This is the green light. An Active subscriber is healthy, verified, and completely fit to receive your communications. Your primary goal is to keep as many subscribers in this state as possible.

2. Bounced

A bounce occurs when an email is sent from your SFMC account but fails to land inside the recipient's inbox. Bounces are split into two categories:

• Soft Bounce: A temporary delivery issue. The most common cause is a full recipient inbox. Once the subscriber clears out some space and a future email successfully delivers, their status automatically reverts to Active.

• Hard Bounce: A permanent delivery failure. This usually happens due to a critical typo in the email address (such as xyz.gmail.com instead of using the @ symbol), making the domain completely unavailable.

3. Held (Undeliverable)

Also referred to as Undeliverable, the Held status acts as a safety net to protect your sender reputation by stopping you from emailing dead accounts. A subscriber is moved here under two conditions:

• They experience an immediate hard bounce due to an invalid email address.

• They accumulate threesoftbounceswithina15-daywindow.

4. Unsubscribed

This status is driven purely by subscriber behavior. If a recipient decides they no longer want to see your content, they will utilize your opt-out link. SFMC automatically shifts them to Unsubscribed to honor their choice and keep your organization compliant.