Knowledge Base

In email marketing, permission is key. Contacts must opt in to receive marketing communications from you.

Campaigns tracks this consent under a custom field called marketing status. Email campaigns will only be successfully sent to contacts with a subscribed status under this field.

How the marketing status works

In Pipedrive, the marketing status is attached to an email address. While it‘s shown on a person contact, the status exists independently of the contact record itself. If a person has multiple email addresses, the status is linked to the main one shown on the contact.

The marketing status is not applicable to leads or deals.

Marketing status types

A contact‘s marketing status can be one of the following:

	All contacts have this status by default.
	The contact has given their consent to receive emails.
	The contact has unsubscribed from your emails using the unsubscribe link in the footer.
	The contact has had emails hard-bounce (permanent delivery failure) or soft-bounce (temporary delivery failure) five times.
	You‘ve added more subscribed contacts than your billing tier allows. After reaching your limit, the excess contacts will be marked as “Pending upgrade”. When you upgrade to a higher tier, the subscribed contacts with “Pending upgrade” status are automatically converted to “Subscribed”.
	Double opt-in contacts that haven’t yet confirmed their subscription by clicking on a confirmation link sent to them via email.
	The marketing status is archived if an email address is removed from all contacts and the removal occurred within the past 90 days, provided the status was “Subscribed” or “Pending upgrade”.

Data retention and compliance

Pipedrive automatically manages the retention of marketing statuses to ensure compliance with GDPR and other privacy regulations.

We retain marketing status information to provide service in line with your instructions, prevent accidental or improper re-subscription, protect our infrastructure and ensure compliance with anti-spam laws and data subject rights.

Mapping email addresses to marketing status

Pipedrive performs a daily cleanup process to evaluate marketing statuses linked to email addresses that are no longer associated with any contact.

• Changes older than 90 days: If an email address was changed more than 90 days ago, the marketing status for that email is deleted.

• Changes within 90 days: If the email was changed within the past 90 days and the status is “subscribed” or “pending upgrade”, the status will change to “archived”.

This ensures you don't accidentally send campaigns to outdated or non-consenting contacts.

Unsubscribed status

To strictly adhere to anti-spam laws, the “unsubscribed” status is preserved indefinitely, even if the email address is removed from a specific contact.

The “unsubscribed” status is only deleted if your entire company account is deleted from Pipedrive, as marketing status data is retained independently of contact records.

Re-subscribing contacts (Double Opt-In)

If a contact has previously unsubscribed but wishes to receive emails again, you must ensure this is done in compliance with applicable laws.

In alignment with GDPR (specifically Article 21 regarding the right to object), we strongly recommend using the double opt-in feature as the approved method for legitimately re-subscribing an email address that was previously unsubscribed.

This sends a request to the contact to confirm their subscription, ensuring you have legitimate proof of consent for previously unsubscribed emails.

Managing marketing statuses

You can manage marketing statuses in the detail view, list view, add person modal and via the bulk edit tool.

Bulk edit

You can use the bulk edit functionality in the people list view to update the marketing statuses of multiple contacts at once.

To do that, go to your people list view and:

• Select the contacts you want to modify
• In the bulk edit panel on the right, find the marketing status field
• Select the desired status (e.g., “Unsubscribed”) and confirm by clicking “Edit persons”

Detail view

You can view and change the status directly within a contact’s detail view.

Open a person contact you want to edit, then:

• Locate the marketing section in the sidebar.

• Click the status dropdown to change the status.

List view

You can also edit the marketing status in the person list view.

Locate (or add) the marketing status column and:

• Select the pencil icon for the contact you want to edit
• Click the dropdown menu and change the status
• Click “Save”

Add person modal

When adding a person to your contacts, you‘ll see the Marketing status section. Click the dropdown to change the status.

During contact import

You can also add a contact‘s marketing status when importing contacts into Pipedrive from a spreadsheet.

At the mapping step, search for the Marketing status data field under Pipedrive data fields and drag it opposite to the corresponding data field from your spreadsheet.

Filtering for marketing status

When creating filters for your lists or campaigns, strictly filtering for “Subscribed” users is often unnecessary when sending campaigns.

Campaigns automatically excludes contacts who are not subscribed when the campaign is sent.

However, if you wish to see a specific list of subscribers, you can use a quick filter in the people list view to display only contacts with a specific marketing status.

In the people list view, click “Add condition”, then select Marketing status > is > choose one of the options in the dropdown menu.

Now you‘ll see only contacts with the chosen marketing status.

FAQ

What if multiple people have the same email address?

The marketing status is attached to an email. If one person unsubscribes from the campaign, all people with the same email address get the status “Unsubscribed”.

What if a user has added a contact with an email that has previously been unsubscribed?

We’ll mark that person‘s email as “Unsubscribed”.