Sending emails to leads not in your database

[Anonymous]

I learned today that you cannot send an email to an email address not in your lead database.

My Use Case:
I had a filter set to 'Email Address is name@email.com', however as this email was not in my lead database, it would not add to the smart list. In this case, I just wanted to include someone for a one-time email, not necessarily add them to my database to receive emails going forward.

So, my idea is... If you exlipcitly add a filter 'Email address is...', Marketo should add that email to your smart list regardless if that email is in your database or not.

(if your curious, I ended up adding the email to my database)

[Anonymous]

I agree - we include event partners sometimes for testing, or internal email addresses.  We don't want these people considered leads and have no interest in tracking their activity, but are forced to add them anyways.  In the case of partners, we then have to remember to marketing suspend them immeditely afterwards.

[Chris_Willis1]

I love this idea.  We get requirements to carbon copy Sales reps on emails, and this causes issues with having to have non-marketing internal "leads" in our database.  It would be great to be able to cc certain internal folks on an email send, but not track their response in our engagement metrics.  

[Josh_Hill13]

Hi,

This is not how marketo works. Just add your test leads, seed list, or whatever and it will work. IF you have a one off email address, just remove it later.

You can also set an action in the flow to suspend that particular list of people.
if you want to remove people from tracking in the Email Report, use the Smart List to exclude that list of people.

[Grant_Booth]

Hi Todd,

Have you considered adding them to your database but as unsubscribed? Then you could send them an operational email (which ignores the unsubscribed status) without having to worry about marketing emails going to them:
https://community.marketo.com/MarketoTutorial?id=kA250000000Kz32CAC

[JD_Nelson]

What if you rent a list from a vendor - legally you aren't allowed to keep the address in your DB and saving them/removing them later seems legally risky - ?  I also see the flip side, Marketo needs to keep record of the email address and ensure they weren't previously unsubscribed or anything like that...  seems like quite the pickle.

[Anonymous]

Hi Todd,

Adding the email to the database is inevitable, but once you have done this, and sent the email, you could have a smart campaign make the "list" of contacts marketing suspended, or delete them. 

[Anonymous]

If you use Salesforce you could also use record types within leads and contacts, then create a workflow that automatically suspends or unsubscribes the 'non-marketing' record type after a short period of time after the record was created - or automatically unsubscribe them as Grant suggests - then only send operational emails to that specific record type.

[Chris_Willis1]

Josh - I agree... and I like some of the recommendations.  I generally discourage the use of Marketing Automation for internal communications (as well as the practice of sending Sales copies of emails... that's where MSI plays in).  There are some folks that insist that we send the sellers emails anyways and sometimes it's difficult to say "no."  

Everyone - thanks for the ideas.  This is a great idea to follow. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the ideas!

Adding a lead as unsubscribed is a non-starter, as I then comprimise my entire unsubscribe list by sending the email out as operational.

I understand the idea of adding and then deleting leads, but that's a lot of work and time I just don't have, plus I'd imagine this might hurt reporting.

Adding workflows and smart lists as a work around might be the best answer, but it's just creating a lot of extra work to just send a one-off email.  

In my use case, I needed to send a promotional email for an event we were attending as part of our contract, so I just wanted to include those event contacts on that email, so they knew we sent it, but don't necessarily want them in our database going forward.

Happy Monday & keep voting! 🙂

[SanfordWhiteman]

I don't get how this Idea could work within Marketo's current business model.

If your database is limited to 100,000 leads but you can send one-off e-mails to as many other people as you like, you're crushing Marketo's servers and they're getting nothing in return.  In addition, the easier it is to blast to people you don't care about, the more you're going to have shady purchased lists uploaded, which in turn harms Marketo's reputation -- and the rep of everybody that uses the system. The fact that you have to pay for your lead count is a powerful deterrent that helps Marketo's standing in the industry.  (Yes, it's already possible to upload and then remove leads somewhat quickly, but the complexity still has an inhibitive effect compared to a pure blast-and-forget.)

Of course I'm not accusing people posting on this particular thread of having shady motives, but please, guys, think this through!  Limits on such "transient leads" need to be enforced, or I would get really worried (about my own Marketing team as well).