My contacts were quarantined

Overview#

When you launch a cold email campaign, Tantra validates each recipient before enrolling them. Addresses that fail validation are set aside instead of being enrolled. These are your quarantined contacts, and they appear on the campaign's Needs review tab.

Quarantine protects your sending reputation. Sending to invalid or risky addresses causes bounces, which harm deliverability for every mailbox. This article explains the reasons and how to recover the affected contacts.

Why contacts are quarantined#

At launch, after removing anyone on your unsubscribe or suppression lists, Tantra checks every remaining recipient for three things:

• Valid email shape. A malformed address, with spaces, a missing domain, or more than one at-sign, is rejected.
• Not a role address. Shared inboxes such as info@, sales@, and no-reply@ are set aside because they rarely belong to a single person.
• A domain that can receive mail. Tantra looks up the domain's mail records. If the domain has no mail exchange record, it cannot receive email and is set aside.

Contacts that fail any check are not enrolled. Everyone who passes is enrolled and starts the sequence.

Step-by-step checks#

1. Open the campaign and select the Needs review tab. Each row shows the recipient's email and a Reason code.
2. Read the reason on each row. The codes are invalid_syntax, role_address, and no_mx. See the table below for what each means.
3. Fix the underlying contact data. Correct typos for invalid_syntax. Replace a shared inbox with a named person's address for role_address. Confirm the domain is real and can receive mail for no_mx.
4. Re-import the corrected contacts, or add them as new contacts, then enroll them in a new campaign launch so they pass validation.
5. For contacts that are genuinely unreachable, leave them quarantined. Sending to them would only produce bounces.

Recovering quarantined contacts#

The Needs review tab shows a Release for next launch action, but it is not yet available. Do not rely on it to re-enroll contacts.

To bring a quarantined contact back into sending, fix the address and re-import it, then launch a campaign that includes it. On that launch, the corrected address passes validation and the contact is enrolled normally.

What happens next#

Quarantine is decided at launch, so the list is set when the campaign starts. Corrected contacts are only re-checked the next time they are enrolled in a campaign. After you re-import and launch, watch the Enrollments tab. The fixed contacts should appear there as active rather than back on Needs review.

Troubleshooting#

FAQ#

Where do I see my quarantined contacts? On the campaign's Needs review tab. Each row lists the email and the reason it was set aside.

Can I release a quarantined contact back into the campaign? Not from the tab yet. The release action is not available. Fix the address and re-import it, then include it in a new launch.

Why was a shared inbox rejected? Role addresses like info@ and sales@ rarely map to one decision maker and often auto-reply or bounce. Tantra sets them aside to protect deliverability.

What does no MX record mean? It means the recipient's domain is not configured to receive email. Messages to it would bounce, so the address is not enrolled.

Do quarantined contacts count against my sending limits? No. They are never enrolled, so they never consume a send.

Will fixing the contact re-enroll it automatically? No. You must re-import or re-add the contact and launch a campaign that includes it. Validation runs again at that launch.

Related articles#

• Contact validation and quarantine
• Import contacts from CSV
• My emails are not sending