Deceased Member / Contact

[CPowell5]

I work for a Farming Systems Group - essentially we have a team who conduct agricultural on-farm research and then a communications team who informs our members (who pay an annual fee) of the research results. 

We have recently found out that one of our members has sadly passed away. I have looked at other posts saying to create a list and change properties etc. 

Is it an option to just make a note on the contact record - remove them from lists / set as non-marketing contact and then delete the contact after a period of time, eg. 3 months. 

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

@CPowell5 I am sorry to hear that one of your members has passed away. 

Yes, removing them from lists, setting as a non-marketing contact, and adding a note are all good things to do, but I would not recommend deleting them, even after 3 months, because of the potential impact on your data/reporting.

For example, if you have a report that shows how many contacts converted on a specific landing page, that conversion data would be lost when the contact is deleted. Another example would be the loss of lead status and lifecycle stages impacting your funnel reports.

Depending on the type of reports you have set up, removing a contact can cause discrepancies with your numbers and reporting YoY, MoM, etc. 

Unless you aren't concerned with historic data, I think finding a way to keep the contact in the CRM is recommended.

[CPowell5]

Thank you so much for your help, and for replying so quickly. 

I will take this to the Execs and see what they think. Thank you again!