A dormant contact is one whose record has not changed in 180 days or more. When 30% or more of a database is dormant, email engagement drops and reports count people who left long ago. Segment the dormant group, run one short re-engagement attempt, and then suppress or retire the people who do not respond.
Mailbox providers watch how recipients engage. Sending to large groups of people who never open teaches them your mail is unwanted, which can push messages to spam for engaged contacts too.
If your subscription uses marketing contacts, dormant records that stay set as marketing contacts can count toward your tier. They also inflate list sizes and funnel reports, so conversion rates look worse than they are.
A dormant share this large is usually a process signal: old imports, event lists, or bought data that were never qualified or cleaned out.
Before you change anything: Last modified date changes whenever any property updates, including updates from workflows and integrations, so treat the count as a floor. Deletion and retention can carry privacy obligations. A responsible person should decide them, and this page is not legal advice.
Last modified date is a default property that HubSpot keeps on contact records, while activity dates depend on which tools your team uses. It is a conservative measure: a contact updated by a sync or a workflow is not counted as dormant, even if no person has engaged.
Not as a first step. Re-engage them, then suppress them or set them as non-marketing. Delete only under a retention rule your team has agreed, because deletion removes history that reporting and attribution may need.
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