outreach agent re-contacted candidates from a 6-month-old campaign - the do-not-contact suppression list lived on a...

Outreach agent re-contacted opted-out candidates from an old campaign

TL;DR

The agent re-emailed people who opted out because the suppression list was a spreadsheet nobody loaded into the sending pipeline. Fix: move the do-not-contact list into the system the agent queries before every send, and make the suppression check a blocking gate. A list the send path never reads is not a suppression list.

Error

outreach agent re-contacted candidates from a 6-month-old campaign  -  the do-not-contact suppression list lived on a spreadsheet nobody loaded, so the opt-outs were never honored

Steps

1. Export the spreadsheet and count the entries; then check how many of those addresses appear in recent sends. Expected: you know exactly how many opt-outs were violated.

2. Import the list into your sending system or a suppression table the agent can query: email (lowercased, trimmed), opt-out date, source. Dedupe on the normalized email. Expected: one authoritative list, no duplicates.

3. Add a blocking gate in the send flow: normalize the recipient, check suppression, abort the send on a hit, log the skip. Expected: a suppressed address can never be sent to, no matter which campaign or agent tries.

4. Retire the spreadsheet: point everyone who used to edit it at the new list, and mark the old file clearly so it stops being "the list" in anyone's head. Expected: one source of truth.

5. Test with a suppressed address and a fresh address. Expected: suppressed aborts with a logged skip; fresh sends normally.

Use this when

• opt-outs get emailed again
• suppression data lives in spreadsheets, docs, or someone's inbox
• multiple agents or campaigns share one audience
• compliance wants proof of honoring opt-outs

Not for this skill when

• the suppression list was loaded but the check ran after the send (that is ordering)
• the opt-out arrived as a reply the classifier missed (that is the reply-classifier problem)
• the candidate never opted out and just got too many emails (that is frequency policy)

Variant phrasings

• "suppression list not loaded"
• "opted-out candidates emailed again"
• "do not contact list ignored by agent"
• "unsubscribe spreadsheet never synced"

Why it happens

The spreadsheet was the process for a human team, and nobody rebuilt the process when the agent took over sending. The agent can only enforce rules that live in systems it reads; a file on someone's drive is invisible to it. Every manual list that matters to sending must become a queried table with a blocking check.

Edge cases

• Emails change; also suppress on candidate ID or phone where you have them, not email alone.
• Keep the opt-out record even if the candidate later re-applies; stopping outreach is separate from recruiting them inbound.
• If the list updates from a form, the gate must read the live table, not a cached copy.
• Log every suppressed skip; auditors ask for this.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_lEq1KDliOs3JFOTpTPQBNA