Urgent Issue with Unsubscribe

[Anonymous]

We often get complaints from people that they cannot unsubscribe, and usually we just point them to the link and manually unsubscribe them--which used to work.

But I have one lead who reached out saying she submitted the unsubscribe form and reached confirmation 2x, but was still getting emails. I went into her record and saw that the Unsubscribed box was checked already, with a note that: "System flow action for 'Unsubscribe Email' triggered Wed, 15 Jul 2015 09:06:58 -0500"

So as a backup I checked Marketing Suspended as well and asked her to let me know if she got another email the next day (today), and she was emailed again!

Please help! My backup option would be to remove her from the Marketo database entirely so she could stop getting the emails she doesn't want/we don't want to be sending her...

[Adrian_Watkins]

Vivian - I would agree with what Josh said earlier. The biggest help is normally in her record, you mentioned that you can see the flow that she unsubscribed. If that lead is still getting emails you should be able to see that on her record also. if you do not see anything then there are several options;

1) There is another lead in the system that is a duplicate and that lead is not set to unsubscribe (i've seen that happen a lot).

2) She isn't actually getting an email from you but someone has hijacked your email style or is sending something similar to her

3) The email she is receiving it on isn't the one associate with her lead. For example I am on many email chains, "marketing@....." as an example. Multiple people receive that email but she may not realize that it isn't being sent to her personally.

The other thing I would do is find out which email she said that she received, go to that send program and search members. Look for her email or name and if she was sent the email she will show up. You can then trace the record from there

[Anonymous]

Found out what happened! People have been unsubscribing with a different email address than the one that they originally signed up (and were getting emails to).

Thank you everyone!

[Alex_Stanton1]

Vivian, also check that you are emailing the email address she uses to unsubscribe. Let's say you are emailing her @domain1.com but she is unsubscribing from @domain2.com - I have seen that happen more than once.

[Grant_Booth]

This is another reason to have some along the lines of the following in the Unsubscribe HTML for your emails:

"This email was sent to {{lead.Email Address}}..."

That way the email address it was sent to is recorded in the email, so if they try to unsubscribe with a different email address that's their own fault. This is the best way to avoid what Susan talked about.
This should be part of the default Unsubscribe HTML, but sometimes customers alter it.

Jeff is correct - it's not possible for two different leads to have the same email address but one be unsubscribed while the other is not. Marketo's durable unsubscribe updates the unsubscribed field for the duplicate records.

Grant

[Grant_Booth]

Hi Vivian,

I recommend looking up which email it was in the lead's activity log and examining that email. Was the email they received set to be "operational"?  If so, it will over-ride the Marketing Suspended and Unsubscribed settings. Operational emails should only be used for triggered emails, such as when someone fills out a form.

If that's not the case, then I recommend having them forward you the email to verify it's actually from Marketo and not a different source. If it is from Marketo, you can open a support case and we'll help you figure out why it was sent.

Grant

[Josh_Hill13]

I agree with all of what Grant said.

But look at the Activity Log before you go to Support. Are these emails really being sent to her? Is someone spoofing your domain?

If the email is not set to Operational, then something is wrong.

Also, Marketing Suspended does not mean much here; they will still get operational emails in that case. Doesn't seem like this is an issue.

[Josh_Hill13]

Does she have a dupe record that is not unsubscribed??

[Anonymous]

That is what I was going to ask as well. I used to have that problem a lot -- if I am a member of a distribution list email (ie marketing@xyzcompany.com) and one of my coworkers fills out an online form with that email address, then I might get an email that looks like it's being sent to me, but is really being sent to that distribution list.

Try looking in your lead DB for the domain (@xyzcompany.com) and see what else pops up. You can always unsubscribe everyone at that domain if you have to.

[Jeff_Smith3]

Susan, wouldn't unsubscribing that distribution list unsubscribe everyone on it, though? (Assuming your instance dedupes only off email address). Does this person have any email addresses that route to her? For instance, her co-worker left the company, but his record is not unsubscribed. So she's getting the emails that send to him, but then get forwarded to her. If you use tokens in the name, though, that would be easy to pick out.

Josh, if there are two leads with the same email address, where one is unsubscribed and one isn't, then wouldn't that person not get the email still? I thought that the unsubscribing happens to the email address and not the lead record...?

[Anonymous]

Jeff, yes, that unsubscribes everyone at the domain. It made sense for us to be better safe than sorry at the time.

[Anonymous]

Hi Grant,

I don't believe it is an operational email--I don't remember setting it up as so month ago. Is there some way to check?

The email is definitely a Marketo email, as it comes from an engagement program.

Thanks,

Vivian

[Anonymous]

I just went into the email in editing mode, and checked the setting and it is NOT an operational email.

[Grant_Booth]

In that case, I recommend contacting Support so we can look at the email header and our email logs to figure out what's happening. Be sure to attach the email they forwarded you / responded to and be specific about the email address of the lead, which email they received, and when it was sent.