HubSpot Ideas

Stanczak

Delete email addresses from contact record

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.

108 Replies
Merit_Jackson
Member

This would be useful for my team too. I just added someone's email address after getting it from a garbled voicemail message. Lo and behold, my email to them bounced. I have no confirmation of what their correct email is, so the incorrect one just sits there in their contact record now.

Dylan
HubSpot Product Team

Hello HubSpot community, 

I'm excited to let you all know that this is something we are planning to work on in the coming months. At this time I don't have a specific timeline for delivery but will update this post once we do. 

Swiss-Biotech
Participant

Good to see that the hubspot team is taking customer input seriously to improve the otherwise very flexible and great product!

DigitalImpact
Participant | Diamond Partner

Dylan - Thanks for the update on Aug 13. Any further updates on the ETA for this feature?

 

In a world where we do as much text message marketing and comms as we do email, we should be able to store contacts in HubSpot with no email addresses if there is a valid mobile phone number.  You can't create new contacts in HubSpot via the chatbot without email addresses which has been causing major problems for us.

SMAlexander
Participant

@Dylan Hey, 

 

Any news on this? 

 

Thanks, 

woody
Contributor

It has been more than 3 years from when @pvinci raise this issue and we still can't delete email in contact.

Lezlie
Member

I agree with Woody. Three years is a long time to wait for this. 

Hubspot- please fix this issue now.

 

 

ARose
Participant

Yes! When is this update happening? We're currently filling in a fake email address to avoid random bounces to email addresses we know are wrong but cannot be deleted. If anyone has a better work around suggestion, I'm all ears!

Mads-Identity
Participant

allow the field to be marked as "invalid". or even better, allow tools like NeverBounce to flag the email as invalid so its impossible to include in mail functions..

SMAlexander
Participant

Actually, 

 

Right now Hubspot, emails that are bounced, are marked somehow with it and they don't allow you to send an email to them. Which is okay. 

dhartzer
Member

I appreciate the bounced emails don't allow you to send future to the incorrect email but how do you know it is incorrect. Besides a "bounced email" notification, it still has an invalid email that needs to be updated somehow. It would be far cleaner to have it automatically removed or allow us to remove when we are setting the contact as a "lost contact" until they show up at a different company in the future. I never delete a contact because in our world they end up being a potential at a new company and I want all the history of their kids names, etc. saved. 

 

Mudia
Member

Looking forward to this update, really need to delete those wrong emails! 

rirunyan
Member

Is there an ETA for this in the roadmap?  Having to use a fake email to fix this on the front end is troublesome.  There would be too much work needed to exclude bogus emails from mailings

BB1
Top Contributor

Hi @rirunyan  - what about making a list which includes any emails with fakefake in it, and exclduing that list in all sends?

dhartzer
Member

We basically did just that by using bad@badfirm.com. I include the initials after "bad" so I can reuse over and over (badab@badfirm.com), however, what I found is that then created a Company with the name "BAD FIRM". This is a mess. Regardless, when we do sequence/email campaigns, inevitably we forget then get a ton of kickbacks. It would be so much nicer just to have the email erased when it is bad. I don't care if I have to answer YES to 3 questions to make sure I want to delete it, are you sure you want to delete it, etc., but the bad emails need to go away. I've heard rumors it is in the works but looking at this string, I don't have faith it will be any time soon. 

C_Hori
Participant

Yes, if Hubspot wants to be strong as a CRM, we must be able to delete the email without having to delete the contact. Because there's more in life than just emailing!

ReganRoss
Contributor

Yeah, just orienting myself to Hubspot, and while I get that email (for Contacts) and domain (for Companies) is an elegant approach (and I am seeing the wisdom in it), I think the easy fix to this solution (which is driving me bananas, FYI, as I work on my outreach post migration from Salesforce) is to create a Hubspot TBD email default that all us who learn an email for a certain lead/prospect/contact is dead... And is designed so we can enter with a half-key stroke and not have to worry about it. 
Please and thank you.

KJLUNDE
Contributor

Checking in on this.  Is this still not possible?  Why would a HubSpot user not be able to modify their own data?  There are a million reasons why a user might want a contact to remain in the system without an email in their Contact profile.  Another example of something that is available on the CRM of every one of Hubspot's competitors...

Apocalyps
Member

THANK YOU HubSpot for making this option possible (after a bit of nagging).

KJLUNDE
Contributor

I saw someone posted that this has been fixed, but I'm still not seeing removal of an email as an option.  Am I missing something?  I see you can create a contact with no email, but if I try to remove the email address from an existing Contact, it still isn't allowing the email to be removed.  Help!