Change the unique identifier from email address to a custom field.

[Danny_Famularo]

Hi, I'm new to Marketo and am transitioning from SalesForce Marketing Cloud (AKA ExactTarget). In our business it is very common for there to be two accounts attached to a single email address. So for example, there could be a husband and wife, each of which have separate account number (i.e. 10000 and 10001) however they share the same email address jsmith@household.com. When we send out an email, we need to to ensure that each of them both get their account relevant email as there may be different content within them. In ExactTarget, we were required to change the "subscriber key" from email address to a custom field (i.e. "AccountNumber") to allow for these instances. Is it possible to do something similar with Marketo?

[Anonymous]

Hi Danny -  I am keen to find a solution for the same issue.  We understand that if we can't add leads into Marketo via the SOAP or CSV upload with the same email address nor keep those records up-to-date.  But I am seeking to find a way to be able to allow a couple to have their own names & flags as well as share an email address.  Have you found a way ?

[SanfordWhiteman]

I don't understand your remark about the SOAP (API). You can insert/update leads based on another dedupe key, not Email Address, if you use the API. What you can't easily do is have a compound dedupe key spanning multiple fields.

[Anonymous]

Hi Sanford

You can insert/update leads based on another dedupe key, not Email Address, if you use the API.

To confirm, you are saying that we can insert or update Leads in Marketo, and they could have the same email address, as long as we identify another dedupe key.

Is that right ?

For example we want to have

Lead Id Con ID Email Name Interest

001 1 freshwjj@gmail.com<mailto:freshwjj@gmail.com> Jen Health

002 2 freshwjj@gmail.com<mailto:freshwjj@gmail.com> Rob Poverty

And be able to update the records Lead 001 or 002 independently

We have something called a ‘CON ID” which is unique to each record in our CRM. If we made that the dedupe key, could we use the REST API

Can we make that change – change the dedupe key now, with a populated Lead table ?

Cheers

Jen

Jennifer Freshwater | Project Co-ordinator | Oxfam Australia

132-138 Leicester Street, Carlton VIC 3053

Tel: +613 9289 951 | Fax: +613 9347 1725 | www.oxfam.org.au<http://www.oxfam.org.au/>

[SanfordWhiteman]

To confirm, you are saying that we can insert or update Leads in Marketo, and they could have the same email address, as long as we identify another dedupe key.

We have something called a ‘CON ID” which is unique to each record in our CRM. If we made that the dedupe key, could we use the REST API

Can we make that change – change the dedupe key now, with a populated Lead table ?

It's not a persistent change to the database, it's only a parameter of a REST API call. Marketo won't retain any memory of what you use for deduping in different scenarios, and you can use different dedupe keys for different tasks. There are restrictions on eligible data types but your String key will be fine.

[Anonymous]

Hi Sanford

I am following up on the first part of the question - above, with some information on that.

We are currently using POST /rest/v1/leads.json with ‘email’ as the lookup field and a ‘createOnly’ action.

Would it be possible to create new leads in Marketo by using a custom field like ‘oxConId’ as a lookup field?

Thanks

Jen

[David_Everly]

Yes, here is an example of using a custom field as lookup field:

REQUEST

POST /rest/v1/leads.json

{

    "input": [

        {

        "oxConId": "2",

        "company":"Oxfam Australia",

        "title":"Project Co-ordinator",

        "firstName":"Jennifer",

        "lastName":"Freshwater"

        }

    ],

    "action":"createOnly",

    "lookupField":"oxConId"

}

RESPONSE

{

    "requestId": "6b77#15f4f9500ac",

    "result": [

        {

            "id": 318999,

            "status": "created"

        }

    ],

    "success": true

}

[SanfordWhiteman]

Why don't you test using a different lookup field, which currently has no matching leads, and see?

[Anonymous]

Sanford - Testing would be the trick here yes, but Developer time is scarce, it needs JSON knowledge & access to test environment to do that test.

