As part of your package with Force24, you will have a maximum number of active contacts to be used in your account, and any overages will be chargeable.
This means it is important to stay on top of your total number of active contacts, to ensure you are below your contact allowance.
When reviewing your number of active contacts, Force24 will look at the results of this search - only looking for contacts with a Contact/Global status of "active":
Only the "Contacts found" in the search results will be considered active contacts when it comes to your allowance.
In order to manage your contact allowance, and reduce your total active contacts if you are nearing/going over your limit, there are two main options.
Option 1 - Set contacts to Inactive
The best method for this is de-activating contacts in bulk, by updating their Global/Contact status to "inactive". We have a useful article below that explains how to do this yourself:
How to Bulk Update Contact Subscriptions and Contact Status : Force24 Support
This allows you to retain all data and reporting in the platform that is tied to these contacts, but the "inactive" status prevents you from actively sending campaigns/journeys to them.
This option is especially recommended if you have a custom integration set up between Force24 and your CRM. This is because with the alternative method of deleting contacts, it's possible for Force24-deleted email addresses to be re-added into F24 via the integration if they have not also been deleted from your CRM. Keeping the contacts in your F24 account as "inactive" prevents this from happening, as all the data is still present, just not "active" to be sent to.
Option 2 - Delete contacts
Alternatively, you can request for contacts to be deleted in bulk from your account - this completely removes the data/contacts from your account so they will no longer show at all in contact searches/reporting etc.
Bulk deletions need to be actioned by our Force24 support team - the full process is explained in the article below:
How to bulk delete contacts in Force24 : Force24 Support
As explained above, this option would usually be best if you don't have a CRM integration with Force24.
If you'd like any further assistance with managing your contact allowance please reach out to our team on the live chat.