Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

hs-user
Participant

How to delete inactive contacts?

SOLVE

Hello everyone,

 

We have exceed our limit and I'd like to find a way to identify our inactive contacts. To do so I created a static list but I struggle with the worklow. Ideally I like to get a trigger that says: enroll contacts without any activity for the last XX days. To me activity means: page view or form submission etc.

How should I set-up this workflow?

 

Thanks for your help.

1 Accepted solution
MatthewShepherd
Solution
Key Advisor

How to delete inactive contacts?

SOLVE

Hi @hs-user 

My first thought is why not use an active list instead of a static list? One reason is perhaps because you can't bulk select contacts in active lists to delete them, but all you have to do is go to the contacts screen and filter your contacts by is a member of xyx list and you can bulk delete from there (see screenshot). If you use an active list you won't need additional workflows to push contacts in and out of a static list.


hs-inactive-list-contact-screen.png
Below is a screenshot of an active list that should achieve what you are looking for - no forms submitted within the last 90 days (less than 90 days ago) AND no sessions tracked on your site(s) in the last 90 days (happened more than 90 days ago). Depending on your marketing and sales activity you might also want to consider filtering your list based on email engagements and sales team activities. You could also filter for contacts where the number of sessions is unknown or no forms have been submitted. In all cases its a good idea to look closely at the contacts that your list is selecting before deleting to make sure there isn't some activity of interest going on with the contact.

 

 

 

hs-inactive-list.png

Matthew Shepherd

Freelance HubSpot Consultant
CRM Consultant | SEO Specialist

Did my post help answer your query?Help the community by marking it as a solution.

View solution in original post

4 Replies 4
RBoze
Participant

How to delete inactive contacts?

SOLVE

Hey @hs-user,

 

Matthew's active list suggestion is how I would recommend that most people do it.  I see that you are still looking for a way to purge low quality contacts and cut down on your total. 

 

Full disclosure here — I work for them, but I think Insycle could be potentially what you need. First, Insycle's health assessment is great for identifying records to delete. It automatically audits your contacts and flags records that are missing data, contain invalid data, have common data errors, or are duplicates. 

 

You can combine several variables for advanced filtering and identification, using any field in your HubSpot database, and preview them before the purge is pushed to your live data. Then, you can schedule regular automatic data purges on a set schedule, using the templates that you build. Each time an automatic purge runs, a .CSV of the removed files will be emailed to your chosen email so that you can anaylyze and keep an audit trail in place.

 

We actually recently published a guide to this feature, if you'd like to check it out: Declutter Your CRM By Purging Low-Quality Data Automatically 

 

MatthewShepherd
Solution
Key Advisor

How to delete inactive contacts?

SOLVE

Hi @hs-user 

My first thought is why not use an active list instead of a static list? One reason is perhaps because you can't bulk select contacts in active lists to delete them, but all you have to do is go to the contacts screen and filter your contacts by is a member of xyx list and you can bulk delete from there (see screenshot). If you use an active list you won't need additional workflows to push contacts in and out of a static list.


hs-inactive-list-contact-screen.png
Below is a screenshot of an active list that should achieve what you are looking for - no forms submitted within the last 90 days (less than 90 days ago) AND no sessions tracked on your site(s) in the last 90 days (happened more than 90 days ago). Depending on your marketing and sales activity you might also want to consider filtering your list based on email engagements and sales team activities. You could also filter for contacts where the number of sessions is unknown or no forms have been submitted. In all cases its a good idea to look closely at the contacts that your list is selecting before deleting to make sure there isn't some activity of interest going on with the contact.

 

 

 

hs-inactive-list.png

Matthew Shepherd

Freelance HubSpot Consultant
CRM Consultant | SEO Specialist

Did my post help answer your query?Help the community by marking it as a solution.
hs-user
Participant

How to delete inactive contacts?

SOLVE

Thanks a lot for this! I implemented your solution and it works like a charm 🙂

My contact data base limitation is 25,000 and we are above 37,000 😞 With this solution I saved 5,000 contacts. I am still for other ideas to be under my subscription plan.

 

Annotation 2020-06-10 120847.png

MatthewShepherd
Key Advisor

How to delete inactive contacts?

SOLVE

Great, glad that helped.

 

Here are some other ideas to help with contact clean up:

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/email/how-to-clean-up-your-contact-lists-to-improve-deliverability

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/contacts/how-can-i-delete-contacts-who-have-unsubscribed-or-hard-bounc...

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/crm-setup/deduplication-of-contacts-companies-deals-tickets

Matthew Shepherd

Freelance HubSpot Consultant
CRM Consultant | SEO Specialist

Did my post help answer your query?Help the community by marking it as a solution.