Mailchimp has released new plans. With the new pricing all subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts count towards the amount you pay each month (cleaned contacts do not count towards billing).
In regards to reducing your Mailchimp monthly spend, below I describe the difference between deleting and archiving contacts in Mailchimp.
What is the difference between deleting and archiving a contact?
Deleting a Mailchimp contact removes all data about that contact and removes evidence that the contact was in your audience (list).
Archiving a contact means that the contact no longer shows in your list (although you can view contacts through the Manage contacts menu item). Even although you won’t see the archived contact in the usual audience view, that contact is still in your list; you just can’t market to that person.
Whether you delete or archive a contact, you’ll no longer be billed for that contact.
When You Should Archive and not Delete Mailchimp Contacts
Deleting a contact may be needed for privacy or other legal reasons (e.g. GDPR). Other than for these reasons there is little reason to delete a contact.
The most obvious reason to archive rather than delete a contact is when new contacts are being added to your audience; if the contact is archived then the contact won’t be inadvertently added as a new contact. If you delete a contact then attempt to add that contact to your audience you will add the deleted contact to your list.
Adding a contact to a Mailchimp audience in error will result in that contact counting towards the amount you pay Mailchimp each month. It is also possible that you will contravene spam regulations as if you delete an unsubscribed contact then perform an import, the contact will be shown as subscribed in your audience.
In summary, unless required by law, it is probably safer to archive rather than delete contacts.
You stated – “With the new pricing all contacts whether subscribed, unsubscribed or cleaned count towards the amount you pay each month.” I too was thinking this in the beginning. However, take a look at – https://mailchimp.com/help/about-legacy-pricing-plan/. “Starting on June 15, 2019, the legacy Free Plan will use whole-audience billing, which means that every contact you store counts toward your audience limit, including subscribed, unsubscribed, and non-subscribed contacts. Cleaned or archived contacts do not count toward your audience limit.” So it seems cleaned won’t count. I was hoping to archive “cleaned” addresses in my audience, but you can’t. So I guess we’ll see on June 15 what happens.
Thanks for the ‘heads up’ Kevin. I’ve amended the content.
Hello Gary! I think I misunderstood this part of your content “The most obvious reason to archive rather than delete a contact is when new contacts are being added to your audience; if the contact is archived then the contact won’t be inadvertently added as a new contact. If you delete a contact then attempt to add that contact to your audience you will add the deleted contact to your list.”
To my understanding I could delete and then add them again as new contacts. But once I do that the re-added contacts dont show on my list and the message this contacts have been permanently deleted appear.
Is there no way I can have them in my audience again?
Mailchimp have made various changes recently as to how deleted contacts are handled; as it stands right now deleted contacts can’t be re-added to an Audience whereas archived contacts can.
Hi Gary, I have copy/pasted the following from Mailchimp.
“When a contact who unsubscribed themselves decides to resubscribe, they need to sign up again on your Mailchimp-hosted signup form. Our forms capture the date and time the contact gave you permission to send them emails.
If someone has contacted you to ask about resubscribing, send them a link to your signup form.”
I am testing this out. I unsubscribed myself but was unable to re-subscribe. I tried using my own embedded form on my website and the direct link to the mailchimp form. No success. Are you able to shed any light on this please?
Hi Kelly, what error message was shown on the signup form when you tried to resubscribe?
For the 1st one, I unsubscribed via a link in the email and resubscribed via the sign up form. For the 2nd one, I deleted myself from contacts in Mailchimp and tried to resub with the form again. Both times the error message I was given is that “This email is already subscribed”
Kelly, are you trying to re-subscribe using a thirds party form? Please try the inbuilt Mailchimp form; see https://organicweb.com.au/marketing/mailchimp-cleaned-resubscribe/ (the instructions are old but still similar).
Hi Gary
What happens to an archived contact when they subsequently (re-)subscribe?
Does that contact automatically become active again? Will Mailchimp ‘unarchive’ the contact?
Yes. That’s correct.
Hi Gary! Thanks for your article! very useful!
