Managing Opt-Outs and STOP Keywords

How STOP keywords work, how the permanent opt-out list protects contacts, and how to manage it manually.

Every campaign has a set of STOP keywords — configurable as chips in the campaign editor, pre-filled from your account-wide defaults in Settings. Any reply that exactly matches one of these keywords opts that contact out automatically.

How Matching Works

The reply has to match a keyword exactly as the whole message, not just contain it — so a reply of “STOP” opts someone out, but “stop by tomorrow?” does not. This keeps normal conversation from accidentally triggering an opt-out.

What Happens When Someone Opts Out

The contact is added to a permanent, account-wide opt-out list and will never receive a campaign message again — even if they’re re-added to a future campaign’s audience. If you have an AI sales agent handed off to that campaign, it also stops replying to that contact.

The Opted-Out Users List

You can view and manage this list at any time. Each entry shows:

  • The contact
  • The reason — STOP keyword reply or manual add
  • The matched keyword, if applicable
  • When it was added

You can also manually add or remove phone numbers from this list yourself, independent of any campaign.

Suppressed vs. Opted Out

In a campaign’s results, these are two different things:

  • Suppressed — the contact was already on the opt-out list before this campaign started, so they were skipped from the send entirely.
  • Opted out — the contact replied with a STOP keyword during this campaign.

Both counts are tracked separately so you can see the difference. See Tracking Campaign Status for the full breakdown of recipient states.