How to Perform an Expedited List Cleanup with Automation

In this guide, we’ll demonstrate how to set up an automation that unsubscribes contacts from all lists if they haven’t engaged with your campaigns in the past 90 days.

Customizing the Time Window

While 90 days is a recommended timeframe, you can adjust this to fit your business needs, such as 30 or 60 days. For those not requiring an immediate cleanup, consider sending a win-back email to re-engage inactive contacts before unsubscribing them. Learn more about win-back strategies by visiting the "Use automation to win back subscribers" guide.

Additional Recommendations

In addition to this cleanup process, consider setting up the following automations to maintain your contact lists:

  • Track contacts' last engagement dates.

  • Unsubscribe unengaged contacts within the first 90 days of account creation.

  • Remove unengaged contacts from the past 6 months or a year.

For more information, see "Use automation to track contacts' last engaged dates and perform ongoing list cleanup."

Prerequisites

To perform this cleanup, you must have:

  • Access to custom contact fields.

  • Permission to use the Automations feature.

How It Works

The expedited list cleanup is a three-step process:

  1. Create an Automation: Set up an automation with an "Unsubscribe from all lists" action and activate it.

  2. Perform an Advanced Search: Identify subscribed contacts who haven’t engaged with any campaign in the last 90 days.

  3. Bulk Add Contacts to Automation: Add the identified contacts to your unsubscribe automation.

Pro Tip

We recommend adding a tagging action to your automation to track when and why contacts were unsubscribed. Update this tag with the relevant date if you plan to reuse the automation.

Step 1: Build the Automation
Expedited list cleanup automationjpg.jpg
  1. Navigate to Automations and click Create an automation.

  2. Select Start from Scratch and click Continue.

  3. Choose Start without a trigger.

  4. (Optional) Add the Add a tag action to label unsubscribed contacts (e.g., [Unengaged] Expedited List Cleanup DATE). This tag should let you know when and how these contacts unsubscribed.

  5. Drag the Unsubscribe action into the workflow and select Unsubscribe from all lists.

  6. Add the "End this automation" action to complete the workflow.

  7. Activate the automation. Note that contacts can only be added manually.

Step 2: Create an Advanced Search
Advanced search.jpg
  1. Go to Contacts and select the Search bar > Advanced Search.

  2. Use the following conditions: Advanced search - Expedited List Cleanup automation.jpg

    • Is subscribed to list (active): At least one list.

    • Has been sent: Campaign > Any campaign > In the last 90 days.

    • Has not opened: Campaign > Any campaign > In the last 90 days.

    • Has not clicked on a link: Campaign > Any link > In the last 90 days.

    • Has not replied: Campaign > Any campaign > In the last 90 days.

  3. Click Search to display all contacts meeting these conditions.

  4. Bulk add contacts to your automation (steps below).
Step 3: Bulk Add Contacts to Automation
  1. From the advanced search results, click Edit all to select all contacts.

  2. In the modal window, click Add to an automation and choose the unsubscribe automation you created.

  3. Click Add and then Apply.

  4. Confirm the bulk update action by clicking Apply changes in the modal window.

  5. Click OK to finalize.

The selected contacts will be added to your automation, tagged (if applicable), and unsubscribed from all lists in your account.