Can someone who unsubscribed still receive future emails?

[Anonymous]

I just noticed one of my leads who previously unsubcribed continued getting emails after. I thought once you unsubscribe Marketo stops them from receiving.

[Kenneth_Elking1]

Hey Ben,

One common practice in this particular case it to make your Change Program Status> Sent flow step conditional.  To do this you use the Add Choice option on the flow step to have the "If Was Sent Email is [Your Email] Change Program Status > Sent" and then have the default choice be do nothing.  This will ensure that any leads that were not actually sent the email do not have their status changed.

[Anonymous]

That's true as long as in your FLOW you don't have a step called Change Program Status ---> SENT

[Anonymous]

Ben - I just did a test to myself, wherein I was unsubscribed, and I created a campaign to send myself an e-mail. After the campaign ran, I looked through the results of the campaign, and Marketo reflects that the e-mail was not sent. The results also did not say that 1 e-mail was sent (which is what you're implying), so I don't think Marketo reflects the Unsubscribes in the Sent numbers/stats. This seems correct, and based on the test I did, I don't think you need to include the Unsubscribed=True filter in campaigns to reflect the correct stats.

[Anonymous]

Thank you everyone for your comments!

Apparently the unsubscribed lead I was looking was actually NOT sent an email but the program was changing the status to --> SENT. No actual emails were sent.

Here's another thing I just learned. Apparently, even if a lead is already unsubscribed, it still qualifies for campaigns and mucks up your sent numbers. It's imperative that you add Unsubscribe = False as part of your smart list filters to exclude unsubscribes right off the bat. I thought it would be logical for Marketo to just exclude them since they will never receive the email anyway. Go figure.

[Cecile_Maindron]

It's probably a duplicate error between Contact and Lead and different leads are qualifying and only 1 has unsubscribed.
@ Josh Hill :You are talking about Contact & Lead in SFDC right? because we only have leads in MKTO or am I mistaken?

I thought they had fixed that issue.
Are you saying that if a contact with multiple email addresses ask to be unsubscribed all their related email addresses should be unsubscribed? (lf MKTO was working properly). What about leads who let's say have multiple email addresses and only want to unsubscribe one that they are no longer using?

[Josh_Hill13]

Ben, 

Definitely ask customer support at this stage. It's probably a duplicate error between Contact and Lead and different leads are qualifying and only 1 has unsubscribed. I thought they had fixed that issue.
 

If the person has multiple email addresses (jhill, josh.hill, jdhill @samecompany.com) only one will be unsubscribed.

If someone fills out a form without an opt in box, they should NOT be automatically opted in (or back in).

[Cecile_Maindron]

@ Bentacular: as far as I know, all complaints we had received were always justified. Either the lead thought he was unsubscribed but wasn't, or he had received an operational email, or he had 2 different email addresses, or (as Kenneth E mentioned) he is receiving emails from an alias/re-direct from a former colleague to his mailbox.

When I cannot find an obvious reason, what I usually do is check with the leads which email address they think they have unsubscribed to and ask them if they are receiving our newsletters under other addresses.

[Anonymous]

Bentacular - I would recommend logging a customer support ticket at this point, and they'll be happy to troubleshoot this for you.

[Anonymous]

Thanks guys, but I've looked at every single one of those reasons. I'm stumped right now and creating doubts about Marketo's unsubscribe rules...

[Michelle_Tizian]

Ooh so true about the duplicate record.  I totally forgot about that and that has happened in my case.  

[Kenneth_Elking1]

Other than duplicate records, the most common reason for a lead that is unsubscribed to continue receiving emails is that they either have an alternate email address stored as a lead in your account, or an address that is an alias for that email address.  Sometimes a lead will receive an email via one email address, and mistakenly enter another email address in the unsubscribe form.  In the case of an email alias, the lead will receive the email to their primary inbox, but will not realize it went to the alias, and fail to unsubscribe that alias.

[Anonymous]

Is there a duplicate record with the same email address in the database? That might be it.

[Anonymous]

Marketo has a built in global unsubscribe functionality that will automatically prevent anyone who is opted out from receiving non-operational emails. That said, are a couple reasons why someone may still be getting emails, even if they're "unsubscribed"

1. The lead is unsubscribed  from a custom field, like a newsletter subscription field, but not the primary opt out field. The system-controlled opt out field is called "Unsubscribed" in your Marketo instance, and it has two values: True or False.

2. The lead received an "operational" email, which has overriden the global unsubscribe settings. This feature can be activated for any email, but is really only meant to be used in instances where the email cannot be considered spam. You'd use this only in situations where the person is expecting an email, or needs critical info from the email, such as for an event registration or an autoresponder, or in certain instances, a critical customer communication.

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

I believe if a lead unsubscribes, and then fills out a form later they are re-subscribed to your email content. Is it possible that they could have filled out a form to update their lead record?

[Michelle_Tizian]

The only thing I can think of is if someone set the lead's record in Marketo "unsubscribed" from true to false.  You can check the lead's activity record to see what happened.  

[Anonymous]

That doesn't sound right. I would recommend confirming whether that person's Unsubscribed field is checked, or it's value is 'True'. It also depends on whether you're using Marketo's standard 'Unsubscribed' field to track opt-outs or whether you're using your own custom field.

[Anonymous]

What if it's no operational? I had a lead unsubscribe in February and they continued receiving non-operational emails...

[Michelle_Tizian]

If the email is operational, an unsubscribed lead can still get the email.