Mass Update or use BPM to change Contact Email Address to Opted Out or Invalid

We have a requirement to regularly update contacts who no longer work for a particular account. We use a Contact Status field to indicate whether this is the case or not.

When the Contact leaves employment for an Account or the Account is lost, we change the contact status (individually or using BPM respectively) and then trigger a BPM that mass updates a wide range of Contact fields to reflect this.

The one field we cannot access using BPM is to indicate the email address for the contact is no longer valid. (We can switch Do Not Call but its the Email Address that will prevent Campaigns going to the contact.)

So we have the BPM create a task for someone to do this, but it is quite cumbersome when we say lose an Account and there are many contacts linked to that account. It also seems that we can't use Mass Update.

Any thoughts ? Should this be added as an idea for SugarCRM to consider to enhance BPM ?

Parents
  • Hi - I used to have to do this monthly and had a super-secret trick I used. Haven't tried it in a while, but it may work for you! 

    How to process Email Unsubscribes (Opt-Outs)

    1. Save the list of email addresses to a csv file (just the one column).
    2. In SugarCRM, go to the Campaigns tab and choose Import Targets.
    3. Add fields to mapping screen: 
      1. Opt-Out Email = yes
      2. Last Name = x
    4. Perform Targets import (create records)
    5. UNDO import (important!!)

    I'm pretty sure this is exploiting a little-known issue that undoing an import that sets the opt-out status will not revert the opt-out status. And all email addresses in Sugar are linked, so if you opt it out in one place, it opts out everywhere. Let me know if it works for you.

    Also, I would perform some cleanup on the email addresses using a 3rd party tool called ASAP Utilities:

    • Convert all characters to lowercase.
      • ASAP Utilities > Text > Change to Lowercase
    • Remove Leading, Trailing, and Excessive spaces. 
      • ASAP Utilities > Text > Delete Leading, Trailing, and Excessive Spaces
Reply
  • Hi - I used to have to do this monthly and had a super-secret trick I used. Haven't tried it in a while, but it may work for you! 

    How to process Email Unsubscribes (Opt-Outs)

    1. Save the list of email addresses to a csv file (just the one column).
    2. In SugarCRM, go to the Campaigns tab and choose Import Targets.
    3. Add fields to mapping screen: 
      1. Opt-Out Email = yes
      2. Last Name = x
    4. Perform Targets import (create records)
    5. UNDO import (important!!)

    I'm pretty sure this is exploiting a little-known issue that undoing an import that sets the opt-out status will not revert the opt-out status. And all email addresses in Sugar are linked, so if you opt it out in one place, it opts out everywhere. Let me know if it works for you.

    Also, I would perform some cleanup on the email addresses using a 3rd party tool called ASAP Utilities:

    • Convert all characters to lowercase.
      • ASAP Utilities > Text > Change to Lowercase
    • Remove Leading, Trailing, and Excessive spaces. 
      • ASAP Utilities > Text > Delete Leading, Trailing, and Excessive Spaces
Children