Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional offers a One-to-Many Sync option for customer accounts that are integrated with multiple external databases (such as being integrated with Higher Logic Online Community and Salesforce).

Often in these multiple-database scenarios, subscriber records get unintentionally duplicated, leading to multiple records for the same subscriber.

With One-to-Many Sync, you can sync the same email address — from different integration sources — to Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional without creating duplicate subscriber records; only one main subscriber record, per email address, is created in Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional.

NOTE: One-to-Many Sync can also be used to manage duplicate subscriber records within the same integration. To learn more, create a case with Higher Logic Support.

Before you begin...

As you consider One-to-Many Sync, consider that it:

• Is intended only for Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional accounts that have multiple integrations.

NOTE: If you have just one integration, see Unique identifiers & managing duplicates in Integrations Basics for information on how subscriber records are handled.

• Has to be enabled in your account by a Higher Logic staff member. Create a case to request it be enabled.
• Uses only the email address of a subscriber as the basis for determining the uniqueness of a record.

Is One-to-Many Sync right for me?

One-to-Many Sync is available only for those Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional accounts that have multiple integrations.

• Review the following checklist to determine whether One-to-Many Sync is suitable for your account.
• If you determine that it is or if you have questions, create a case with Higher Logic Support.

Our Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional account is integrated with several external databases
Our Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional database has duplicate records and we want to clean it up
We want to avoid duplicate records in our Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional database as our account and our integrations add subscribers

De-duping subscriber records

One-to-Many Sync, effectively, creates a unified record in Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional that automates the handling of duplicate subscriber records.

One-to-Many Sync:

• cleans up ("de-dupes") your existing subscriber records and
• automatically prevents duplicates as records are added in the future.

Existing records

IMPORTANT: Be sure to review the important caveats in Email address changes in order to fully understand the implications of changing a user's email address after the One-to-Many Sync process.

Subscriber records that are currently in Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional are de-duped by assigning one record as the main subscriber record and then associating any email address-based duplicates to that main record.

Determining the main subscriber record

During the initial de-dupe process, Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional:

• identifies which remote ID was most recently synced and then
• assigns the associated subscriber record as the main subscriber record.

This record displays in the Remote Subscribers column on the Subscribers list page. Refer to Remote Subscribers column, below, to learn how to display this column.

Any other subscriber records (in your Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional account) that have a matching email address — irrespective of their remote ID — are considered duplicates and are stored in a separate table.

NOTE: As future syncs occur, the remote ID is no longer queried; the email address is the exclusive criterion for determining and managing duplicates.

Unsubscribed duplicate records

The de-dupe process automatically unsubscribes all records that it deems duplicates of the main subscriber record. As a result, the number of "unsubscribers" in your account will spike; this will be most notable in:

• the Unsubscribes by Month chart on the Dashboard and
• the reports that you run in Admin at:
  • Contacts > Search > Subscribers
  • Contacts > Reports > Unsubscribes
  • Contacts > Reports > Unsubscribes by Day

Refer to Impacts of Unsubscribed duplicate records, below, for more information about these unsubscribes and how to exclude them from reports in order to ensure a more accurate picture of your unsubscribe activity during the period in which you de-duped your records.

Future records

IMPORTANT: Be sure to review the important caveats in Email address changes in order to fully understand the implications of changing a user's email address after the One-to-Many Sync process.

Future subscriber records that are added to your Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional account via an integration sync are automatically checked for a duplicate email address. If the email address is:

• a duplicate, the subscriber record is added to the existing main subscriber record in Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional.
• not a duplicate, the subscriber record is used to create a new record in Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional.

Remote IDs in subscriber upload files

If you are uploading a list of subscribers via an upload file and that file includes remote IDs, you have to indicate the source of your integration. (If your upload file does not have remote IDs, this information is not applicable.)

NOTE: This is required if the file has remote IDs. If the integration is not indicated, the upload will fail.

1. At step 1 of the upload process, check the Specify integration source box.
2. Click the dropdown and choose your integration.

TIP: You can do this either before or after choosing the file, but you must do so before you click Next.

Email address changes

In the traditional One-to-One Sync in Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional, subscriber email addresses can be updated because the Remote ID is the criterion for matching up database records. However, with One-to-Many Sync, subscriber email addresses are the sole criterion for determining duplicate database records, so changing them could have unforeseen consequences.

As a result, there are two important caveats in regards to email-address changes.

