In this article, you’ll learn how to archive unsubscribed email addresses in Mailchimp to keep your costs as low as possible.

Want to learn the difference between Mailchimp contacts and subscribers? Read. “Subscribers and Contacts“.

There are currently 435 contacts and I’m going to make it so that there are 430 contacts. I’m going to remove those 5 unsubscribes because I’m paying for them.

Screenshot: How to archive unsubscribed email addresses in Mailchimp

So I’m going to go over here to view contacts.

Click on view contacts to go to your Mailchimp audience.

Create a new segment of only the unsubscribed email addresses.

Screenshot of the audience dashboard pointing to New Segment.

Click New Segment and email marking status is unsubscribed.

Screenshot how to create a segment of unsubscribed email addresses

Preview this segment. It’s coming up with 5 matches, which is the difference between these two numbers. 

Screenshot of the segment of unsubscribed email addresses

Hover over the blank space over the check boxes. Select all, or click all the unsubscribed email address. Hover over Actions and click on Archive.

Screenshot of the segment of unsubscribed email addresses

Now confirm.

Screenshot of the archive unsubscribed email addresses screen.

Your audience dashboard will take a couple minutes for the 2 numbers to catch up. If we refresh the screen they’re not going to be the same it has some lag time in Mailchimp but right now I only have 430 contacts.

If  you looked at this again, and did a new segment to look for the unsubscribed, we would get this screen.

Mailchimp screenshot of an empty segment of archive unsubscribed email addresses.

This is correct because all the unsubscribed have been archived.

If you’re not using ads in Mailchimp then you don’t need those unsubscribed email addresses and you’re only paying for email addresses you can’t send to.

This Mailchimp tutorial is just one in a series of tutorials available on this website. Check out my Mailchimp tutorial library.

Don’t want to hassle doing this yourself? I can help!

If you have questions about how to archive unsubscribed email addresses let me know in the comments below.

Posted in Mailchimp, Tutorials and tagged ,

9 Comments

  1. Janis on June 2, 2019 at 7:33 am

    Your tutorial made that so easy! Thank you! 🙂

    Reply
  2. Emily Geizer on July 16, 2019 at 1:51 pm

    Thank you! This has been on my to-do list for about 4 months now. You made it so easy!

    Reply
    • Amy Hall on July 16, 2019 at 4:27 pm

      Yay! I’m so happy I could help. 🙂

      Reply
  3. James King on January 16, 2020 at 7:43 pm

    I tried this, but under the ACTIONS list there is no ARCHIVE to click!!!

    Reply
    • Amy Hall on January 16, 2020 at 8:01 pm

      It now says remove contacts. Click on that and you’ll find the archive option.

      Reply
  4. Clare on May 4, 2020 at 8:31 am

    Hi, if I do this will Mailchimp remember that the contact is unsubscribed and make sure if I do a new import that they are not re-added as a subscriber, or will it recognise not to add them again as they’re archived? Just want to ensure that they cannot be accidentally re-added and marketed to by email.

    Reply
    • Sami on May 14, 2020 at 4:42 pm

      Thanks, this was super-helpful. I have the same question as Clare!

      Reply
    • Amy Hall on May 14, 2020 at 5:13 pm

      Mailchimp will know that you’ve archived them and won’t add them to your list as a subscriber again. Hope that helps!

      Reply

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