How should I manage different types of suppressions?

Suppressions fall into several categories, and each requires different handling. Hard bounces are permanent failures (address doesn't exist) and should be suppressed immediately and indefinitely. Spam complaints indicate the recipient actively rejected your mail; never email them again. Unsubscribes are explicit opt-outs that must be honored.

Beyond these core types, you may have manual suppressions (addresses you've chosen to exclude), role addresses (like info@ or support@), and legal or compliance holds (addresses flagged during disputes or investigations).

Best practice: maintain a unified suppression list that aggregates all types, but track the reason for each suppression separately. This helps with audits, compliance questions, and understanding list health. Your ESP likely handles much of this automatically, but verify that suppressions sync across all sending systems.

A suppression list is your insurance policy. It protects you from complaints, blocks, and legal exposure. Treat it as sacred and never override it without documented justification.