Understand graymail and avoid sending email to unengaged contacts

With graymail suppression, you can improve your engagement rates by excluding contacts who aren't interacting with your marketing emails.

Understand graymail

Graymail is email that contacts have opted in to receive, but never open or click. Spam filters can identify and filter out emails that recipients aren't opening or clicking. This increases the likelihood that future emails will end up in the junk folder or spam filter. By continuing to send email to contacts who don't open or click, you're lowering your sender score overall.

Understand how unengaged contacts are calculated

HubSpot's graymail suppression feature automatically excludes any contacts who have not been engaging with your marketing emails. This feature uses the Sends since last engagement contact property, which counts an engagement when a contact opens a marketing email or when they click a link in your marketing email.

A contact will be categorized as unengaged if they meet one of the following criteria:

• Has never engaged with a marketing email from you and hasn't engaged with the last 11 emails you've sent them.
• Previously engaged with one of your marketing emails but hasn't engaged with the last 16 emails you've sent them.

You can see a complete list of contacts that will be excluded from a specific email.

Create a sunset policy to manage unengaged contacts

Sending to unengaged contacts will increase the likelihood that your future emails will be automatically moved to the recipient's spam or junk folder. To mitigate this, you can create a sunset policy to help you manage your unengaged contacts and maintain a healthy email sending reputation.

A sunset policy is a plan for regularly determining which contacts aren't engaging with your emails, attempting to re-engage with them to confirm their interest, and removing any contacts who remain uninterested and unengaged. Learn more about how to use a sunset policy.

If you'd like to automatically avoid sending email to unengaged contacts by default, you can follow the instructions below.

Manage graymail suppression for a specific email

To configure graymail suppression for an individual marketing email:

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Email.
2. Click the name of a drafted email. 
3. Click the Send to tab.
4. Select the Don't send to unengaged contacts checkbox to turn on this setting.
5. To see a complete list of recipients that would be excluded with this feature turned on, click the unengaged contacts link.

You can see whether the Don't send to contacts with low engagement setting was turned on in the email details. You'll also see these contacts in the Not sent tab of your sent marketing email.

Turn off default graymail suppression (Marketing Hub Starter, Professional, and Enterprise only)

By default, the Don't send to unengaged contacts switch is turned on for all emails. To have this switch be turned off by default for newly created emails: 

1. In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the top navigation bar.
2. In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Marketing > Email. 
3. Click the Subscriptions tab.
4. In the Resubscription and sending options section, click to toggle the Don't send to unengaged contacts switch off. This will not affect any previously created emails.