Pulling Data from Google Sheets

[Eric_Nguyen2]

Our inside sales team has established a workflow that uses Google spreadsheets to manage their initial prospecting efforts. They would like to move the data into SFDC, but want to avoid the manual upload process...not to mention that SFDC doesn't natively dedupe. It's not ideal, but it's reality.

Has anyone tried setting up an integration between Google Sheets and Marketo? Simply put, I'd like the data in Google Sheets (name, email, company, etc.) to populate a Marketo List...perhaps in a Program to measure the lead generation efforts of each individual Rep. Then at the very least, each prospect could be deduped via the "upload" process.

Thoughts?
 

[Justin_Norris1]

I've come pretty close to doing this, but I had a dedicated data developer using an ETL tool (Pentaho) to pull the data from Google Sheets and talk to the Marketo API. So totally doable but you would need those types of resources. 

Is it possible to do a one-time upload and then move the whole process into SFDC? (I'm guessing not since you're asking..but thought I'd check). 

What is it that they are trying to achieve using the Google sheet? 

Justin Norris | Perkuto
 

[SanfordWhiteman]

Y'know, I'm positive you could link the sheet directly to Marketo using the Google Apps Script URL Fetch service (to do a POST).   But I can't say I've done it.

[Eric_Nguyen2]

Hi Justin,

Thanks for the suggestion. We don't have an ETL tool at the moment, so that's not an available option. Do you think there is another method that will allow us to push/pull the data to Marketo without pulling the trigger on an ETL tool?

Regarding SFDC, we're actually looking into options using Marketo or SFDC. Do you think it would be easier to do this using SFDC?

In regards to your last question; our inside sales reps use Google Sheets to build prospect lists and track their progress. Its much easier for them to share their notes and progress with managers and partners. It's real-time and collaboration is easy. But at a certain point, moving lead data (e.g. email addresses) into Marketo/SFDC is a manual process that's currently a pain.
 

[Anonymous]

Yes. We used Google Sheets API in past to handle similar requirements.
https://developers.google.com/google-apps/spreadsheets/#fetching_specific_rows_or_columns
A call such as

GET https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/cells/key/worksheetId/private/full?min-row=2&min-col=4&max-col=4

will do.

But this might need some custom development work.

Hope this helps

Rajesh

[Eric_Nguyen2]

Thanks for the suggestion Sanford...

I'm not familiar with Google Apps Scripting, but doing some Googling I came across a vendor called "itduzzit."

https://www.itduzzit.com/connect/marketo-to-google-docs

I think this could work! The use-case that they outline with their connector describes exactly what we need... which is simply moving rows of data from Sheets, to Marketo (create/update lead). I'll see if I can set this up and test it out.

Thanks for pointing me in this direction.

[Justin_Norris1]

Eric, that is a pretty sweet app! Thanks for sharing the find. Our use case was to have an offshore VA build prospect lists on Google sheets that we then loaded in the system, so this would work perfectly for that.

Although you seem close to solving your problem I wanted to mention one other thing with respect to managing sales activities in a spreadsheet. Maybe not super helpful in solving the immediate issue, but just food for thought.

Your company has invested probably at least 5 figures annually on a CRM system so that sales folks can manage their sales activities. And now it sounds like your reps are using a free spreadsheet app to the do same thing, and then creating work for you to move their data into the system where it should have resided in the first place. It seems kind of crazy when you think about it! 🙂

However, even in saying this I don't mean to suggest they are at fault. The "fault" if any is with SFDC, whose outdated interface and inflexibility is clearly not giving them what they need.

Were I in your shoes (and I have no idea what other obstacles you may have, so this is just blue-sky) I would start thinking about how to optimize the Salesforce environment to better meet sales-folks' needs rather than trying to enable them working around the primary systems you have in place.

For example, I have had awesome success with an app called Skuid, which lets you essentially redesign the Salesforce interface in ways you would not imagine. Reps love it because it makes Salesforce a pleasure to use, and admins love it because they can give reps what they want while keeping data where it should be and increase rep productivity.

So just something to think about. Maybe you can tackle the bigger problem here and get a real win for everyone by going to the root of the issue!

Justin Norris | Perkuto

[Justin_Norris1]

If anyone is looking for a solution for this, I've had great success importing data from Google Sheets to Marketo using SyncFrog:

It is plug and play and offers a lot of flexibility at an affordable price. It's great if you are purchasing leads from content syndication -- just set up a sheet and have your vendor paste the data into it. Syncfrog will poll the sheet regularly (up until hourly) and pass the data into Marketo.

Include a campaign reference field and you can send the leads on their way into the right program/campaign. Works great

​Tool now seems to be defunct unfortunately.

[Eric_Nguyen2]

Hey Justin,

Awesome...thanks for following up on this. What you described with SyncFrog was exactly what I had set up with itDuzzit. It was awesome for our specific needs.

That said, I just found out a week ago that itDuzzit got acquired by Intuit, so they're shutting down. They provided existing customers with additional alternatives that I'll list here:

Workato provides an enterprise-grade integration platform with an easy-to-use workflow builder that has features similar to the Duzzit Editor and supports cloud-to-cloud integrations.

Zapier is a popular integration automation tool that supports hundreds of popular cloud applications. Their new multi-step zap feature makes Zapier an option for replacing some kinds of custom duzzit flows.

[Yoav_Guttman1]

@justin - the syncfrog link redirected to a highly NSFW site. perhaps you can remove it.