Delete contacts who no longer receive your marketing emails

To manage unengaged contacts, create a segment of contacts who have hard bounced on your past marketing emails. Any contacts who have been unbounced in your account won't be included in the hard-bounced segment.

As another step to tidy up outdated contacts, you can also create a segment of contacts who've marked one of your marketing emails as spam. HubSpot will automatically omit sending marketing emails to these contacts, but as the number of contacts in your CRM increases, it can be helpful to remove them.

Once you've created these segments, you can review them to ensure you're deleting the correct contacts, then permanently remove them from your account. Alternatively, you can keep these contacts in your account for reporting purposes. Learn more about how to keep your contacts up to date.

Delete contacts who hard-bounced on a marketing email

You can create an active segment of hard-bounced contacts directly from the marketing email tool, or you can customize an active segment of bounced contacts using the segments tool. After you've created the segment of bounced contacts, you can review the associated contacts then permanently delete them.

Please note: contacts who have globally bounced (i.e. hard bounced in three or more HubSpot accounts) will not appear in segments of hard bounced contacts. 

Create a segment of bounced contacts

To create an active segment of bounced contacts from the marketing email tool:

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Email.
2. In the top right, click Email tools, then select Create segment of hard-bounced contacts.
3. In the dialog box, customize your hard-bounced contact segment:
   
   • Segment name: enter a name for your new segment.
   • Hard bounce reasons: click the dropdown menu to change the bounce reasons included in this segment. By default, all hard bounce types are selected.

• • Rolling timeframe start date and end date: select the time frame for the sent marketing emails included in your active segment.
    • Only contacts who hard bounced on emails sent during the selected rolling timeframe will be included.
    • The dates you enter will be treated as a rolling timeframe, which means the segment will dynamically update relative to the current date. For example, if you initially create the segment on November 1st for a time period of October 24th through October 31st, then on November 2nd, the segment's timeframe will shift to October 25th through November 1st.
    • If you want to maintain a static segment for the original dates you specify, follow the instructions in this article to convert the active segment to a static one after you create it.
  • Save your segment.

4. Once your segment has finished processing, select the checkbox in the header row to select all contacts on the first page of your segment. Click Select all [number of contacts] to select all contacts in the segment.
5. Click the More dropdown menu, then select Delete to delete these contacts. 
6. Enter the number of contacts you're deleting, then click Delete.

Customize an active segment of bounced contacts using the Email hard bounce reason property

To customize an active segment of bounced contacts manually:

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to CRM > Segments.
2. Create a contact segment.
3. In the left panel, select the criteria for bounced contacts:
   • Select Contact properties.
   • Search and select Email hard bounce reason.
   • Select is known, if you want to include bounced contacts of all types. If you want to view only bounced contacts of a specific reason, select is any of and in the dropdown menu, select the reasons you want to view.
4. Set the segment as active, then save and process the segment.
5. Once it populates, you can delete the bounced contacts.

Learn more about using segments and other segment criteria.

Delete contacts who marked one of your marketing emails as spam

To remove contacts who marked one of your emails as spam, create a segment of the contacts who marked one of your marketing emails as spam, then delete them all in bulk:

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Email.
2. In the top right, click the Email tools dropdown menu, then click Create segment of hard bounced contacts.
3. In the dialog box, customize your segment:
   • Enter a segment name.
   • Click the X next to all the Hard bounce reason options except Spam.
   • Rolling timeframe start date and end date: select the time frame for the sent marketing emails included in your active segment.
     
     • Only contacts who marked your emails as spam on emails during the selected rolling timeframe will be included.
     • The dates you enter will be treated as a rolling timeframe, which means the segment will dynamically update relative to the current date. For example, if you initially create the segment on November 1st for a time period of October 24th through October 31st, then on November 2nd, the segment's timeframe will shift to October 25th through November 1st.
     • If you want to maintain a static segment for the original dates you specify, follow the instructions in this article to convert the active segment to a static one after you create it.
   • Save your segment.
4. Once you've created the new segment, select the checkbox in the header row to select all of the contacts on the first page of your segment.
5. Click Select all [number of contacts] to select all contacts in the segment.
6. Click the More dropdown menu, then select Delete.

Please note: contacts who mark your emails as spam will hurt your email sending reputation, and could lead to a suspension of your ability to send email. Make sure you're following the best practices of HubSpot's email deliverability guidelines.