Key Takeaways

• Shared email addresses create unique challenges for Eloqua marketers
• Custom Objects enable many-to-one relationships for multiple contacts
• Preference management prevents one user from unsubscribing everyone
• Lead tracking should focus on individuals, not shared addresses
• Personalization requires moving Custom Object data to contact records

Managing shared email addresses presents a unique challenge for marketing teams using Oracle Eloqua. Multiple family members often use a single email for household registrations, or businesses rely on addresses like [email protected] to centralize communications. While this approach simplifies inbox management for your contacts, it creates complications for marketers who depend on one-to-one email relationships.

Eloqua’s out-of-the-box functionality doesn’t support multiple contacts sharing the same email address. Each contact record is identified by a unique email, creating a fundamental mismatch between how people use email and how Eloqua stores data. When families share an address or businesses use generic inboxes, you lose the ability to track individual engagement, personalize messaging, or respect individual preferences.

Thus, smart marketers leverage Custom Objects and strategic workarounds to accommodate these shared email arrangements. With the right configuration, you can maintain personalized communication, track individual engagement, and respect user preferences—even when multiple people share a single inbox. This guide walks you through proven solutions for managing shared email addresses in Eloqua without sacrificing personalization or compliance.

Eloqua Custom Objects for Shared Email Addresses

Luckily, the solution is simple. Custom Objects (CO) dramatically expand Eloqua’s capabilities for data storage and usage. To use Custom Objects for multiple users sharing an email address, simply create a CO for each user and input the same email address. Eloqua will now have a many-to-one relationship for each person associated with the email address. 4Thought Marketing’s Many-to-One Cloud App is designed to work in tandem with these Custom Objects to construct and send customized emails. Each user will receive an email tailored personally to them on their shared email address.

Solving Potential Problems with Shared Email Addresses

Shared email addresses make things slightly more complicated for marketers. Even with Custom Objects and cloud apps set up perfectly, certain functions or customer behaviors can cause problems. Let’s look at a few common issues you may face and how to handle them.

Unsubscribing or Opting Out

Here’s the situation: you’ve been sending emails to a single address shared by three people—Jack, Jill, and Jane—for a while now. Jack gets tired of seeing your emails and unsubscribes. Now all three users are unsubscribed, even if Jill and Jane are still interested. You’ve lost two potential customers. How can you get around this?

The best way to do this is to use Preference Management. Allow each user connected to an email address to choose which emails they want to receive and which they don’t. In this case, that means that Jack can choose to significantly limit the emails tailored to him, while Jill and Jane can still get the messages they want. This allows Jack to manage his preferences without costing you two additional customers.

Complicated Lead Tracking

Continuing the example of Jack, Jill, and Jane, let’s look at lead tracking. Imagine that Jill expresses interest in a product one of your emails to her advertised. Jill is now a lead. But since Jane hasn’t expressed this interest, and Jack has opted out of most of your messages, only one user on their shared email address is considered a lead.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for this. In this particular case, it’s best to track Jill the individual as a lead, rather than by treating the email address and everyone else on it as a lead. This lets you focus on nurturing a customer without marketing aggressively to users who haven’t asked for it.

Segmentation & Email Personalization

Personalizing emails that go to a shared address can be confusing. But fortunately, Eloqua can handle it. To use data from Custom Objects to personalize these types of emails, you should:

• Identify which contacts meet your campaign segmentation criteria
• Find the Custom Object with the data you need
• Move the data from the Custom Object to the Contact

You can also use the Many-to-One Email Cloud App to streamline the process.

Email Marketing Like a Pro

Shared email addresses may seem complicated at first, but with the right tools, your marketing team can handle them easily. And we’re always ready to help. With several successful Many-to-One integrations under our belt, we can get your marketing team back on track in no time. Get in touch with us today to learn more or schedule your own integration.

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