Can you identify leads that have been 'reactivated' in Marketo (after they'd previously been deleted)?

[Cherie_Nelson1]

Hi everyone,

To manage our lead database limits, we currently delete anyone that unsubscribes and is then inactive for a period of time.

What I have noticed is that when these leads are re-acquired by another program (say 4 months after they were deleted they fill in a form on the website) they are marked as 'acquired by' that program and therefore reporting as a new lead when I'd rather classify them as 'reactivated'.

So in summary, I'm looking for a way to report/identify leads who are truly new to our business (no prior history in Marketo) vs those who are have been re-activated (for lack of a better word!) which would mean they existed at some stage, were deleted and then re-added upon engagement again.

Any idea on the filters I could use to produce a report of new vs reactivated?

Appreciate your help!

What I'd like to do

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

If you're deleting them, then the only memory Marketo keeps is the true value of the Unsubscribed field (e.g. the Durable Unsubscribe feature).

But this wouldn't be enough to identify people who are (re)created with Unsubscribed explicitly set to false upon creation, AFAIK.

What you can do instead (and highly recommend it) is offboard people to a Google Sheet before deleting them.

Then, whenever someone is created, use a webhook to bring back whatever fields/milestones you put in the Sheet. You won't be bringing back their whole history or anything close to that. But a few interesting fields can be stored & restored when people get reactivated.

[Cherie_Nelson1]

Great suggestion... as I also export and save before deleting, I'd have the data stored already.

Not sure why I hadn't thought of doing a manual lookup on those files until now 😂 although the idea of a webhook accessing a google sheet is far more efficient. Thanks!