review-bounced-contacts

Review Bounced Contacts

A weekly manual review process for contacts flagged with 3+ bounces. The bounce monitoring workflow auto-suppresses these contacts, but a human should decide whether to permanently delete or attempt recovery.

Prerequisites

• Bounce monitoring workflow active (run /bounce-monitoring-workflow first)
• email_health_flag custom property exists on contacts
• A HubSpot private app access token (HUBSPOT_ACCESS_TOKEN in .env) for scripted pre-filtering

Step-by-Step Instructions

Stage 1: Before

Use the CRM Search API to pull contacts where email_health_flag is set:

import os, requests
from dotenv import load_dotenv

load_dotenv() TOKEN = os.environ["HUBSPOT_ACCESS_TOKEN"] BASE = "https://api.hubapi.com" HEADERS = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {TOKEN}", "Content-Type": "application/json"}

resp = requests.post(f"{BASE}/crm/v3/objects/contacts/search", headers=HEADERS, json={ "filterGroups": [{"filters": [ {"propertyName": "email_health_flag", "operator": "EQ", "value": "true"}, ]}], "properties": ["email", "firstname", "lastname", "company", "hs_email_bounce", "hs_email_hard_bounce_reason_enum", "lifecyclestage", "hubspot_owner_id"], "limit": 100, }) resp.raise_for_status() results = resp.json()["results"]

Export results to a CSV for review.

### Stage 2: Execute — Review Each Contact

For each flagged contact, check:

1. **Is the email domain active?** Run a quick MX record lookup or visit the domain.
2. **Is this a known customer or high-value contact?** Check lifecycle stage and deal history.
3. **What is the bounce reason?** Hard bounce (invalid mailbox) vs. soft bounce (mailbox full, temporary error).

**Decision matrix:**

| Domain active? | High value? | Bounce type | Action |
|---------------|-------------|-------------|--------|
| No | Any | Any | Delete |
| Yes | No | Hard | Delete |
| Yes | No | Soft | Keep suppressed, recheck next quarter |
| Yes | Yes | Hard | Attempt to find updated email |
| Yes | Yes | Soft | Keep suppressed, monitor |

### Stage 3: After — Apply Decisions and Log

1. **Delete** contacts marked for deletion via the HubSpot UI or API batch delete.
2. **Clear** the `email_health_flag` on all reviewed contacts.
3. Log the review results (deleted count, kept count, recovery attempts) for the quarterly report.

## Rollback

- Deleted contacts can be restored from HubSpot's recycling bin within 90 days.
- Contacts kept as suppressed can be restored to marketing status via a workflow or manual update in the UI.

## MCP Note

This weekly triage is exactly the interactive, judgment-heavy work HubSpot's MCP server is good at (see `/connect-hubspot-mcp`): ask Claude to pull each flagged contact's details, deal history, and bounce reason conversationally while you decide delete-vs-recover.

## Frequency

Run weekly, ideally Monday morning. Should take 5-15 minutes depending on volume. If volume exceeds 50 contacts per week, investigate the root cause (bad list source, form spam, etc.).