Contacts Disappear from SFDC

[Anonymous]

Has anyone ever experienced a situation in which a SFDC contact disappears but their record and activity still show up in Marketo? We had a long-standing contact inexplicably vanish from SFDC, but their record still existed in Marketo. When we clicked on the Marketo lead record to try to find out more info, then it re-populated the information as a lead in SFDC (supposed to be a contact). Does anyone know why or how this might happen? 

[Anonymous]

Hi Rachel,
The behavior you described would happen if the Contact was deleted in SFDC. Contacts that are deleted in SFDC are not deleted from Marketo so all the information is there. Then when the record was synced to SFDC (or was added to an SFDC Campaign), it would be pushed back into SFDC as a new lead. Marketo can't create Contacts, only Leads.

You need to understand who/what deleted the Contact in SFDC to begin with and address that issue. It was not Marketo that deleted the Contact.

Hope this helps.

[Kimi_Heskett1]

I was going to say the same as Sheila, sounds like it was deleted in SFDC.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Shiela and Kimi! I should have included this in the original post, but the contact was not deleted in SFDC. We know this because:

a) The contact was not in the SFDC recycle bin
b) The contact's territory owner is the only one who would edit it and he did not delete the contact

Any other ideas? Thanks again!

Rachel