How do I update email addresses in All Subscribers in Marketing Cloud?

Question

Data is imported from source systems into SFMC data extensions and email address details that customers have updated in the source systems propagate to data extensions, but not to All Subscribers.

Is there a way that I can easily update All Subscribers from these, or will I need to do this via either an export of updated/changed details and then an import of same into All Subscribers, or modifications to the initial imports to also update all subscribers? The second option is currently being used, but seems a little clunky, and the latter will be tricky due to the updates required at source.

Answer 1

You need to create a file import activity from your master contact dataextension and chose all subscribers list as the target. Then you have to map the emailaddress and contactkey accordingly and it will update the email addresses in your all subscribers list. If you want to change the subscriber status from your main external system you can also overwrite the subscriber_status. You just need to have a Field in your file that will have the Status in it (like aktive unsubscribed, etc). That is the easiest way to update email addresses in the All Subscribers List.

Answer 2

You can create SSJS script to select records fro your Data Extension that you need to unsubscribe, and then either use Subscriber.Unsubscribe() or change subscriber status with SSJS API Functions. You'd need to contact support to enable scripts in your account. If you use an automation to import that data from FTP you can add that script as last step of it.