A contact can have 3 possible statuses:
- Active – The contact will receive your outbound messages and can send incoming messages.
- Stopped – The contact is removed from all groups and will no longer receive your messages. The contact is ignored until they send an incoming message, opting them back in.
- Blocked – The contact is removed from all groups and will be ignored entirely, but not deleted. The contact will neither receive outbound messages nor be able to send incoming messages.
Stopped Contacts
Some channels, like Twilio, have built-in opt-out keywords. If the contact sends any of them to your channel, we will automatically place them in the ‘Stopped’ folder in the ‘Contacts’ tab. The contacts are removed from all groups and you will be unable to send them any outbound messages. The contact can opt back in to receiving your messages with the provider’s re-subscribe keywords at any time. They will not be automatically re-added to groups.
Using the ‘Update the Contact’ action in a flow to change a contact’s status to ‘Stopped’ is helpful when a channel does not have automatic opt-out keywords and helps you to track opt-outs yourself. Any time the contact sends you an incoming message, they’ll be removed from the ‘Stopped’ folder and made ‘Active’ unless still opted-out by your channel provider, like Twilio.
Blocked Contacts
Sometimes, a contact can abuse your service or send offensive messages. While you can manually block a contact if you notice spammy behavior, it can also be useful to build rules in your flows that detect abusive language.
If a contact sends unwanted language, you can use a ‘Wait for Response’ to detect certain words. If found, you can automatically block the contact. This can come in handy when contacts can automatically trigger a flow with an assigned keyword published on a website or advertisement.