Contacts with multiple email addresses

Overview

Contacts can have more than one usable email address, for example, a personal email and a work email, and you can choose which one your messages are sent to. Learn more about how to set this up.

Creating a custom email field

If you want to store and send to an additional email address (e.g., work, personal, secondary), you’ll first need to create a custom email field. This field must be of type Email.

To create one:

1. Go to Settings > Customer Data > Fields.

2. Click New custom field and choose Create person field.

3. Enter a name for your field (e.g., Business email, Secondary email).

4. Set the Field type to Email and click OK to save.



Using secondary emails in email campaigns

When sending an email campaign from the Campaigns tab, you can choose which email address to send to. This is configured on the Setup page under Email settings.

Email field to send to

• Primary email (default): Sends to the contact’s primary/system email field.
• Other email: Choose a custom email field (e.g., Work Email, Secondary Email) to send to instead.

If the selected email is blank

You can control what happens when the chosen email field has no value:

• Don’t send: The email will not be sent to that contact and will be marked as invalid.
• Fallback to other email: Choose another email field to use as a backup if the selected field is empty.

If both the selected email and the fallback email fields are empty, the email will be marked as invalid.

Open rate optimization

If you have open rate optimization enabled for an email campaign, you can choose whether the resend should go to the same email address used in the original send or to a fallback email address.

• The same email: The resend is delivered to the same email field used previously.
• Fallback email: The resend is delivered to an alternative email field you select.

If the fallback email field is empty, the system will automatically resend to the original email address used in the first send.

Learn more about open rate optimization.

Using secondary emails in journeys

In Journeys, you can also choose which email address your messages are sent to.

You can configure this in the Email settings section of the Journey. The available options are the same as for campaigns (selecting the email field, and setting fallback behaviour if the chosen field is empty).

Email activities

All email-related activity is always tracked against the contact profile of the record.

For example, if you send an email to a secondary/custom email field and the contact unsubscribes, the contact profile will be marked as unsubscribed. You will no longer be able to send to that contact, even if you try using a different email field in the future.

The same logic applies to all other email activities, including bounces and spam complaints.

In addition, the system automatically includes the To email parameter in the Sent email activity. This shows the exact email address the message was delivered to, giving you clear visibility when reviewing a contact’s activity history.

Unique identifiers

You can configure your unique identifier settings to match one incoming email against two different fields in your existing contacts.

To handle this, you would set Email as your primary key. Then, under Check against another field, select Secondary email.



Learn more about unique identifiers.