How do I update a subscriber's email address in Marketing Cloud when the corresponding Contact mail is changed?

Question

The case is the following:

• Contact located in Salesforce Service is added with "XXX@mail.com" mail.
• Salesforce Service is connected to Marketing Cloud.
• Note: Subscriber Key is Salesforce Contact ID.
• Subscriber related to this Contact in Marketing Cloud receives email.
• At a given time the mail in Salesforce Service is changed to "YYY@mail.com".
• Contact mail is updated in Marketing Cloud Contact Object from "XXX@mail.com" mail to "YYY@mail.com".
• Subscriber mail in all Subscriber is not updated and remains as the initial one "XXX@mail.com".
• Subscriber receives mail to old email "XXX@mail.com" and not the new one "YYY@mail.com".

How can the email in All subscribers be automatically updated?

Thanks,

Melina!

Answer 1

This is expected Marketing Cloud behaviour but can be addressed with an automation containing four steps:

1. SQL query to retrieve contacts with email addresses in the All Subscribers list that do not match the corresponding record in Salesforce, writing them to a data extension

    SELECT
        sf.Id as SubscriberKey,
        sf.Email as EmailAddress,
        a.Status
    FROM
        Contact_Salesforce as sf
    RIGHT JOIN
        _subscribers as a
    ON sf.Id = a.SubscriberKey
    WHERE sf.Email != a.EmailAddress

2. Data extract activity that extracts the returned records from the previous step as a .csv, with the file destination being the Marketing Cloud Safehouse.

3. File transfer activity to move the file from the Safehouse to the import folder of the SFTP directory, where the file can be processed from.

4. Import activity to import the file into the All Subscribers list, updating the email address values for the specified records.

You can run this as often as needed.

Alternatively, if you send to a data extension from Journey Builder, the email address in the data extension will be used (rather than whatever is stored for the subscriber in All Subscribers).