There are various ways to delete contacts and contact lists in Emarsys. When you delete a contact their entry in the database will be deleted but they will still be counted in the reporting for the campaigns they responded to. This is why, when you drill down in these reports to view the contacts, you may find that the number of contacts displayed is different to the total shown in the report.
Deleting individual contacts
Please note that we are not only removing contact data, but we are collecting and removing all historical behavioral data that might be linked with that individual. This means that the reporting screens which use contact-level data may show slightly different results. Screens which use aggregated data will not be affected.
This also means that if you have the Loyalty add-on, all points and rewards are removed for the deleted contact. This data is not restored even if the contact is registered or imported into Emarsys again with the same identifier (e.g. email address).
To delete a single contact:
- Use the API endpoint Delete a Contact.
- Search for them using the Search function and click the skull icon to delete them from your database.
- Open a segment or list to display the contacts and click the skull icon to delete them from your database.
What happens to deleted contacts in Emarsys?
Contacts can be deleted for various reasons:
- contacts request you to delete all their personal data in compliance with legal guidelines,
- other reasons not related to legal guidelines such as:
- you need to delete inactive Mobile Engage contacts for technical reasons,
- your money-back guarantee policy,
- database maintenance.
When you delete a contact, then all data, including historical behavioral and revenue data, relating to that contact is also deleted. This will retrospectively affect any reports which use contact-level data.
Affected pages
Contact deletion involves removing all historical behavioral and revenue data of the deleted contact. As a result, reporting screens using contact-level data may show slightly different results. Deleting contact data affects the following reports and metrics:
Important:
- In general, contact deletion has a minor impact on the revenue. However, in some specific cases, deleting contacts may cause a noticeable difference in the revenue.
- Contact deletion can affect your analytics and reports, especially the year-to-year comparison on the Main Dashboard.
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Main Dashboard:
- Predict Recommendations widget: You may experience changes in figures after deleting contacts but it will not affect your reports retrospectively.
- Intelligence widget: You may experience changes in metrics retrospectively and regularly.
- Strategic Dashboard - Overview: Numbers may change across all strategies and objectives and deleting contacts will also affect the AOV (Average Order Value).
-
Strategic Dashboard - Strategy reporting: You may experience changes in:
- the strategy-level reporting both for the current year and the selected period it is compared to.
- the results of the Tactics related to the selected strategy, due to the adjustments to the number of purchases, level of engagement and revenue.
-
Revenue Analytics:
- You may experience changes in the following figures:
- Total revenue
- Total attributed revenue
- Purchases
- Revenue impact rate
- Deleting contacts will also affect the AOV (Average Order Value).
- You may experience changes in the following figures:
-
Revenue Attribution Service:
- Contact deletion affects all reports that retrieve data from the Revenue Attribution Service. For more information, see Checking the results of Revenue Attribution and Trend reporting.
- The Smart Insight Dashboard and all the Smart Insight reporting screens, including the Customer Lifecycle, Product Affinity and Impact pages: You may experience the following changes:
- figures may change in all charts because contact deletion affects all calculations.
- deleting contacts also affect conversion rates, the AOV (Average Order Value) and lifecycle calculations.
- Predict: You may experience sudden changes in the following metrics after deleting contacts, but it will not affect your reports retrospectively:
- Mobile Engage reports:
- You may experience slight changes in the following statistics on the Mobile Engage Dashboard:
- Monthly active users
- Total installs
- Anonymous contact deletion may also have an impact on your Mobile Engage reports. Depending on your anonymous contact deletion configuration, you might experience changes in the overall number of users.
- You may experience slight changes in the following statistics on the Mobile Engage Dashboard:
Anonymous contacts are created in Mobile Engage each time a user without a user ID (contact field value is null
) uses a Mobile Engage service from an unknown device. In this case, a new contact will be created in the contact database with their hardware ID
. Similarly, a new contact will be created if a contact logs out and there is no existing anonymous contact with the same hardware ID
in your contact database.
-
Trend Reporting:
- You may experience changes in revenue data because it is retrieved from the Revenue Attribution Service.
- Behavior metrics are only affected if you reload your data.
-
Email Analysis: You may experience changes in:
- revenue because that data is retrieved from Trend Reporting.
- contact-level detailed metrics.
- Deliverability reporting: Deleting contacts may affect domain-level results.
Deleting entire lists of contacts
To delete a batch of contacts:
- Create a contact list and go to Contacts > Delete Contacts.
- Click the skull icon to delete the list and all the contacts in it.
- This is a useful way to clean up your database (for example by deleting all contacts who you know to be invalid).
- Deleting a large list may take a few minutes.
- In order to delete contacts, you need administrator rights.
Deleting a contact in a contact list
Alternatively, you can use the Remove Contacts from the Contact List endpoint as well.
Deleting a contact list but not the contacts in it
If you only want to remove a contact list from your account without touching any of the contacts in it:
- Use the API endpoint Delete a Contact List.
- Go to Contacts > Contact Lists and click the trash icon to remove the contact list.