Manage the suppression list

The suppression list is the record of every address ColdMerge will not send to, and why. Open it under Contacts, then the Suppression tab.

Above the table sits the count: “1,240 addresses you’ll never email.”, or “Nobody yet.” if the list is empty.

Look up one address

The Look up an address box takes one whole email address.

Type the complete address. A partial never matches. Searching for acme will find nothing even if [email protected] is on the list.

That is a consequence of how the list works rather than a missing feature. Addresses are matched by a one-way hash, and a hash cannot be searched by fragment. An exact match is also the only search that an erased row can answer at all.

The empty result says so plainly: “No exact match”, followed by “A partial address never matches, so this doesn’t mean <what you typed> can be emailed.”

Add addresses

One card at the top, Add to suppression list, holds both ways in. It has two tabs, and the button changes with the tab you are on.

Paste addresses

This is the default tab, and the everyday one.

1. Paste addresses into the box, one per line.
2. Select Never email these.

They are suppressed immediately. There is no review step, because an address is a block of one and there is nothing to map.

Any line that is not an email address stays on screen underneath, listed with its line number, so you can see exactly which ones to fix. Up to ten are shown, then “and N more”. They stay put rather than flashing past in a toast, because these are the lines you have to go and correct.

The confirmation tells you the split, for example “12 addresses added, 3 already on the list.” If nothing at all was an address, it says so instead of claiming success.

Upload a file

Use this tab for an opt-out export from a tool you are moving away from.

1. Switch to Upload a file.
2. Drop the file on the dropzone, or select it to browse. The hint under the box states the accepted file types and size limit.
3. Select Read the addresses.

The file is staged as a suppression import and you land in the ordinary import wizard, the same one contact imports use. See Contacts, lists & imports for how that screen works.

A suppression import has no column mapping and no target list, so there is nothing to configure. Go straight to applying it. In the summary afterwards, the created count reads Suppressed rather than “Added”.

A migration of years of opt-outs takes minutes, and it is the kind of thing you start and walk away from. Past imports, next to the button, takes you back to one already running.

Caution

A suppression import has no undo. Bulk-removing suppression rows would risk re-emailing people who opted out, so the button does not exist. A row from a migration file can be taken off one at a time, by an Owner or Admin, if it turns out to be wrong.

Read a row

Each row carries the address, a short explanation, the reason, the source, and the date it was added.

The whole row reads as ordinary neutral text. Nothing on this screen is red. Being on this list is the system doing its job.

Reasons

Reason	What happened	Can it come off?
Unsubscribed	They used the unsubscribe link in a message you sent.	Never
Bounced	Their mail server rejected a message as undeliverable.	Yes
Added by you	You put this address on the list, by hand or by importing it.	Yes
Erased	They asked to be erased, so everything but the one-way hash is gone.	Never

The explanation under each address says both halves in words, so you never have to guess which rows are permanent.

Sources

The source column says where the row came from.

Source	Meaning
Unsubscribe link	A recipient opted out of a message you sent.
Bounce report	A mail server reported the address as permanently undeliverable.
Added by hand	Typed or pasted on this screen.
Imported	Came from a suppression file you uploaded.
Suppressed from contacts	Selected on the Contacts screen and suppressed in bulk.
Not recorded	An erasure row, which deliberately records no provenance.

Note

Addresses brought in from another tool are recorded as Added by you, never as Unsubscribed, even though they are somebody else’s opt-out list. Nobody clicked anything of yours, and the Unsubscribed reason can never be undone, so a mis-aimed migration file would make its own mistakes permanent.

Remove a row

The Removal column on the right holds one of three things.

• A Remove button, if the row can come off and you are an Owner or Admin.
• A sentence explaining why the row cannot come off, if it cannot.
• Nothing at all, if the row could come off but your role does not allow it.

Selecting Remove asks you to confirm, naming the address: “Let [email protected] be emailed again?” with the note “Your campaigns will send to [email protected] again.” Confirm, and it is off the list.

Who can remove

Adding to the list is open to any role. It is the ordinary work of outreach.

Removing is Owner and Admin only. Undoing a suppression is a compliance decision, so it sits with the roles that make compliance decisions.

A Member does not see a disabled button on a row they cannot act on. They see nothing there. A greyed-out control with no explanation is something people argue with, so ColdMerge leaves it out.

Rows nobody can remove

Two kinds of row are refused for every role, including Owners.

Unsubscribed rows. The row reads: “This person clicked unsubscribe. Nobody can put them back on your sending list, at any Role: they asked you to stop.”

Erased rows. The address column shows the word erased in muted italics instead of an address, because the plaintext is gone. The refusal reads: “This address was erased at the person’s request. The one-way hash is all that is left of them, and it is the only thing keeping the next import from re-creating them.”

An erased row keeps whatever reason it had before the erasure, so a row can read Bounced and still be unremovable. What decides it is whether the address is still there, not what the reason column says. If the address is gone, so is the Remove button.

The refusal text you read is the same sentence the server would answer with, so there is never a case where the screen offers something the system would refuse, or hides something it would have allowed.

Adding the same address twice

Nothing breaks. The row already there is kept, along with its original reason and date. The first record of why an address is on the list wins, and a second write never overwrites it.

So pasting a list that overlaps one you imported last month is safe, and the confirmation tells you how many were already there.

What suppression does to a running campaign

Suppression is account-wide and enforced on every send, with no exceptions.

• Nobody suppressed receives another message from any campaign.
• Any follow-up steps still waiting for that person are ended.
• At import time, a suppressed address is skipped entirely: no contact is created, no fields are updated on an existing one, and no list membership is added.

That import-time skip is hygiene rather than the guarantee. The real guarantee is the check at the moment of sending, because somebody can become suppressed after you imported them.