Contacts under review

A list may hold old, abandoned addresses and spam traps. Sent all at once, a bad list can put your domain in the Gmail spam folder in a single afternoon. Kula sends to new contacts progressively and watches how inbox providers react.

Contacts under review

A contact is under review until it shows a human sign of life: an open, a click, or the confirmation of a double opt-in. Opens from privacy proxies and clicks from link scanners don't count.

It applies to every contact, however it was added: import, signup form, dashboard or API.

The cap

Each campaign reaches a capped number of contacts under review. When you send a campaign:

• if the audience has fewer contacts under review than the cap, they all receive it;
• if it has more, as many as the cap allows are picked at random and receive it. The others skip this campaign and take part in the next ones.

Everyone else in the audience receives the campaign as usual.

The campaign editor tells you before sending how many contacts will be held back.

How the cap lifts

After each campaign, Kula checks how inbox providers treated the contacts under review, Gmail first: it sends cold lists to spam fastest, and doesn't tell anyone.

When the results are healthy, the cap rises for the next campaign, until your whole list is back. When they're not, the cap stays where it is until a later campaign does better. The cap never goes down.

Imports don't trigger anything

• no confirmation email, even on a list with double opt-in;
• no welcome flow: flows triggered by a list subscription ignore imported subscriptions.

Imported contacts get their first email when you send them a campaign.

Good practice for a migration

• Import only contacts who agreed to receive your emails, and recently. Remove anyone who hasn't opened in a year.
• Start with your most engaged contacts if your previous tool can export them.
• Send your usual content. A "we've moved" email to a cold list is the kind that gets reported as spam.

See the migration guide.

Where to follow it

• Contacts shows how many contacts are Under review, and each contact's page says whether it is.
• The campaign report shows how many contacts were held back by the cap.
• Import contacts explains the CSV format and why rows can be skipped.