Customer Survey - Pulling unique links into email list

[Conor_McCormick]

We're sending out emails to our customer database as part of an annual survey, and I'm having trouble getting a unique link to pull into the email. Every client has been given a unique survey link, and I've added a custom field into Marketo per this post​ but every time I do a sample send, the link shows up as the default value instead of the unique value, as described in this post. Even if I add myself to the list and sample send to myself, it still does not pull the unique link in correctly.

What am I missing? At the end of the day, with the list that I am uploading, I just need the associated unique link to populate in the email for the recipient.

Thanks in advance.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Such a field is no different from any other Marketo string field from Marketo's standpoint-- it may seem like it because it's "unique," but that's only because you enforced the uniqueness before import. It might as well have a constant value on every lead.

Do you indeed see it populated differently on every lead? Sure you're using the right token?

[Conor_McCormick]

Sure I'm using the right token. When I send sample using different contacts on the list, it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. I think the issue may be duplicate accounts in our Marketo database (I inherited the instance a couple months ago after it had been unused and un-maintained for several years, so the database has...issues, but I'm learning how to work with it). So when I pull up "Send Sample" for a given email on the list, it might identify 4 identical emails with different Marketo IDs - three of those emails will get the default token value, one will get the unique value. Given that the email is sending to a static list that I've uploaded, on send, will the token populate correctly if I use a "Survey URL is not blank" filter in the Smart List in conjunction with "Is Member of List XYZ"?

Or is the added filter unnecessary and it will send with the correct URL due to the email sending to a static list that has been uploaded directly to the email program?

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

If you have dupes, like that, then you've figured it out. The list import can only update one Lead regardless of the matching email addresses. So it dedupes in the sense that it doesn't insert a new lead, but doesn't dedupe in the sense of propagating changes to ​all ​existing leads.