Understanding suppression

Last updated: March 10, 2025

Overview

Ensuring that you do not email contacts who explicitly do not want your content is crucial for maintaining a good sending reputation and deliverability, and Sendlane's platform provides ways to automatically and manually add contacts to suppression.

Read on to learn more about when Sendlane automatically suppresses email addresses and how you can suppress email addresses and domains!

Once a contact has been suppressed, it cannot be un-suppressed

Email address suppression

Contacts' individual email addresses are automatically suppressed by Sendlane if they meet certain criteria, but they can also be manually suppressed.

Automatic Contact Suppression

Contacts are suppressed automatically by Sendlane when:

  • An email cannot be delivered and results in a hard bounce, that email address is automatically suppressed

  • A Contact clicks the spam/junk button in an email, it is registered as a “complaint” against the sender to the Contact's Internet Service Provider. Sendlane participates in all known feedback loop programs for receiving notifications of spam complaints, and our system adds email addresses to Suppression when we are notified that the email address registered spam complaints on an email sent from Sendlane.

Manual Contact Suppression

Use the following processes to suppress individual email addresses:

Import email addresses to suppression

  1. Make sure the View by menu is toggled to Email

  2. Click the Import Contacts button

  3. In the Tools menu, choose Import from a file if you have a .CSV or .TXT file to upload or Copy + Paste if you have a short list to enter

  4. Click the pink Import Contacts button

Manually add email addresses to suppression

  1. Open the Suppression window

  2. Make sure the View by menu is toggled to Email

  3. Click the Add Contacts button

  4. Enter the email address you want to suppress

  5. Click the pink Add button

Email domain suppression

Email domains (the part of the email address after @) can be manually added to your suppression list.

Domain suppression automatically suppresses any email address with the suppressed domain if it is added to your account via any method.

Adding domains to your suppression list means that no email address containing these domain names will ever receive emails from you

If you suppress the domain gmail.com, your content will not be delivered to any email address using the gmail.com domain.

Use caution when suppressing entire domains

Importing Domains to Suppression

  1. Ensure the View by menu is toggled to Domain

  2. Click the Import Domains button

  3. In the Contact Import menu, choose Import from a File if you have a .CSV or .TXT file to upload or Copy + Paste if you have a short list to enter

  4. Click the pink Import Domains button

Manually Add Domains to Suppression

  1. Ensure the View by menu is toggled to Domain

  2. Click the Add Domain button

  3. Enter the domains you want to suppress

  4. Click Add 

Access your account's suppression list

  1. Click the Audience icon

  2. Click Lists tab

  3. Below your lists, find the Suppression box and click on the pink Suppression link

Search for Suppressed Email Addresses or Domains

Search for specific email addresses or domains on your Suppression list with the search bar in the Suppressed List window:

  1. Access your account's suppression list

  2. Select Email or Domain

  3. Search for an email address or domain

Export Suppressed Email Addresses or Domains

Export a list of your suppressed Contacts' email addresses or domains:

  1. Access your account's suppression list

  2. Select Email or Domain

  3. Click Export

  4. Select to export your list as a CSV or TXT file, and you'll receive an email when your file is ready to download! You can also check the status of your export and download your completed file in the Exports tab.