Deletion of contact(s) removes the contact information from the Marketing Cloud completely from All Subscribers, Mobile Connect, Mobile Push, and Contact Builder. Once the deletion request is initiated, those contacts that needs to be deleted enters the Suppression Period before it gets deleted.
During the suppression period, the contact stays in the account, but it wouldn’t be accessible. Following is the table that shows what happens when the contact deletion process is initiated.
| Account-level Deletion Process | Suppress Contacts Phase | Delete Contacts Phase |
| Journey Builder | Suppressed contacts do not appear in Journey Builder. This phase prevents entry by any contact with the same ContactKey. | This process removes contact information from your journeys. |
| Contact Builder | Suppressed contacts do not appear in Contact Builder. This phase prevents creation of any new contact record with the same ContactKey. | This process removes contact information, including information from sendable data extensions and populations. |
| Audience Builder | Suppressed contacts do not appear in Audience Builder. During this phase, deleted ContactKeys are excluded from audiences. | This process removes contact information, including information from audiences and dimensions. |
| Email Studio | Suppressed contacts do not receive sends or appear in Email Studio. This phase prevents addition of any contact with the same ContactKey via imports or triggered sends. | This process removes contact information from lists, groups and data extensions. We retain unsubscribe, bounce, and spam-related information for deleted contacts as part of CAN-SPAM compliance. |
| MobileConnect | Suppressed contacts do not receive sends or appear in MobileConnect. During this phase, triggered sends and responses to subscribers’ messages aren’t delivered. | This process removes contact information, including information from filtered lists, data extensions, and opt-out information. |
| MobilePush | Suppressed contacts do not receive sends or appear in MobilePush. | This process removes contact information, including information from filtered lists, data extensions, and opt-out information. |
| GroupConnect | Suppressed contacts do not receive sends or appear in GroupConnect. Follow requests are ignored. Block requests are processed. No auto-responses to incoming messages are triggered. | This process removes contact information, including information from filtered lists and sendable data extensions. |
| Einstein | Suppressed contacts do not receive sends or appear in Web Recommendations, Email Recommendations, and Web and Mobile Analytics. | This process removes contact information, including information from filtered lists and data extensions. |
Contact remains in the suppressed status for 14 days by default. However, this settings can be updated under Contacts Configuration > Contact Delete > Manage Settings. To initiate the delete process immediately without waiting for the suppression period, we can set it to 0 days as well.
This process does not apply to any non-sendable data extensions not included in a population via Data Designer. It is our responsibility for deleting applicable information from those sources on our own.
Read from the official Salesforce Marketing Cloud documentation – Contact Deletion in Contact Builder and Contact Delete Best Practices in Contact Builder before initiating the delete requests.
