Import Activity Failed to All Subscribers List

Question

We are running an automation process that syncs the email address of the All Subscribers List to the contact email address in Sales Cloud. This automation is run daily.

However last night the data extension used for updating the All Subscribers List was empty because the email addresses were all synced previously. So the import activity failed.

Is there a way to prevent this error? If the data extension is empty then don't run import activity?

Answer 1

I had the same problem and solved it by adding a UNION to the end of the email-sync query, forcing a constant user into the update data extension:

SELECT
b.SubscriberKey
,b.EmailAddress
,a.Status
FROM _Subscribers a
LEFT JOIN [All Customers DE] b ON a.SubscriberKey = b.SubscriberKey
WHERE a.EmailAddress != b.EmailAddress

UNION

SELECT
c.SubscriberKey
,c.EmailAddress
,c.Status
FROM _Subscribers
WHERE c.SubscriberKey = 'TEST_SUBSCRIBER_01'

The top half of the SQL Query Activity selects all customers where the EmailAddress has changed, while the second half pick up my test subscriber record (TEST_SUBSCRIBER_01) and updates itself, with itself.

This ensures there is always 1 record in the import process.