Non-Marketing Contacts Guide

Strategic Value of Implementation

• Cost Management: Automatically prevent hitting plan limits by systematically identifying and removing contacts that waste your marketing contact allocation.
• Database Health: Maintain a high-quality contact database that accurately reflects your true marketing reach and potential customer base.
• Performance Optimization: Improve key email metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and deliverability by removing non-engaged and problematic contacts.
• Compliance Assurance: Automatically respect unsubscribe requests and avoid sending to contacts who cannot legally receive marketing communications.

5 Non-Marketing Contact Criteria

1. Hard Bounces

Filters contacts whose emails have permanently failed delivery, eliminating contacts that can never receive emails and waste your marketing contact limit.

2. Invalid Email Addresses

Removes contacts with structurally incorrect or suspicious email patterns, protecting sender reputation while eliminating contacts that won't receive communications.

3. Quarantined Email Addresses

Identifies emails HubSpot has automatically flagged for delivery issues, preventing sends to addresses that consistently fail verification checks and protecting your sender reputation.

4. Unsubscribed Contacts

Respects contacts who have legally withdrawn consent from email communications, maintaining compliance with GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and other privacy law requirements.

5. Unengaged Contacts

Removes contacts with no meaningful engagement over 11+ emails and zero opens, improving engagement rates by focusing marketing efforts on contacts who actually interact with your content.

Additional Advanced Criteria

Unknown Email Opens

Accounts for contacts affected by Apple's privacy features where open data is unavailable, casting a wider net for truly unengaged contacts.

Unengaged Regardless of Opens

Targets contacts who haven't had meaningful engagement beyond basic opens (no clicks, downloads, or conversions) in 16+ emails.

Too Many Soft Bounces

Identifies contacts with repeated temporary delivery failures (3+ soft bounces), indicating low-quality or rarely-checked email addresses.

Implementation in HubSpot

1. Create Comprehensive Contact List

• Navigate to Contacts > Lists > Create List
• Select "Create a contact-based list"
• Name your list (e.g., "Non-Marketing Contact Criteria - All")

2. Apply All Five Core Filters

Group 1 - Hard Bounces:

• Filter: "Email hard bounce reason" is known
• AND "Marketing contact status" is any of "Marketing contact"

Group 2 - Invalid Emails:

• Filter: "Marketing contact status" is any of "Marketing contact"
• AND "Invalid email address" is equal to True

Group 3 - Quarantined:

• Filter: "Marketing contact status" is any of "Marketing contact"
• AND "Email address quarantined" is equal to True

Group 4 - Unsubscribed:

• Filter: "Marketing contact status" is any of "Marketing contact"
• AND "Unsubscribed from all email" is equal to True

Group 5 - Unengaged:

• Filter: "Marketing contact status" is any of "Marketing contact"
• AND "Sends since last engagement" is greater than 11
• AND "Marketing emails opened" is equal to 0

3. Create Automation Workflow

• Go to Automation > Workflows
• Create a new workflow
• Set enrollment trigger to "Event occurs" > "List membership has changed"
• Select your non-marketing contact list and "is added to list"
• Go to the Reenrollment tab and turn reenrollment ON
• Add an action and select "Set marketing status"
• Choose "Set as non-marketing contact"
• Save and activate your workflow