I have a question, see if you can help me! If I copied some contacts that I already have into a new audience. But now I want to remove them ONLY from that new audience, keeping them only in the old audience. If I delete them from the new audience, will they be removed from the old audience too? Thanks a lot Gary.
Hi Raul, Audiences are independent in that if you remove a contact from one audience they won’t be removed from other Audiences.
Hi Gary, can you delete Archived Contacts at a later date, and if so how? Thanks
@Larissa, I don’t know of a means of deleting Archived contacts directly. The only way that I know of is to unarchive contacts and then delete those contacts (be aware that method may affect your billing).
I THINK I’ve found my answer by digging through my lists. But I couldn’t find it when I googled or in the FAQ of mailchimp. My question is I have a portion of my list segmented for inactive members (the setting adds them to this list when they haven’t opened the last 5 of my campaigns) For the first time ever I sent a refresh email to these contacts to ask if they were still interested in receiving emails and explain why they are on my inactive list. My question I got a surprising out pour of them responding that yes they do. I believe because they opened the email they were taken out of the segment. Is this true? So there’s nothing further I need to do to get them back on my active list correct? I just want to be sure. I did go check to see and they are no longer in the inactive segment. But I want to be sure there’s nothing further I need to do.
Hi Elizabeth. Your understanding is correct 🙂
Thank you!
Hi Gary, I have a segment of non active contacts that are already archived. We wish to give it one last go at re-engaging them with an offer and email before ultimately saying goodbye and that we won’t be contacting again as they don’t open emails. Is there a way to bulk unarchive contacts in Mailchimp? The functionality currently only allows 100 at a time. Is there a quicker way to unarchive? Thanks, Michelle
Hi Ciara, the quickest way to unarchive that I know of is to amend the archived contacts details e.g. import the email addresses of archived contacts and tag them during the import. Because the details of the archived contacts have changed Mailchimp should unarchive.
Hi Gary. I Have been deleting some old inactive accounts and some have a message across the top in green which says “better safe than sorry this person has been unsubscribed” can you explain that please?. i am assuming it is diferent from them being ‘cleaned’
I haven’t heard of Mailchimp automatically unsubscribing contacts. Please will you provide further context.
Hi Gary, I’m in the U.S. and have been using the free MailChimp for years and am grandfathered into some of the features that are now part of a pay plan, but even those are disappearing. We are not in retail. I have deleted many contacts that I know that the company no longer exists, an employee left, or a company was bought/merged with another company and now the original email address is no longer valid. But for the others, is there a reason to archive instead of delete hard bounced or cleaned contacts? Thanks for your input!
Hi Cristi, you aren’t able to delete cleaned contacts in Mailchimp. Mailchimp don’t charge for cleaned contacts so you are safe leaving them in your Audeince.
Hi again Gary, I cant find an example to screenshot for you because they have been unsubscribed and archived. But they were old entries with very low activity. eg nil opens for maybe 18 months. I had downloaded my “rare opens” segment and was going through it to systematically remove inactive members. When I clicked on some of those entries (maybe 20 or 30 of them) a message appeared across the top of the screen in a green coloured bar. The message in the bar said “Better safe than sorry. This person has been unsubscribed.” However the entry itself was not marked “cleaned” or “unsubscribed” and still appeared on my “current subscribers list”. i checked the email address for some of them to cnfirm it was still a valid address.
It was rather confusing, and made me wonder whether those people had been receiving my recent emails.
Hi Gary!
I have just tested this by unsubscribing and archiving myself. Then I subscribed again through my Shopify website. In Shopify I do see that I am signed up to e-mail marketing again, unfortunately in Mailchimp the contact is still archived and there is no activity whatsoever.
Do you have any thoughts on how this is possible?
Thnx!
Hi Keen, Mailchimp continue to change how unsubscribed and deleted contacts are treated. At present it seems that the unsubscribe cannot be overridden via an integration 🙁
Hi
If you unarchive a subscriber they go back into the ‘active’ list’.
Do they then receive the welcome email that new subscribers get?
Hi Matty. No they won’t. The welcome email is triggered based on the ‘Date Added’ field in your audience and this doesn’t ever change.