Active Contacts in SiteGround Email Marketing - Explained

In SiteGround’s Email Marketing service, the concept of active contact pertains to how users manage their campaigns and monthly billing.

In this article, we’ll explore the technical aspects of active contacts and their role in your billing. So, read on to grasp this concept and ensure you have full control over your expenses.

Billing System Specifics

Within each billing period, you are allocated a certain number of active contacts you can send emails to. The number of active contacts you can email depends on your Email Marketing service plan.

The system behind SiteGround Email Marketing tracks the number of unique contacts emailed to ensure this limit is not exceeded.

In case you’ve exceeded your plan’s monthly sending limit, you may encounter the following warnings.

• If you have already exceeded the email sends for your plan, you’ll see this warning banner in your Email Marketing dashboard. Click the Increase Limit button to add more contacts to your plan, which adds email sends accordingly.
  

  

• When you are sending out a campaign, and the number of contacts you are emailing exceeds your monthly limit, you’ll see a warning notice in the Email Builder.
  

  

Here’s how it works:

• Contact Addition: The system considers a contact “active” once they receive an email from you within your billing period.

• Emailing Contacts: Each time a campaign is sent out, the system checks to see if the recipients have already been emailed during the current billing cycle. If that’s the first time you email a subscriber, that is marked and counted as an active contact.

• Counting Active Contacts: The system keeps a running tally of your active contacts. Note that the active contacts count remains the same if a contact is deleted after being emailed. The contact is counted as active for the duration of the billing period.

• Limitations: If you reach your limit of active contacts and then delete some to add others, the new contacts cannot be emailed until the next billing period. This is because the system has already counted the initial set of contacts as active for that period, and deleting them does not reset the count.

Technical Considerations

The technical constraint of not being able to email additional contacts after deleting active ones is significant. It helps you stay within your active contacts limit. This system concept serves multiple purposes:

• Fair Usage. The active contacts concept ensures that users adhere to the fair usage policy of the platform. Thus, it prevents the overuse of resources by continuously rotating contacts.
• Billing Integrity. It maintains the integrity of the billing system, ensuring that users are billed according to their plan’s limits.
• Resource Allocation. It allows SiteGround to allocate server resources effectively, ensuring the platform remains stable and performs optimally for all users.

Conclusion

Understanding the technicalities of active contacts in SiteGround’s email marketing platform is essential for effective campaign management. It impacts how you strategize your email outreach and how you are billed for the service.

Grasping the concept of active contacts, you can plan your marketing efforts within the limits of your chosen plan. This way, you can avoid any surprises regarding billing and resource allocation. SiteGround’s system is designed to provide a fair and stable service for all users, and the active contacts count is a key component in achieving this goal.