We’ve added a new deliverability analytics table to phpList which identifies domains with high numbers of unconfirmed subscribers, making it easy to identify mail hosts which are not receiving as many campaign messages as they could.
Subscribers may have one of three states in phpList: Confirmed, Unconfirmed or Blacklisted. When high numbers of unconfirmed subscribers are detected, this table appears on the Domain Stats page to summarise the number of subscribers with each status.
The new data provides you with a snapshot of the phpList list cleaning process, and an opportunity to take action if message delivery is not reaching its potential.
Status recap
What do the labels mean? The following terms are used throughout phpList to describe individual subscriber status:
A Confirmed subscriber is active and will be sent campaigns.
An Unconfirmed subscriber will not receive mails temporarily while the veracity of their email is established. In the latter case they may have not confirmed their subscription yet, or messages to them may have recently bounced.
A Blacklisted subscriber will not receive emails at all; usually these are people who have manually unsubscribed, or who are unreachable and have bounced consistently.
Taking action
What causes subscribers to be unconfirmed?
- The subscriber’s email address is incorrect, and they did not receive the confirmation request email.
- The confirmation request email was ignored by the subscriber.
- The subscriber’s email address was previously receiving mail, but is no longer, and messages to them are now bouncing back.
- The subscriber’s mail host is blocking your messages.
Possible remedies
- You can check for errors in the email addresses.
- If the subscriber has previously opted in, you can manually confirm them by going to Subscribers > Manage subscribers > Reconcile subscribers and use the Make subscribers on all lists confirmed function Note: if the subscriber was unconfirmed due to bounced messages, and bounces again, they will be blacklisted.
- You can look at the history of a particular subscriber to see if they were automatically unconfirmed any if so, why.
- If 100% of subscribers on a particular domain are unconfirmed or blacklisted, the mail host responsible may be blocking your messages.
For expert advice contact our deliverability team at any time.