Held Contacts

Held contacts are contacts that, for any number of reasons, have not been able to receive email from the Platform and have "bounced." There are many different types of bounces. For example: the contact mailbox is full, the contact's server was temporarily offline, or the contact might just have an Out of Office message going out. All of these are types of "Soft Bounces." Our system automatically sets the status of a contact to “held” if messages to the contact bounce repeatedly. It also holds a contact if a message “Hard Bounces” meaning the domain informs us the email address does not exist. The Held group cannot be deleted as it is a system group.

Once a contact is held, that email address won’t receive any mail even if they are on a list you are sending to. If you click on a contact’s name in the group, you can see their contact record details, including a red message stating how long they have been “held.”  You have the option of checking to box to reset the held status. NOTE: Unless you know of a specific reason why a contact bounced, we don't recommend resetting the bounce status (as they will likely bounce again). Resetting the bounce status on unavailable/non-existent emails and sending to may cause deliverability issues with your good email lists.

Held contacts are designated by a green flag next to their contact record:

To find a list of all your held contacts, start on Contacts home page. Toggle to the Search Contacts tab and change your filter on Held from "Any" to "Yes." Click the Search button. This will show you all held contacts in your account. You can follow these same steps when clicked into a group to find all the held contacts who are part of that group. NOTE: Because they might get re-uploaded at a later data and get sent to again, we suggest NOT DELETING held contacts.