In HubSpot, an unengaged contact is a contact who has never opened or clicked one of your marketing emails and has not engaged with the last 11 you sent them, or who engaged in the past but has not engaged with the last 16. HubSpot's Don't send to unengaged contacts setting, which is on by default, leaves those contacts out of marketing email sends to protect your sending reputation.
Checked against the HubSpot Knowledge Base on October 20, 2026.
HubSpot calls this feature graymail suppression. Graymail is email that contacts opted in to receive but do not open or click. According to HubSpot, spam filters can pick up on that lack of interaction and route future emails to junk folders, which lowers your overall sender score. The setting exists to stop that from happening quietly in the background.
What counts as an unengaged contact in HubSpot?
HubSpot uses two thresholds, depending on whether the contact has ever engaged with your marketing email.
| Contact history | Unengaged after | What resets it |
|---|---|---|
| Never opened or clicked any of your marketing emails | 11 sends in a row with no engagement | An open or a link click in a marketing email |
| Opened or clicked at least once in the past | 16 sends in a row with no engagement | An open or a link click in a marketing email |
A few details matter here:
- Engagement means an open or a click. HubSpot counts an engagement when a contact opens a marketing email or clicks a link in one.
- Transactional email does not count. HubSpot's property documentation says transactional email interactions do not count toward engagement.
- The rule is fixed. HubSpot's help article documents no setting to change 11 or 16. If you want a stricter or looser definition, build your own segment (covered below) and exclude it from sends.
If you are answering the HubSpot Academy style question "In HubSpot, you can exclude unengaged contacts. Which best describes an unengaged contact?", the answer is: a subscribed contact who has stopped opening or clicking your marketing emails, measured as 11 straight sends with no engagement for someone who never engaged, or 16 for someone who engaged before.
How the Sends since last engagement property drives suppression
Graymail suppression runs on a default contact property called Sends since last engagement. HubSpot defines it as the number of marketing emails sent since the contact's last engagement, specifically an email open or link click. HubSpot sets it automatically.
Because the property counts from the last engagement, a contact who opens or clicks moves back to a count of zero. From that point they are a previously engaged contact, so they would need 16 more sends with no engagement before HubSpot treats them as unengaged again.
You can use the property in segment filters and workflow triggers alongside these related default properties:
| Property | What it stores |
|---|---|
| Sends since last engagement | Marketing emails sent since the last open or click |
| Last marketing email open date | Date of the most recent open of any marketing email |
| Last marketing email click date | Date of the most recent link click in any marketing email |
| Last marketing email send date | Date of the most recent delivery of any marketing email |
| Marketing emails delivered | Count of unique marketing email deliveries |
| Marketing emails opened | Count of marketing emails opened (at most once per email) |
| Marketing emails clicked | Count of marketing emails with a link click (at most once per email) |
Opens, bots and privacy features
HubSpot measures an open when the images in an email load, or when a link is clicked without images loading. Some opens are not human. HubSpot's bot filtering, which is on by default, excludes suspected bot activity such as security scanners, corporate screeners and privacy features like Apple's Mail Privacy Protection from email performance data. HubSpot notes that engagement data on the Recipients tab will not include events removed by bot filtering. You can review the setting under Settings > Tracking & Analytics > Tracking Code > Advanced Tracking, and our guide to bot filtering in HubSpot email analytics explains the tradeoffs. When you build your own re-engagement segments, clicks are a firmer signal than opens.
Where the Don't send to unengaged contacts setting lives
The setting is on by default for every marketing email. The job is usually to confirm nobody turned it off, not to turn it on.
| What you want to do | Where | Who can do it |
|---|---|---|
| Turn the setting on or off for one email | Email editor, send icon in the left sidebar | All products and plans, with edit permissions for marketing emails |
| Preview who would be excluded | The unengaged contacts link next to the toggle | Same as above |
| Make new emails default to off | Settings > Marketing > Email > Subscriptions tab, Resubscription and sending options | Marketing Hub Starter, Professional or Enterprise |
Check the setting on a single email
- In your HubSpot account, go to Marketing > Email (click More first if you see it).
- Click the name of a drafted email.
- In the email editor, click the send icon in the left sidebar.
- Make sure the Don't send to unengaged contacts switch is on.
- To see the contacts this would exclude, click the unengaged contacts link.
Change the account default
- Click the settings icon in the top navigation bar.
- In the left sidebar, go to Marketing > Email.
- Click the Subscriptions tab.
- In the Resubscription and sending options section, toggle Don't send to unengaged contacts.
This changes the default for newly created emails only. Emails you already created keep their current setting. We recommend leaving the default on and turning it off only for a specific, planned re-engagement send.
Limits and edge cases
HubSpot documents three behaviors that catch teams out:
- Smaller send counts. With the setting on, the number of contacts who receive an email can be lower than the number selected in the Send to dropdown. That gap is the suppression doing its job.
- Deleting a contact does not reset it. HubSpot keeps recipients' engagement history. If you delete an unengaged contact and recreate them, HubSpot still excludes them.
