A contact can be in your audience and still be ineligible for a message. Before each marketing send, Kirora checks channel consent, topic preferences, unsubscribes and suppression. This guide explains how those checks work together.
Consent, per channel
Each contact has separate consent for email and for push. Giving one doesn’t give the other. A contact needs consent for a channel before they can receive marketing on it.
Consent is recorded when:
- you import contacts and say how they agreed. See Import contacts.
- someone signs up through one of your signup forms
- you edit a contact and tick This person agreed to receive marketing email or …push notifications
- your app records it through the API
Every grant records how the person agreed: Opted in or Existing customer. It also records the evidence you gave. You’ll find the full record on the contact’s Consent tab, under Consent history, showing what changed, how, by whom and when.
Existing-customer consent for contacts in Canada lapses two years after it was last given. After a new purchase, edit the contact and choose Restate how they agreed to renew it.
Transactional messages, such as receipts and password resets, don’t need marketing consent.
Topics: let people opt out of some messages
Without topics, unsubscribing stops all marketing email. Topics let people drop one kind of message, such as promotions, and keep getting another, such as your newsletter.
- Open Settings, then Topics.
- Choose New topic.
- Enter a Name (contacts see it on the unsubscribe page) and a Description.
- Choose Who gets it:
- everyone with marketing consent, unless they’ve left the topic
- only people who have joined it, through a form, the API or someone in your workspace
- Choose Create topic.
Then pick the topic on a campaign’s Details step, or on a journey’s send step. A contact’s topics are listed on their profile.
Unsubscribes and the preference centre
Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link and your postal address in the footer. When someone selects the link, they reach a page that names your business. From there they can unsubscribe from all marketing email or, if you use topics, choose which topics to keep. They can also resubscribe there.
Unsubscribe links keep working for old emails. Unsubscribing only affects email. It doesn’t remove push consent.
Unsubscribes show in your campaign results and in the contact’s consent history.
Suppression
Suppression blocks email to an address, even if the contact has consent. Admins and the owner manage it under Settings › Deliverability, in the Suppression list. Each entry has a reason:
| Reason | How it’s added | Can you remove it? |
|---|---|---|
| Added by hand | You suppressed it, from the list or from Contacts | Yes |
| Unsubscribed | The person unsubscribed | No |
| Bounced | The address permanently bounced | No |
| Marked as spam (marketing) or (all email) | The person reported your email as spam | No |
Bounces, spam complaints and unsubscribes are the recipient’s own choice or their mail provider’s, so you can’t remove them. Hard bounces and spam complaints keep blocking the address even if you delete the contact and add them again. They also apply across every workspace with the same owner. Temporary bounces, such as a full inbox, don’t suppress an address.
Hard bounces and spam complaints block transactional email too.
To suppress contacts by hand, select them on Contacts and choose Suppress email. Choose Undo manual suppression to lift only the blocks you added.
Moving from another email tool? On the Suppression list, choose Import addresses and paste or upload your old provider’s unsubscribes and bounces. Nothing is sent to them.
Automatic pause
If bounces or spam complaints get too high, Kirora pauses campaign and journey email for your workspace. Transactional email and push keep sending. See Deliverability basics for how to avoid a pause and resume sending.
Open and click tracking
The owner can turn Track opens and Track clicks on or off under Settings › Deliverability. Contacts in the EEA and the UK are never tracked, so their opens and clicks always read zero. That doesn’t mean they aren’t engaged.
Frequently asked questions
Does unsubscribing from email stop push notifications?
No. Unsubscribing only affects email. Push consent stays as it was.
Can I remove a bounced address from the suppression list?
No. Only addresses you added by hand can be removed. Unsubscribes, hard bounces and spam complaints stay, because they’re the recipient’s choice or their mail provider’s.
Do receipts and password resets need marketing consent?
No. Transactional messages don’t need marketing consent, but hard bounces and spam complaints still block them.
Why do some contacts show zero opens and clicks?
Contacts in the EEA and the UK are never tracked, and the owner can turn tracking off. Zero doesn’t mean they aren’t engaged.