Q: How can I prevent addresses previously unsubscribed from LISTSERV Maestro lists from being re-added?

Answer by Liam Kelly
Senior Consulting Analyst, L-Soft

When it comes to maintaining good relationships with email list subscribers, the importance of respecting list signoff requests cannot be overstated. While this can be easy for lists stored exclusively in LISTSERV or LISTSERV Maestro, it can become a challenge when subscriber data for a LISTSERV Maestro hosted list comes from one or more outside sources. For example, we may use a Hosted Recipient List to send a monthly newsletter, and we may have subscribers unsubscribe from that newsletter over the course of the month. If we run a monthly importer from an external database that populates the Hosted Recipient List with email addresses, we probably don't want to re-subscribe those addresses that had left the list. The list protection feature of LISTSERV Maestro 5.0 (currently in public beta) addresses just this situation.

Enabling List Protection

List Protection is a feature of LISTSERV Maestro 5.0 that can be enabled for any or all of the lists in a Dataset. With a Hosted Recipient List or Hosted LISTSERV List selected, pull down the Hosted List menu, and select List Protection Settings:

By default, List Protection is turned off:

To enable List Protection, click the Click Here to Change link. Click the radio button to Enable List Protection:

Click OK. List Protection is now enabled for the Hosted Recipient List or Hosted LISTSERV List.

List Protection In Action

Once List Protection is enabled, LISTSERV Maestro 5.0 will keep track of any addresses that unsubscribe from the Hosted Recipient List or Hosted LISTSERV List. Users who unsubscribe may re-subscribe themselves at will. But if the data administrator attempts to re-add the user, LISTSERV Maestro will supply a warning that List Protection is enabled and that the user has previously unsubscribed. To add the address, the data administrator must confirm that they wish to override the List Protection:

Similarly, if the data administrator runs a Recipient Importer and the imported address list contains unsubscribed addresses, they will not be re-added to the list, and LISTSERV Maestro will issue a warning:

List Protection is just one of many new features in the soon-to-be-released LISTSERV Maestro 5.0. If you would like to try out the pre-release version of LISTSERV Maestro 5.0, contact your L-Soft account representative or L-Soft technical support.

References

LISTSERV Maestro 5.0 What's New Manual
https://www.lsoft.com/resources/manuals-download.asp?id=202&format=PDF

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