What is a Suppression List?

A suppression list is a list of email addresses or URL’s that can be used by email senders to provide an opt-out mechanism for email recipients.  The email recipients can unsubscribe their email address, or mark an email as spam.  The intent is to block the transmission of future email messages from the unwanted email sender.

ClickBank’s Suppression List

Have you seen the following while logging into ClickBank?

I guess I have not logged into ClickBank, CB, in a while.   I was looking for some niche appropriate affiliate offers to promote to my email list.  But, when I logged into CB, I got the ATTENTION … message (see Figure 1) in a light red window that sounded rather ominous.

So, I did a little internet searching and deciphered the message into some better understood English.  Basically, I interpret the message as follows:  CB has a list of “companies / URL’s” that do not ever want to receive an email about any CB product.  If you inadvertently send an unsolicited email (spam) to anyone on this, over 3,300 entry, suppression list, it would not be good and you could bring trouble to CB, who in turn could reciprocate that trouble to you.

So, this might seem like bad news and an impossible task to handle, but luckily if you have Aweber or Get Response for sending your emails, then you can fairly easily import the suppression list that CB provides into your account and broadcast emails will not be sent to anyone on the CB Suppression List.

To start, you are going to want to download the suppression list by clicking on the Download Suppression List button, storing that list in an easily accessible area on your computer, then clicking on Accept.

The Full ATTENTION CLICKBANK VENDOR … Message

The following is the entire expanded ATTENTION message from ClickBank (as of 12/16/20):

ATTENTION CLICKBANK VENDORS AND AFFILIATES

Important! To comply with an order issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, if you send unsolicited email marketing campaigns promoting products sold through ClickBank, you must not send unsolicited marketing emails to the domains owned and/or operated by XMission LC listed on the linked suppression list. Sending unsolicited marketing emails to the domains on the linked suppression list may be considered a violation of the CAN-SPAM Act and, therefore, a breach of your obligations under Section 6 of the Client Contract, and could expose you or ClickBank to court action, including potential monetary penalties, and immediate termination of your ClickBank account. This requirement does not prohibit you from responding to potential customer inquiries, sending order confirmations or tracking information or responding to customer service requests.

Additionally, the linked suppression list is “Confidential Information” under Section 9 of the ClickBank Client Contract. You shall not disclose or use the linked suppression list except as necessary to comply with the court order and ensure that the domains on the list are scrubbed from your email campaigns. Any use or disclosure of the attached suppression list beyond this limited scope is a breach of your Client Contract. Additionally, XMission is a third-party beneficiary of the designation of the suppression list as Confidential Information under the Client Contract, and you acknowledge and agree that XMission may enforce your failure to maintain its confidentiality, including the right to seek injunctive relief under Section 19.h. of the Client Contract.

According to Aweber, an unsolicited email is an email that you send, generally an ad of some sort, to someone who has not requested to receive such emails from you, sometimes called SPAM.

How to Obtain the Suppression List from ClickBank

The suppression list is proprietary CB information that can be downloaded from CB when the ATTENTION CLICKBANK VENDORS AND AFFILIATES red box message is visible when you log into your CB account.  once you download the file and click on ACCEPT, the option to download the file will not be visible again (red box) until another update is made to that file by CB.

If figure 1 is no longer visible, because you have downloaded the file and clicked on accept, but don’t remember where you stored the file, then you are probably going to have to contact ClickBank support and have them give you acccess to the file again

How Do I Know That I Have the Most Up-To-Date Suppression List?

Since the suppression list is CB Confidential Information, it is not readily visible on CB’s site.  However, the list that you downloaded from your CB account is the most up to date.  Once you download the list and then press accept in that red box, the message will go away. It should only come back if there is an update.  I can find no mention of this file nor suppression list anywhere in the CB help.  So, if you forget where you have downloaded the file you will probably be required to request that file from CB Support.

How to Import the ClickBank Suppression List into Aweber

1. Edit the Suppression List from CB
2. Copy all the URL’s to the clipboard
3. In Aweber click on Subscribers then select Subscribers

4. Click on Subscriber Tools

5. Click on Suppress Subscribers

6. Paste all the URL’s from step 2 into the Emails and Domains box in Figure 2

7. Then click on the green Suppress button

Note:  this will only prevent certain emails or domains (the ones added to Aweber from the CB Suppression List) from receiving broadcast messages.

I don’t own Get Response, so I don’t want to show you some regurgitated information I copied from the internet on how to Import the CB Suppression List into Get Response.  You should be able to obtain the latest procedure on how to do this from the Get Response help.

Legend

CB = ClickBank