A clean database improves email deliverability, protects your sender reputation, and saves money. Connect only charges for subscribed status, so unsubscribing or removing stale contacts directly reduces your costs.

This guide walks you through identifying problem contacts, running a win-back campaign before you delete anyone, removing or suppressing what's left, and building a regular maintenance routine.
 

Why database hygiene matters

Every time you send a campaign to contacts who don't engage, it signals to email providers (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) that your messages aren't wanted. Over time, this can push your emails into spam, even for contacts who do want to hear from you.

A smaller, engaged database will always outperform a large, inactive one. Quality over quantity.

Quick checklist

Use this as a reference each time you do a cleanup:

☐ Search for and delete fake/test email addresses

☐ Review campaign reports for hard bounces

☐ Check for contacts with no email AND no mobile

☐ Review your "Inactive subscribers" segment

☐ Run a win-back campaign for unengaged contacts

☐ Tag or delete contacts who don't respond to win-back

☐ Spot-check for near-duplicate records

☐ Verify your bounce management automation is active

Step 1: Identify inactive contacts

Start by finding contacts who are subscribed but not engaging. These are the ones hurting your deliverability the most.

1. Go to Contacts → Search Your Contacts
2. Add the following criteria:
   • Last email opened is more than 180 days ago
   • Subscribed (email) equals Yes
3. Set match mode to Match all conditions (AND)
4. Click Search
5. Click Save This Segment and name it something clear like "Inactive subscribers – 180d"

This segment will automatically update over time, so you can revisit it whenever you need to.

See: How to search your contacts in Connect

Step 2: Look for junk and invalid data

Before running any campaigns, do a quick sweep for obviously bad data:

Fake or test emails — Search for contacts with emails like test@test.com, noemail@noemail.com, abc@abc.com, or anything that clearly isn't a real person. Delete these outright.

Hard bounced emails — Review your recent campaign reports for hard bounces. A hard bounce means the email address doesn't exist or has been permanently rejected. Connect handles most of this automatically, but it's worth checking periodically.

Incomplete records — Search for contacts where both email and mobile are empty. These contacts can't be reached and are taking up space.

See: Campaign Reports & Analytics in Connect · How to set up an automation to manage bounced emails

Step 3: Run a win-back campaign before deleting

Don't delete inactive contacts without giving them one last chance to re-engage. A win-back campaign lets you recover some of those contacts before you lose them permanently.

How to set one up:

1. Create a new email campaign targeting your "Inactive subscribers" segment
2. Use a subject line that creates urgency or curiosity — e.g. "We miss you! Here's 25% off to welcome you back"
3. Include a clear call to action (a link to click, an offer to redeem, a form to update preferences)
4. Send the campaign and wait 7–14 days for responses

What to track:

• Contacts who open or click → they're still interested. Keep them.
• Contacts who don't engage at all → move to Step 4.

For a detailed guide on running a reconfirmation campaign, see: How to reconfirm your contacts

💡 Pro tip: Create a campaign folder called "Database Health" to keep your cleanup campaigns separate from regular marketing. This makes it easy to track what you've done.

Step 4: Suppress or remove unengaged contacts

After your win-back campaign, anyone who still hasn't engaged should be dealt with. You have two options:

Option A: Suppress (recommended)

Tag the unengaged contacts with something like "Inactive – suppressed" and exclude this tag from all future campaigns. The contacts stay in your database for historical data and reporting, but they won't receive marketing.

To do this:

1. Search for contacts in your "Inactive subscribers" segment who did not open or click the win-back campaign
2. Select them and click Tag
3. Apply the tag "Inactive – suppressed"
4. When building future campaigns, exclude this tag from your audience

Option B: Delete

If you want a clean slate, you can permanently remove them.

1. Search for the contacts to remove
2. Select them and click Delete
3. Confirm the deletion

⚠️ Deletion is permanent and cannot be undone. If you're not sure, start with suppression (Option A). You can always delete later.

See: How to edit, tag, and delete contacts in bulk · Managing Tags

Step 5: Review duplicates

Connect automatically prevents duplicate contacts by matching on email address and mobile number. If either already exists, the incoming record updates the existing contact rather than creating a new one.

However, it's still worth checking for near-duplicates for example, contacts with slightly different email addresses or phone numbers that belong to the same person. If you spot these, you can manually update the primary record and delete the duplicate.

See: How Connect handles duplicate contacts

Build a regular maintenance schedule

Database hygiene isn't a one-off task — it works best as a routine.

Automating ongoing cleanup

You can use Connect's automation features to handle some of this passively:

Bounce management — Set up an automation to automatically tag or unsubscribe contacts who hard bounce, so they don't keep receiving campaigns.

Update details reminders — Create an automation triggered by the contact's created date. After a set period (e.g. 12 months), send an email asking the contact to review and update their information. Including an incentive (a discount or prize draw entry) significantly improves response rates.

See: Automated Triggers and their definitions · How to set up an automation to manage bounced emails