To manage your contact database efficiently, you need a strategic and proactive approach. By optimizing your campaigns, improving the engagement and exploring alternatives to deleting contacts, you maximize your chances of success and you maintain a lasting relationship with contacts. At the end of this article, you will find the available deleting methods. However, we strongly invite you to read the warnings and alternatives before taking action.
Warnings
Dialog Insight DOES NOT RECOMMEND DELETING CONTACTS for different reasons.
- Loss of important data: Interactions and web behavior history, consent history, user preferences, etc. Some laws require keeping this data, for example, the C-28 law in Canada require to keep sending and consent histories for a minimum of 24 months.
- Loss of business opportunities: Deleting contacts can harm some of your business goals. Re-engagement campaigns normally get good conversion rates. Deleting data will stop you from making these campaigns.
- Impact on deliverability: If addresses in quarantine or blacklisted are deleted, and these same addresses are returned to Dialog Insight in a future synchronization, there is a significant risk of negatively impacting your sender's reputation. Indeed, these good deliverability practices dictate to respect retroactions from the mailers and cease immediately all communications to adresses identified as in quarantine or invalid and those who filed a complaint, otherwise, you risk being categorized as spam. Keeping these addresses in your database prevents you from trying another sending since DI has processes to prevent sending to contacts that are not admissible.
- Risk of altering your analysis and reports: Deleting contacts makes it harder to evaluate campaign's efficiency. For example, the totals will show large variations. A contact could be part of your initial base, but be deleted during the campaign. A contact coming back to you could then be considered as a new customer even if he was in the database in the past. This situation will affect your communications' relevance (considering a customer as "new" by mistake is rarely good).
Alternatives
Campaign optimization
- Expand the scope of the welcome campaign: Make sure to cover all subscription cases, not only the newsletter. Integrate personalized welcome messages for each subscription type in order to increase engagement at the beginning.
- Diversify the re-engagement campaign: Segment your contacts according to their interests and create re-engagment campaigns that target each segment. Propose exclusive content, special offers or reminders of the opt-in benefits to encourage new interactions.
Engagement and interaction improvement
- In-depth analysis: Examine the campaign statistics (openings and clicks) to identify the weaknesses and areas for improvement.
- Segmentation and personalization: Segment your contacts using their demographics, interests and behavior, then personalize your communications accordingly.
- Creation of quality content: Suggest quality content that is engaging and has a plus value for your subscribers. Diversify the formats (articles, videos, infographics, etc.) in order to generate interest.
- Optimization of sending frequency: Find the right balance to avoid overloading your subscribers. Use A/B tests to determine the optimal frequency for each segment.
- Diversification of the communication channels: Explore other communication channels to reach your contacts, such as SMS, Push notifications (web and mobile), postal mailings and phone calls.
Contact Deactivation
Deactivate inactive contacts or those who opted-out instead of deleting them. This will allow you to keep their data and to reactivate them if necessary.
→ Deactivating a contact
Deactivate or delete? If you want to exclude a contact from any future communication (campaign, message, etc.), you can deactivate the contact and keep the data intact. You could also delete the contact, which erases entirely the contact from the database, including the contact's history. It is generally preferable to deactivate the contact. This way, the data will remain in the database while disabling the sendings to that contact. |
Overview of the Methods
Method 1: Deleting one contact at a time
The contact will be erased from the database, including the history for communications, opt-ins and relational data. Erasing the history can generate inaccuracies in the message results or impact the opt-ins/opt-outs. It is generally preferable to deactivate a contact.
To delete definitely a contact, go into the contact's profile and click Delete:
Method 2: Deleting several contacts at a time
→ Deleting several contacts at a time
Method 3: Deleting all contacts from a project
→ Deleting a project