Database Cleanse

[ShaneJHTA]

I have been using Hubspot to send eDMs and Blog Notifications for a full year now, and since my first list upload, many customers have been added, but many contacts are also now irrelevant to our target market and need to be removed.

I have over 100 lists, where in many cases a contact will appear in 3 or 4 (this isnt a bad thing, but my database is a mess).

Is there a way to clean up my database into lists according to more relevant demographics?

I have been thinking of exporting all my contacts to excel, sorting them according to their relevant segment, and re-importing them in their new lists. Is this the best practice? One of the benefits of this will be the ability to delete unsubscribed/bounced contacts, but is there a chance i may also lose important contacts?

NOTE: We are a national gym equipment manufacturer, serving commercial gyms and fitness retail stores, in mainly a b2b setting.

[Phil_Vallender · Accepted solution]

Hi @ShaneJHTA

Unlike some other systems, HubSpot only has one database of contacts, and all your lists are just views on that database.

If a contact is in multiple lists it just means they meet the criteria for those lists, if they are smart lists, or they were included in that import, in the case of some static lists. 

You could delete all your lists and not lose a single contact in your database, allowing you to start over. 

To do the cleanse you are talking about you would want to build new smart lists identifying segments of contacts that can be deleted.

Let me know if you need any more help with this.

[ShaneJHTA]

Thanks @Phil_Vallender !

[BenDitto]

Hi Phil,

I have just imported around 5,000 contacts from various sources outside of Hubspot. The lists data quality is avergae to say the least, but this seems to be because of the options allowed upon import.

For example Organisations not linking with Contacts. Is there a way I can export in the Hubspot template, clean and add all relevant data, then simply import again with clen up to date connecting list data?