Understanding contact opt-in status

efore a contact can receive promos from your organisation, they need to opt in. This ensures your audience is made up of people who genuinely want to hear from you, which keeps engagement meaningful and helps your emails reach inboxes rather than spam folders.

The first time you send a promo to a new contact, the opt-in is built in. They receive the promo and are asked to consent as part of viewing it. Once they opt in, future promos go straight to them. If they never opt in, they will not receive further promos until they do.

Read on to understand how you can check your contacts' opt-in status and how this affects the promos they can receive from you.

The status column

In your Audience page, the Status column shows one of three statuses for each contact:

No status: the contact has been added to your audience but has not yet opted in to receive promos from your organisation. This is the default for newly added contacts, unless you declare prior consent when adding them.

Subscribed: the contact has opted in and will receive your promos directly.

Unsubscribed: the contact has opted out and will not receive promos.

Opt-in options when adding contacts

When you add a contact manually or import contacts from a CSV file, you can declare that they have already consented to receive emails from you on another platform. A checkbox reading "This contact already opted in on another platform" appears in the add contact form, and an equivalent checkbox appears during CSV import.

If you check this box, the contact is immediately marked as Subscribed and will receive your next promo without going through the opt-in step first.

If you leave it unchecked (the default), the contact is added with no status. They will be asked to opt in when they receive their first promo from you, as described above.

Only use the opt-in option if you have a clear record of the contact's consent. Contacts who did not genuinely opt in are more likely to unsubscribe or mark your emails as spam.

What happens when you send a promo

When you reach the Audience step of your promo, the sidebar on the right shows a live breakdown of who will be reached. This breakdown has four rows:

Subscribed: Opted-in contacts who will receive the promo directly.

New contacts: Contacts who have never been included in a promo send before. They will receive the promo, and will be asked to opt in as part of that first experience.

Awaiting opt-in: Contacts who were included in a previous promo send but have not yet opted in. They will not receive another promo until they opt in.

Unsubscribed / failed: Contacts who have unsubscribed or had previous delivery failures. These are excluded from all sends.

The large number at the top of the sidebar ("Target audience") shows the total number of contacts who will be contacted when you send. This includes both Subscribed and New contacts.

Accessing a promo

When a contact clicks the link in a promo email for the first time, they are granted access automatically without needing to enter a passcode. If the same link is accessed again (for example, on a different device), identity verification is required. This helps keep your promos safe from unintended viewers.

Why some contacts show as "Awaiting opt-in"

If you have contacts in this state, it means they received a previous promo but did not complete the opt-in. They remain in your audience but are excluded from sends until they opt in.

If your entire filtered audience is in the Awaiting opt-in state, you will see a warning banner on the Audience step. You can still preview and send test emails for your promo while this is the case.