What Does "This Address Has Been Cleaned" Mean In Mail Chimp?

I was on a call with a client recently, and she was explaining how busy life was at the moment, despite being in a lockdown. One thing she mentioned was that because of her workload, she'd not got round to cancelling some of the services she was using. In particular, she was all the same paying for TV channels, even though she hadn't watched them for a while.

It reminded me of ane of the challenges with Mailchimp, and how if you're non careful you can end up paying over the odds because you lot're not managing your audience effectively. Specifically, we're talking about those people who don't get your emails… the unsubscribed and cleaned email addresses.

This is a common question in the Mailchimp Answers Facebook Group. And so what do you do with these email addresses? Do y'all annal them? Delete them? Ignore them?To understand what to practise, if annihilation, yous demand to get a handle on what these terms actually hateful both to y'all but simply as importantly to Mailchimp. One time you know this, it'due south a lot easier to go your head around things.

Mailchimp does one matter

The first thing you lot always need to call up is that Mailchimp does 1 thing, 1 sole objective.

Information technology gets emails into people's inboxes.

If it tin can't get an email into an inbox, it doesn't have a concern model, and so it's going to do everything in information technology's power to protect it's ability to evangelize.

A cardinal mode to ensure this is the instance is through making sure it doesn't get any 'negative marks' against it from the people who control the inboxes we all transport to (east.g. gmail, yahoo, etc). It needs to maintain a good reputation equally a sender.

…and to do this, it needs to avoid doing things that spammers are recognised as doing – such equally sending emails to people who either don't exist or don't want to receive them.

Every time an email that Mailchimp sends goes undelivered, because the address doesn't exist, or the email sent results in an unsubscribe, or even worse a spam complaint, this impacts Mailchimp's hereafter ability to transport emails into inboxes.

Then it needs to protect itself confronting these actions….which leads united states back to unsubscribed and cleaned email addresses.

The Unsubscribed

Ane of the' terms of service' of Mailchimp is that every electronic mail it sends on your behalf must have an unsubscribe link. The reason for this is so that in that location is a managed style for people to effectively finish receiving emails from a sender.

…only the real reason is to take the 'unsubscribe' procedure out of your hands so that there is no chance at all you can corruption the organisation.

Remember, every time an email gets sent to someone who has stated they don't want it – and they complain – this affects Mailchimp.

So by taking the unsubscribe process out of your hands, it ensures that this never happens and then is doing it'south best to protect itself.

This is why you can't just get in and resubscribe someone who has unsubscribed. In fact the only fashion to resubscribe someone who has unsubscribed is to go them to complete a Mailchimp form and reconfirm. (Small aside, there's nothing stopping you from doing this yourself manually, but remember, if yous corruption this you're not simply hurting yourself, you lot're pain everybody).

So, Mailchimp keeps unsubscribes visible on your audience. It doesn't actually remove them considering of the fact y'all tin use the information on this person for other purposes (Retargeting/Postcards) within Mailchimp.

However, if you aren't going to do either of these things, and so the best thing to do is to place all those who are unsubscribed and annal them.

Archiving them removes them as 'valid' contacts on your organization, which means that they don't count against your overall Mailchimp bill (n.b. this doesn't affect those who are on legacy accounts).

To conclude on what to do with Unsubscribes…If y'all aren't using any of mailchimp's other marketing tools, it'south best to Archive them (and fifty-fifty if you're on a legacy account and don't get charged for unsubscribed contacts, it's not a bad idea to archive them equally there isn't a penalty for doing so).

As well, if someone does decide they want to come up dorsum to you and completes a form, they'll automatically exist moved from the annal listing back to the main listing equally a alive subscriber.

The cleaned

Where an unsubscribe is someone saying they don't want to hear from you, someone who's address is 'cleaned' is someone maxim they tin't hear from you.

A cleaned email address is as far as Mailchimp's concerned, a expressionless email accost and one that cannot be contacted.

In most instances, this is considering the electronic mail accost either doesn't be, which is known as a 'hard' bounciness, or information technology can't take any emails at the moment (it could be total), which is known every bit a soft bounce.

Hard bounces volition be marked on your electronic mail database equally cleaned. Soft bounces will have several attempts to get your email through, simply if it fails, so it will be also marked as cleaned.

Sending an email to someone who's unsubscribed is not a good thing, but sending an email to an address that doesn't exist is even worse.

This is why you can movement unsubscribes to be archived… merely you can't do a thing with the cleaned electronic mail addresses. They are kept in your account so that they don't become misused/ignored.

I understand that this can exist frustrating if you like things neat and tidy, merely it'south just the way things are…and you lot don't need to worry as you don't get charged past Mailchimp for these non real email addresses.

Then, the simple answer to; "what to do with cleaned email addresses in your database?"… is to do nothing! They aren't causing you an issue or costing y'all coin, they tin't be archived or deleted… so but go out them exist!

To Archive or Delete

Another question that often gets asked in this arena is whether you should archive or delete contacts?

Personally, unless you've got a specific reason for someone to exist deleted (e.g. in that location was a request from someone to be deleted on the basis of GDPR), then you should archive.

Archive keeps the contacts information and details in place should they ever decide to resubscribe (and means yous can observe the data if someone starts saying why take their emails stopped) – delete removes them completely.

Unless y'all've a actually good reason, just use the archive office.

Wrapping Up

Mailchimp is a corking system for e-mail marketing and i of the key benefits is that they handle lots of the heavy lifting – managing unsubscribed emails and emails that don't exist – without you lot having to get involved.

The one thing you practice need to do regularly though is review your unsubscribes.

If you're using the data for postcards or targeting, yous can keep them, but otherwise I'd recommend you annal them – it'll salve y'all money if you're on a standard/essentials plan, it'll reduce your subscriber count if you're trying to keep under the 2,000 limit on a complimentary plan – and even if you're on a legacy plan, it's just good do to keep things tidy.

…and don't worry about cleaned emails, they may wait a bit messy, only in that location non doing you whatsoever impairment at all and are really protecting you (and Mailchimp) from bad email practice.

Just like those Tv subscriptions you keep paying for which you lot know you should probably cancel, if you don't archive your unsubscribes, it's probable your paying money for things you don't demand.

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