One time email populated with custom data that will only be used in this email

[Anonymous]

How can you email to a list of lead contacts and new prospects with custom data information populated (tokened) within the email for only one time use?  We don't want the custom data fields to remain in our Marketo or SFDC database after this one time email communication. Is this possible?

[Josh_Hill13]

Sure,

Just create some custom fields in Marketo. Use them. I suspect it'll be easier to do this than to add the fields in SFDC --> Marketo because there are some weird things that go on if you try to kill an SFDC field. Or at least check before you try it.

After email is fully delivered (wait 2-3 days), delete fields. The Email tokens will break, but sounds like you don't care about that.

[Veronica_Holme4 · Accepted solution]

If the custom data is the SAME for every lead, you could use My Tokens at the program level, which allows you to define a token with a specific value for that program.

If you're talking different values for each lead, then you don't really have any choice but to go the route Josh is suggesting and build custom fields in Marketo that you upload data into. Be aware though, you cannot delete Marketo custom fields later, you can only hide them, so building a lot of custom fields can start to clutter your database if you're constantly building them for one-off campaigns.

There's an old trick I've seen used successfully where you can just create a bunch of generic custom fields for this campaign (like custom field 1, custome field 2, etc), then once the campaign is over delete the data from them and re-use the fields for other campaigns later.