Durable unsubscribe behaviour when creating new contacts

[PaddyCumiskey]

I am trying to better understand how the "Durable unsubscribe" function works. I have seen the standard documentation here:https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/email-marketing/deliverability/du... but am struggling to understand its behaviour in the below usecase.

We need to remove all contacts from our Marketo instance due to a data error. Once remove, the CRM will sync again, pushing contacts back into the instance. 

The errors caused a large number of contact subscription status's to be incorrectly updated from [Unsub=False] to [Unsub=True].

When attempting to remove a record, and re upload, Marketo seems to remember the record and update their [Unsub=True] status and change the value to suit. 

Is there a way to turn off this durable unsubscribe function. Unsubscribe is looked after by our CRM so do need this solution

[jacklaushway1]

Hi there,

On your unsubscribed field in Marketo you can block updates within the Field Management tab in Admin. You can select SFDC sync which should disable any updates on this field from a SFDC sync. I would caution against this though, especially if you are updating unsubscribe through CRM primarily.

[SanfordWhiteman]

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In your unsubscribed field in Marketo you can block updates within the Field Management tab in Admin. You can select SFDC sync which should disable any updates on this field from a SFDC sync. I would caution against this though, especially if you are updating unsubscribe through CRM primarily.

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(Won’t stop Durable Unsubscribe btw.)

[YanHandarov1]

@SanfordWhiteman any idea how long for Marketo stores the Durable Unsubscribe info?

[SanfordWhiteman]

Forever.

[Chelsea_Stinnet]

The durable unsubscribe is a Marketo feature that safeguards companies from violating privacy laws. If a record is deleted that has Unsubscribe = true, Marketo will store that email address as a durable unsubscribe and attribute that value to a new record created with the same email address. If there have been data errors in the past, you do have the ability to change the Unsubscribe value back to false as long as field blocking rules enable you to do so. I don't know of a way to disable the durable unsubscribe feature, but you can create campaigns to correct data that you know to be incorrect. I would just caution you to be extremely careful about overwriting Unsubscribe data because of legal ramifications and the risk of harming your sender reputation. 

[Darshil_Shah1 · Accepted solution]

I too don't think you can turn the durable unsubscribe feature off, and I think that's a good thing. An empty value for the Unsubscribed field would mean that the person isn't unsubscribed, and I can imagine a lot of companies going under the bus w/o the safety net of Durable Unsubscribe. It's a built-in system feature that propagates a person's Unsubscribed field's value to other records having same Email Address and backfills it in case the person gets re-created after getting deleted from the Marketo database. You should ideally run updates to fix the Unsubscribed field value to its desired state for the records that were updated erroneously before you deleted them. I'm pretty sure you'd be able to pull those records as you mentioned that you maintain the Unsubscribed status in SFDC.

[SanfordWhiteman]

The errors caused a large number of contact subscription status's to be incorrectly updated from [Unsub=False] to [Unsub=True].

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As Darshil says, it’s not “incorrect”, it’s the correct and expected behavior.

If someone clicks — for one of many examples — the Unsubscribe button in their email client, that updates (via the List-Unsubscribe SMTP header) the system Unsubscribed field in Marketo. Marketo must honor this value unless you have a valid reason to override it. Merely deleting the email from your database temporarily does not change the user’s unsubscribe request, which has legal implications.