Subscriber Key Email Address and Salesforce ID

Question

Situation

The salesforce marketing cloud connector recommended for a long time to use the email address as subscriber key. With the newest release it is possible to use data streams or data sources to connect salesforce and exactTarget. It is possible to create a synchronised data extension called Contact__Salesforce. The subscriber key that is used is the contact id.

Question

• How can I do the transition between Email and ID?
• Is it possible to track Emails in Salesforce with the new data source technology?

Answer 1

What version of the connector are you on V2, V3?

The latest release allows you to synchronise standard , as well as custom objects. Once configured - each object will have its own DE ( you can choose this) and will sync data every 15 minutes

Transitioning between Email & ID - this will require a subscriber key migration and you will need help from marketing cloud services to do that.

As long as you are using contact_id or lead_id as your unique identifier i.e subscriber key, tracking will automatically sync back to salesforce

Hope this helps

Answer 2

Subscriber Key Considerations

• A Subscriber Key should be implemented for each and every subscriber within your database.
• It should NOT change. Reconfiguration of the Subscriber Key takes effort and planning. Therefore, give thought to the value being used and make sure it's going to work for your organization now and long-term.
• Keep in mind: the purpose of Subscriber Key is to allow an individual email address to receive more than 1 of the same message. If this is a concern, here are ways to suppress based on email address.
• Subscriber Key allows users to change their email address and still retain tracking data in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Otherwise a new record would need to be created and tracking data would be lost.

Reference:

• Best Practices: Marketing Cloud: Subscriber Key Considerations