Connect Marketo record to an existing SFDC Contact

[Daniel_Peacock]

Greetings everyone! I have a fresh new Marketo record that came in via web form, and they are being blocked from SalesForce. Upon checking the error message in the activity log, I see that SalesForce is returning the following error: 

{DUPLICATES_DETECTED: You're trying to create a duplicate record we suggest you select an existing record.}

Upon searching in SFDC, I found a Contact that clearly pre-dates the Marketo record, that seems to have never synced over to Marketo. I've seen this a handful of times with our systems, as we have a number of records in SFDC that existed before we integrated our Marketo instance who have stubbornly refused to sync over to Marketo's database. My question is, do I have a way to force the two systems to make the connection between the Marketo record and the existing Contact in SFDC? To my knowledge, there are no fields in the SFDC Contact that would be "hiding" it from Marketo's sync user, so I'm a bit at a loss as to why they haven't synced. Appreciate any help! 

[Zoe_Forman]

Following with interest as our Salesforce/Marketo integration is only 2 weeks old and I have also seen a sync error like this.

[Darshil_Shah1 · Accepted solution]

Okay, you're seeing that duplicate error because most likely you have a custom de-duplication rule set in SFDC that is preventing duplicate record creation in SFDC. Additionally, I'd double-check whether the contact records that aren't syncing to Marketo are even accessible to Marketo's sync user profile in the first place, access to fields is cool, but for instance, there could be a possibility that the sync user isn't able to see the records under a particular record type altogether. Additionally, your best way out here is to update the sync user's permissions so it can see the record and once it gets synced over to Marketo, merge it with the existing Marketo-only record. Just adding a note here that when you merge a contact and a Marketo-only/lead record, the contact record always exists. See this KB article for more details on understanding merges in Marketo.
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[Zoe_Forman]

Super helpful on my Salesforce sync learning curve!

[Daniel_Peacock]

Thanks Darshil, your note about checking whether the record was accessible by the sync user pointed me in the right direction. The Contact in this case was a very specific record type (a sort of "sub-category" of Contact) that was invisible to our sync user with its current permissions. Excellent call-out, thanks for the advice!