There are many reasons it might be time to delete leads from your database such as CRM costs, stale leads, bounced email addresses, the list goes on and on. As much as you may want to keep a high volume of leads in your database so the numbers “look bigger,” we’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: quality is more important than quantity.

With these starter lists of people to delete, you probably won’t even notice they are gone.

To get in-depth documentation with copy + paste friendly lists, download our Database Reduction Guide here.

Junk Leads

Testing forms can result in a lot of test leads. People trying to get free content without giving up their information can result in dummy leads. You may think it’s pretty cool to have “Clark Kent, clarkkent@superman.com” in your database, but I hate to break it to you, he’s not real 😞. So let’s get rid of all the super heroes in your database.

List Criteria Examples:

• Email Address contains: test@unknown, @unknown.com, @@, ..,  testing@,  tester@,  @testing.com,  +testing,  @test., @abc.com,  @123.com,  abc123@,  notreal@,  @fake.com,  @asdf.com
• Side note: using your email address with “+test1,””+test2,” etc. before the “@” is a great way to create unique leads for testing, while making it easy to find and delete test leads.
• First/Last Name contains: $, !, @, %, ^, &, * , 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, aaa, bbb, ccc, ddd, eee, fff, ggg. hhh, asdf, testing, testest, asdfg
• Full name is: Mickey Mouse, Joe Schmo, Joe Schmoe, Jane Doe, First Last , Test Test , [not provided] , fake name , no name , Unknown Unknown , First Name Last Name
• Tip: To find your most comment “fake names” you can export your database and do a pivot table on Full Name

Rejected Leads

Sales has already rejected them, so really there is little use in keeping them around. By using “rejected reason” as a filter as well, you can be sure you are only deleting the worst of the worst.

List Criteria Examples:

• Person/Lead/Contact Status = Rejected
• Rejected Reasons = (Select the ones that best apply to leads you’d like to delete. i.e., not a fit, not a decision maker, etc.)

Inactive Leads

If a lead hasn’t had any activity in the past 2 years that you have been emailing them, they probably don’t want to hear from you anymore. Let’s clear out space for people who actually want your emails.

List Criteria Examples:

• Not filled out a form in past 12 months (choose a timeframe you are comfortable with)
• Not visited webpage in past 12 months
• Not had any success in a program in past 12 months

Uncontactable Leads

If a person is unsubscribed and has Do Not Call = True, you can’t (legally) contact them. Or maybe you added in leads without email addresses or phone numbers in hopes that you would eventually get them, but never did. If you can’t contact them, is there really any point in keeping them around?

List Criteria Examples:

• Email address and phone number are empty
• Unsubscribed = True and Do Not Call = True

Filters for all lists

A safety measure you can put in place that will help you sleep at night is an exclusion list containing any attributes of people you definitely don’t want to delete. I like to create this as a smart list called “Do Not Delete” and then exclude that list from all the delete lists.

List Criteria Examples:

• Part of an opportunity
• Customers/partners
• People created in the past 6 months
• Any other criteria you may not want to delete

Every organization will have different variables for people to delete or not delete, but the four lists above are a good starting point. If you to keep track of list sizes and criteria, we have this handy Database Reduction Framework you can download.