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Best Practice for people who unsubscribe

Lauren Zook

Hi there. In all efforts of keeping our database clean when you have a constituent who unsubscribes to your email list and has never given a gift, what do you do? Do you delete them or do you make them inactive? This is not many accounts but if we can't email them we can't move them along the donor cycle and I don't want them in my total constituent count:).

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Comments

JoAnn Strommen

@Lauren Zook Some questions: Why/How did they get a record in db to start with? If there is a reason for them to be in db, will they likely be added again in the future?

If you delete the record you have no knowledge of their wishes to unsubscribe. I understand the concern over record count but unless you can think of some way to remove from count/effectively track outside of RE, I would keep the record.

Ruth Droescher

@Lauren Zook I have always considered it best practice to inactivate rather than delete, so that I can retain the history of that constituent's engagement. As was previously mentioned, I can explicitly track that they unsubscribed, rather than just not having a record.

Is your concern about constituent count for analysis or cost? I would say that inactivating should allow you to filter them out for any analysis, so you would only query based on active record status. You could filter more specifically based on inactive reason as well.