GreenArrow Email Software Documentation

Suppression Lists

Creating a Suppression List

  1. Log into Studio.
  2. Go to Admin => Suppression Lists.
  3. Click Create a suppression list.
  4. Give the list an appropriate name.
  5. Select the suppression scope (see below) for the suppression list.
  6. Select a mailing list (if the suppression scope “All mailings from a single mailing list” is selected).
  7. Click Create this suppression list.

Suppression Scope

The suppression scope specifies to which mailings a suppression list will apply.

All mailings from this system

This option is available only if your user is a system admin and part of the System Organization. It causes the suppression list to be applied to all campaigns and autoresponders across all organizations.

All mailings from this organization

This option causes the suppression list to be applied to all campaigns and autoresponders on this organization.

All mailings from a single mailing list

This option causes the suppression list to be applied to all campaigns and autoresponders on a single mailing list.

Only when selected by a segment

This option prevents this suppression list from being automatically applied. It must be specifically selected as part of a segment using the “Not In Suppression List” clause.

Adding addresses to the suppression list

  1. On the same Suppression Lists page, click the magnifying glass icon for the list you wish to add addresses to: magnifying.png
  2. There are several ways to add these addresses.
    1. Import the addressees
      1. Click Import
        1. Upload a File
          1. This will allow you to upload the suppression list directly from your browser.
            1. Click Choose File and select the file you wish to upload.
            2. Select when you want the import to be scheduled by selecting either Begin this import immediately or Begin this import at the time below.
              1. Selecting Begin this import at the time below will require you to set a time. For example: September 18, 2013 6:00pm.
            3. Click Continue with this import
        2. Select a pre-uploaded file
          1. This will allow you to select from a pre-uploaded list that was uploaded via FTP
            1. Upload the list by using your favorite FTP client. You will use your Studio login credentials to login via FTP. Upload the file to the home directory you are placed in upon logging in.
            2. Select the list from the Server File drop down that appears when selecting Select a pre-uploaded file as the File Source.
            3. Select when you want the import to be scheduled by selecting either Begin this import immediately or Begin this import at the time below.
              1. Selecting Begin this import at the time below will require you to set a time. For example: September 18, 2013 6:00pm.
            4. Click Continue with this import
    2. Add the addresses manually
      1. Click Add address
      2. Add each address to the Address text box with one address per line.
      3. Click Add these addresses

Import File Format

When importing addresses to a suppression list, your import file must have one email address or domain per line. Import files with additional custom fields will cause the import to fail.

GreenArrow can suppress emails to a whole domain by entering @DOMAINNAME on a single line in the import file. For example, to ban everyone at Yahoo!, enter @yahoo.com on one line in the import file.

MD5s in suppression lists

Suppression Lists may contain MD5 hashes (e.g. d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e).

For email addresses with ASCII domain names, an MD5 hash is taken of the subscriber’s lowercased email address. This hash is represented in lowercase hex. If this hash is in the suppression list then the address is suppressed.

For example, the MD5 hash 55502f40dc8b7c769880b10874abc9d0 will suppress [email protected].

SHA256 in suppression lists

Suppression Lists may also contain SHA256 hashes (e.g. e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855).

For email addresses with ASCII domain names, a SHA256 hash is taken of the subscriber’s lowercased email address. This hash is represented in lowercase hex. If this hash is in the suppression list then the address is suppressed.

For example, the SHA256 hash 973dfe463ec85785f5f95af5ba3906eedb2d931c24e69824a89ea65dba4e813b will suppress [email protected].

Internationalized Domain Names

For email addresses with Internationalized Domain Names, the subscriber’s email domain is encoded into punycode, which is lowercased, and then an MD5 hash is taken. This hash is represented in lowercase hex. If this hash is in the suppression list then the email address is suppressed.

For example, the email address TEST@ëxample.com converts to punycode as [email protected] which is lowercased to [email protected] and then MD5 hashed to 9a5639acba8bc61ee2aed0816d60eda4.

The hash 9a5639acba8bc61ee2aed0816d60eda4 will suppress the email address TEST@ëxample.com. Because it is possible to directly enter the punycode version of the email address into GreenArrow Studio, this hash will also suppress the email address [email protected]

The MD5 hash of TEST@ëxample.com (represented in UTF-8) is 9c444b28be4b73b068fb85d557e670fe which will NOT suppress that email address. Only the hash of the punycode representation, as described above, will suppress it.

Time of Suppression

Suppression lists are applied to campaigns when the campaign starts sending and the recipient list is created.

Suppressed addresses added after a campaign begins sending will not be suppressed on that campaign.

Similarly, a subscriber’s state (active, unsubscribed, spam complained, deactivated, or bounced) is checked when a campaign starts sending. Subscribers that are deactivated after a campaign starts sending will still be included in the campaign.


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