How to send to a custom email address field?

[KanaNg]

Hi!

Does anyone know how to best send emails to a Custom Email Address Field without first putting it into the Standard Email Field? We have some crazy sync rules in place with our CRM, so the Standard Email Field needs to remain empty for the instance I'm working in. We also need to report on email performance so unfortunately can't send it as an alert either. 

Appreciate the help!

[SanfordWhiteman]

You can use the CC: feature but not if the system Email Address field is completely blank.

It can be an address without an attended mailbox, for example, or an address @ example.test (N.B. this is not just a random domain, it's an actual RFC-standard domain guaranteed to not resolve in the public DNS) which will not have a valid MX record. If you use the latter option you need to make sure you don't have a separate SC that turns soft bounces into Email Invalid.

[KanaNg]

But that would still require filling in the Standard Email Field, right? I'm afraid that would still interfere with our sync rules, unfortunately.

[SanfordWhiteman]

It has to be filled with something.

What kind of crazy sync rules do you have set up?  Is there some other way to rethink this? Can't see how you can reasonably use Marketo without being able to use the standard Email Address field (which of course is also the default lookup key, it's central to Marketo).

[KanaNg]

I agree, it's very unusual. It was set up before I joined the team, so I don't know all the details that led to this decision, but essentially there are multiple instances and one of them uses the Standard Email Address field and other instances will use Custom Email Address fields.

[SanfordWhiteman]

This just isn't sustainable.  Someone should've talked to a person who really knows Marketo before going ahead with it.

You're not going to be able to make productive use of the platform if you can only send alerts.

[KanaNg]

I'm going to see if we can at least temporarily fill in the Standard Email field for sends without screwing up our CRM. I appreciate you taking the time to offer a solution. Thanks!

[SanfordWhiteman]

If your CRM can connect via an API gateway as opposed to direct to the Marketo API, then you can modify the API request/response on the fly so the system Email Address (a) appears blank and (b) is never updated.

(I can't really belive it's come to suggesting that, though!)