Sometimes you need to delete subscribers from ConvertKit. These could be subscribers that are no longer active, they are unconfirmed, or they no longer want to receive your emails.
You can delete an individual subscriber by going to their subscriber page in ConvertKit, where you’ll find a Delete Subscriber button.
But it is going to be a very tedious process to go through and delete each subscriber one by one. So how do you delete multiple subscribers in bulk?
Create a segment
The first step is to create a segment for the group you want to delete. The most common way of doing this is to tag the subscribers that you want to delete. You can then use that tag in the segment. Sometimes you’ll have more than one tag.
An example
I migrated my email list from Drip to ConvertKit. After moving them from Drip to ConvertKit, I tagged them with a tag called source: drip. This was just before GDPR happened, so I also emailed them to ask them if they still wanted to get emails from me. If they did, they got tagged with Newsletter.
Anyone with the tag source: drip but without the tag Newsletter needed to be deleted, because I can no longer email them. So I created a segment for this.
Once you have created the segment, it will be listed under Segments on the main Subscribers page. Click on the segment to bring up a list of subscribers who belong to that segment.
Spot check the segment
It is a good idea to do a few spot checks to make sure the segment is set up correctly. After you have clicked on the segment in the Subscriber tab, go through the list and randomly click on subscribers and check that they are indeed the right people to be deleted. You can do this as many times as you like until you feel comfortable. As a guide, I normally check 10 to 20 subscribers.
Bulk delete the subscribers
Once you are happy with the segment, it’s time to delete the subscribers.
In the subscriber tab, make sure you are still looking at the list of subscribers for your segment. You’ll see Segment: name above the list if you are.
If you are not looking at the list of subscribers for the segment, click on the segment in the right hand panel again.
Now tick the checkbox in the row at the top of the list. You should see a message appear that says All 30 subscribers on this page are selected. This just means that it has selected everyone on the first page of the results. But you want to select everyone in the segment, not just the first page. So click on the link that says Select all X subscribers in the Cold newsletter subs.
The message should change to confirm that they have all been selected.
In the top right corner, just above the list of subscribers, you’ll see a drop down menu called Bulk Operations. Click on that and then click on Delete from the list.
You’ll be asked for confirmation that you want to delete these subscribers.
And that is it, at this point you will have successfully deleted all the subscribers from the list.