In June 2024, Adobe deprecated Marketo Measure fields on the SFDC Lead/Contact objects. This means that new downloads of the Marketo Measure install package in Salesforce will no longer insert custom Lead/Contact fields, and the integration automation will no longer copy data from Measure Touchpoints to Lead/Contact fields.
Why was the change implemented in Marketo Measure?
Performance, cost, and market timing. This change is expected to reduce customers’ Salesforce API costs by 10%. Furthermore, these extract, transform, and load (ETL) jobs cause the highest number of errors in the Measure integration.
However, the market timing is favorable for this change. More and more teams are integrating custom objects into their RevOps data models, and familiarity with referencing custom objects is increasing. As system architecture complexity increases, analytics and campaign teams are better equipped to reference source data on custom objects.
How to adjust to this change?
Your team has a couple of options:
1. Lean in and reset processes to align with this best practice. Create new SFDC Report Types for Leads and Contacts with or without Touchpoints. Reset expectations that Touchpoint data is available directly from the Touchpoints, and not copied to a secondary location.
2. Recreate automation in SFDC to push Touchpoint data to the Lead/Contact for business critical fields. If Marketo, or other systems, are triggering off of Measure data on the Lead/Contact, and bringing in Touchpoint data isn’t a viable option, then work with your CRM admin to replicate the automation that Adobe is deprecating.
Let’s take a closer look at how to execute these changes in CRM.
Creating new SFDC report types
Create new Report Types for Leads and Contacts with or without Touchpoints. Recreate all existing SFDC reports that use the deprecated fields. Make sure to add the Touchpoint Position (FT and/or LC) filter to each report.
See the Release Notes for more information.
Creating SFDC flows
Before creating the flow, identify the specific data value(s) you are trying to leverage (campaign, source, channel etc.) to prevent unnecessary API calls. Once the Touchpoint data has been identified, create new custom Lead/Contact fields, since the deprecated fields are expected to be removed from CRM via a package update. Give read-only access to these new fields to prevent users or 3rd-party integrations from overriding Touchpoint data.
If a backfill of Touchpoint data is needed, create a report of missing Touchpoints, and use the Salesforce Data Loader to write values to Lead/Contact fields.
There are many ways to design flows in Salesforce. The following is one approach which uses two flows: one for Lead fields and one for Contact fields.
1. Define your start criteria
Set your record-triggered flow to start when a Touchpoint record is created or updated. Set entry conditions for the flow to trigger only when the fields of interest are present upon create or changed. This minimizes unnecessary flow executions and helps to conserve your org’s resources.
2. Evaluate changes by Touchpoint position of interest
Use a decision element to group changes based on the Touchpoint position. Decision elements can be configured to allow only certain types of Touchpoints to make data value changes on the Lead/Contact.
Here we are grouping the FT Touchpoint position trigger to update multiple FT fields on the Lead/Contact.
3. Update first touch fields
Use an update records element to update records related to the Touchpoint that triggered the flow. Use one element per field. The record selector allows you to pass data through multiple levels of related objects using lookup relationships established when the objects were created.
In this case, we associate the triggering record to the Bizible Person and then to the Lead or Contact. See syntax below for the record selection paths:
{!$Record.bizible2__Bizible_Person__r.bizible2__Lead__r}
or
{!$Record.bizible2__Bizible_Person__r.bizible2__Contact__r}
Once the related records path is set, map the Touchpoint field to the corresponding first touch Lead/Contact field.
The steps for this example are as follows:
- Create an Update Records element.
- Set the Name to “Marketing Channel (FT)”.
- Find records to update by selecting “Update records related to the Bizible touchpoint record that triggered the flow.”
- Select Related Records by setting the path from the triggering record (i.e. Touchpoint object), to the Bizible Person object (i.e. Person ID), to the Lead object.
- Under the “Set Field Values for the Lead Records” section, choose “bizible2__Marketing_Channel_FT__c” for the destination field.
- For the source value, select the triggering record, and choose the “Marketing Channel – Path” field.
4. Repeat for all fields that need mapping
Repeat this process for all first touch fields in your decision element, and then all fields in subsequent decision elements.
Personalize these examples to your use cases
Take these screenshots and examples as a basis of what can be built for your team, and have your SFDC admin personalize the approach for your organization. Use the following process for reliable results:
- Start by identifying what data you need moved between objects.
- Write out the trigger conditions for updating the Lead/Contact.
- Group update record elements by triggers.
- Create a written testing plan with specific steps to validate and expected results for each test case. A robust testing plan is required to identify overlooked scenarios that will be mishandled by your automation.
This material was developed by Amanda Giacobassi, Adobe Marketo Engage Architect Master and Salesforce Certified Administrator.
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