Should I delete or erase a contact?
Choose ordinary cleanup for an unsent contact or permanent erasure for a data-removal request.
2 min read
Delete an unsent duplicate, typo, or test contact. Erase a contact when you need to remove their data permanently and prevent the address from being re-created.
| Delete | Erase | |
|---|---|---|
| Who can do it | Any role | Owner or Admin |
| Allowed when | The contact has no message history | May briefly wait for a finishing verification check |
| Contact fields | Deleted | Deleted |
| Message and tracking history | Not applicable | Deleted |
| Suppression | Nothing added | Permanent one-way hash added |
| Can be undone | No | No |
Delete a contact
Section titled “Delete a contact”- Open the contact.
- Scroll to Removing this contact.
- Select Delete contact.
- Confirm with Delete contact.
Delete adds nothing to suppression. It is available only when ColdMerge has no message history for the contact. A failed send still counts as message history.
When you delete contacts in bulk, ColdMerge skips contacts with message history and reports the skipped count.
Erase a contact
Section titled “Erase a contact”- Open the contact.
- Scroll to Removing this contact.
- Select Erase contact.
- Read the permanent-removal warning.
- Select Erase permanently.
Erasure removes the contact, custom fields, messages, replies, tracking events, verification data, import rows, and relevant notifications held by ColdMerge. It keeps an unreadable one-way hash of the address on the suppression list so a future import cannot recreate and email the person.
An erased suppression row shows erased instead of an address and cannot be removed.
If ColdMerge says A verification check is finishing. Nothing was erased. Try again in a moment., wait briefly and repeat Erase permanently. That attempt changed nothing; the contact remains until erasure succeeds.
What erasure cannot remove
Section titled “What erasure cannot remove”- Messages in your Gmail Sent folder.
- Messages already delivered to the recipient.
- The fact that a preview consumed send allowance. Its stored destination is
replaced with
erased@erased.invalid.
Delete Gmail copies yourself if your process requires it. Delivered mail cannot be recalled.
Old unsubscribe links for an erased contact stop resolving because their message records are gone. The address remains suppressed through its one-way hash.
Use suppression for an opt-out
Section titled “Use suppression for an opt-out”If someone only asks you to stop emailing them, suppress the address rather than erasing the contact. This keeps the record of what happened while blocking future sends. An unsubscribe does this automatically.