In the digital world of Marketing Automation Marketo is one of the front runner tools, but since it’s a Marketing Automation tool it is dependent on CRM to keep up its promises to its customers. Among the CRM’s Salesforce is name everybody is familiar with, so the Combination of Marketo with sales force satisfies all your needs and Marketo has provided a very good in-depth documentation for this integration. If you want to know more about it, you should read the MARKETO-Salesforce DOCUMENTATION. But here I would like to consolidate the Tips that I have learned and can help in better sync optimization (fast, more reliable and error free). There are many good blogs and discussions about these on the Marketo community as well.

Optimize the Integration between Marketo and SFDC

The syncing of a lot of fields can impact performance. Here is a list of things you can do to optimize the field sync between the two systems.

1. LIMIT THE NUMBER OF EXCHANGES:

Review the activity log of a few records (leads and contacts). If there are a lot of data value changes for fields we don’t ever use on a form or to segment your database, they are probably fields we synced over unnecessarily. If the value of a field is changing every day, the field is probably a formula field. Since it is difficult to use a formula field in Marketo I would recommend not syncing it.

1. DICTIONARY OF FIELDS:

Always make a dictionary listing the purpose of each field you have in the system. Export a list of all the fields in Marketo (Marketo only and Synced from SFDC).

• Lookup for the fields you may want to check.
• Check in SFDC, if the field is from SFDC, etc.

1. NOTE DOWN THE FIELDS:

If there are fields that are not used/ required by the sales team in SFDC i.e. not used in the marketing programs on the recurring basis, those should not be synced.

1. STOP THE SYNC OF NOT REQUIRED FIELDS:

To Stop the sync of fields, SFDC Admin should hide the field in the profile for the Marketo user and similarly hide the fields in Marketo as well.

NOTE: The data Sync between Marketo and SFDC should be of good QUALITY (Less and only the required fields).

Do Not Ignore Marketo Notifications

Many of us hardly pay attention to the Marketo Notification, but many errors and their solutions can be simply solved by just going through the notifications. 

Here are some for reference:

Notification		Solutions
Salesforce Sync Error: Unable to update Lead	Unable to update Lead in Salesforce from Marketo.	Check that the SFDC profile for Marketo sync user has the correct access level(permissions). The error can be caused insufficient permission.
Salesforce Sync Warning: Change in Salesforce Field	Multiple fields updated in Salesforce.	Check your assets(forms) and verify these field names. Then re-approve the landing pages to update the live version.
Salesforce Sync Error	An unexpected error occurred.	The error is not caused by Marketo and there is no data loss and all updates will eventually sync. Any investigation into the cause of the error needs to be done in Salesforce.
Salesforce Sync Error: Unable to update Lead	Unable to update Lead in Salesforce from Marketo.	Check that the SFDC validation rule is met for the field specified. Create campaigns from Marketo if necessary to put the correct value. Resync lead as needed.

Similarly, if one keeps a close eye on notifications, many issues can be resolved quickly avoiding escalations.