Adding a field to Contact that was already on Lead - can it be mapped to same field?

[Erica_Harris2]

We have some fields in SFDC on the Lead that we would now like to have on the Contact as well. They are currently mapped to the Lead object only (as they don't yet exist on the Contact). I seem to recall that we need Marketo to map the Contact field to the same field as the Lead field. Is it correct that this is a destructive process that will wipe the data in the Lead field? Does anyone have experience to add? I'm reluctant to work around this by creating new fields on both because of the issues with all of the references to the fields in SFDC and Marketo, and that you can't delete fields in Marketo, only hide them.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Erica,

yes, just make sure the API name of the contact field in SFDC is the same as for the lead, and the mapping will be automatic.

If it is not the case, you can ask support to map them manually.

-Greg

[Erica_Harris2]

Hi Greg,

Will this be non-destructive to the data in those fields on the Lead object? I would hope so...

-Erica

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Erica,

No, it won't.

-Greg

[Josh_Hill13]

+1 on Greg.

To create new fields that are properly mapped, you must create them and map in CRM first, then Marketo will pick them up. It's best not to re-map after data is in there. You could potentially download the data, then re-upload against email address after the mapping is done.

[Jessica_Kao3]

When you are creating fields in SFDC, as stated above, create the same field on the Lead and Contact in SFDC with the same API name.  It also has to be the same type.  IE you can't have the a text field with a size limit of 100 on one and a text field with a size limit of 200 on the other. 

Immediately after (ie don't wait a week).  Click on Map Lead Fields, and map the fields.  Then only one field will show up in Marketo.  If you don't map the field, then two fields will show up in Marketo.  ie

Custom Field (L)

Custom Field (C)

You'll find this on the setup section of SFDC on the Lead Field section in the second section. 

[Anonymous]

Just to be clear, we were adding fields to Contact that were already on Lead (historically, created years ago). I wanted to know whether we could map the contact field to the same Marketo field as the lead field. This worked fine and did not destroy any data, but I did do an export first just in case. Marketo support eventually confirmed that all we needed to do was ensure that the API name was the same. I know it is best practice to create the fields on Lead and Contact at the same time - this is a case of inheriting an existing instance and developing it.

I was not aware that Marketo looked at the lead convert mappings - but I had set these up anyway as it was part of the requirement. Are you sure that it looks at the convert mappings? I can't find any reference to this in the documentation and I always understood that it was the API name that was the link rather than the convert mappings.