In Delivra, maintaining a healthy sender reputation is critical to ensuring your emails reach the inbox. One key way the platform supports this is through the automatic handling of contacts in "Held" status. This article explains what "Held" status means, how contacts are moved into that state, and how you can manually update contacts after a campaign.

What Does 'Held' Status Mean?

A contact is moved to "Held" status after three consecutive emails sent to them have been rejected by the recipient's server. These rejections, or hard bounces, typically indicate that:

• The email address is no longer active
• The address was never valid

Once a contact is in Held status, Delivra will no longer send emails to that address. This protects your overall deliverability by reducing bounce rates and limiting engagement with invalid emails.

Note: Some accounts may have customized settings for held status thresholds. Contact Support if you believe your configuration differs.

How to Manually Mark Hard Bounces as Held

If you want to proactively update bounced contacts without waiting for three failures, you can manually move them to "Held" status using the steps below.

Step 1: Identify Hard Bounced Contacts

1. Click Analytics in the top navigation.
2. Choose Campaigns from the left-side menu.
3. Select View Report on the Mailing Overview report.
4. Click the Select Mailings button and move the desired campaign(s) or report group(s) from left to right.
5. In the Delivery section, click the hard bounces number.
6. Click the three vertical dots in the top right of the results table and select Export All to Excel.

Step 2: Prepare CSV for Import

1. Open the exported spreadsheet.
2. Delete all columns except the EmailAddr_ column.
3. Add a new column titled membertype.
4. In the membertype column, type held next to each email address.
   • Tip: Use the drag-to-fill feature after typing held once.
5. Save the file as a CSV (comma-delimited).

Step 3: Import Held Status Contacts

1. Go to the Contacts tab.
2. Click Import Email Contacts in the upper-right.
3. Click Select to upload your prepared CSV.
4. Click Next.
5. Ensure column headers match Delivra’s fields (email address and membertype).
6. Click Next, then Import.

Once completed, these contacts will be marked as "Held" and will no longer receive future emails from your campaigns.

Notes and Support

If you're working with a large number of bounced contacts or need help preparing the file, our Deliverability Team is available for consultation. This may incur an hourly fee.

For questions or assistance, reach out to our Support team at support@delivra.com.