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Wondering why your emails only send to some of your intended contacts? This article explains what may be causing this email recipient discrepancy.

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Troubleshoot email recipient discrepancy

If you are attempting to send an email campaign to your list of contacts, you may find that the list of recipients is smaller than your list of contacts. For example, you have a list of 1500 contacts in your Contacts tab: 1500 contacts But only 1200 recipients when drafting your email campaign: 1200 recipients

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Marketing emails and subscribers

You are likely seeing the result of the important difference between sending marketing emails and transactional emails. To comply with various rules, laws, and regulations such as the CAN-SPAM Act and GDPR, your marketing emails will only send to subscribed contacts. Learn more about the difference between marketing emails and transactional emails for details. In the example above, 300 of the 1500 contacts are unsubscribed. This will result in the total number of 1200 subscribers that are eligible to receive your marketing email. A discrepancy can also occur if you are attempting to send an email campaign to a specific segment of your contacts but only a few contacts in the segment are set to receive the email. If your recipient list contains unsubscribed contacts, you will see a difference between the number of recipients you have selected to send your email and the total number of contacts in your contact list. It is important to note that your email campaign specifies the term “subscribers” when determining your email recipients. Subscribers are contacts who have provided the appropriate permissions to be subscribed to receive your marketing emails.
Note: If a contact is not subscribed to receive marketing emails they will not receive emails in an email sequence. Learn more about Subscribers for details. If your subscribers are not receiving your sequence, your emails may be getting marked as spam. Learn to improve your sender reputation and improve your email deliverability.
If you would like to add custom messaging to encourage email subscription upon offer checkout, or choose to automatically sign up customers to your email list when they purchase a paid offer, you can do so in your checkout page opt-in settings. Learn how to update your checkout page opt-in settings here. Learn more about contacts, customers, and subscribers to better understand subscribed and unsubscribed contacts.

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Additional resource

  • Did you accidentally unsubscribe a contact? Did a contact accidentally unsubscribe from your marketing emails or forget to subscribe when signing up for your course? Learn more about resubscribing contacts who may have been accidentally unsubscribed.