We have some occurrences where we have multiple contact records with the same name and same email address, but different customer numbers. Due to that individual having multiple accounts with us for different locations etc.
Due them having the same email address, when we send an email through a campaign or a broadcast only one a single email will be sent.
Each contact record has different values in custom fields based on their account, some of which are used as merge fields in the emails/broadcasts.
The campaign emails have set date/time timers, so all the records will enter/run the email segment at the same time.
What is the logic that dictates which record is sent an email? i.e. contact creation date, name, etc.
If they have the same name, email, creation date etc. (basic info) how is it determined which record will be used?
Is there a way for them to both receive the emails/broadcasts while having the same email address?
So if an update is done (for say a landing page), I believe it will actually update both records simultaneously unless you have changed dedupe options to firstname+email (which you cannot do in the new landing page builder).
What I do is this. Lets say our company wanted to use info@test.com and both myself and Bob have signed up, so you now have two contact records Andy and Bob both use info@test.com.
The different accounts have the same first name, last name, and email address so I think I might be out of luck with updates. Due to the unique data otherwise attached to these accounts they can’t be merged and really need to be kept separately.
From what you’re saying it seems that they would both be overwritten in an update and both end up with the same information as just one of the accounts. If both were being updated simultaneously through an API import/update, do you know what logic would dictate which record’s information would remain?
i.e. The import/update sees record 1 in the update and matches it to record 1 and record 2 in the system, then overwrites them both. Then the import/update reaches record 2 in the update and matches it to record 1 and record 2 in the system, then overwrites them both. Thus both record 1 and record 2 would now actually only contain the information from record 2.
In terms of changing the duplicate email, unfortunately this is through our customers’ input on signup and therefore not something that we can change on our end.
As the two accounts have different information attached such as location etc. we need to be able to communicate differently about each account, even though they both have the same email address.
Any further insights?
Would be great to know how Infusionsoft chooses which contact record to use when sending an email/broadcast in the case where there are two records with the same email address.
Ah but you’re missing the fact they they become unique email addresses, keeping the contact records separate
info+bob@test.com and info+andy@test.com are both WORKING email addresses, as email senders ignore the + and what follows, however they are unique, thus keeping separation.
Thanks for the clarification, I’d not heard of that before. I’ve given it a test though and it appears that the Infusionsoft sender didn’t ignore the + and following text. I tested it with a few different email providers, and it looks like the reception depends on the receiving service rather than the sending one.
It worked for Gmail, but not for several of the other major email providers that our customers use. Those that didn’t work were flagged as hard bounces in Infusionsoft.