Advice on using SFDC Queues/Assignment Rules?

[Anonymous]

Hi Community,

I am embarking on changing our model from Marketo syncing some leads to SFDC to Marketo syncing all leads (mirroring the databases) and utilizing SFDC Queues with Assignment Rules to keep the cold leads in a holding tank until they deserve to be presented to sales for qualifying. We want to do this to reduce duplicates from being created by sales reps in SFDC as well as a few other reasons. I would love some feedback from others who have done this because I have not found documentation on how to do this. Here are some things I am wondering...

1. I have made a queue in SF called "Mkting Holding Tank" but I can't get my head around what the assignment rule should be doing. It's likely something simple but the options in SFDC aren't making sense to me. What criteria need to be met in order to put all new leads into this queue?
2. What if a new lead is created in Marketo, it runs through a trigger campaign in Marketo: If lead is created > sync lead to SF > assign to "Marketing Holding Tank", and it is already in SF as a contact? From what I am reading a duplicate is created. Is there a second process that handles this? It won't demote them to a lead but what should be done?
3. Once all of the above is working, Marketo is listening for certain actions that move leads out of this queue. We have scoring set up to listen and certain interesting moments also push people to sales. To move leads out of the holding tank can I just use a Marketo Campaign saying "change Lead Owner" or does something need to be configured in SF too?

Any insights would be much appreciated as I don't want to be messing up both systems, yikes. 

Thanks!!

[Anonymous]

Let me do some more investigation and reply further to your questions.

One comment. It is better to avoid lead assignment logic scattered across both the systems Marketo and SFDC. Either do all assignments in Marketo or using SFDC LARs. Mix and match might create issues down the line for maintanance etc.


Rajesh Talele

[Josh_Hill13]

Mary, this is usually a great idea. As Rajesh noted, it is often best to have a central system moving the leads around.

1. Holding Tank Queue - this is only for SFDC Leads. 
Marketo can have a central flow that says Net New Leads get assigned to Holding Queue. We know it is net new because it has SFDC TYpe=EMPTY
SFDC Contacts already exist, so this is not necessary for them. But keep in mind if you assign a Contact to a Queue, it duplicates the record as an SFDC Leads.

2. Existing records are ok because Marketo will have deduped it (by email address) and your flow in #1 will be ok. If the record isn't deduped by email, then a new dupe is created.

3. Moving Leads Out of the Queue
I usually have at least 2 flows handling this and there are two methods:

SFDC Method - trigger a Change Owner if Lead Status=MQL, then run LARs. This will require special Apex trigger because LARs run once by themselves.

Marketo Method - trigger MQL:

SFDC Lead: Change Owner from Queue to X
SFDC Contact - assign task/alert to Owner