Automatically update an existing lead with a new email address?

[Anonymous]

We want to offer the option when someone unsubscribes from emails to change their email instead. What is the best way to update the email address on a lead record automatically (through a form fill on our website) without creating a new lead record? Would we do this through the API?

[Matt_Stone2]

It sounds like you're going to offer a email preference center in addition to a one-click unsubscribe. If on your EPC page you have a Marketo form with an email address field, and the person visiting the page is cookied by Marketo, then changing their email address will update their record.

If the person who visits the page is not cookied and enters a different email address, it will create a new record.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure that Matt's comment is correct here I'm afraid.

A new email address submitted via form fillout will always equal a new record in Marketo (unless the instance has requested for additional deduplication criteria, or you are running something customized with your form fillout). There is a more detailed discussion thread here

[Anonymous]

Cathal is right. The top comment shouldn't be.

The way I see it, there would be 2 ways to achieve what you want:
1/ Via the API and the marketo ID (see Cathal link, but it's more technical)
2/ Using a custom field "New Email Address" in your page and creating a program in Marketo that would change the data value of the system email address field with the token {{lead.newEmailAddress}} when it sees a change in this new custom field.