When do I delete?

The direct answer to that question should be made carefully and with forethought. Deletion actions are permanent and cannot be reversed.

It’s a feature that was added in response to users’ need to stay compliant with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). GDPR was adopted in spring 2016 and became enforceable in spring 2018, which meant that businesses and organizations that collect or utilize personally identifiable information of people located in the EU needed tools to help them stay compliant. Mailchimp offers tools to add to your sign-up forms to gather GDPR-compliant consent in the event that you have EU contacts, but it also offers a GDPR-compliant deletion mechanism, which is more relevant to this chapter.

The way this deletion deviates from archiving and unsubscribing is that it will delete all information associated with the contact profile and anonymize their email address in your reports. Once a contact...