How can I bypass Marketo Durable Unsubscribe?

[Guitarrista82]

Hello Community,

We are setting up a process to bypass Marketo's Durable Unsubscribe.

This is how the process works. Anyone who opts out of email using the below methods in the Smart List will go through the Flow Steps below:

Here we will set the Brand Unsubscribe field to TRUE (first step is for those who fill out one of our forms and second step is for everyone else). We will then wait 2 minutes (I tested it and it seems a wait step is needed to allow for Marketo processing time before Flow Step 4), then in Flow Step 4 we will change the Unsubscribed field to FALSE. This will affect all brands that someone is subscribed to with the same email address. Steps 5 and 6 are additional backend maintenance we do ourselves.

One of the outliers we have is we set up a process for one of our brands to enable them to opt-into email on a website by checking a box. The opt-in syncs to Marketo and the "(Name of Brand)-Marketing Opt-In" box is set to TRUE. 

Our problem is that I've noticed a lot of these members who are opting in via this process were previously unsubscribed by Marketo's durable unsubscribe--so they cannot receive emails due to Unsubscribed being checked.

I want to set up a process that when someone is opted into marketing via the Marketing Opt-In checkbox AND they previously had durable unsubscribe box checked, that box will be unchecked. HOWEVER, my concern is what to do about the duplicate account that they originally did opt out of? Because, when we change Unsubscribed to FALSE, Marketo will automatically update those other duplicates accounts and also set them to FALSE.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I was thinking we could possibly use an API to update the duplicate brand and set the Brand Unsubscribed field to TRUE but can't determine how to configure this API call. I've been testing using Postman.

Another idea is to use another trigger campaign to set the Brand Unsubscribed to TRUE as soon as the Durable Unsubscribe is updated using the criteria and flow steps below:

I think this could work but am not 100% positive. Has anyone ever built something like this and/or have any suggestions?

Thank you,

LK

[Jo_Pitts1]

@Guitarrista82,

Can you step back from the screen shots and technical stuff and give a clear business synopsis of what it is you need to achieve.

Cheers

Jo

[Guitarrista82]

Hi Jo,

Sure.

Our company provides travel marketing and fulfillment services for many companies. In our Marketo instance, we have set up a person partition for each company (or brand) enabling us to keep each brand's respective contacts separated. However, we have over 1M duplicate contacts, most of whom have the same email address across multiple brands. 

We have long been using Marketo's built-in Unsubscribe feature to opt-out contacts from marketing they no longer want to receive. However, if a contact decides to opt out of marketing for one brand, but also receives emails from one, two or three other brands, Marketo's Durable Unsubscribe unsubscribes them from receiving all brand emails.

This has long been a problem, but came sharply into focus when we migrated a new brand with about 800K members from another marketing platform into Marketo. Upon migration, we noticed a high number of subscribers were immediately opted out of marketing for the new brand because they had a duplicate email address that had previously opted out of receiving marketing from a different brand.

Last year, we decided we wanted to implement a process that would prevent someone in Brand X who unsubscribed from Brand X's emails from being unsubscribed from Brand Y's emails via the Durable Unsubscribe. As we onboard more clients from different brands, our objective is to retain email marketing privileges for members who potentially exist in Marketo using a duplicate email address and previously unsubscribed.

While the process we have constructed and tested is straight forward, we have come across a potential obstacle that I outlined in my initial post.

Please let me know if this makes sense or if you have any questions.

Thank you,

LK

[Jo_Pitts1]

OK.  So If I'm reading this right, you're implementing opt-in flags that work across partitions, but you need a way to synchronise those flags across duplicate records?

[Guitarrista82]

Kind of. The opt-in flag (shown below) is a field that resides on all contacts regardless of which partition they're in.

However, we are using an API sync to only update this field on one particular brand. For example, Jim Jones visits the Brand X website, checks the Opt-In box, the API updates the field on his record.

And what we've found is that, even though Jim Jones opted into marketing for Brand X, because he unsubscribed from Brand Y six months ago, Brand X is also unsubscribed.

We need a process that will change Unsubscribed to FALSE on Brand X and on Brand Y, but then set the "Brand Unsubscribe" field on Brand Y to TRUE, so that Jim won't start receiving emails from Brand Y.

[Jo_Pitts1]

@Guitarrista82, So it sounds like there are two things in play here:

1. A one time corrective action to get all your flags into the right shape
2. An ongoing process that keeps things correctly up to date.  

Does that sound correct?

[Guitarrista82]

Yes

1. A one time corrective action to get all your flags into the right shape - Yes, we'll need to ensure that 1.) anyone who subscribes to marketing via the Opt-in flag and has Unsubscribed currently set to TRUE is updated to the correct setting - i.e. Unsubscribed = FALSE and 2.) if the person in Step 1 has a duplicate account (or multiple duplicate accounts) also set to TRUE, but those accounts intentionally opted out of email marketing (i.e. filled out a form, clicked Unsubscribe in Gmail or Yahoo, or clicked on the Spam button in their email service provider) they are flagged with the "Brand Unsubscribe".
2. An ongoing process that keeps things correctly up to date.   - Yes.

[Jo_Pitts1 · Accepted solution]

Cool... now we're getting somewhere 🙂

for the one time corrective effort, this is how I'd handle it:

1. Export all the data from Marketo.  I'd set up a Marketo view that had the lead ID, email address, unsubscribe, and all your brand preference fields to minimise the number of fields you're exporting.
2. Import it into SQL
3. Update the data appropriately as per your rules.
4. Export from SQL back to CSV
5. DO NOT DO A LIST IMPORT FROM THE UI!  You need the import to be based on Lead ID, not on Email address.
6. Do an API based bulk import that uses the lead ID as the lookup

For the ongoing management:

Firstly, I'm not sure why you're using an API call to update the brand preference flags instead of a Marketo forms call (or is that what you meant).
In terms of how to do the management of the flags within Marketo:

1. FLOWBOOST.  All day every day.  I've written preference synch code to do this for a client and it uses FlowBoost to manage flag states across intentional duplicates.

Cheers

Jo

[Guitarrista82]

Hi Jo!

Thanks so much for your input. I am reviewing FlowBoost now and it looks AMAZING! Where have I been to just be finding out about it??? 

I'm going to review this with my supervisor and I will circle back if I have any questions.

Thanks again,

LK