Delete contacts who no longer receive your marketing emails

To manage unengaged contacts, create a list 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 list.

As another step to tidy up outdated contacts, you can also create a list of contacts who've marked one of your marketing emails as spam.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 lists, 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 contact lists up to date.

Delete contacts who hard bounced on a marketing email

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

Create a list of bounced contacts

To create a active list of bounced contacts from the marketing email tool:

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Marketing Email.
• In the top right, click Email tools, then select Create list of hard bounced contacts.

• In the dialog box, customize your hard bounced contact list:
  
  • List name: enter a name for your new list.
  • Hard bounce reasons: click the dropdown menu to modify the bounce reasons included in this list. 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 list.
    • 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 list will dynamically update relative to the current date. For example, if you initially create the list on November 1st for a time period of October 24th through October 31st, then on November 2nd, the list's timeframe will shift to October 25th through November 1st.
    • If you want to maintain a static list for the original dates you specify, follow the instructions in this article to convert the active list to a static one after you create it.
  • Click Create list. It may take a few moments for your list to process.

• Once your list has finished processing, select the checkbox in the header row to select all contacts on the first page of your list. Click Select all [number of contacts] to select all contacts in the list.

• Click the More dropdown menu, then select Delete to delete these contacts. 
• Enter the number of contacts you're deleting, then click Delete.

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

To customize an active list of bounced contacts manually:

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to CRM > Lists.
• In the upper right, click Create list.

• In the top left, click the pencil icon edit and enter a name for the list.
• In the upper left, click the dropdown menu and select Active list.
• 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.

• In the upper right, click Save.
• Once it populates, you can delete the bounced contacts.

Please note: when you unbounce a contact who previously hard bounced, the contact will still have a value for the Email hard bounce reason property. If you want to guarantee that contacts in your active list aren't mistakenly deleted after they've been unbounced, you should follow the instructions above to create a static list instead.

Learn more about using lists and other list 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 list of the contacts who marked one of your marketing emails as spam, then delete them all in bulk:

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Marketing Email.
• In the left sidebar menu, under Email tools, click the Email bounce tools dropdown menu, then select Export unsubscribes and bounces.
• In the dialog box, customize your list:
  • Enter a list name.
  • Click the X next to all the Hard bounce reason options except Spam.
  • Under Time, select the time frame for the sent marketing emails included in your list. Only contacts who marked your emails as Spam that were sent during the selected timeframe will be included. 
  • Click Create list.

• Once you've created the new list, select the checkbox in the header row to select all of the contacts on the first page of your list.
• Click Select all [number of contacts] to select all contacts in the list.

• 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.