Mailchimp have recently amended how contacts are deleted (removed) from an Audience. Contacts may now be archived or permanently deleted (read more about permanently deleting Mailchimp contacts).
The Difference Between Archiving and Permanently Deleting a Mailchimp Contact
A contact that is permanently deleted cannot be re-added to an Audience. In addition a contact that is permanently deleted has their data removed from Mailchimp reports.
A contact that is archived may be added back into a Mailchimp Audience and data are not removed from reports.
The video below shows the difference between archiving and permanently deleting a Mailchimp contact.
Instructions to Archive a Mailchimp Contact
Time needed: 5 minutes.
Archiving a single contact, or multiple contacts, in a Mailchimp Audience is simple. The steps below described how to archive Mailchimp contacts.
- View your Mailchimp Audience
Login to your Mailchimp account and click “Audience” in the main horizontal menu. Ensure that you are in the Audience from which you want to delete contacts by selecting your preferred Audience in the “Current audience” drop-down field.
- Select the contacts to archive
View your contacts by clicking the “View Contacts” button. Create and view a segment of the contacts you want to archive (e.g. all unsubscribed contacts) and click the down arrow to the left of the “Email Address” column to select all contacts in your segment. To select contacts without segmenting merely click in the empty box to the left of each contact you want to archive.
- Archive your selected contacts
In the previous step you selected the contacts you wanted to archive. To archive the selected contacts, click “Actions” then “Archive” then “Confirm.
- Check and unarchive your archived contacts
To check on your contacts that are archived in Mailchimp; view your contacts, click “Manage contacts” then “View archived contacts”. You’ll be able to select contacts and unarchive those contacts.
Yes, I’ve reviewed all your materials and am frustrated there’s nothing that speaks to how to bulk delete contacts. It will be too timely to go 1 by one through my list of 900 contacts to find the unsubscribed ones to delete. It’s unclear from your video and from your text.
Why did MailChimp do this? It was so easy before.
Hi Shara, I share your frustration; unfortunately I don’t know of any means of bulk deleting contacts 🙁
Does archiving a contact remove them from your subscribed list? If I archive a contact and then send a newsletter out, will they still receive it? I went through and archived a bunch of contacts thinking it would unsubscribe them also but now I am not sure that’s the case.
Hi Chelsea, archiving doesn’t unsubscribed contacts but rather places them in an archive. You won’t eb able to send to archived contacts unless you unarchive them.
Thank you, Gary. Very, very helpful material! Are you allowed to have any number of archived contacts? Is there any limit at all? THANK YOU!!
Hi Martha, as far as I know the number of contacts that may be archived is unlimited.
Thank you for your helpful answer, Gary!
I don’t want to push my luck here, but I do have another two questions please!
It has to do with a contact that was used in an email campaign but shortly thereafter archived. If that contact THEN “opens” or “opens/clicks,” will those data be picked up by MailChimp and “added” to the (archived) contact’s information?
Also, on the Free Plan, if I have more than 2,000 subscribers, is it OK for me to shift them in and out of being archived such that I have no more than 2,000 subscribers / contacts at any one time in my “active audience”? …and therefore do not jeopardize my Free Plan…
Hi Martha,
These are great questions! I have to admit to not being totally familiar with how Mailchimp handles archives (in addition, Mailchimp regularly make changes that affect how contacts and archives work).
I hope this helps a little 🙂
Wow!!! Your answer, Gary, is extremely useful to me – it means that if I am going to be going in and out of “archiving” more than 2,000 subscribers, I should give myself some wiggle-room, in the event that (possibly) some of my contacts “open” or “open/click” the campaign long after the campaign is over (from my point of view)!! THANK YOU!!
Hi Gary
Great to have found you.
Can you please explain how contacts are selected to get Archived? I have a number of contacts that have been Archived, it’s not something I’ve done manually and I’ve contacted some of the people involved who assure me they’ve not unsubscribed. In fact a couple have complained they are no longer receiving my Newsletter (which is how I found out about this issue).
My list is only just over 600 in total and I use an API to pull a list from my membership software (I represent a small professional Society) to Mail Chimp. Lots of these Archived people are 4 or 5 star readers, so it’s not that they are being biffed for not engaging with my Newsletters.
Any idea how/why they been Archived?
I may need to take this up with my membership software provider but I thought I’d ask a Mail Chimp expert for some advice first.
Cheers
Nicki
Hi Nicki, it’s more than likely that it’s the external application that is instructing Mailchimp to archive the contacts.
Hi Gary
That’s what I was afraid of as it means I have no control over it, and no idea how ‘it’ has ‘decided’ who to Archive. I’ll try unarchiving everyone and re running my list via the API.
Thank you for your advice.
Nicki
Hi Gary,
Does archiving a contact from one audience mean that I cannot send email communications through my account including via. other audiences? Or I can still send them communications incase they are present in other audiences?
Hi Pooja, Archiving applies to a single audience only i.e. if you archive in one audience this won’t affect other audiences.