Prior to determining whether you wish to use Contacts with No Email Address that is now generally available with the Summer '14 Eloqua 10 release, here are some frequently asked questions that may help in your decision. Once you have read through these questions and answers, you can access the Configuration Guide at http://topliners.eloqua.com/docs/DOC-5716.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this functionality available for both Eloqua 9 and Eloqua 10?
No, it is only available for Eloqua 10.
Will this be available to all trims?
Yes, this is available to customers on all trims (Basic, Standard, Enterprise).
Will this feature be enabled by default for my Eloqua instance?
No. Please speak with your Account Director for more information, as enabling this capability may have implications to your current CRM integration and Eloqua subscription. Once completed, you can log a Service Request ("SR") with Eloqua Product Support via My Oracle Support (support.oracle.com).
Will contacts with no email address count against my contact band limit?
Yes. Since the primary use case for storing contacts with no email address in Eloqua is execution through a variety of non-email channels enabled through the AppCloud e.g. SMS, Direct Mail, etc., they are still actionable and can be marketed to.
What happens if I use CRM ID as my unique identifier and my input file has duplicate CRM IDs?
As long as there are no duplicate CRM IDs assigned to your contacts, during upload the system will try to deduplicate the duplicate rows and update the corresponding contact record.
What happens if I choose to uniquely match on first name, but there are multiple contacts that have the same first name?
The data being updated will be rejected and not processed since you’ve violated your uniqueness constraint.
Is there a way to globally set a unique identifier versus picking it each time?
No, currently you are required to specify your unique ID each time you update data in the database whether it is through a list upload, CRM synch, or data import. This capability is being considered for a feature enhancement in a future release.
For contacts that do have an email address, does it still have to be unique or can I have multiple contacts with the same email address?
Email address must still be unique. This capability is part of a separate beta program that we are still running.
Can I use different unique IDs each time I update Contact data in the application?
Yes, users can select Email as the unique ID and easily change to a different unique ID, for example CRM ID. However, you are responsible for ensuring that they adhere to the uniqueness constraint. If you decide to use First Name as the unique ID and there are 100 contacts with the same first name, for example “John", Eloqua will not know which one of the records to update and therefore the update will fail.
Scenario: Jim is a contact record with no Email address. Jim subsequently submits a form that includes his Email address. Does the Form submission update the no Email address contact record or does it create a new Contact, one for Jim with no email and one for Jim with email?
This depends on how the Contact is arriving at the Landing Page from the Form.
If the contact organically visits the Landing Page and submits a Form, there is no unique identifier on which to match. In this case, a new contact will be created.
However, it is likely that another unique identifier will be present, for example a phone number, to facilitate marketing communication if an Email address does not exist. This identifier can be selected in a Form Processing step to lookup contacts in the database and update with Form data. In this scenario, using the phone number you could find Jim’s existing contact record and update it with the new Email address from the Form.
How do Contacts with no Email address affect subscription management?
Initially, Contacts with no Email address are globally unsubscribed. Beyond that if there is an activity that drives them online (for example, a direct mail with PURL) and there is a Form submission then their subscription preferences are processed as usual. Note that in the absence of an Email address, access to manage subscriptions preferences on an individual contact record is hidden from view.