Delete email addresses from contact record

[Stanczak]

I know it's seen as bad practice and I know why HubSpot doesn't currently allow it.

But really guys, sometimes we actually do need to delete an email address from a contact record.

I have historical contacts with important notes and history that have never had a valid email address in the email property. Or, someone in our organization entered a bad email address years ago and now it's permanently enshrined on the contact record, causing confusion and bounced marketing emails.

Perhaps when a HubSpot user attempts to clear an email address you can present us with a dire warning and then let the user make that decision themselves. Or, make it an advanced permission that only administrators can enable for themselves.

Either way, deleting the contact record or creating custom properties (as suggested here) are not viable solutions.

[#2]

This surely can't be a feature someone actually designed? Contacts move all the time and it can be a while until we have new email addresses for them. Until then we just have old, incorrect data for them. I don't want to mark them as 'left company' as all other info can be updated, I just don't have an email yet. Please fix this!

[#3]

My company is having the same issue. As a marketer, I want to remove any invalid email addresses to keep our email accounts healthy. My Sales team, however, needs a record of companies, deals, etc., even after our contact has left the position—so that they can follow up with whoever takes over that account and still have a history to reference. 

We need an easy way to split an email off of a contact property. 

[#4]

Every day it's a new problem with Hubspot!  Every day it's "Find a workaround" for something. And it seems to take years to get something fixed. Not being able to leave the email address blank is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. 

And yes, months of frustration is starting to wear on me, and on the CEO.

[#5]

Hi - agree that this can be a pain. A simple solution would be renaming it fakeemail@ and the current domain, so you can filter out all emails that start with fakeemail@ and not have an issue with duplicates.

[#6]

If you do this, you will end up re-updating the same contact constantly. (Hubspot will consider it as a duplicate and instead of creating a new contact, will update the contact that has the email "fakeemail@". However, we found a workaround by instead doing fakeemail+(User ID, phone number, or anything you have on a contact that is unique to that contact). This will make sure a new contact is created. 

[#7]

Thanks for clarifying. I think that is what I intended - to have a string in the email which you will use to filter and block from sending, and it will need to be unique. You are explaining how to make it unique.

[#8]

Brett,

any update on this, we entered an email address for a different lead into a contact profile and now cannot delete it, and also probably cannot add this to the correct record. The one we want to delete it from, we do not have an email address for this, we have a lot of contacts with no address, so very important to just be able to remove it without replaceing it with something else.

[#9]

I added the wrong email - one for another contact - to another contact. I was able to fix the other one, but this one is still attached - only through HISTORY - to this other contact.

What do I do?

SM

[#10]

Hi @FixMyInfo ,

Can you please share the two email addresses involved (the one you would like removed, and the one that is associated with it now)? 

You can share this through direct message or through this thread.

Thank you,

Jenny

[#11]

Two years later, and this still hasn't been fixed, Hubspot? This makes no sense. Every other CRM allows you to remove a bad email, why not this one? This is extremely annoying.