User Guide

Suppression Lists

Suppression lists let you prevent Punchmail from sending emails to specific addresses or entire domains. They're your safety net — once an address is on a suppression list, it won't receive email from any campaign that uses that list, no matter what.

Why Suppression Matters

There are a few situations where you absolutely need suppression:

  • Legal compliance — Someone unsubscribes or requests that you stop emailing them. You need to honor that permanently, not just remove them from one list.
  • Bounced addresses — Repeatedly sending to addresses that bounce damages your sender reputation.
  • Spam complainers — If someone marks your email as spam, continuing to email them makes things worse.
  • Role accounts — Addresses like info@, admin@, postmaster@, or abuse@ are usually monitored by multiple people and should generally be suppressed.
  • Competitors or test accounts — You might want to exclude certain domains from ever receiving your campaigns.

Finding Suppression Lists

Click Suppression in the sidebar to see all your suppression lists. You'll see:

  • Name — The name you gave the list.
  • Platform-wide indicator — A badge showing whether the list applies to all campaigns automatically.
  • Entry count — How many email addresses and domains are on the list.
  • Created date — When the list was created.
  • Delete button — Remove the list (only available for non-platform-wide lists).

Platform-wide suppression lists are sorted to the top of the page and cannot be deleted. They exist to protect you — addresses on a platform-wide list are automatically excluded from every campaign you send.

Creating a Suppression List

  1. On the Suppression page, click the Create button (or toggle the creation form).
  2. Enter a Name for the list (e.g., “Hard Bounces”, “Spam Complainers”, “Competitor Domains”).
  3. Check the Platform-wide checkbox if you want this list to apply to all campaigns automatically. Leave it unchecked if you only want to use it selectively.
  4. Click Create.

That's it — your new suppression list is ready for entries.

Platform-Wide vs. Selective

  • Platform-wide lists are always enforced. Every campaign checks against them before sending. Use these for addresses that should never receive any email from your platform — hard bounces, unsubscribes, legal requests, etc.
  • Selective (non-platform-wide) lists are optional. You choose whether to apply them when setting up a campaign in Step 1 of campaign creation. Use these for situational exclusions — like suppressing a specific domain for a particular type of campaign.

Adding Entries

Open a suppression list by clicking its name. You'll see the list's detail page with a header showing the entry count.

To add a single entry:

  1. Click Add Entry.
  2. Choose a Type:
  3. Email — Suppresses a specific email address (e.g., john@example.com).
  4. Domain — Suppresses every address at a domain (e.g., example.com blocks john@example.com, jane@example.com, and every other address at that domain).
  5. Enter the Value — the email address or domain.
  6. Optionally enter a Reason — a note to remind yourself why this entry was added (e.g., “Hard bounce 2024-03-15”, “Spam complaint”, “Requested removal”).
  7. Click to confirm.

The entry appears immediately in the table below.

Understanding Entry Types

Entries in the table are color-coded:

  • Email entries show a blue badge — they suppress one specific address.
  • Domain entries show an amber/warning badge — they suppress all addresses at that domain.

Domain-level suppression is powerful. If you add badcompany.com as a domain entry, nobody at that company will receive your emails. Use it carefully.

Importing Entries in Bulk

When you need to add hundreds or thousands of entries at once, use the CSV import.

  1. On the suppression list detail page, click Import CSV.
  2. Upload your file — Accepted formats are CSV and TXT, up to 10MB.
  3. Choose the Type — Whether the entries in your file are email addresses or domains.
  4. Optionally enter a Reason — This will be applied to all imported entries.
  5. Preview — Punchmail shows you the first 10 rows so you can confirm the data looks right.
  6. Click Start Import.

The import runs in the background, so you can close the page and come back later. You'll see a confirmation message once processing begins.

File format tips: - One entry per line (or one entry per row in a CSV). - If your CSV has two columns, the first is the value (email/domain) and the second is the reason. - No header row is required, but it won't cause problems if there is one.

Exporting Entries

To download a copy of all entries in a suppression list:

  1. Open the suppression list.
  2. Click Export CSV.

You'll get a CSV file containing the type, value, reason, and creation date for every entry. This is useful for backups, auditing, or transferring suppressions between platforms.

Searching and Filtering

The suppression list detail page has a search box at the top. Type any part of an email address or domain to filter the table instantly.

This is especially helpful when you need to check whether a specific address is already suppressed or when you're looking for entries to clean up.

Selecting and Deleting Entries

Deleting a Single Entry

Each row in the entries table has a Delete button. Click it to remove that entry. The address will become eligible for emailing again (unless it's on another suppression list too).

Bulk Deletion

  1. Use the checkboxes next to entries to select the ones you want to remove. There's a “select all” checkbox at the top to select everything on the current page.
  2. Once you've made your selection, click the bulk delete button.
  3. Confirm the deletion.

Entries are paginated at 50 per page. The select-all checkbox applies to the current page.

Using Suppression Lists in Campaigns

When you create a campaign, Step 1 asks you which lists to send to. It also lets you choose which suppression lists to apply.

  • Platform-wide suppression lists are always applied automatically — you don't need to select them.
  • Selective suppression lists appear as options you can check or uncheck for that specific campaign.

This gives you flexibility: maybe you have a “Competitor Domains” list that you apply to product announcements but not to industry newsletters.

Best Practices

  1. Always create a platform-wide list for hard bounces. Punchmail's bounce processing can handle this automatically, but having a dedicated list gives you visibility and control.
  2. Create a platform-wide list for spam complaints. Anyone who marks you as spam should never hear from you again.
  3. Add domain suppression for your own company. You probably don't want to send marketing emails to your own team through Punchmail.
  4. Document your reasons. Use the reason field when adding entries. Six months from now, you'll be glad you noted why a particular address was suppressed.
  5. Review your lists periodically. Suppression lists tend to grow over time. That's normal and healthy — it means you're protecting your reputation.
  6. Export before deleting. If you're cleaning up a suppression list, export it first as a backup.
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