Removing Stale Leads Best Practices?

[Anonymous]

Been using Marketo for a year now and wanted to clean out some of the old/un-used emails.  I was curious as to what logic people were using to accomplish this?

I was thinking of creating a smart list with the NOT opened email or NOT clicked email filters, then adding a 'minimum number of times' constraint.  Maybe even 'date of activity'.

My thought was that if I've sent the majority of the database atleast one email a month, so 12 emails in total, if they haven't opened or clicked at least 6 for example, then they are probably not interested, or in a sales cycle.

Appreciate your input.

[Aqeel_Akbar]

I would strongly urge you to watch this video from MarketingSherpa on how CNET reengaged 8% of their email list--really great information and insight around what to do with stale leads and clean up your database: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/video/win-back-campaigns-list-cleansing-email-summit

[Anonymous]

It's not really an issue of re-engagement, it more that our database was kind of old/outdated when it was imported into Marketo last year, so I'm really just removing those that have never opened an email ever.

[Anonymous]

Hi Dominick, I've been through a similar exercise before and that's the sort of logic I follow to determine what data to export/delete.

Things I account for when determining 'inactive' names are:

- Is the lead at least a year/18 months/2 years old?
- Have they not: clicked/opened any email/visited any tracked web page/submitted any form
- Has their email address hard-bounced an email (I usually do min. # of times = at least 2 for this)
- Other filters like: "Email Bounced Reason" [or] "Email Suspended Cause" contain 'spam'

I tend to think this is a good way to start weeding out data for people that is a) old and b) either never engaged, or has become inactive such that it could be a spam trap liability