Filtering on email activity older than retention period

[Debbie]

Hi Community

I've inherited an instance that unfortunately has a large portion of the database marked as unsubscribed when they shouldn't be. Going back to 2017 there are Leads that have never received an email from us and I'm trying to differentiate these from the ones that have legitimately unsubscribed from an email.

Using the 'Not Was Sent Email', 'Not Opened Email', etc. filters the results are returning Leads that have received and unsubscribed from an email which I can see in their activity logs. I suspect they are showing in the results because of the data retention policy for email activity?

Is there a way I can accurately segment this database to identify those that have never received an email from us vs those that have unsubscribed?

[SanfordWhiteman]

Unfortunately, if all relevant activities have aged out it's not possible to distinguish those who had the chance to engage with asset X from those that never even received asset X. This is why a thorough set of timestamping campaigns is a best practice (Last Email Sent Week Ending, Last Email Clicked Week Ending, etc.).

[Debbie]

Thought that would be the case, hoped it wasn't. Thanks Sanford