We have received confirmation from Oracle support, Sojourn Solutions, and Marketing Decisions that deleting contacts monthly that have either hard bounced, globally unsubscribed, or had no activity in the last 18 months should be deleted. This is considered a best practice since we pay for the amount of contacts we have and inactive ones should be removed.

Be definition, Eloqua is meant to be used as an email tool and not a CRM database to house data so deletion of these contacts should have minimal risks.

Here are some of the segments I have set up to track these contacts.

• Hard Bounces - https://secure.p04.eloqua.com/Main.aspx#segments&id=12869

• Global Unsubscribes - https://secure.p04.eloqua.com/Main.aspx#segments&id=12914

• Contacts that have not opened an email in the last 18 months - https://secure.p04.eloqua.com/Main.aspx#segments&id=21386

• Contacts that were not sent an email in the last 18 months - https://secure.p04.eloqua.com/Main.aspx#segments&id=12904

Before the contacts are deleted, they should be exported from Eloqua and kept in a secure location just in case we need to reimport them.

It is also a good idea to send the inactive contacts for 18 months a survey to determine their interest level and confirm is removal is best.

After a contact is deleted, only the email group subscription status is retained. All activity and contact labels for the contact will be removed.