Please note that contacts are available on Email Marketing plans.
Remove from list vs delete permanently
Elastic Email gives you two separate actions for taking a contact out of your audience:
"Remove from list" takes the contact off one specific list only. The contact stays in your account, keeps its status and history, and stays on any other list it belongs to.
"Delete permanently" removes the contact from your account completely, including every list it belongs to. This action cannot be undone.
Use "Remove from list" when you only want to change which list a contact belongs to, for example when you are reorganizing your audience or a contact was added to the wrong list. Use "Delete permanently" when the contact should no longer exist in your account at all.
Where to find your contacts
There are two places where you can select contacts:
Audience > Lists, then open a specific list. This view is tied to one list, so both actions are available here.
Audience > Overview > All contacts, which shows every contact in your account in one place. This view is not tied to any list, so only "Delete permanently" is available here.
Removing contacts from a specific list
Go to Audience > Lists.
Open the list you want to edit.
Find the contact you want to remove. You can use the search field to find a specific email address.
Select the contact using the checkbox on the left. You can select several contacts to remove them in one action.
Click "More actions" on the right.
Click "Remove from list".
In the confirmation window, click "Remove".
The confirmation window is titled with the number of contacts you selected, for example "Remove 1 Contact", and states that the contacts will not be deleted. The selected contacts are removed from that list only. They stay in your account with their status unchanged, and they stay on any other list they belong to.
Deleting contacts from your account
Go to Audience > Lists and open a list, or go to Audience > Overview > All contacts.
Find the contact you want to delete.
Select the contact using the checkbox on the left. You can select several contacts to delete them in one action.
Click "More actions" on the right.
Click "Delete permanently".
In the "Delete contact" window, type "delete" in the confirmation field.
Click "Delete".
The contact is removed from your account and from every list it belonged to. The contact record and its history cannot be restored, so if you may want to email the contact again later, remove it from the list instead, or change its status.
Adding a deleted contact again
Deleting a contact does not reset its status. If you delete a contact and later add the same email address to your account again, it comes back with the status it had before, not as a new Active contact. A contact that was Unsubscribed stays Unsubscribed, and a contact marked as Complaint keeps that status as well.
This means that deleting an address and adding it again is not a way to resume sending to a contact who opted out. An unsubscribed contact can become Active again only by resubscribing. See the article Resubscribing your contact.
Stopping emails without deleting a contact
Deleting a contact is permanent and removes its history from your account. In most cases where you simply want to stop sending to someone, one of these options fits better:
To stop all marketing emails to a contact, change its status to Inactive. See the article What are the contact statuses.
To exclude contacts from one campaign only, without changing your lists, see the article How to exclude contacts from your Campaign.
To automatically limit sending to contacts that stop engaging, see the article Contact Pruning.
Please also note that deleting a contact does not immediately lower the number of contacts counted toward your plan. If an email was sent to that contact during the current subscription period, it is still counted until the next subscription period. See the article How are contacts counted on Email Marketing plan.
If you need any further assistance, feel free to reach out to our Customer Support Team, available 24/7. We're always happy to help!