What action options does Valid Email Checker offer for Mailchimp? (Tag / Unsubscribe / Delete)

When you pick a Mailchimp audience or segment and switch the Valid Email Checker modal to Clean List Automatically, three actions become available per result category. The dropdown labels read Keep, Unsubscribe, and Delete. The category rows are the same across every integration (Invalid, Disposable, Catch-all, Unknown, Risky). What changes is what each action does inside Mailchimp.

How each action behaves in Mailchimp

• Keep — VEC writes nothing back. The subscriber stays put. Tags, merge fields, signup source, and historical campaign engagement are untouched. Pick this when you want a results report without changing Mailchimp data.
• Unsubscribe — VEC calls the Mailchimp API to set the subscriber status to Unsubscribed. The subscriber stays in the audience and stops receiving emails. Tags, merge fields, and engagement history are preserved.
• Delete — VEC removes the subscriber from the verified audience entirely. Tags and merge fields go with them.

Default settings

The defaults match every non-ConvertKit integration. Only Invalid and Disposable are enabled out of the box; the more nuanced categories stay off so a first-time run never silently mutates large chunks of subscribers.

Click Use Recommended Settings in the modal to snap back to defaults. Combine with the list selection covered in how to select a Mailchimp list to verify.

What survives Unsubscribe in Mailchimp

• Tags stay attached. Mailchimp tags are part of the subscriber record and survive unsubscribe.
• Merge fields (FNAME, LNAME, every custom merge field) — preserved.
• Signup source and date — kept on the subscriber profile.
• Historical campaign engagement (opens, clicks) — retained for reporting.

Mailchimp processes writes asynchronously

After Clean List Automatically completes on our side, give Mailchimp 2-5 minutes to reflect the changes in their dashboard. If subscribers still show as active 30 minutes later, contact support — we can check the API responses on our end and confirm whether the writes landed.

Why the title says Tag and the UI says Keep

Tag/Unsubscribe/Delete is the industry shorthand for the three behaviors. Valid Email Checker uses Keep in the actual modal because that label honestly describes the no-op behavior. Some other vendors silently tag every subscriber with their results regardless of category; VEC leaves your Mailchimp audience alone unless you explicitly choose Unsubscribe or Delete on a category.

The Risky category in Mailchimp

Risky bundles risky, spamtrap, and role_account from the engine. Mailchimp deliverability is closely tied to sender reputation across their shared infrastructure. Enabling Risky with Unsubscribe protects reputation while keeping tags and merge fields intact.