Subscriptions on a contact
Double opt-in isn't generally available yet. The panel described here is live and useful today, but the double opt-in setting it refers to is still being rolled out — in Settings it's greyed out and marked Coming soon, so no list can require a confirmation click yet. In practice that means you won't see Awaiting confirmation, Request expired, Double opt-in confirmed or Never asked — those all belong to lists that require a confirmation click. What you'll see today is Subscribed on every list a contact hasn't left, Unsubscribed where they have, and Subscribed · not verified where consent arrived with an import. If you'd like double opt-in turned on for your account, get in touch — see Double opt-in.
Open any contact and you'll find a Subscriptions panel in the right-hand column, just under Consent & reachability. It answers the two questions that come up whenever someone writes in about email: what has this person actually agreed to receive? and why haven't they been confirmed yet?
The panel shows one line per subscription list, for every email address on the contact — so an old address that has been suppressed doesn't quietly hide the consent attached to it.
What each state means
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| Subscribed | They're on this list and mail will reach them. This list doesn't ask for a confirmation click, so anyone who hasn't unsubscribed is subscribed — that's what the line under the label means by implicit. |
| Double opt-in confirmed | They asked to join, and then clicked the confirmation link we emailed them. Their consent is proven. |
| Subscribed · not verified | They're on the list, but no confirmation round-trip ever happened. Three things land here: the consent came in with an import, it was carried over from before double opt-in was switched on, or they added themselves to this list from their preference centre page. That last one still proves they can reach their own inbox — reaching the page at all requires clicking a link that was mailed to them — but it isn't a click on a dedicated confirmation link, so it's recorded with the same honesty as the other two. |
| Awaiting confirmation | They asked to join and we've emailed the confirmation link, but they haven't clicked it yet. The panel shows when it was sent and when it expires. |
| Request expired | The confirmation link ran out before they used it. |
| Unsubscribed | They removed themselves from this list, with the date they did it. |
| Never asked | No opt-in has ever been recorded, on a list that requires a confirmation click. This is not the same as unsubscribing — nobody has ever asked, and nobody has ever said no. On lists that don't require confirmation you won't see this: there, someone who never said no is Subscribed. |
Lists that require a confirmation click are tagged double opt-in. Lists without that tag never send a confirmation, so nothing on them can be pending.
Each line also shows the provenance: when the request came in, when it was confirmed, and how (a web form, the preference centre, an import, an admin, and so on).
When someone unsubscribes from a list
However a recipient unsubscribes — the Unsubscribe link in an email footer, or their preference centre page — the list they left is recorded as Unsubscribed on this panel, and you get the same result whichever route they used. The two never leave the contact in different states.
One rule is worth knowing: if a list is your only list and it's the default, unsubscribing from it stops all email to that contact, not just that one list. With a single list there's no difference between "leave this list" and "stop mailing me" — and honouring it as "stop all email" also keeps a list you add later from quietly mailing someone who already asked you to stop. In that case the contact's Do not email switch (on the Consent & reachability card just above) is turned on as well, and the panel shows a banner saying so. Re-subscribing reverses both.
With two or more lists, unsubscribing from one leaves the others untouched — it's a per-list choice.
Unsubscribe from all → re-subscribe. A recipient who unsubscribes from everything (a global "unsubscribe from all email") is opted out of every list and marked Do not email. Because the per-list rows now show unsubscribed too, they can turn it back on from the same preference page: re-ticking any list re-subscribes them and lifts the global "Do not email" — an affirmative "email me again" clears the block. (A hard bounce or spam complaint is different: that suppresses the address separately, and re-subscribing never re-enables a bounced or complained address.)
"Do not email is on"
If the contact's Do not email switch is on — whether from the rule above, a hard bounce, a spam complaint, or someone turning it on by hand — a banner at the top of the panel says so. It's a reminder that no list will receive email while that switch is on, whatever the individual lines say: a per-list Subscribed only means they never left that list, not that mail will actually go out to them.
About the preference centre mentioned above
The preference centre — the page a recipient opens from the Email preferences link in your footer — comes with double opt-in. It's available when at least one of your subscription lists has double opt-in switched on, and unavailable when none of them does. See Double opt-in for the whole picture.
Two consequences show up on this panel:
- While it's off, nothing new arrives here with "preference centre" provenance — recipients have no preference page to change anything from. Lines already recorded that way keep their history; provenance is never rewritten.
- Turning double opt-in off turns off preference links you've already sent. Those links stay valid for 90 days, so anyone clicking an older one gets a "this link is no longer valid" page instead of their checkboxes. Their subscriptions are unchanged, and the Unsubscribe link in the same footer still works.
Re-sending a confirmation
When a contact is stuck waiting on a confirmation, a Resend confirmation button appears on that line. The button only shows when a resend can actually work — the panel never offers one it would then refuse.
When there's no button, the panel says why in plain words. The most common reasons:
- The contact is marked do not contact. Nothing can be sent to them at all.
- The address is suppressed (a hard bounce or a global unsubscribe) — nothing can be delivered to it.
- They unsubscribed from this list. Re-sending would be a fresh solicitation, so the request has to come from them.
- This list doesn't require confirmation. Double opt-in isn't turned on for it, so there's no confirmation step to resend.
- No request exists. Nobody has ever asked to join this list from this address, so there's nothing to confirm.
- Already confirmed — there's nothing left to confirm.
- The request expired. Reviving it would also be a fresh solicitation, so it has to start from their side.
Two things can happen after you press the button:
- "Try again later." There's a limit of three confirmation emails per address per day, so nobody can be mail-bombed by accident. Come back tomorrow, or later in the day.
- "Retrying won't help until something changes." The send was refused outright — for example the address became suppressed, the contact was marked do not contact, or your account has no verified sending address yet. Fix the underlying cause and try again; repeating the click won't do anything.
If it worked, the panel confirms which address the email went to.
What the panel deliberately doesn't show
The evidence recorded alongside a consent — the IP address, the browser, and the exact wording of the consent text they agreed to — is not shown here. It's kept as evidence for a regulator or a dispute and is included in the contact's data export (Settings → Privacy), rather than being displayed on a screen anyone can open.