Delete versus erase a contact
There are two ways to remove a contact, and they are not two names for the same thing. Which one you can use depends on whether you have ever emailed the person.
The app says it in one line: deleting is ordinary cleanup, erasing honors a request to be forgotten and cannot be undone by anyone.
Both live at the bottom of a contact’s own screen, under Removing this contact.
Side by side
Section titled “Side by side”| Delete | Erase | |
|---|---|---|
| Who can do it | Any role | Owner and Admin only |
| When it is allowed | Only if the contact has no message history | Always |
| Removes their fields | Yes | Yes |
| Removes message history | There is none to remove | Yes, permanently |
| Adds to suppression | No | Yes, as a one-way hash |
| Can be undone | No, but you can re-add the address | No, by anyone, ever |
Delete
Section titled “Delete”Delete is for cleanup. A duplicate you typed twice, a test row, a contact you imported into the wrong place before you sent anything.
Selecting Delete contact asks you to confirm, with the note “Removes the contact and their fields, and adds nothing to your suppression list.”
That last part is the point. Delete leaves nothing behind, which is safe precisely because the person was never emailed. There is no message of yours in their mailbox, so there is no unsubscribe link that could stop working, and no opt-out to remember.
Delete is refused if you have emailed them
Section titled “Delete is refused if you have emailed them”If the contact has any messages on record, delete is refused. The buttons are replaced by an explanation:
This contact has message history
There are 4 messages on record, so they can be erased but not deleted.
Underneath sit two ways forward: Erase contact, if you are an Owner or Admin, and Leave them alone, which puts the screen back as it was.
This is not a failure. It is the product telling you that this person needs the other removal.
A failed send counts as a message here. It is still a record of an attempt, so it still blocks the delete.
Deleting several at once
Section titled “Deleting several at once”Removing a selection from the Contacts screen follows the same rule. Contacts with message history are skipped and the count of skipped rows is reported back to you, rather than the whole batch failing or those contacts being deleted anyway.
Undoing an import works the same way. It removes the contacts that import created, and skips any of them you have emailed since.
Erase is for a request to be forgotten. Someone writes to you and asks you to delete their data, and this is how you honor it.
Selecting Erase contact asks you to confirm, with the note “Deletes their fields and message history for good, keeps a one-way hash so they can never be emailed again, and cannot be undone.”
When it completes, ColdMerge confirms what happened, either “[email protected]
erased. They stay suppressed for good.” or, if they were already on the
suppression list for some other reason, “[email protected] erased. They stay
suppressed, still recorded as bounce.”
What erasing does
Section titled “What erasing does”- The contact and their custom fields are hard-deleted.
- Their message history is hard-deleted.
- Any verification result held for that address is dropped.
- Their address is removed from the suppression list’s plaintext, and a one-way hash is kept in its place.
- Copies of the address sitting in an unfinished import’s staged rows are reached too, so erasing somebody removes their data everywhere, including files still mid-import.
Owners and Admins only. It is offered to them from the start, not only after a delete has been refused, because erasure requests arrive for people you have never emailed as well.
Why a hash is kept
Section titled “Why a hash is kept”This is the part that surprises people, so it is worth being plain about.
If erasing removed every trace, nothing would stop the next file you import from re-creating that person and emailing them again. You would have honored the request and then broken it, with no way to notice.
So ColdMerge keeps one thing: a one-way hash of the address. A one-way hash is a fixed-length scramble that cannot be turned back into the address it came from. ColdMerge can take an address you are about to send to, scramble it the same way, and see whether the result matches. It cannot read the hash and recover who the person was.
The hash is the only reason the opt-out keeps working after the record is gone. That is also why an erased row can never be taken off the suppression list, by anyone. Removing it would take the hash with it, and there is no address left to ask for consent with.
On the suppression screen, an erased row shows the word erased where the address would be, keeps whatever reason it already had, and shows no source. See Manage the suppression list.
Old unsubscribe links stop working
Section titled “Old unsubscribe links stop working”An erased person’s messages are gone, so the unsubscribe links in the emails they already received no longer resolve. Following one shows the “This link is not valid” page.
That is harmless. The suppression hash is kept separately from the message, so they stay suppressed whether or not any link still works.
Which one should you use?
Section titled “Which one should you use?”- Someone asked you to stop emailing them. You do not need either of these. Suppress the address and leave the contact alone, so you keep the record of what happened. An unsubscribe does this for you automatically.
- Someone asked you to delete their data. Erase.
- A duplicate, a typo, or a test row you never emailed. Delete.
- A contact you emailed and now just want out of the way. Suppression is usually the better answer than erase. Erasing throws away your own record of what you sent, permanently.