There may be times when you will need to remove a contact from your account. This could be for a variety of reasons including unsubscribe requests, data management, or just a change in data strategy. Follow the steps in this post to remove a contact from your marketing lists.
Please note: Contacts cannot be deleted in full from Wired (please contact your Account Manager to request a full data deletion), as we keep the information to ensure any contacts are not contacted by accident, for example, we don’t allow deleting contacts who have unsubscribed, as we have to store them to know who to remove before sending a campaign.
How to remove a contact
There are two ways that you can remove a contact from your account:
- Suppress – The contact will be placed in ‘Suppressions’ meaning they cannot be contacted.
- Archive – The contact will be removed from your marketing lists but you can unarchive them at a later stage.
Suppressing a contact
Suppressing a contact places them in a suppression list so that they cannot be contacted.
This option is useful if you have received a manual request for removal from a contact, for example via a reply to an email or via phone.
Suppression ensures that you do not accidentally contact an email address that you do not want to correspond with. This option would be used when the user has unsubscribed from your mailing list and you no longer want to send emails to them.
You may also want to suppress contacts who have hard bounced after an email has been sent to them as this affects your sender score.
To suppress a contact, follow these steps:
- Navigate to 'Subscribers' on the main navigation bar and select 'Contacts' from the dropdown
- Search for the contact you want to suppress, either by scrolling through the list of contacts or using the search modal
- Click the small cog icon on the left of the contact's email address, and select 'Suppress' from the dropdown
The contact will then be placed on the suppression list.
You can suppress multiple contacts at once by following the steps above, selecting the checkboxes next to the relevant contacts, clicking on the 'Action' button, and selecting 'Suppress Selection' from the dropdown.
Archiving a contact
Archive contacts to remove them from your marketing audience without losing any data. This is useful if you have lots of outdated or inactive contacts who don’t interact with your campaigns. If you change your mind, you can always unarchive them later.
You can archive a contact by searching for them in the subscribers area, selecting the checkbox next to their email address, and selecting ‘Archive Selection’ from the dropdown.
To archive a contact, follow these steps:
- Navigate to 'Subscribers' on the main navigation bar and select 'Contacts' from the dropdown
- Search for the contact you want to archive, either by scrolling through the list of contacts or using the search modal
- Click the small cog icon on the left of the contact's email address, and select 'Archive' from the dropdown
You can archive multiple contacts at once by following the steps above, selecting the checkboxes next to the relevant contacts, clicking on the 'Action' button, and selecting 'Archive Selection' from the dropdown.
You can view a list of your suppressed and archived contacts by navigating to Subscribers > Suppression.