Video: How to Archive Unsubscribed Email Addresses in Mailchimp
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.

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

Create a new segment of only the unsubscribed email addresses.

Click New Segment and email marking status is unsubscribed.

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

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.

Now confirm.

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.

This is correct because all the unsubscribed have been archived.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.
Your tutorial made that so easy! Thank you! 🙂
Happy to help!
Thank you! This has been on my to-do list for about 4 months now. You made it so easy!
Yay! I’m so happy I could help. 🙂
I tried this, but under the ACTIONS list there is no ARCHIVE to click!!!
It now says remove contacts. Click on that and you’ll find the archive option.
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.
Thanks, this was super-helpful. I have the same question as Clare!
Mailchimp will know that you’ve archived them and won’t add them to your list as a subscriber again. Hope that helps!
Will this action always achieve anyone who falls into this segment or is it something that you need to jump on and do periodically?
Thanks
You’ll need to archive people every once and awhile. 🙂