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 service key (HUBSPOT_ACCESS_TOKEN in .env; an existing legacy private app token also works) 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:

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.).