Understanding Reachability

Learn how your contacts’ email permissions impact your ability to engage with them.

A contact’s email and text permissions determine whether or not they are reachable. Each status is ultimately determined by the contact’s previous interactions with your brand. A contact’s current permissions are available for review on the Contacts dashboard and their profile. 

Email Permissions

There are currently 4 possible email permissions:

Mailable

The contact is eligible to receive emails. A contact typically becomes mailable by submitting a form with the proper consent or by being included in an import designated for subscribed contacts. 

Unsubscribed

The contact is not eligible to receive emails. A contact becomes unsubscribed by opting out via the email preferences link in your emails or by being included in an import designated for unsubscribed contacts. 

Suppressed

The contact is not eligible to receive emails because their email address is invalid or Privy had trouble getting the server to accept the email (e.g., Hard Bounce). 

Unset

The contact is not eligible to receive emails yet because the contact has neither opted in nor opted out of receiving emails. They will not be mailable until they have opted in. A contact typically becomes unset if they completed a purchase without also opting into marketing communications, or if they were included in an import that is pending review by Privy’s compliance team. Any newly imported contacts will remain in an unset status until approved. 

Managing Email Permissions

Resubscribing a Contact: Unsubscribed contacts will be resubscribed when a signup event provides consent. Suppressed contacts will not be resubscribed, as that is currently treated as a permanent state. If you believe a contact has been incorrectly marked as suppressed, please contact the support team. 

Unsubscribing a Contact: Contacts can unsubscribe themselves by clicking the email preferences link at the bottom of any email received from Privy.

Additionally, if a contact requests that you unsubscribe their email address on their behalf, you can manually unsubscribe them by clicking the Unsubscribe button on their profile. Learn more.

Syncing Email Permissions

Syncing Mailable and Unset Contacts: When syncing a signup event to an external email service provider (ESP), Privy will send a marketing flag when possible. The provider can then use the information to update consent and reachability information on their end. 

If the contact’s subscription status at the partner was “unsubscribed” when Privy sent the information, the sync might resubscribe the contact on the partner’s end as well. Additionally, this sync may result in the recreation of a previously deleted contact. However, both of these behaviors depend on the specifics of the partner’s API. 

Syncing Unsubscribed and Suppressed contacts - Privy does not currently support real-time syncing of this information to or from partner email service providers (ESPs). 

Text Permissions

There are currently 2 possible text permissions:

Textable

The contact is eligible to receive text messages. A contact becomes textable by submitting a form with the SMS opt-in legal disclaimer and also answering ‘Y’ to the double opt-in message sent to their number. This action provides explicit consent. 

Not Textable

The contact is not eligible to receive texts. The contact either provided their phone number on a form that did not include the SMS opt-in legal disclaimer, or they signed up on a form including the disclaimer but never replied ‘Y’ to confirm their signup.

Managing Text Permissions

Unsubscribing a Contact: Contacts unsubscribe themselves by replying STOP. This disclaimer is included in all Privy texts automatically. 

Resubscribing a Contact: Unsubscribed contacts can resubscribe themselves by either submitting a display that provides new explicit consent, or replying “UNSTOP” or “START” to a message from your toll-free number. Learn more.