Caveat 1

The email address of the main subscriber record in Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional cannot be changed. This ensures that the main subscriber record:

• maintains its association with any of its duplicate records and
• preserves the connection to the subscriber's historical data (e.g., sent mailings) in those duplicate records.

Caveat 2

If the email address of the main subscriber record is changed in an external/integrated database, a new record will be created in Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional upon the next sync.

• That new record will not have any association with historical data for the subscriber.
• The historical data will not be deleted or archived, it is just no longer associated to the subscriber.

Remote Subscribers column

The Remote Subscribers column can be added to the Subscribers list in two places in the Admin interface.

• Contacts > Search
• Target Group > Subscribers

To add the Remote Subscribers column:

1. Click Columns above the table to open the column-chooser.
2. Click the plus symbol (+) next to Remote Subscribers to move it to the "selected" items list.

TIP: You can drag and drop the "selected" items up and down to set their left-to-right display order.

The Remote Subscribers column displays all remote subscriber records that are linked to the main subscriber record, based on having a matching email address.

Sources and Remote IDs

The Source and Remote ID of any subscriber records that have a matching email address are:

• stored in a separate table in Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional and
• linked to the main subscriber record.

This ensures that the subscriber's historical data is preserved and remains available.

NOTE: This applies to duplicate email addresses within the same integration as well. Their respective Sources and Remote IDs are saved in a separate table and linked to the main subscriber record.

Subscriptions

This section describes how subscriptions are managed when de-duping subscriber records.

By default, the de-dupe process marks the main subscriber record as Active, as long as all of the associated remote subscriber records allow email communications.

This means that if even one of the associated remote subscriber records, synced from an integration, prohibits email communications, the main subscriber record is marked as Unsubscriber.

Impacts of Unsubscribed duplicate records

The de-dupe process automatically unsubscribes all records that it deems duplicates of the main subscriber record. This results in an expected spike in the number of "unsubscribers" in your account.

This section describes where those spikes will be most apparent and how, in some places, you can exclude the de-dupe unsubscribes in order to get a more accurate picture of your unsubscribe activity during the period in which you de-duped your records.

TIP: All duplicate records that were unsubscribed by the de-dupe process have the same "unsubscribed" date and time. This is shown below in the Unsub Date column of the Subscribers list.

Unsubscribes in Dashboard charts

The Unsubscribes by Month chart offers a visual representation of your unsubscribes. Any duplicate records that are unsubscribed by the de-dupe process will automatically be included in the chart.

• The example below shows an uncharacteristic spike in the number of unsubscribes in Jan 2024 when the de-dupe process unsubscribed more than 1,600 duplicate records.

NOTE: This is an expected consequence of the de-dupe process.

Unsubscribes in Admin reports

Any duplicate records that are unsubscribed by the de-dupe process will automatically be included in several Unsubscribe-based reports in Admin.

Contacts reports

Two reports under Contacts > Reports have a Cancel Method option that you can use to isolate the records (by email address) that were unsubscribed as "duplicates" by the de-dupe process.

• For both of these reports, set Cancel Method to Duplicate Email Address, as shown.
• The Unsubscribe Date settings aren't necessary because all of the duplicate records that were unsubscribed by the de-dupe process have the same "unsubscribed" date and time.

Learn more about these and other reports in Subscriber Reports.

Unsubscribers Report

Unsubscribers by Day Report

Subscribers list

There are two settings for reports on the Subscribers list page (Contacts > Search) that you might find useful.

Learn more about these and other reports in Contact Search.

Current Status = Unsubscribed

This report returns all unsubscribed records, irrespective of why or how the unsubscribe occurred, so the "de-dupe" unsubscribes won't be obvious in this report.

TIP: If you want to isolate the records that were unsubscribed by the de-dupe process and you know when the de-duping occurred, use the date fields.

1. Click the dropdown and choose Unsubscribed.

Subscription Action = Unsubscribed

1. Click the dropdown and choose Unsubscribed.

Now you've got two options:

Option 1 - Exclude the duplicates

To exclude the de-dupe unsubscribes from the report:

1. Check the Select All box.
2. Scroll down and uncheck the Duplicate Email Address box.
3. Click Update.

Option 2 - Display only the duplicates

To include only the de-dupe unsubscribes in the report:

1. Scroll down and check the Duplicate Email Address box.
2. Make sure no other boxes are checked.
3. Click Update.