Bulk Deleting

[GlenMar]

I am working with our entire list of contacts. I found that there are a large group that we would like to delete. Is there an easy way to do that?

[William_A · Accepted solution]

Hello @GlenMar ,

There's three ways you can go about doing this, depending on how you've setup the contacts you wish to delete:

• If you have the contacts you wish to delete already on a contact file of their own, then you can upload them as a new list into your Contacts. Then you can select-all, top Actions button > Delete. This will remove them from your account across all lists.
• If they're part of a drilldown, such as an email's bounces report, you can select-all, top Actions button > Delete
• If they're not in one of these setups, the most straightforward method would be to simply go into your contacts / the specific list, and start manually clicking the contacts you want to get rid of, then Actions > Delete.

[LindaK9]

I have 22,000+ contacts without email addresses to delete. I have a csv of them, but I can't upload the csv to create a new list without email addresses. I can't create a segment and filter by email. I can't add tags in bulk because I can't select the contacts by page because it selects all the contacts. I cannot delete them individually because that would take forever. How should I fix this? 

[William_A]

Hello @LindaK9 ,

If you're working with that many contacts to begin with, I'd advise emailing our premier support team for assistance managing your lists and overall contacts. Please see this article for advice on managing large list contact dashboards and guidance on emailing contact management support requests.

[user619900]

Is there really no way to either make a list, or a segment or use a tag to select all the contacts that match that criteria and mass delete them?  I've been fighting with trying to do this now for like an hour.  It's kind of crazy.

I exported my entire list and ran them through a cleaner service. My list has been inactive for a bit and I don't want to email a bunch of old and now bad addresses. Out of that cleaning service I was provided a new list about 85% of my old list. 

I uploaded it again and now tagged the contacts that were updated with a special tag, something like "Cleaned110424". It would seem I should be able to either simply open them using the tag or segment them using the tag and then use that partitioning to DELETE the contacts... 

Are all these things really impossible in CC? I've used maybe 4 other of the giant ESP services and I've never been so blocked from simply deleting contacts before, so this is kind of baffling.

Thanks

[William_A]

Hello @user619900 ,

Per the comment you're responding to, you'd follow the path mentioned first:

If you re-imported the contacts you want to have deleted, then you'd just add into a list specifically meant for deletion, go into that list, select-all, then delete the contacts.

[user619900]

Ya I didn't import the ones I want to delete - those are gone from my external list. I reimported the ones I want to KEEP.  Now I just want to delete the rest. Should be simple, but I can find no way. 

[William_A]

If that's the path you chose to take, then you'd have instead wanted to delete all the contacts in your account, so when you re-upload you just have the contacts you wanted to keep. This is the most straightforward path, if you're expecting to upload a clean list, rather than delete contacts via tagging, segmentation, or manual selection within the UI.

[user619900]

Then I'll lose the years of engagement records I have with them. This is backwards. I should be able to partition by criteria like date, field value, list, segment, tag, etc. then select all and delete - done. simple.

[William_A]

Yes, you'd do that by segmenting for contacts without the tag, adding the segment once it's done calculating to a list for deletion, then going into that list to select-all and delete.

You also wouldn't lose engagement by deleting then re-uploading. As long as the unique email address is being re-uploaded, all prior data is maintained.

[William_A]

You could also run a segment for all contacts that aren't tagged with that "Cleaned110424," add the segment to a list, then select-all and delete the contacts.

[user619900]

I don't really follow that but I'll try to walk through it. I tried removing them from lists but the previous user managing these made like 40 lists and of course I can't remove them from ALL LISTS as I should be able to... Last time I tried deleting from a segment it only offered to delete the segment.

[William_A]

I'll break it down then:

1. Make a segment with the criteria of "Tags > Is Not > Cleaned110424
2. Save and run this segment.
3. Once the segment is complete, add it to a list.
4. During the Add to list, create a new list and call it something obvious like "Delete List"
5. Go to the "Delete List"
6. While viewing all the contacts in the Delete List, select-all by selecting the topmost checkmark box.
7. Click the Actions button at the top > Delete 

This is the most straightforward way, if you chose to clean your contact list outside of the system, and added the appropriate "Cleaned110424" tag to all the viable contacts via upload. There's a myriad of different ways to accomplish what you're looking to do, and very efficiently, this is just the most efficient path for your particular method of cleaning up your contacts outside the system.

[user619900]

OK - I stumbled through this very long way to do something otherwise simple.

We shouldn't need to create a new list specifically for the purpose of deleting the things we put into it so we can then immediately delete the list itself. See how much extra nonsense there is in that?

I do realize I'm frustrated and ESP raging (lol), but do appreciate your help.

So in the future, since I'll be doing this cleaning quite regularly, and CC has no substantive cleaning tools really, what's the best way to export my contacts, clean them, get back a CLEAN list, and then bring them back into CC for comparing and purging those that are not clean?

You don't need to answer, but I do appreciate your help - either way

[William_A]

If you're using an external system to sus out the unviable contacts, then what you did in tandem with the steps I provided will be the best path.

If you're just looking to get rid of bounced contacts we recommend for removal, then you can delete (and even unsubscribe) them all from that particular email's report.

If you're looking to utilize segmentation within the system to sus out least engaged and other low-value contacts, then you'd follow the steps I provided earlier- but using either the pre-built low engagement segment, or your own custom one using contact activity and other criteria.

At this time, contacts can't be deleted via segments, which is why the addition to a list is the extra, necessary component if using segmentation for bulk-deletes.

[user619900]

It definitely makes more sense that this workaround is more of a hack than a designed plan.

I can't imagine any engineer making people do all that just to delete a filtered collection of records.

That's like index management 101... 

Anyway - I'm all set now. Thanks for the help!