Re-importing a contact that was deleted

[HopeandCope]

Hi, What happens if I delete a contact and someone re-imports that contact using an Excel sheet or something? Is the contact re-inserted? I'm asking because I'm trying to clean up our list by doing the following: 1) Identifying everyone that has unsubscribed and is subscribed to no list 2) Running a campaign to ask people who have not unsubscribed, but are not on a list, to subscribe to a list or to unsubscribe completely 3) Identifying hard bounces and removing them As part of (2), I was preparing to delete the contacts that had unsubscribed when I noticed that someone in our organization tried to re-upload unsubscribed contacts (and others) using an Excel sheet. So I'm concerned that if I delete unsubscribed contacts (no matter by what method) they could be re-instated against their wishes. Is that the case? Thanks, L

[William_A · Accepted solution]

Hello @HopeandCope ,

If you only delete the contact, then yes uploading a file with that contact info will re-add them and update any new info if provided in the upload. 

If you're wanting to get rid of contacts, and not have them be able to be re-added without explicitly going through a sign up form or other method of overwriting their permissions, then I'd advise also unsubscribing them.

You can upload lists of contacts to mass-unsubscribe at one time, if you have advanced permissions turned on for your account.

You can unsubscribe bounces while deleting them, if doing so via an email's bounces report. 

Otherwise, you'll need to go through your files and remove the contacts that you don't want re-imported.