Understanding what contact data Oracle Eloqua retains and restores
After you delete a contact, Oracle Eloqua keeps the following information from the contact record indefinitely:
- Global subscription status
- Email address status (hard bounceback status or global subscription status)
- Bounceback history
- Email group subscription status
For reporting purposes, any previous activity associated with the deleted contact is still available from Insight. Any custom object records remain in the database, but Oracle Eloqua removes the linkage to the contact record.
Note: Form submission data is only deleted after you perform two actions: exclude form submission data from reports, then delete the contact. For deleted contacts who have not been excluded from reporting, their form data is stored for 760 days. See Data retention for more information.
You can opt to automatically delete custom object records when a contact is deleted by configuring your custom object settings. Learn more about
Tip: You can use a program to delete the custom object records. For more information, review this example.
About restoring a contact
If a deleted contact re-engages your organization (for example, by submitting a form), Oracle Eloqua creates a new contact record.
The following information from the original contact record is restored:
- Information from the original contact record:
- Global subscription status
- Email address status
- Bounceback history
- Email group subscription status
If the contact had previously globally unsubscribed or had an email status of Bounceback, you must reset the contact's subscription and email status before you can re-engage the contact. See Editing contacts for more information.
Oracle Eloqua does not retain or restore any other information from the original contact record. So, Oracle Eloqua does not restore the following information:
- Shared list membership
- Program membership history, like entries, exists, program paths
- PURL names - a new PURL name is created
- Custom object record linkages
- Date stamp values - for example, the contact's creation date is reset
Contacts restored from an CRM autosync
If the contact record is re-created via