Identity review, marketing preferences, archiving, restore and erasure are different operations. Choose the operation that matches the actual customer request and retain the permitted evidence.
Watch the lesson
Preferences and suppression
Record a decision for the exact channel and purpose through the customer preference action. Include the actual source/method/time and evidence for opt-in. Unknown is not opt-in. Later permission after an earlier opt-out requires explicit reviewed reconsent; a new name, imported record, higher lead score or won deal does not reset suppression.
A merge retains channel aliases and the strongest applicable opt-out. Changing a recipient address can invalidate a prior positive permission for that destination. Campaign enrollment still checks the exact recipient and current send-time eligibility. See Customers.
Archive or restore
Contact archiving preserves the identity/history and still consumes contact capacity. It is not erasure. Other supported deleted CRM records use their own restore flow. Restore rechecks the current company, relationships, versions and finite capacity; it cannot bypass a downgrade.
Mistaken-merge recovery requires the original unchanged evidence. If later edits changed the merged contacts or relationships, reconcile manually instead of forcing stale recovery. Restoring a separate person can need additional contact capacity.
Portability and erasure
Use supported authorized export/archive flows to produce the permitted record scope. Review included fields, private file access, history and exclusions. A portable archive is not a full server or provider backup.
Erasure is a reviewed operation with a preview and receipt. References, files, source links, queued work and unresolved external writes can affect safe completion. Some non-identifying operational markers remain necessary to prevent a retry from recreating the same person or duplicating an uncertain external write. A partial cleanup receipt is not evidence that every physical object disappeared.
Failed file deletion keeps its remaining charge and cleanup state for retry. Do not delete journals or object paths directly to force completion. External CRM retention/deletion is a separate responsibility: the current Zoho record-event layer does not mirror deletions. See Files and storage, Zoho CRM and CRM operations.