Duplicate, bounced & unsubscribed
This guide explains how Prezly identifies duplicate contacts, what bounced and unsubscribed statuses mean, and how to manage these.
Duplicate contacts
Viewing duplicate contacts
Prezly automatically checks your CRM for duplicates and flags any contacts with a gray badge on the contact's profile picture.
You can see all the duplicate contacts in your account by selecting Contacts from your left-hand menu and clicking on the Potential duplicates view at the top of the page.
Resolving duplicates
- Click a contact to open it in side view
- Go to the Duplicates tab
- Choose one of the following:
- Merge contact – combine the contact with its duplicate
- Not a duplicate – remove the duplicate flag
When you choose Merge contact, Prezly will highlight any data conflicts and allow you to choose what information to keep for the merged contact by selecting Keep this one.
How Prezly detects duplicate people
A person is flagged as a duplicate when:
- Two or more contacts in your CRM share the exact same email address
- One contact's primary email address appears as a secondary email address for another contact
- A contact has no email address but shares the exact same name with another contact
- A contact has no email address but shares the exact same social media handle with another contact
How Prezly detects duplicate organizations
An organization is flagged as a duplicate when:
- Two or more organizations share the exact same email address
- Organizations have the same name
- One organization's primary email address appears within another organization's email list
All detected duplicates are added to the Duplicate view on the Contacts page.
Bounced contacts
A bounce occurs when an email cannot be delivered to a recipient. Common reasons include an invalid or misspelled email address, full inbox, or a server rejecting the message.
Bounced contacts are marked with a red no access 🚫 symbol in Prezly.
Prezly automatically marks email addresses as bounced when delivery fails. Bounced email addresses will not receive future campaigns.
Hard vs soft bounces
There are two main types of bounces:
- Email addresses reporting temporary challenges (such as quota or network issues) are retried for up to 72 hours, after which they are considered temporary or soft bounces
- More serious error codes (such as mailbox full, or non-existent address) puts contacts in a permanent or hard bounce list
After a certain time, we test the bounced email addresses again to see whether they recovered.
- Soft bounces are cleared ("purged") from the suppression list after 10 days
- Hard bounces are cleared ("purged") from the suppression list after 90 days
Viewing bounced contacts
You can see the bounced contacts in your account by selecting Contacts from your left-hand menu and clicking on the Bounced view at the top of the page.
Resolving bounced contacts
Start by checking the contact’s email address for spelling errors or outdated information. This is a common cause of bounces, especially if you're importing contacts from a bought database. Once you update the email address, the bounce status is removed and the contact will be eligible to receive future campaigns.
If the email address looks correct, open the contact and go to the Activity tab. Each undelivered message includes a short explanation of why it bounced, which can help you understand what happened and what to fix.
Some bounces are temporary – for example, a full inbox or a momentary server issue. In those cases, wait and try contacting the person again later.
If you are certain that the emails to which you are sending your campaigns are active and should not be bouncing, please contact us via the chat bubble in the corner of Prezly or email our support team and we'll investigate.
Unsubscribed contacts
Every email campaign sent through Prezly includes an unsubscribe link at the bottom to comply with anti-spam laws.
When someone clicks the unsubscribe link:
- They are unsubscribed only from the site that sent the email
- If you have multiple sites, they may still receive emails from your other sites
- If they unsubscribe from one email address on their contact profile, only that specific address is unsubscribed
Prezly prevents unsubscribed email addresses from receiving future campaigns linked to that site, even if they are included in a recipient list.
Why you or a colleague might appear unsubscribed
If an email campaign is forwarded manually from your inbox and the recipient of your forwarded copy clicks the unsubscribe link, the unsubscribe is applied to your email address.
This happens because the unsubscribe link is unique to the original recipient.
To avoid this, always send emails to all intended recipients directly through Prezly.
How to resubscribe a contact
To resubscribe, the contact must re-enter their email address into the subscription form in your site footer. This confirms consent and restores email delivery.
If your site footer does not include a subscription form, you can toggle it on in your subscriber settings. To do this:
- Select the site you want to add a subscription form to
- Click on the Subscribers block in the site dashboard
- Click the ⚙️ gear icon to open the settings
- Toggle Show subscription form to on
How to check which site a contact has unsubscribed from
Hover over the red unsubscribe icon next to a contact's name. Prezly will show the site or sites the contact has opted out of.
How to check which email address is unsubscribed
If a contact has multiple email addresses and only one is unsubscribed, reach out to support@prezly.com and we can check which specific address is affected.