Streamlining Contact Management in HubSpot: Removing Unsubscribed, Bounced, and Spam-marked Contacts

5 min read
Jan 3, 2024 12:15:35 PM

Learn how to efficiently manage your contacts in HubSpot by removing unsubscribed, bounced, and spam-marked contacts.

Understanding the Importance of Streamlining Contact Management

Efficient contact management is crucial for successful email marketing campaigns. By regularly reviewing and removing contacts who have unsubscribed, bounced, or marked your emails as spam, you can ensure that your email deliverability remains high and your sender reputation stays intact. Removing these contacts from your HubSpot account not only helps maintain a clean and engaged contact list but also improves the overall performance of your email marketing efforts.

When contacts unsubscribe, it indicates that they are no longer interested in receiving emails from your organization. Continuing to email them could lead to negative consequences such as increased spam complaints or even legal issues. By promptly removing unsubscribed contacts, you can respect their preferences and avoid potential problems.

Similarly, bounced emails occur when the recipient's email server rejects the message. Bounces can be either hard bounces, which are permanent delivery failures, or soft bounces, which are temporary issues like a full mailbox. By identifying and removing bounced contacts, you can maintain a clean email list and prevent negative impacts on your sender reputation.

Lastly, contacts who mark your emails as spam can harm your email deliverability and reputation. When a contact marks your email as spam, it sends a signal to email service providers that your messages are unwanted. By promptly removing these contacts from your HubSpot account, you can minimize the risk of your emails being filtered to spam folders and maintain a positive sender reputation.

In summary, understanding the importance of streamlining contact management in HubSpot is crucial for maintaining a clean and engaged contact list, improving email deliverability, and protecting your sender reputation.

Identifying Unsubscribed, Bounced, and Spam-marked Contacts

Before you can remove unsubscribed, bounced, and spam-marked contacts from your HubSpot account, you need to identify them. HubSpot provides tools and features that allow you to easily segment and filter your contacts based on their subscription status, bounce history, and spam marking history.

To identify unsubscribed contacts, you can use the 'Unsubscribed' property in HubSpot. This property automatically tracks whether a contact has unsubscribed from your emails. By creating a segment based on this property, you can easily view and manage your unsubscribed contacts.

For identifying bounced contacts, you can utilize the 'Bounce' property in HubSpot. This property tracks the bounce history of each contact's email address. By filtering contacts based on their bounce status, you can identify and manage bounced contacts effectively.

Lastly, to identify contacts who have marked your emails as spam, you can leverage the 'Spam Report' property in HubSpot. This property keeps track of contacts who have reported your emails as spam. By segmenting contacts based on this property, you can identify and take appropriate actions for these contacts.

By effectively utilizing HubSpot's segmentation and filtering features, you can easily identify unsubscribed, bounced, and spam-marked contacts in your account.

Creating Segments for Unsubscribed, Bounced, and Spam-marked Contacts

Once you have identified unsubscribed, bounced, and spam-marked contacts in your HubSpot account, it is essential to create segments to manage them efficiently. Segments allow you to group contacts based on specific criteria and perform targeted actions on them.

To create a segment for unsubscribed contacts, you can use the 'Unsubscribed' property as a filter criterion. By applying this filter, you can create a segment that includes only contacts who have unsubscribed from your emails. This segment will help you keep track of unsubscribed contacts and easily remove them from your account.

For managing bounced contacts, you can create segments based on the 'Bounce' property. By applying filters for hard bounces, soft bounces, or specific bounce codes, you can create segments that include contacts with different bounce statuses. This segmentation allows you to take appropriate actions, such as updating contact information or removing contacts with repeated hard bounces.

Similarly, to create a segment for spam-marked contacts, you can use the 'Spam Report' property as a filter criterion. By applying this filter, you can create a segment that includes contacts who have marked your emails as spam. This segment enables you to review and remove these contacts from your account.

By creating segments for unsubscribed, bounced, and spam-marked contacts, you can effectively manage and take targeted actions on these contacts in your HubSpot account.

Removing Unsubscribed, Bounced, and Spam-marked Contacts

After identifying and creating segments for unsubscribed, bounced, and spam-marked contacts in HubSpot, it's time to remove them from your account. HubSpot offers several options for removing contacts, depending on your specific requirements and preferences.

One option is to manually remove contacts from your account. You can navigate to the contact record and select the 'Actions' dropdown menu, where you'll find the 'Delete' option. By choosing this option, you can remove the contact from your account permanently. This method is suitable for removing individual contacts or a small number of contacts.

If you have a large number of contacts to remove, you can utilize the bulk actions feature in HubSpot. Simply select the contacts you want to remove, click on the 'Actions' dropdown menu, and choose the 'Delete' option. This allows you to remove multiple contacts at once, saving you time and effort.

Alternatively, you can use the HubSpot API or integrations with other platforms to automate the removal of unsubscribed, bounced, and spam-marked contacts. By leveraging these automation capabilities, you can streamline the contact removal process and ensure that your contact list remains up-to-date.

If you want even more information on how to delete contacts who no longer wish to receive your emails, check out this Knowledge base article.

Remember to exercise caution when removing contacts, as this action is irreversible. Make sure to double-check your segments and review the contacts before proceeding with the removal process.

By promptly removing unsubscribed, bounced, and spam-marked contacts from your HubSpot account, you can maintain a clean and engaged contact list, improve email deliverability, and protect your sender reputation.

Optimizing Contact Management for Improved Email Deliverability

Streamlining contact management in HubSpot goes beyond just removing unsubscribed, bounced, and spam-marked contacts. To optimize your contact management practices and improve email deliverability, consider implementing the following strategies:

1. Regularly clean your contact list: In addition to removing unsubscribed, bounced, and spam-marked contacts, periodically review your contact list for inactive or outdated contacts. Cleaning your list ensures that you are targeting engaged and interested recipients, leading to better email engagement.

2. Implement double opt-in: Double opt-in is a process where subscribers confirm their email address and consent to receive emails by clicking on a verification link. By implementing double opt-in, you can ensure that your contacts have actively opted in to receive your emails, reducing the chances of spam complaints and improving email deliverability.

3. Personalize your emails: Personalization helps create a more meaningful and relevant email experience for your contacts. By segmenting your contact list based on their interests, preferences, or behavior, you can tailor your email content and increase engagement.

4. Monitor email engagement metrics: Keep track of key email engagement metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates. Analyzing these metrics can provide insights into the effectiveness of your email campaigns and help you make data-driven decisions to improve your email deliverability.

By implementing these optimization strategies alongside removing unsubscribed, bounced, and spam-marked contacts, you can enhance your contact management practices and maximize the success of your email marketing efforts.

Not looking to delete all of them? That's okay too, but make sure you tag them as non-marketing contacts so you don't get charged for them!

 

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