Why am I receiving a Contact Overusage notification?

each organization has an allocated number of contacts based on its package, for which engage manages saturation control over time, your contact list will change; new contacts may be added, some may unsubscribe, and others may change contact categories this can lead to situations where the total number of contacts exceeds your paid limit to help manage this, deselect engage now automatically detects when your organization goes over its paid contact limit and alerts you directly in the application how it works daily calculation every day, deselect engage calculates the total number of contacts processed across all active business units for your organization limit comparison this number is compared against the organization's paid contact limit in app notification if the total usage exceeds the limit, a red banner will appear at the top of your organization’s deselect engage interface automatic removal once your contact count goes back below the threshold contact limit by cleaning up your contacts, the banner will disappear automatically in case you need to upgrade your contact limit, you can reach directly to your deselect account executive which contacts are counted? a contact will be counted if a contact exists in the contact categories data extension (see the contact categories section in the admin panel) a contact is in a campaign segment, meaning it is in a data extension selected for a send contacts are counted up to 30 days after the planned send date a record appears for a contact in the sent data view (meaning a non transactional email is sent to that contact in the current business unit) note, this will also happen if the contact does not exist in the contact categories data extension a contact will continue to be processed and counted to your limit up to 30 days after we last came across it in any of the 3 instances listed above notes within one business unit, contacts will never be counted double for example, if a contact exists in the contact categories de and is found in 3 send des, it will count as one contact if the same contact exists in 2 business units where engage is activated, it will count as 2 contacts even if your contact categories data extension is up to date, and the contacts in your send data extensions all exist in your contact categories data extension, it's possible that your total count is higher than the number of contacts in your contact categories data extension, because of rotating contacts for example, let's say you currently have 100 000 contacts in your contact categories data extension, and in the last 30 days 3 000 contacts unsubscribed your contact count today would be 103 000, because there is a 30 day delay for contacts being removed over the next 30 days, those 3 000 contacts will all be removed from your contact count, if they are not targeted in any other sends moving forward best practices to keep your contact count up to date keep your contact categories data extension up to date so engage’s calculations remain accurate regularly review your contact list to remove inactive or unsubscribed contacts where possible note in case you would like to upgrade and add more contacts to your limit, please reach out to your customer success manager, account executive, or support\@deselect com