How do i clean up my customer email list!!!

[zcommons]

I'm trying to clean up my customer database but it's very confusing so I want to confirm how to handle certain changes. 

I. Customer Profile Clean-Up

Customer A. Smith has 5 profiles.

Two are "Instant Profile (via Payment)" that DO HAVE the correct email address.

Two are "Instant" but they do not have an email address.

One is a "Directory" profile which DOES HAVE the correct email address.

My Questions:

1. Can I merge Instant and Directory profiles?  Goal is to get all sales under one profile.

2. Can I delete the Instant profiles?

3. Why is the system creating multiple Instant profiles? 

4. Do all three of the profiles with an email count against my marketing number?

If i clean-up the Excel data that I exported, and upload it back to Square will it overwrite what's currently in the system?

II.  Subscription Status Issues:

a. The export has an "Email Subscription Status" column that shows Unsubscribed, Unknown, and Bounced comments along with a lot of blank fields.  I understand the Unsubscribed and Bounced statuses but what does Unknown or blank fields mean?

III.  How many real email addresses do i have?

Dashboard shows over 3,000 email addresses.

Marketing shows 2,307 reachable customers.

Marketing shows 1,428 sent.

Why do these numbers vary so much?

Apologies for the lengthy email...

[Valentina]

Welcome back to the Community 🎉
Hopefully we can help clarify some things for you here, @zcommons!

Yes, you can merge Instant Profiles - however, transactions from 1 profile would not merge to another.

For context, Instant Profiles are customer profiles that are automatically created following a transaction. If a customer’s name is collected from their payment card, and a matching profile doesn’t already exist within your directory, Square will create an Instant Profile. Future purchases made with that card will update the customer’s profile with new transaction details and other activity with your business.

You do have the ability to add or edit information in an Instant Profile. Instant Profiles appear in the Instant Profile group in your Directory, and can be filtered by using the creation source filter and selecting Instant profile (via payment).

You can manually delete instant profiles but there is not a way to disable Instant Profiles at this time.
If there are 3 profiles with the same email, we only send one email to that email address.

For help dissecting the numbers you posted here, we recommend getting in touch with our team directly in order to gain a bit more clarity, as they can take a look at your account with you. I hope this helps! ✨