How to Archive Contacts in Mailchimp

If you use Mailchimp for your email campaigns, you might need to archive some of your contacts. Archiving helps keep your list clean and can save you money. Let’s go through the steps to do this.

Logging into Mailchimp

First, you need to log into your Mailchimp account. Once you’re in, you’ll see a dashboard with different options. Look for the Audience icon and click on it. This will take you to the section where you manage your contacts.

Accessing Your Contacts

After clicking on Audience, you’ll see an option for All contacts. Click this to see a list of all the contacts in your account. If you have more than one audience, make sure to select the right one before you continue. This step is important because you don’t want to accidentally archive contacts from the wrong list.

Selecting Contacts to Archive

Now, you need to choose which contacts you want to archive. You can do this by checking the box next to each contact’s name. If you want to archive a lot of contacts, you might find it easier to use the Actions drop-down menu to select multiple contacts at once. This can save you time if you’re dealing with a large list.

Archiving the Contacts

Once you’ve selected the contacts, go to the Actions drop-down menu again and choose Archive. A confirmation pop-up will appear. To confirm, type ARCHIVE in the box and click Confirm. This will move the selected contacts to your archived list, keeping them out of your active marketing campaigns.

Important Considerations

Archiving contacts can help you in several ways. It can reduce your marketing costs because archived contacts don’t count towards your billing. It’s also a good way to remove contacts who are no longer engaged or have unsubscribed, which helps maintain your email reputation. Remember, archiving keeps the contact data without affecting your billing, which is useful for keeping records.

Key Notes

When you archive contacts, they are not deleted permanently. You can bring them back if you need to. However, if you’re dealing with GDPR, remember that archiving is not the same as deleting, so it’s not a legal solution for data removal. Archived contacts are moved out of your main contact table, but their data is still kept in your account. This means you can still access their information if you need to.

Archiving All Contacts

If you decide to archive your entire audience, the process is a bit different. Start by clicking Audience and then All contacts. Look for the Manage contacts drop-down menu and select Archive all contacts. You’ll need to type ARCHIVE to confirm this action. This is a big step, so make sure you really want to do it before you go ahead.

By following these steps, you can keep your Mailchimp account organized and efficient. Archiving helps you manage your contact list better and can save you money on your email campaigns.