When is it the right time to delete a lead?

[Anonymous]

I am responsible for database health and with over 1m leads in our database I'm looking to remove 'bad leads' from our instance. I'm interested to know people's thoughts on when you consider a lead is 'dead'?
 
Is it when they:
- Unsubscribe
- Become inactive
- Are flagged as Email Invalid
- Email bounce filter
- Become Blacklisted...
 
If you answer yes to any of these, do you add additional criteria?  For example, with inactive leads we profile these with the standard inactivity filters against a time limit and couple this with ‘lead is created’ NOT in ‘3 months’.
 
Also, once profiled as a 'dead' lead do you then removed these from your database?  If so, do you automate this process or do you still have manual checks of lists before deleting a lead from you instance?
 
All thoughts and comments welcome.
 
Kind regards, Victoria

[Anonymous]

Victoria, we keep our known, but inactive or dead lead records for at least 2 years to facilitate year-over-year performance reporting.  After that, they are a candidate for deletion.

We never delete blacklisted leads to ensure we never send them emails (there are very few of these anyway).

Email Invalid is a strong indicator that someone has left their company and we have our teleprospecting or sales team follow up on these to determine if this is the case.  If so, we change the Lead Status to "Gone" and try to identify a new lead at that company.  These are candidates for deletion after 2 years.

If someone unsubscribes, they may still be receptive to calls, coming to events / tradeshows, etc, so we do not flag those as dead or bogus. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Elliott.  Interesting to read your approach.  Kind regards, Victoria

[Ande_Kempf4]

Hi Victoria! Were you able to come to conclusions for your original post? I am facing a similar situation and would love feedback.

Thanks!