Using the Sync Lead to SFDC Flow Step to Insert a Marketo Only Record

Brian_Law_MKTO
Marketo Employee
Marketo Employee

Here are some tips on using the Sync Lead to SFDC flow step to insert a Marketo only record into SFDC:

 

  1. All records in Marketo should have an email address.
  2. If someone will be calling the lead remember to capture the phone number before inserting the record into SFDC.
  3. Make sure your records have values for SFDC’s required fields Company & Last Name otherwise SFDC will reject the record. I recommend working with your lead follow-up team before deciding to insert new records using default values. You don't want your sales team complaining that the default value is worthless. You can set default values if you have admin privileges. Go to Admin> Salesforce> Sync Options and set a default value for the Default Lead Company. Marketo will pass this value in the sync when the company name is not otherwise provided, which will prevent the sync from breaking.
  4. Determine if there are any validation rules for new records.
  5. Learn how your SFDC assignment rules work and determine whether you need country, state, postal code, industry or any other information to properly route the record.
  6. Determine if you should assign your records using auto-assignment or set to a specific user or queue.
    • Caution: Salesforce does not allow "Contacts" to be assigned to lead queues.  In this case Marketo will create a duplicate "Lead" in Salesforce. Thus, be careful of allowing SFDC Contacts in Marketo to flow through a smart campaign using the Sync Lead to SFDC flow step and assigning the record to a queue.
  7. Determine if you should set the Lead Status to a default value like "Marketing Qualified Lead."
  8. Remember Marketo can only insert new records into SFDC as Leads, not Contacts.
  9. If you are also going to add the record to a SFDC Campaign, make sure the Sync Lead to SFDC flow step happens first.
  10. To make it easy to troubleshoot issues in the future I recommend documenting everything.
  11. Ideally it is best to test using a Marketo and SFDC sandbox. If you don't have a sandbox, at least sync up with your lead follow-up about your testing and use a naming convention so you can easily delete all the tests later.

 

 

When to Use the Flow Step

When I first started using Marketo I ran a lot of online events. I was generating a lot of new leads and all the important fields on my form for routing such as state, country, phone were required. I pushed the records to sales immediately in the same triggered smart campaign I used to send out the confirmation email. Today many people use a centralized campaign to insert their Marketo only records into SFDC. Using a centralized campaign is better if you are using a scoring threshold to decide whether a record should be synced to SFDC. It also makes it easier to trouble shoot issues.

 

 

Here are some additional resources for learning about the Marketo integration with SFDC.

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