About Cleaned Contacts

Cleaned contacts have email addresses that have hard bounced or repeatedly soft bounced, and are considered invalid.

In this article, you’ll learn about cleaned contacts and how to view, export, or archive them.

Things to know

Here’s some things to know.

• Make sure you familiarize yourself with the different types of contacts in Mailchimp.
• Cleaned contacts don't count toward audience limits.
• Cleaned contacts can be deleted, but we recommend that you archive them to keep them in your audience to avoid bounces.

Why addresses are cleaned

If you send an email to an invalid email address, it'll likely hard bounce. A hard bounce indicates a permanent reason an email can't be delivered. Hard bounces may be the result of a typo in an email address, server problems, or an outdated address. In most cases, Mailchimp will automatically remove addresses from your audience that hard bounce.

Cleaned addresses can't receive future emails you send to your audience. You can view cleaned addresses anytime or archive and export them, but you can’t edit them.

There are occasionally cases in which valid email addresses will hard bounce.

View or export cleaned contacts

To view and export your cleaned contacts, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience, then click All contacts.
2. If you have more than 1 audience, click the Audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
3. Click the Create new segment drop-down, then click Regular segment.
4. Set the drop-down menus to Email subscription status | is one of | Cleaned.
5. Click Preview Segment.
6. To download a file of your cleaned contacts, click Export segment.
7. In the Export segment preview? pop-up modal, click Confirm export.
8. In the Export started pop-up modal, click View exports.
9. After the export completes, click Export As CSV to download the file to your computer.

Archive cleaned contacts

You may wish to archive your cleaned contacts. Archived contacts won’t receive your marketing, but you’ll keep their historical data. You can unarchive them at any time.

To view and archive your cleaned contacts, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience, then click All contacts.
2. If you have more than 1 audience, click the Audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
3. Click the Create new segment button.
4. Set the drop-down menus to Email subscription status | is one of | Cleaned.
5. Click Preview segment.
6. Click the box next to Email Address to select all cleaned contacts, or click the boxes next to individual contacts.
7. Click Archive.
   
8. In the Archive contacts pop-up modal, enter ARCHIVE in the field.
9. Click Archive.

Fix typos

If you try to send to a mistyped address, such as freddie@mailchii&mp.com, the email will probably hard bounce and be cleaned. Because cleaned contact information can't be edited, you'll need to add the new, corrected address to your audience. Mailchimp doesn’t charge for cleaned addresses, so you won’t be penalized for adding an extra contact.

To add a corrected address to your audience, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience, then click All contacts.
2. If you have more than 1 audience, click the Audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
3. Click the Add contacts drop-down and choose Add a single contact.
4. Enter your contact’s corrected information and check the box next to This person gave me permission to email them.
5. Click Add contact.

That’s it! The corrected email address is now subscribed to your marketing.