If you’re using Hubspot as your marketing automation platform, you know that it’s an incredibly powerful tool for managing your marketing efforts. One of the key features of Hubspot is its ability to help you manage your contacts and track their engagement with your marketing campaigns. However, if you’re like most marketers, you’ve probably accumulated a large number of contacts over time, and not all of them are relevant to your marketing efforts.
It’s important to keep your contact database clean and up-to-date so that you can focus your marketing efforts on the people who are most likely to engage with your campaigns. Removing marketing contacts from your Hubspot database is a crucial part of this process.
In this article, we’ll walk you through the steps you need to take to identify and remove marketing contacts from your Hubspot database. We’ll also share some best practices for maintaining a clean contact database in Hubspot, so that you can keep your marketing efforts focused on the people who matter most.
How to Identify Marketing Contacts in Hubspot
Before you can remove marketing contacts from your Hubspot database, you need to identify them. Fortunately, Hubspot provides a number of tools and features that can help you do this.
First, it’s important to understand how Hubspot organizes and tracks your contacts. Hubspot uses a variety of properties to store information about each contact, including their name, email address, company, job title, and more. One of the most important properties for identifying marketing contacts is the “Lifecycle Stage” property.
The Lifecycle Stage property in Hubspot tracks where each contact is in your sales funnel. There are several stages that a contact can be in, including Subscriber, Lead, Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), Opportunity, and Customer. For the purposes of identifying marketing contacts, we’re primarily interested in the MQL stage.
How to Filter and Search for Marketing Contacts
Once you understand how Hubspot organizes your contacts, you can start to identify marketing contacts by filtering and searching for contacts in the MQL stage.
To do this, start by navigating to the “Contacts” tab in Hubspot. From there, you can use the filter options to narrow down your contacts based on a variety of criteria, including their lifecycle stage. To filter for contacts in the MQL stage, select “Marketing Qualified Lead” from the “Lifecycle Stage” dropdown menu.
You can also use Hubspot’s search feature to look for contacts who meet certain criteria. For example, you could search for contacts who have downloaded a specific piece of content, or who have clicked on a certain link in an email.
Common Characteristics of Marketing Contacts
In addition to using Hubspot’s contact properties to identify marketing contacts, there are some common characteristics that can help you spot them. Marketing contacts are typically people who have interacted with your marketing campaigns in some way, but who are not yet ready to make a purchase. They may have downloaded a piece of content, attended a webinar, or signed up for a newsletter.
Marketing contacts may also have certain demographic characteristics in common, such as their job title or industry. For example, if you’re a B2B company that sells to IT professionals, you may have a lot of marketing contacts who are IT managers or directors.
By using a combination of Hubspot’s contact properties, search features, and common characteristics, you can quickly identify the marketing contacts in your database and start to remove them.
How to Remove Marketing Contacts in Hubspot
Once you’ve identified the marketing contacts in your Hubspot database, it’s time to remove them. There are several ways to do this, depending on how many contacts you need to remove and how quickly you need to do it.
How to Delete Individual Contacts
If you only have a small number of marketing contacts to remove, you can delete them individually in Hubspot. To do this, simply navigate to the contact record for the contact you want to remove, and click the “Actions” dropdown menu in the upper right corner. From there, select “Delete contact” and confirm that you want to delete the contact.
How to Delete Multiple Contacts at Once
If you have a larger number of marketing contacts to remove, it’s more efficient to delete them in bulk. To do this, start by filtering your contacts list to show only the marketing contacts you want to remove. You can then select all of the contacts by clicking the checkbox at the top of the list, or you can select individual contacts by clicking the checkboxes next to their names.
Once you’ve selected the contacts you want to remove, click the “Actions” dropdown menu at the top of the list, and select “Delete contacts.” Hubspot will then ask you to confirm that you want to delete the selected contacts.
How to Use the Hubspot API to Delete Contacts
If you have a very large number of marketing contacts to remove, or if you need to automate the process of removing contacts, you can use the Hubspot API to delete contacts. This requires some technical knowledge and development expertise, but it can be a powerful way to manage your contact database at scale.
To use the Hubspot API to delete contacts, you’ll need to create an API key and authenticate your application with Hubspot. You can then use the API to send requests to Hubspot to delete individual contacts or batches of contacts.
Hubspot provides detailed documentation and developer tools to help you use the API, so if you’re comfortable with programming and have experience working with APIs, this can be an effective way to manage your contacts in Hubspot.
Overall, the method you choose for removing marketing contacts from Hubspot will depend on the number of contacts you need to remove, the speed at which you need to do it, and your technical expertise. Regardless of the method you choose, be sure to take the time to confirm that you’re removing the right contacts and that you’re not accidentally deleting any valuable data.
Best Practices for Maintaining a Clean Contact Database in Hubspot
Now that you’ve removed your marketing contacts from Hubspot, it’s important to take steps to maintain a clean contact database going forward. Here are some best practices to help you do this:
How to Prevent Marketing Contacts from Being Added
One of the easiest ways to keep your contact database clean is to prevent marketing contacts from being added in the first place. You can do this by setting up workflows and rules in Hubspot that automatically remove contacts who meet certain criteria, such as being inactive or not engaging with your marketing campaigns.
You can also use Hubspot’s lead capture forms to filter out irrelevant contacts before they’re added to your database. For example, you can use form fields to ask for information about a prospect’s job title or industry, and then use that information to filter out contacts who are not a good fit for your business.
How to Regularly Clean Up Your Contact Database
Even with preventative measures in place, it’s important to regularly review and clean up your contact database. This can help you identify and remove contacts who are no longer relevant or who have become inactive.
To do this, set a regular schedule for reviewing your contact database, such as once a quarter or twice a year. Use the same methods we discussed earlier to identify contacts who are no longer relevant or who have become inactive, and remove them from your database.
How to Use Hubspot’s GDPR Tools to Comply with Data Privacy Regulations
If you’re doing business in the European Union or with EU citizens, it’s important to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Hubspot provides a number of tools to help you comply with GDPR regulations, such as the ability to delete contacts upon request and the ability to anonymize contacts who have not engaged with your marketing campaigns.
To use these tools, you’ll need to set up your Hubspot account to comply with GDPR regulations. You can do this by creating GDPR-specific forms and consent checkboxes, and by setting up workflows to automatically handle GDPR-related requests and actions.
By following these best practices, you can keep your Hubspot contact database clean and up-to-date, and focus your marketing efforts on the people who matter most.
Conclusion
Removing marketing contacts from your Hubspot database is a critical step in maintaining a clean and effective marketing automation platform. By identifying and removing marketing contacts, you can focus your marketing efforts on the people who are most likely to engage with your campaigns and convert into customers.
In this article, we’ve covered the steps you need to take to identify and remove marketing contacts in Hubspot, including using Hubspot’s contact properties, search features, and common characteristics. We’ve also discussed different methods for removing contacts, including deleting them individually, deleting them in bulk, and using the Hubspot API to automate the process.
Finally, we’ve shared some best practices for maintaining a clean contact database in Hubspot, including preventing irrelevant contacts from being added, regularly reviewing and cleaning up your database, and complying with GDPR regulations.
By following these best practices, you can ensure that your Hubspot contact database is clean, organized, and effective, and that you’re making the most of your marketing automation platform.