This is an issue we often struggle with.
I can’t guarantee that this is the right solution, but a workaround I’m exploring at the moment is adding an incremental string and number into the email addresses, to allow us to create a second contact record, and then opting out those incorrect emails (by importing as an opt-out list - i.e. never contact unless the contact manually opts in).
You want to add a short string and number to the email (and not at the end so it still validates) to make sure everyone can using the crm can be sure that this is an invalid email that we created on purpose e.g. myname**-hs-multi1**@test.com.
If you have a lot of these contacts working with them in an Excel workbook can help with adding those incremental string and numbers and then creating a list of contacts (with invalid incremental email addresses) for opt out.
Here’s how I do that in Excel:
First Name Last Name Email Count Multi Identifier Final Email
| Matthew | Shepherd | test@test.com | 1 | test@test.com | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joe | Smith | test@test.com | 2 | -hs-multi1 | test-hs-multi1@test.com |
| Jack | Black | test@test.com | 3 | -hs-multi2 | test-hs-multi2@test.com |
| Matthew | Shepherd | hello@test.com | 1 | hello@test.com | |
| Joe | Smith | hello@test.com | 2 | -hs-multi1 | hello-hs-multi1@test.com |
With formulas:
First NameLast Name Email Count Multi Identifier
| Matthew | Shepherd | test@test.com | =COUNTIF($C$1:C2,C2) | =IF(D2>1,“-hs-multi”&D2-1,“”) | =SUBSTITUTE(C2,“@”,E2&“@”) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joe | Smith | test@test.com | =COUNTIF($C$1:C3,C3) | =IF(D3>1,“-hs-multi”&D3-1,“”) | =SUBSTITUTE(C3,“@”,E3&“@”) |
| Jack | Black | test@test.com | =COUNTIF($C$1:C4,C4) | =IF(D4>1,“-hs-multi”&D4-1,“”) | =SUBSTITUTE(C4,“@”,E4&“@”) |
| Matthew | Shepherd | hello@test.com | =COUNTIF($C$1:C5,C5) | =IF(D5>1,“-hs-multi”&D5-1,“”) | =SUBSTITUTE(C5,“@”,E5&“@”) |
| Joe | Smith | hello@test.com | =COUNTIF($C$1:C6,C6) | =IF(D6>1,“-hs-multi”&D6-1,“”) | =SUBSTITUTE(C6,“@”,E6&“@”) |
That way, you have multiple contacts one with a valid email that can be used for marketing and the rest that have an identifiably modified email address that stay in the CRM but are in your opt-out list and therefore not counting toward your contact tier.