New "No Permissions Set" prevents sending certificate of attendance

[ChO]

Hi,

Has anyone experienced this new issue - the inability to set email status to subscribed when uploading contacts from excel for existing contacts. 

It seems Constant Contact introduced a new spam prevention measure that is preventing me from sending certificates of attendance for our events. 

We are a professional organization. Our members need to maintain  their certifications via 40 hours of training each year. Most of what we do are trainings. Say 300 people signed for our training and 150 attended.

In January 2025 we could upload the list off those 150 who attended the training as a new list in Constant Contact and send all 150 a certificate of attendance so that they can maintain their certification. 

Now, in February 2025, we did the same, but Constant Contact now did not set the permissions for those who did not opt to join our mail list as subscribed and prevents is from sending them a certificate of attendance unless we spend one hour manually updating their email status to subscribed. 

Now, we have 10 trainings already scheduled before Constant Contact introduced this new "feature". 15% of our attendees miss to join our mail list when registering. Now we have to ask them to join our mail list. But how could we contact them? We have to ask all 100% of attendees to join our mail list if they have not done so already. But how will the 85% who have already joined know that they don't need to join again. Such a mess. 

[William_A]

Hello @ChO ,

This would indicate that there's either an issue with the contacts (e.g. if they were previously in your account with no permission set or awaiting confirmation, deleting and re-uploading them may have them stuck in a Compliance lock), or with the list itself if it contains permission data.

One thing to note based on your post's wording and the events in your account, is that contacts that have only registered for a specific event, but have not opted into receiving your other emails (per the optional checkmark you can apply to your registration forms), will not have a set permission. Thus, they cannot be sent emails outside of the specific event they're registered for. This is an anti-spam compliance measure, and is how our event system has worked and will continue to work for events. 

All that said, without being able to investigate the contact file further, we won't be able to confirm what the issue is with your imports and the contacts' permissions. I would advise calling support back (and consider updating your account's phone number beforehand so the VA recognizes it for quicker transfers), so our phone support can safely collect that file for further investigation.