Can Marketo make updates to the Account object in Salesforce?
Out of the box when you get your new Marketo instance and go through connecting it with Salesforce we restrict ourselves from making any changes to the Account object in Salesforce.
You are probably use to seeing two way data sync for all objects such as Leads and Contacts, however Account works in a single direction:
We have made this design decision in part due to the following scenario:
- John Doh works for Marketo but also runs a small business on the side
- Marketo currently has about 200 employees
- He has filled out a form with "Marketo" as his company
- The next time he fills out a form he does it on behalf of his own business and changes the company name in the form to "John's Small Business" but fails to change the Email Address
- If Account Write permissions are enabled, everyone in SFDC associated to Marketo (all 200 people) will now be associated to John's Small Business!
As such we have decided to stop Marketo from making any updates to the Account object out of the box. If you want to enable Marketo to make Account level updates in Salesforce we can definitely enable this for you however you must make considerations and move forwardcautiously so that you do not run into any unwanted behavior.
If you want Marketo to update all Account fields except for Account Name, you can accomplish this by making use of the "Block Field Updates" feature. This can help stop any updates from happening in the Marketo database from sources such as Form Fill-Out, List Import...
Once you have given this topic enough thought and planned out which fields you will be blocking from updates and from which sources, you can:
- Ask your enablement manager for this change if you are in the enablement process
- Submit a support ticket if you are out of enablement and flying solo
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