Marketing Cloud Engagement - Change Subscriber status from 'Held' to 'Active'

Note: Subscribers in an undeliverable status have previously bounced from email sent from your account.

This should not be performed without confirmation from the subscribers that their address is deliverable.  Reactivation of undeliverable addresses may result in new bounces and damage to sender reputation.

To change a subscriber's status from Held (undeliverable) back to Active, first set their status to Unsubscribed. Once they are in unsubscribed status, their status can be reset to Active. 

These actions must be taken in the enterprise business unit.
 

Reactivate within the application (individual subscribers)

1. Log in to the Marketing Cloud application.
2. Go to Email Studio | Email | Subscribers | All Subscribers.
3. Click the Search button.
4. Select Email Address from the Search where: drop-down field.
5. Enter the subscriber's email address in the Is equal to: field and click the Find Now button.
6. Click to highlight the subscriber from the search results list and click the View Properties link.
7. In the General tab, click the Unsubscribe from all button.
8. Click the OK button in the dialog box.
9. In the General tab, click the Activate button (activates only on the All Subscribers list). 
10. To activate the subscriber on individual lists, select the List tab. 
11. Select the desired list and click the Details button. 
12. Click the Activate button to reactivate the subscriber on the specified list. 
13.  Click the OK button in the dialog box to exit.

Note: To reactivate the subscriber on other lists, repeat steps 10-12 for each list.

 

Reactivate via an Import (multiple subscribers which does not require the subscriber status to be set to Unsubscribed as an intermediate state)

1. Log in to the Marketing Cloud application.
2. Go to Email Studio | Email | Subscribers | Lists or All Subscribers
3. Click the linked name of the list in question (if sublist).
4. Click the Search button.
5. From the Search where: drop-down field, select Email Status.
6. From the Is equal to: drop-down field, select Undeliverable and click the Find Now button.
7. Click the Export option.
8. Complete the wizard to export the subscribers to a file, selecting the Email Address, Subscriber Key and Email Status fields to be included in the results.
9. Edit the exported file and change the Status field values to Active for every subscriber on the list that needs updated. 
10. Perform an import to the All Subscribers list selecting either Add & Update or Update. This will change their status to active for all lists.

Note: For Enterprise 2.0 accounts, this update will need to be made at the Top Level (Enterprise) account.

You can find more information on Subscriber Status in our Bounce Mail Management documentation.