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Delete multiple Mailchimp unsubscribed contacts

Please be aware that Mailchimp have changed how to removed contacts. Please see the newer article on how to archive and permanently delete contacts in Mailchimp.

Yesterday I posted instructions on how to delete unsubscribed and cleaned Mailchimp contacts. I’ve had a few queries since whether it’s possible to bulk delete unsubscribed contacts (General Data Protection Regulation GDPR requirements seem to be prompting these questions). Unfortunately I am not aware of a means of quickly deleting many unsubscribed contacts. Below are instructions on the quickest way that I know of to delete unsubscribed contacts.

How to bulk delete Mailchimp unsubscribed contacts

Follow these instructions to mass delete your unsubscribed contacts:

  1. Create a segment where Email Marketing Status is Unsubscribed.
  2. Whilst viewing the contacts in the segment, change View to 100 (this will be at the bottom of the window).
  3. Click the empty select box next to each unsubscribed contact.
  4. Click the Delete button near the top of the page.
  5. Click Delete again.

If you have more than 100 contacts then you’re able to select then delete 100 contacts at a time.

Found this useful? Please share:

Related

  • How to delete Mailchimp Unsubscribed & Cleaned Contacts
  • Mailchimp Tutorial – Resubscribe an Unsubscribed Contact
  • How to Resubscribe Someone in Mailchimp

Filed Under: Marketing

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Comments

  1. Peter Thillemann says

    May 30, 2018 at 10:48 pm

    Hi Gary,
    How do we delete multiple cleaned contact? We made a segment, but it is not possible to choose them by using the checkbox. Do we have to delete them one by one?

    Thanks,
    Peter

    Reply
    • Gary says

      May 31, 2018 at 9:58 am

      Hi Peter,
      Unfortunately yes, the cleaned contacts need to be deleted individually 🙁

      Reply
  2. Peter says

    June 9, 2018 at 4:24 am

    Just a small addition. There is an arrow pointing down above the checkboxes for the contacts. If you click that it gives you an option to select all on the page.

    Reply
  3. Hans says

    July 3, 2018 at 4:59 pm

    I have the same problem: We had a quite huge list and did a GDPR campaign. More than 120,000 contacts do not explicitly want to receive further emails. To my understanding to be GDPR compliant we have to delete all data of these 120,000 contacts. Even with “select all” we would have to do that for 1,200 times… Am I wrong or does Mailchimp not provide the tools to be GDPR compliant?

    Reply
    • Gary says

      July 4, 2018 at 9:17 am

        Bulk deleting contacts: At this time, to mass delete contacts at one time (e.g. 120,000) in Mailchimp this can only be done via the API. I’m in Australia and am not fully conversant with GDPR but are you sure that you need to delete these people from your list (would unsubscribing them meet the compliance needs?)?
        Mailchimp GDPR compliance: As far as I’m aware Mailchimp is GDPR compliant. If you want to know more then I recommend contacting Mailchimp directly.
      Reply
  4. shaharan says

    August 13, 2018 at 9:47 pm

    Hi Gary,

    I tried the same method to bulk delete unsubscribed users, well even thought Mailchimp notify me of successfully deleting them. All the users are still in the list when I re-checked.

    And when I selected only one user and tried the same, I got the following error:

    Error

    0 members successfully deleted!
    1 email was not included (the contact unsubscribed or has been cleaned).

    Am I doing anything wrong ?

    Thank you.

    Reply
    • Gary says

      August 14, 2018 at 8:37 am

      I know there were issues yesterday in Mailchimp whereby list deletes were taking quite awhile to show. Is all ok now?

      Reply
      • shaharan says

        August 16, 2018 at 1:17 am

        Hi Gary,

        Thanks for the reply, I tried the same method now. Unfortunately no luck, it’s the same.

        But this is the new error when I selected one to delete:

        Error

        1 contact was not deleted (already unsubscribed, did not opt in to marketing, cleaned).

        Thank you.

        Reply
      • shaharan says

        August 29, 2018 at 5:47 pm

        Hi Gary,

        Yes, I think it was problem with Mailchimp for few days. It worked.

        Thank you 🙂

        Reply
  5. Jason says

    November 25, 2018 at 1:41 pm

    Very helpful. Thank you.

    Reply
  6. Mike says

    January 10, 2019 at 5:33 am

    Can you simply segment them by tagging as unscribed then sort to the tag, click on visible contacts only then delete?

    Reply
    • Gary says

      January 10, 2019 at 7:38 am

      Yes, this should work

      Reply
  7. John Park says

    April 4, 2019 at 9:22 pm

    Hi,

    I created a segment for contacts that opted in to my mailing list (as required by GDPR). How do I delete all of the contacts that are not in this segment? I created a segment of unsubscribed though this only includes a small portion of those who did not opt in. I do not see a Delete button when I selected the first 100 contacts in the View.

    thanks
    John

    Reply
    • Gary says

      April 5, 2019 at 11:55 am

      You should be able to “Select Visible” and then click delete. Can you do this?