Jennifer Freshwater | Project Co-ordinator | Oxfam Australia

132-138 Leicester Street, Carlton VIC 3053

Tel: +613 9289 951 | Fax: +613 9347 1725 | www.oxfam.org.au<http://www.oxfam.org.au/>

[SanfordWhiteman]

Well, it'll work as described, but obvs. should be tested internally as well. Shouldn't need a whole test environment to test insertion of a single lead (of course it's better to test things in a sandbox, but you're putting your instance in the same place day-to-day just by having lead forms).

[SanfordWhiteman]

First, to be clearer about terminology: in Marketo, the email address is not actually a unique identifier. Not only is it not mandatory (in database terms, that means that all the leads with a blank email address in fact have the same email address) but, as you know, there's far from end-to-end protection against duplicate emails.  Email is merely the default deduplication key when using certain (but not all) Marketo functions. Custom settings exist so that some functions use the email address + one other field as the dedupe key instead, but that still doesn't make it a unique id, and still, not all functions will use the custom dedupe key.

The only guaranteed unique identifiers in Marketo are the Lead ID, Unique Code, and Unique Name. Other fields might be treated (by some functions and outside apps) as if they are unique, but Marketo will not ensure uniqueness. An example is when you sync an outside system to Marketo that has a special guaranteed-unique field associated with each of its records. As long as Marketo settings and flows are careful to never touch that field, it'll stay unique in Marketo as well. But it can still be changed within Marketo and the system won't blink.

Anyway, to your question: the Marketo feature that stops the same batch flow step from sending to the same email address more than once isn't deduplication per se. It's a special feature to stop spam-like behavior, and isn't related to create/update deduping. To work around this feature, have your Batch Smart Campaign call Request Campaign on a related Trigger SC. Everyone who qualifies for the Batch SC will then get the email, since the email step is standalone.

[Anonymous]

Sanford Whiteman​

Hi, thanks for explanation.

Right now we are integrating with Marketo and also would like to have several leads sharing the same email address.

We are using Marketo Form created in Design Studio and we have added embed code to our site. This form has hidden field that is populated with uuid (generated on our side) in order to distingush our leads.

So as you can guess, each new lead just updates the existing same email lead, because deduplication key for the form is set to email. I know that API has functionality to easily change this deduplication key during API call (it is called lookupField in API reference), but we aim to use Marketo Form functionality, not API.

As you have stated:

Sanford Whiteman wrote:

Email is merely the default deduplication key when using certain (but not all) Marketo functions. Custom settings exist so that some functions use the email address + one other field as the dedupe key instead

Could you, please, tell us where can we change the custom settings for the Marketo form, so that our custom hidden field with generated uuid will be used as deduplication key?

[SanfordWhiteman]

Could you, please, tell us where can we change the custom settings for the Marketo form, so that our custom hidden field with generated uuid will be used as deduplication key?

The compound key is implemented by Support on the back end. You can't do it in the UI.

[Anonymous]

Sanford Whiteman​

Ok.

So could the Support change deduplication key from email to our custom key for our particular Marketo Form?

If not, could Marketo Form be fully replaced by API usage? Is lead creation the only thing Marketo Form does or is there some additional logic that should be reproduced by other API calls as well?

[Steven_Vanderb3]

Alex Saukou wrote:

Sanford Whiteman

Ok.

So could the Support change deduplication key from email to our custom key for our particular Marketo Form?

If not, could Marketo Form be fully replaced by API usage? Is lead creation the only thing Marketo Form does or is there some additional logic that should be reproduced by other API calls as well?

Support can only change the deduplication key to email and your custom key.  Not to just your custom key.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, that will work.

What information should we supply and where in order to make such changes by the Support?

[Kevin_Weisenber]

Click Help in the upper right of your instance and then customer support. Alternatively if you are logged into the Marketing Nation forum (where we are connecting) there is a support button across the top of the page. Once in the support section there will be a submit A Case button towards the top of the page. Go ahead and open a case and explain to support what you are trying to accomplish and the new rules you want implemented.