Allowing Multiple Prospects with the Same Email Address

Matching Existing Prospects

Whether the CRM ID or an email address is used to match depends on the situation.

Prospect Import

Prospect import serves two purposes: creating records and updating existing records. You can now use CRM ID (Lead ID, Contact ID, or Person Account ID) as an optional matching criteria for prospect import. Importing by CRM ID is ideal when you import new records from Salesforce, because the new prospects are associated with the Salesforce record upon creation.

Although we recommend using CRM ID for imports whenever possible, you can still use an email address as matching criteria for prospect imports. Records with an email address that doesn’t match an existing prospect creates a prospect record. Records with an email address that matches more than one existing prospect updates the prospect with the most recent activity.

Salesforce Connector

The most important aspect of the Salesforce sync is creating a one-to-one relationship between a prospect and a Salesforce lead, contact, or person account. The Salesforce connector uses CRM ID as the matching criteria for sync in both directions.

Syncing from Salesforce to Account Engagement—When Salesforce creates a record with a specific email address, and the connector user has permission to view that record, Account Engagement creates a prospect with a matching CRM ID.

Syncing from Account Engagement to Salesforce—When a new prospect is created and the record meets your criteria to begin syncing, it creates a record in Salesforce following your connector’s settings.

Connector settings—There are fewer connector settings. The connector creates prospects when it finds new leads, contacts, or person accounts, and it syncs changes among those records. When the connector detects merged or deleted records in Salesforce, it updates the corresponding prospects.

Form Submissions

When someone submits a form, Account Engagement uses the visitor cookie to attempt to associate the activity with a prospect. If the visitor’s cookie is associated with a prospect, the activity is saved to that prospect record. If that prospect record is in the recycle bin, it’s undeleted.

If the visitor cookie isn’t associated with a prospect, Account Engagement uses the email address submitted in the form to look for a matching prospect. If only one prospect has that email address, the activity is saved to that record. If more than one prospect has that email address, the activity is saved to the prospect that has the most recent activity. If no active prospects have that email address, we attempt to match a record in the recycle bin and undelete the record if found. If we can’t find any prospects with the given email address, we create a prospect and saves the activity to the new record.

In all these cases, the visitor cookie is updated to match the prospect record. Future activity related to that cookie goes to the associated prospect record.

Third-Party Connectors

Some third-party connectors rely on the email address to sync data from the third party into Account Engagement. When we bring in data from these connectors, we look for matching prospects with the same email address.

If only one prospect has that email address, the activity is saved to that record. If more than one prospect has the email address, the activity is saved to the prospect that has the most recent activity. If no active prospects have that email address, we attempt to match a record in the recycle bin and undelete the record if found. If we can’t find any prospects with the given email address, we create a prospect and saves the activity to the new record.

Acting on Prospects with the Same Email Address

When multiple prospects have the same email address, the biggest behavior changes relate to email sends and lead nurturing.

Email Sending

To protect your sending reputation, we don’t send the same list email to more than one prospect with the same email address. Even with built-in protection, it’s a good idea to segment your lists appropriately.

When you send a list email, Account Engagement deduplicates by email address. If multiple prospects in the list send have the same email address, the email goes to the one with the most recent activity. If multiple prospects in the list send have the same email address, but no activity, the email goes to the most recently created prospect.

A suppression list matches on prospect ID, not email address. If you have multiple prospects with the same email address and one is on a suppression list, that email address isn’t suppressed.

However, a dynamic suppression list that’s based on recency and frequency does match on email address. If any prospect with that email address meets the criteria of your recency and frequency suppression list, all prospects with that email address are suppressed.

Email Deliverability

Your emails are delivered only to the people who want them, which protects your brand and email sending reputation. If a prospect globally opts out of emails, all prospects with the same email address are also opted out. If a prospect unsubscribes from specific email lists, all prospects with the same email address are unsubscribed from those lists. This way, you don’t run the risk of your emails being marked as spam, even if your intended recipient is a different prospect.

If a prospect hard bounces or soft bounces five times, all prospects with the same email address are marked as unmailable.

Lead Nurturing

Engagement programs allow one prospect per email address per program. This limitation ensures that an email address associated with multiple prospects doesn’t receive more than one copy of the same email.

If an email address is used for a prospect in an Engagement Studio program, it gets tied to that prospect, and can't be used by any other prospects. If a prospect's email address is changed after they complete an Engagement Studio program, the original email address associated with that prospect can't be used by another prospect.

Prospect Tracking

If you have multiple prospects with the same email address and some are archived, only the Opt Out and Do Not Email fields are updated on the archived prospects. No other activity is updated on archived prospects.

Account Engagement API

This feature uses a different version of the Account Engagement API. The APIs are similar, but many functions related to prospects can now return more than one result. If you use custom integrations, make sure that they use Version 4 of the API before you enable this feature. Supported connectors are already compatible with Version 4, so no further action is necessary.

• If you’re using custom apps, update them to use Version 4 of the API.
• If you’re using apps built by a third party (for example, Zapier or DataHero), make sure that they’re compatible with Version 4 of the API.

How This Feature Affects Legacy Integrations

Some legacy add-ons and connectors aren’t compatible with AMSPEA.

• Gmail extension
• Outlook add-on
• Thunderbird plug-in
• Apple Mail plug-in