Automatically remove contacts from a list after a specified period of time

[CIDInsurance]

I'm wondering if there is already an ability to keep contacts in a list for a set period of time. Let's say I have brand new contacts or leads that I want to put in a list and send specific emails to. Then, after 6 months or a year, I want to move them out of that list so they only receive my other emails. Being able to put contacts into a type of funnel like this would be ideal. We are B2B and some companies that I'd like to put in this type of automated list have 100's of contacts that I'd have to manually remove one-by-one.

Please let me know if someone has an idea of how to help me accomplish this, or maybe Constant Contact can add this feature soon! Thanks

[Amber_G]

Hi @CIDInsurance, there is a request for a feature like this. I have added your feedback for our engineers, so they know exactly how you would use something like this! For now, one way you could accomplish what you're wanting would be through our segment tool. Here is a video tutorial explaining this tool as well. Using the segment tool, you could pull a segment of those "on List A" + "date added", or "on List A" + "added between date x and date y". You would be able to add new contacts to your "Leads List" and then every 6 months or so, you could pull the segment described above and take that group off the "Leads List" and add them to your regular list. 

[CIDInsurance]

Hi Amber,

Thank you very much for your response. I'm looking forward to your engineers implementing the new feature. I have started playing around with segments recently. I like your idea, but I'm not seeing an option to remove the segment from a list. I only see that I have the ability to add to a list. I appreciate your help with this!

[Amber_G]

Hey Cristina,

You're totally right! There would be a middle step involved of adding the segment to a list first. Since you can't delete a segment directly from a list, you first select to add your segment to a list. There is a feature request regarding simplifying this process as well!

So from start to finish, your situation could look like: Add new contacts to new list, every six months pull a segment, add that segment to 'delete list', from contacts screen, remove everyone on the 'delete list' from your New list or Leads list. Afterwards, you could remove your 'delete list', as it was only serving the purpose of being able to pull this group of contacts off the Leads list. Hope this helps to clarify!

[CIDInsurance]

This is very helpful! I think I have one last thing to figure out that I don't think I've explained yet.

Some of the contacts that I'm adding to this list, the list that I want people to filter out of after 6 months, some of them will have been in our database for a while already. So, creating a segment based on Date Added wouldn't pick them all up.

The contacts that we are adding have recently sent in paperwork to do business with us. I guess I shouldn't have been calling them leads, but we are not yet making any money with/from them. So, the idea is to add these contacts to a list and send them welcome emails and informational stuff to get them more familiar with our company, basically to get them to start doing business with us now that they have their paperwork in.

With that said, some of these contacts will have been in our database for years before they finally send in their paperwork. Then, they will be added to this list that I'm calling 'Recent Conversions'. For that reason, I don't think I can create a segment using the 'Date Added' criteria. If there was a way to create a segment based on the date a contact was tagged or added to a specific list, that would be perfect for my situation.

Let me know if you have any other clever workarounds. You've been very helpful so far!

[Kyle_R · Accepted solution]

Hi Cristina,

You're right, that does mess with things a bit. We might still have some options. 

These contacts that are being added to the "Recent Conversions" list, is the plan that they will all be receiving the same email(s) and you want to remove them so they don't keep receiving the conversion emails? I'm wondering if you'd be interested in creating an automation campaign for these. So, for example, the "Recent Conversions" list would be tied to an automation campaign that starts sending whenever someone is added to that list. You can have the campaign wait a certain number of days before sending the next email in the series, and so on for as many emails as you have.

You could potentially eliminate the list management and manual email scheduling piece of the process. There wouldn't be any need to remove them from the list because once they receive all the emails in the series they're done and the new contacts continue to receive the automated email series. Of course, I'm making a lot of assumptions here. You might still want to remove contacts from the list after 6 months so that you can export it and use it somewhere else, so please feel free to tell me if I'm way off!

[CIDInsurance]

This is actually EXACTLY what I'm looking for. We have an automation campaign running a welcome email but I totally forgot about it! This will work perfectly.

Thank you Kyle and Amber!