Lead changed jobs - can I update with new email address?

[Anonymous]

I have a list of old leads and clients that changed jobs, with their new info.
I'd like to retain all the history, but change the email address and company info.

Is that possible to do on a large scale? Anyone know how?

[Josh_Hill13 · Accepted solution]

Greg,

I would avoid just overwriting their previous data. The practice is to treat all changed job leads as entirely new leads because it's an entirely new sales cycle. If you overwrite their email and Company info, you may lose valuable customer data and reporting information.

If you want to import those people as new leads, just create a sheet with their details and import it.

You would use the same process to overwrite - pull a list with their old email, then do:

Email Address | Company Name

with the new Company and it will update the field (unless it is blocked)

but you cannot do this for Email Address because that is the matching database key. I suppose you could do this with LeadID/ContactID in SFDC though. There is an import function to do this.

Lead ID | Email Address | Company ID

Again, not recommended as it will mess up your Accounts.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Josh, 

My initial thought was import as new leads, while keeping the old records and changing their status to 'unsubscribe' and 'no longer at company.' My hesitation was that sometimes these expired leads turn into spambots if accidentally emailed, or just eat up space in our database.

Thanks for confirming that this is the best practice, and that the only way to update email addresses was through SF. 

I'm glad I asked before I tried anything; it's not worth messing up the data for these leads!

Thanks again!
Greg