Clean a contact list
Assess
list_contacts with status=bounced and status=complained — these must
never be mailed again. Continuing to send to them is what turns a reputation
problem into a blocklisting.get_contact_score with no contact_id returns the lowest-engagement
contacts.get_analytics for the open-rate trend over time.
Report what share of the list each category represents. Percentages, not raw
counts alone — "412 bounced" means nothing without the list size.
Recommend, then ask
Propose which segments to suppress and which to try re-engaging first. A
re-engagement campaign to genuinely unengaged contacts is usually worth one
attempt before suppression; contacts who complained are not.
Never call update_contact to unsubscribe anyone without explicit
per-segment approval. Unsubscribing is effectively irreversible from the
user's perspective and they may be reacting to a number they misread.
Importing
When importing, import_contacts handles up to 5,000 per call and updates
rather than duplicates existing addresses. Before a large import, confirm the
contacts opted in — mailing a purchased or scraped list breaches CAN-SPAM and
GDPR and will damage the sending domain for every other campaign.
Spot-check a sample with validate_email first and report the rejected rows.