- Automated emails lock the setting at publish. For automated emails used in workflows, changes to the setting after you publish the email are not applied. Decide before you publish.
How to see which contacts were excluded
Every sent marketing email shows who was left out and why.
- Go to Marketing > Email and click the name of a sent email.
- Click the Recipients tab.
- Click Not sent in the left column.
- Click the Filter by dropdown and select Unengaged.
- To save these contacts, click the Actions dropdown and select Create a new segment or Add to existing segment.
Unengaged is one of several Not sent reasons. Others include previously unsubscribed, previously hard bounced, previously marked as spam, reached frequency cap, and Other (for example, non-marketing contacts or contacts not opted in to the email's subscription type). On an individual contact record, a suppressed send appears with the message "Recipient was suppressed due to low engagement."
How to email unengaged contacts on purpose
Suppression is not the end of the road. HubSpot's own method for reaching previously excluded contacts is to clone the email, turn the setting off on the clone, and send the clone to a segment of those contacts.
A simple re-engagement sequence:
- Build the audience. Save the Unengaged contacts from your recent sends as a segment, or use the custom segment in the next section.
- Clone a short email. Ask one clear question, such as whether they still want to hear from you, with a single button to stay subscribed and a visible way to update preferences.
- Turn off Don't send to unengaged contacts on the clone only. Leave it on everywhere else.
- Wait before judging the result. Give recipients time to respond before you decide who stays.
- Act on the outcome. Contacts who click are engaged again and rejoin normal sends. Contacts who stay silent can be removed from your marketing segments or set as non-marketing.
Mailbox providers expect this kind of check. Google's Email sender guidelines (checked October 20, 2026) recommend that senders periodically send messages to confirm that recipients want to stay subscribed, and ask all senders to keep spam rates reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.3%.
Build your own unengaged segment
HubSpot renamed lists to segments. Older guides that say Contacts > Lists are out of date. To build a custom definition of unengaged:
- Go to CRM > Segments (click More first if you see it).
- Click Create segment, then select Manually.
- Choose Contacts and click Next.
- Click + Add filter and add property filters such as the ones below.
- Save it as an active segment so contacts join and leave automatically as their engagement changes.
| Goal | Example filters (adjust to your send cadence) |
|---|---|
| Earlier warning than HubSpot's rule | Sends since last engagement is greater than or equal to 8 |
| No clicks in a long window | Last marketing email click date is more than 180 days ago, and Marketing emails delivered is greater than or equal to 10 |
| Never engaged at all | Marketing emails opened is equal to 0, and Marketing emails delivered is greater than or equal to 5 |
These numbers are starting points, not HubSpot rules. Active segments update on their own, while static segments freeze membership at the moment you save, so use active segments for anything engagement based. You can then add the segment to the Don't send to dropdown on regular sends.
Clean up with workflows and marketing contact status
Workflows require a Professional or Enterprise subscription. With one, you can enroll contacts when they join your unengaged segment and change their status automatically:
- Go to Automation > Workflows and create or edit a contact-based workflow.
- Use segment membership as the enrollment trigger.
- Add the Set marketing contact status action and select Set as non-marketing.
On accounts with marketing contacts (Marketing Hub Starter, Professional or Enterprise), non-marketing contacts do not count toward your marketing contact tier, and you are not billed for them. A contact who was marketing earlier in the month only becomes non-marketing after the next update date. Removing marketing contacts frees capacity but does not downgrade your tier before your next renewal date. Without workflows, you can set contacts as non-marketing in bulk from CRM > Contacts or from Account & Billing > Marketing Contacts > Clean up contacts. For a wider database cleanup, see our guide to cleaning up HubSpot contacts to improve deliverability.
A worked example (hypothetical)
Imagine a training company that sends one newsletter a week to 20,000 subscribed contacts.
- After a few months, the newsletter's Recipients tab shows a growing Not sent count with the reason Unengaged. The team saves those contacts as a segment.
- They clone a short "Still want our newsletter?" email, turn off Don't send to unengaged contacts on the clone, and send it to that segment.
- Contacts who click the stay subscribed button reset their Sends since last engagement count and rejoin the weekly send automatically.
- Contacts who do not respond are excluded from the newsletter segment, and a workflow sets them as non-marketing at the next update date.
- Weekly sends now go to people who read them, and the team pays only for contacts it markets to.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Turning the setting off to reach more people. The extra recipients are the ones least likely to engage, and HubSpot built the default to protect your reputation.
- Following setup steps that say "enable" the setting. It is already on. Check that it has not been switched off.
- Changing the setting on a published automated email. The change does not apply, so set it correctly before you publish.
- Deleting unengaged contacts to clear their history. It does not work, because HubSpot keeps the engagement history.
- Using static segments for engagement. They go stale the day you save them. Use active segments.
Getting help with HubSpot email engagement
INSIDEA is an Elite HubSpot Partner and the growth operating system for modern businesses. If your Not sent counts keep climbing or your marketing contact tier keeps growing, our HubSpot team can review your suppression settings, segments and cleanup workflows with you.
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