Handling Multi-Select Fields from Salesforce in Marketo

[Anonymous]

If you create a multi-select field in Salesforce, it will come over as a String field in Marketo. If multiple values have been selected in Salesforce, they will be separated by a semicolon, e.g. Water;Fire;Wind. Let’s say I then put this String field on a form, and change the Field Type to Select, and allow for multiple selections. If that lead subsequently fills out the form and chooses Earth and Wind, this will overwrite the existing values in the field and the field will now say Earth; Wind. These will resolve correctly in the Salesforce multi-select field.

Now, usually we don’t want to overwrite existing data. So for this reason, we create a separate field in Marketo that we can use on forms. Let’s say I call this “Product for Web Forms” and I use this on the form instead of the original multi-select field from CRM.

Then I create a campaign in Marketo along the lines of this:

Now, if I fill out the form and choose Earth and Wind on the form, the Product for Web Forms field will say Earth; Wind and the Product field will say Water;Fire;Wind;Earth;Wind. Even though it has the same value twice in the Marketo list, this will resolve to the correct four values in the multi-select list in Salesforce.

[Elliott_Lowe1]

Most of the time, we do want a field's existing data to be updated with the latest data including removing/adding values in a multi-select field.  For example, if someone had chosen a set of values in a Product Interest multi-select list a year ago and then submits a form today with a different set of values in the Product Interest multi-select field, we  would want to overwrite their previous values. So in this case, we would not use this method and just use the Product Interest field directly on the form - correct? 

A variation of this method might be desirable If we wanted a historical record, of their previous set of interests.  In that case, we would use a field like your Product for Web Forms field and if its value changes, a smart campaign would copy the values in the Product Interest field into a separate Previous Product Interest field and then copy the values from the Product for Web Forms field into the Product Interest field. 

[Anonymous]

It seems to vary from case to case whether you want to overwrite or append. The case where you overwrite the data each time is very simple and not that interesting for a blog. As you say, you just treat it like a regular picklist and use the original field.

Great point about the historical record use case. I see this a lot for Comment fields and it's a very similar tactic.