Quite recently, a Marketing Nation user asked a question in the community on whether the Durable Unsubscribe feature that comes out of the box in Marketo can be disabled as they manage unsubscribes through SFDC.
Their primary concern was that when people with Unsubscribed = True get re-added or created in Marketo, they start as Unsubscribed.
To give some background (or a refresher, if you will), Marketo updates the master email status when a person’s unsubscribe flag is set from false to true, and:
This change (i.e., Unsubscribed = True) is propagated to other records with the same email address.
If the person is removed and recreated, or if a new record is created with the same email address, the unsubscribed flag will not be overwritten, and the person will start as unsubscribed.
This master unsubscribe status can only be overwritten when the Unsubscribed field is updated to false via the Person Info page, flow step, sync from CRM, or API where a Data Value Change activity gets logged.
Most users would agree when I say that this is an excellent feature, and they need it to prevent sending marketing emails to people who’ve opted out of them. Some users may argue that we can very well create a custom setup in Marketo to mimic the Durable unsubscribe feature (or have it completely managed via CRM), but again, such custom setups are susceptible to campaign execution and/or sync delays. In general, they may not match the robustness of the standard out-of-the-box Durable Unsubscribe feature.
Coming back to the Marketing Nation user’s query, there definitely isn’t a way to turn off or temporarily suspend the Durable Unsubscribe feature in Marketo as an end-user, and I believe that’s a good thing. Additionally, blocking field updates won’t work either, as you can’t block field updates from the system as an input source.
Even if the support team or Marketo’s engineering team is able to turn off the feature for your subscription, I wouldn’t recommend doing so, as there could be legal implications to sending marketing emails to people who have unsubscribed from them.
TL;DR: Marketo's Durable Unsubscribe feature serves a vital role in preventing unwarranted marketing emails, and it can’t be turned off. While custom setups are possible, they may not offer the same level of reliability as the standard OOTB feature. It's essential for marketers to ensure compliance with unsubscribe preferences to maintain a positive sender reputation and adhere to legal requirements.
There is only thing about Durable Unsubscribe that I find mildly unsettling: I think the right to be deleted, which is required under EMEA GDPR, conflicts with the fact that Marketo obviously saves the email address plus the unsubscribed flag even if we delete from the Marketo database. Again: Not a big thing, and I never got complaints about it from clients, but still... ;-)