      Reply
  8. Rachel Smets says

    May 15, 2019 at 6:19 am

    Hi Gary,
    Hope you see my message too. There is a change that the Forever free plan includes 2000 contacts and no longer 2000 subs
    So, I want to DELETE my cleaned and unsubscribed contacts.
    Would that be your suggestion? Which could I delete and will it then really be deleted from contacts?
    Sine I have 500+ contacts but only 400 subs

    Thanks

    Reply
    • Gary says

      May 15, 2019 at 7:41 am

      Hi Rachel, yes you can easily delete unsubscribed and/or deleted contacts from your audience.

      Reply
  9. valeria says

    May 28, 2019 at 6:09 am

    I am looking to achieve the same as a result of MC change in the Forever free plan- delete all of my 15,000 unsubscribed contacts. But the only way I see is to “select visible” which only deletes 100 at a time. Is there a way to delete ALL unsubscribed at once?

    Reply
    • Gary says

      May 28, 2019 at 7:38 am

      Unfortunately it’s a slow process of selecting all contacts in a screen (max 100) and deleting those.

      Reply
  10. Steph says

    June 3, 2019 at 4:56 pm

    I’m glad it’s not just me finding it very tedious to delete 100 people at a time! Gary, do you have nay thoughts on archive v delete?

    Reply
    • Gary says

      June 4, 2019 at 9:48 am

      Hi Steph, please see https://organicweb.com.au/marketing/mailchimp-audience-delete-archive/

      Reply
  11. Mick says

    June 13, 2019 at 2:56 am

    Maybe Mailchimp don’t want you deleting contacts as it will change the charging threshold.. ie we have over 11,000 contacts but if we go below 10,000 the price drops by half!
    I’ll be trying your delete instructions tomorrow, thanks.

    Reply
  12. Julie says

    August 6, 2019 at 4:51 pm

    Hi Gary, I was notified by Mailchimp that they are changing their pricing policy, and for free “legacy” plan users, like me, they count both my subscribed and unsubscribed contacts toward the 2000 free limit. They say I have 1079 unsubscribed contacts and 1988 subscribed contacts. I’ve tried to go to the “new segment” section to identify the unsubscribes, but when I do this, it tells me I have 0 unsubscribed contacts. For the life of me, I can’t find the 1079 unsubscribed contacts anywhere. I’d like to just delete them. Any help would be greatly appreciated, as they have given us an 8/7 deadline to do this or switch to a paid plan. Also, they said they would offer a one-time chat session, but no where on the site does it give you instructions as to how to chat with them.

    Reply
    • Gary says

      August 6, 2019 at 5:56 pm

      Hi Julie, without logging in to your account unfortunately I can’t advise where the mystery unsubscribed contacts are. As for accessing Mailchimp chat support try to find it per https://organicweb.com.au/marketing/find-mailchimp-support/ or alternately there should be contact details on the email they would have sent you.

      Reply
  13. Clayton says

    August 12, 2019 at 5:08 am

    This continues to be a complete PITA. Mailchimp are clearly doing this on purpose to publish people with a lot of unsubscribed people on their lists. It’s a completely nightmare to have to do this 100 at a time!

    Reply
  14. Karen McPherson says

    March 5, 2020 at 3:11 am

    I can create a segment of unsubscribed people and view all. But there is no Delete Option or View All option. What am I missing?

    Reply
  15. Karen McPherson says

    March 5, 2020 at 3:12 am

    Sorry – I can create segment and see 100 at the bottom, but no View All option or Delete Option. Thanks!

    Reply
    • Gary says

      March 6, 2020 at 11:29 am

      Hi Karen, Mailchimp have recently changed how subscribers are removed. Please see https://organicweb.com.au/marketing/tutorial-archive-mailchimp-contacts/

      Reply
  16. Paul says

    May 21, 2020 at 9:27 pm

    If you try to reimport deleted email addresses then there is a message that this email address has been previously deleted. So logically this means even after a delete Mailchimp is actually still storing email addresses to check against. This doesn’t seem to comply with their GDPR commitment to delete all data associated with an account.

    Reply
  17. Narayan Sapkota says

    June 20, 2020 at 8:30 am

    recently had thousands of bot subscriber from the website. How can I delete them in bulk from the list. This will cost us a huge amount of money as they are all with **@qq.com email addresses.

    Reply
    • Gary says

      June 21, 2020 at 10:38 am

      The simplest means is:

      1. Create a segment with e.g. email address containing qq.com
      2. Select all the contacts in that segment.
      3. Archive all the contacts.
      Reply
  18. Rich Bowman says

    July 8, 2020 at 3:51 pm

    I made a segment full of CLEANED & UNSUBSCRIBED contacts. I selected the 1st 100 in the list and looked for the “DELETE” option at the top of the page. It is not visible. I am using the FREE plan. Do I have to upgrade to do this mass contact delete in a segment? Or, what am I missing?

    Reply
    • Gary says

      July 9, 2020 at 9:03 am

      Rich, Mailchimp now seem to have removed the delete. It seems (for now?) that it’s only possible to archive – https://organicweb.com.au/marketing/tutorial-archive-mailchimp-contacts/

      Reply
  19. Vishal Kumar Jaiswal says

    April 2, 2021 at 11:51 am

    Yes! It is possible and I got a video on YouTube and it works perfectly.
    With a single click, you can delete more than 10K subscribers on MailChimp.

    Reply

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