Keeping unsubscribed leads?

[Jessica_Leung1]

Hello,

I'm going through a bit of a data cleanse exercise and was wondering what people's views on keeping or deleting unsubscribed leads from their instance? Or even those where they have soft-bounced from campaigns (company spam filters).

In particular, for leads who also exist in Salesforce...are some people keeping them in Marketo to maintain a view/history of the lead's behaviour and any form fills etc., to share intelligence with Sales? Would you still keep these in the system, or just keep the "active" ones?

Thanks!

[Anne_Angele1]

I typically recommend deleting unsubscribed leads that are also otherwise low value - no real recent activity, unlikely to end up in sales' hands any time soon, not at a target account or a really strong fit. Since Marketo has durable unsubscribe, there is no reason to keep junk leads in the database. Remember that if someone is unsubscribed from email, it doesn't necessarily mean that the person isn't useful for sales - either to understand the department a bit better, maybe phone outreach is still happening, etc.

[Jessica_Leung1]

Yes, I think that's the route I'll recommend to the business - helpful to keep some, best to remove others. Thanks!

[Sonali_Jadeja3]

Well, as long as they are valid emails, we don't delete them as we still might send them operational emails regarding service/transactions etc. You also risk losing all their activity logs in case they ever choose to "re-subscribe".

[SanfordWhiteman]

I recommend reading this recent thread on the same topic (remember to search first!): List Cleanout

[Jessica_Leung1]

Thanks Sanford. I was after something slightly different to what was discussed on the link you shared, but still a good read! Thanks for sharing.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

We keep them, at least for a few months.

Pay attention to how you delete them, when you do. If you do not want them to come back to Marketo, you will have to set a sync filter. I have written a couple of blog articles about how to set this up.

-Greg