Delete Contacts

Delete a contact to permanently remove all of their personal information from your audience. This action cannot be undone. Usually, if you have outdated or inactive contacts that don’t interact with your email, you should choose to archive them. Delete contacts for General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) purposes only.

In this article, you'll learn how to delete contacts from your audience.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• Export your audience before you perform any bulk actions. Anything you delete from your account is permanently removed and can't be recovered.

• If you need to reduce your contact count but don’t want to lose any data, we recommend you archive contacts rather than delete them. To learn more, check out Archive or Unarchive Your Contacts.

How it works

When you delete a contact, it erases their personal information and anonymizes their data in your reports. You can't add a deleted contact back to your audience. The only way to add that contact back is if they rejoin through a Mailchimp signup form.

Archiving contacts, on the other hand, is reversible. If you have outdated or inactive contacts that don’t interact with your emails, you should archive them. You can always unarchive them later if you change your mind.

If a contact asks for their information to be completely removed from your records for GDPR purposes, we'll notify you via email. After you receive the email, you’ll have 30 days to delete the contact from every audience in your account, as well as any connected integrations.

Delete contacts

When it comes time to delete contacts from your audience, use the all contacts page to remove them in bulk. To delete a single contact, visit their contact profile page.

From the contact table

To delete one or more contacts from the contact table, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience, then click All contacts.
2. If you have more than one audience, click the Current audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
3. Check the box next to each contact you want to delete.
4. Click the three vertical dots, then choose Delete contacts.
5. In the Review delete versus archive pop-up modal, choose They asked me to and I must comply with privacy laws like GDPR/CCPA then click Continue to delete.
6. In the Permanently delete contacts pop-up modal, choose I understand these contacts can never be re-imported again. Then, type PERMANENTLY DELETE and click Permanently delete.

We’ll display an alert to confirm the contacts have been permanently deleted.

From the profile page

To delete a single contact from their profile page, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience, then click All contacts.
2. If you have more than one audience, click the Current audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
3. Click the contact to open their profile.
4. Click the three vertical dots and choose Remove.
   
5. In the pop-up modal, choose Permanently delete, then click Permanently Delete Contact to complete the action.
   

We'll show you a success message so you know the action is complete.