In your Mailchimp subscriber list you may have come across the four set categories of All Subscribers, Unsubscribed, Cleaned and Transactional. These names aren’t altogether explanatory and I often get asked in Mailchimp training what each means so here is a brief outline:
All Subscribers
These are the email addresses that you’re able to send to i.e. people that are subscribed to receive your EDM and that have not unsubscribed nor hard bounced (see below for more about bounced email addresses).
The email addresses in the All Subscribers category are those for which you are billed.
Unsubscribed
These are people that have unsubscribed from your campaigns. Typically they will have clicked the unsubscribe link at the end of a campaign that you’ve sent to the subscriber. You may of course also import email addresses that have unsubscribed from your list should you have a large number of email addresses that you manually need to unsubscribe (this means also applies to suppression lists).
Email addresses in the Unsubscribed category are not counted by Mailchimp when determining your subscriber amount for billing.
Cleaned
Cleaned subscribers are those where Mailchimp has determined that it isn’t possible to send campaigns to those email addresses. Importantly, the term Cleaned here refers to cleaned from your All Subscribers i.e. they are non-deliverable email addresses.
The email addresses in this section of a list have hard-bounced and therefore Mailchimp believes they can no longer deliver to these email addresses. Here is how the process works:
- You send your Mailchimp campaign.
- Those emails that can be delivered are delivered and those that aren’t come back as a hard-bounce or soft-bounce.
- A hard-bounce means that the receiving server has replied to Mailchimp that the receiving email address is not valid. Mailchimp moves the hard-bounced email address from the All Subscribers section of the list to the Cleaned section. As this subscriber is no longer in the All Subscribers section you’ll no longer be able to send campaigns to that person.
- A soft-bounce is where there is a temporary deliverability issue to an email address (e.g. the recipients mailbox being full or the campaign size exceeds the maximum size allowed by the receiving server). Mailchimp will try to deliver the campaign to soft-bounce email addresses for three days. If an email address continues to soft-bounce over numberous campaigns then the email address will be moved to the Cleaned list category.
Transactional
The subscribers you see in this section are those that have been sent transactional emails via Mandrill. Transactional emails are one-to-one emails. As transactional email recipients haven’t necessarily agreed to receive your email marketing they are kept in this section of your list and not added to your All Subscribers section.
Thanks Gary. Do the “cleaned” email addresses count towards your total number? I can see where someone would want to remove them in order to not pay more, but it does not seem possible to remove cleaned addresses.
No Andrea, the cleaned nor unsubscribed count toward what Mailchimp bills you.
Hi Gary, how does someone end up on the ‘transactional’ list? I can see a lot of people I added to mailchimp after they purchased a ticket on my website and then also signed up to receive my email in person. Do they select transactional or does it happen through the connection to Shopify? Is it possible to change them to ‘subscriber’?
Thanks!
Hi Nicole, the transactional subscribers are added automatically. Transactional means that they will receive transactional email messages (order notification etc) but they have not opted to receive email marketing. To change a transactional subscriber into a ‘full subscriber’ you’ll need to add the subscriber manually and be sure that you select the option to update the subscribers profile when adding the subscriber to Mailchimp.
Ok. What does CLEANED mean, though. How does it restrict the use of that contact? I can’t delete them, can’t send to them. so what is the point of them remaining on the list at all? Seems really frustrating honestly.
Joe, because Mailchimp can’t deliver to the cleaned email addresses that are in the list, the email addresses remain in the list. This means that these ‘bad’ email addresses can’t be mistakenly added again to the list as subscribers (as Mailchimp can’t deliver to the email addresses) and the cleaned addresses remain for reporting purposes. You aren’t charged for cleaned email addresses in your list.
Hi Gary,
I’ve just spoken to one of our “cleaned” subscribers. He really wants to receive our emails/newsletters. He asked me to contact the company he uses. They say that they have blocked Mailchimp because emails never come from the one server. If they had one address, they could mark that as acceptable.When I checked the subscriber list, I found that he wasn’t the only one. What can we do, they do or what can Mailchimp advise? Many thanks.
@Martina the Mailchimp IP ranges are listed at https://mailchimp.com/about/ips/ . The company will be able to whitelist the IP ranges.
Gary is it possible to remove a “Cleaned” designation for a subscriber? If a subscriber gets Mailchimp emails whitelisted by their provider, and thus is able to receive MC emails again, how are they reinstated?
Since MC is no longer sending emails it won’t pick up on the fact that emails can go through successfully…
Hi Ben,
‘Cleaned’ contacts may be resubscribed by using a Mailchimp hosted signup form: https://organicweb.com.au/mailchimp-cleaned-resubscribe/
Many thanks, Gary!
So I accidentally deleted one of my subscribers and when I manually added her again she shows up as “cleaned” as does not get any of the emails anymore. What can I do to bring her email out of cleaned and back into subscribers?
Hi Gary, i just want to start a campaign for My google play store (Android Apps), is this tool to use and to get more downloads. i want to send 10000 email per day is this best tool or any another tool is available please share me any useful information.
Mailchimp will easily handle 10,000 sends per day.
Bonjour Gary,
Je comprends parfaitement l’intitulé “nettoyer”. Néanmoins toute ma liste que j’ai importée a pour statu “nettoyer” comment y remédier ? Je ne pense pas que ça soit possible d’avoir toute une lise dans nettoyer quand même… Merci pour votre réponse, bonne journée
Hi Cecile,
Did you by any chance import all your subscribers as ‘Cleaned’? If so then it’ll be best to create a new Audience and import the contacts as ‘Subscribed’.
Great Explanation. Very ease to understand.
Julio Borges
A HAPPY MailChimp User
Rio de Janeiro – Brazil
I cannot understand how to fix a “cleaned” subscriber to put them back in the roll of receiving our emails. Is there a simpler way of doing this?
Hi Gary, For the paid monthly plan, there are quota for number of contacts for certain price tags, eg $74.99 for up to 10,000 contact. In such case will the contacts in the cleaned list count toward this quota?
No, cleaned contacts don’t count towards billing.
Do cleaned e-mails affect my open rate? Should I be removing them to get a higher open rate?
Hi Hillary,
Emails aren’t sent to cleaned contacts and you are not billed in Mailchimp for cleaned contacts. There is therefore no need to remove cleaned contacts from your audience.
Hi Gary,
Is there a way to send a ‘test’ email to ‘cleaned’ subscribers to see if any respondents open the email?
I understand that Mailchimp classifies a subscriber as ‘cleaned’ if they received 3 soft bounces however, if we send out more than 3 emails weekly and this persons inbox is full during this period they automatically fall within this category even though they themselves haven’t unsubscribed.
Need further classification here.
Hi AB,
To be clear, Mailchimp allow between seven and 15 soft bounces before the email address is marked as “Cleaned” (not three soft bounces).
You could always add a segment criteria to filter out contacts that haven’t opened for, say, a period of time.