Prune Stale Addresses

If you've received an alert that pruning is required on your account, we know you're ready to resolve the issue and get back to work. This message means you don't have a history of compliance issues, but we've noticed one of your campaigns recently generated a high number of bounces or abuse complaints. To take care of this issue before it becomes a bigger problem, you can use our system to clean up your audience.

In this article, you'll learn how to remove stale addresses with Mailchimp's pruning tool.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• Although you don't have a history of compliance issues, one of your campaigns recently generated a high number of bounces or abuse complaints. This is usually due to outdated, or stale, subscriber information in your audience.
• We've flagged a number of addresses in your audience that are likely causing this issue. This process will remove those addresses from your list.
• We have to disable sending for your audience until this process is complete to prevent continued negative campaign results that could damage the deliverability of campaigns sent through Mailchimp.
• After you complete this process, we'll reinstate sending for your audience.

Prune addresses

To remove the stale addresses causing your compliance issue, follow these steps.

1. Navigate to the list of Audiences.
2. In the yellow alert box under the affected list, and click Prune Addresses.
   
3. Review the affected contacts in your audience, and click Prune Addresses.
   
4. In the pop-up modal, click Confirm.
   

We'll display a success message to let you know the addresses have been unsubscribed from your emails and send a confirmation email to the Primary Account Contact.

What should I do next?

After you've completed the pruning process, we'll reinstate sending for your audience and you can create and send campaigns as normal.

We strongly recommend that you review your audiences periodically and send re-engagement campaigns to your inactive subscribers. This will help keep your audience healthy, cut down on bounce warnings and abuse complaints, and can improve your ROI.

Learn more about audience management, or contact our Compliance Team if you have further questions.