Bad Data List Load

[Tara_Rowe]

It seems a list was loaded into Marketo with bad data. Meaning the excel file was sorted incorrectly and therefore now the emails are not matching the contact names. This is not a easy fix as it contains approx 3000 contacts. It also happened in January 2016 and we only found out now.

We are manually scrubbing the file at this point, but are there any ideas on what to do when a load to marketo was bad data how to best correct it? I do not think deleting all the contacts from the static list would work well and likely mess up the database further. Our best option as of now is to correct it and reload to have Marketo override the information would be my assumption. Is there a solution anyone has come up with for Bad Data practice or cleaning up.

Yikes....

[Anonymous]

Hi Tara,

I believe once you have scrubbed the Excel file (and converted it to a CSV or Unicode file, of course), you can just import it again and that should correct the situation (assuming none of the fields populated by the import are blocked from updates). I would test this first with a small batch (say 3 records) first.

As for general rules for bad data cleanup - it depends on the situation and on what data needs to be corrected.

Denise

[Colin_Mann]

As Marketo is based on an email address I also think you can do this and I am fairly sure I have done this myself. I agree about testing it first though.

I hate issues like this - we've all faced it!

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Not necessarily a solution for bad data cleanup, but I would look into blocking fields from list updates... This could have prevented some of the issues you had. It depends on if you think the data that you get from lists would be more or less accurate than what you already have in your database.

Block Updates to a Field - Marketo Docs - Product Docs