Delete Leads from Marketo Database But Keep them in Salesforce

[Edem_Jimbo]

My Marketo instance is currently synched to Salesforce and I'd like to delete around 2,000 leads from the Marketo Database. However, is there a way to keep their information in Salesforce so our sales team can still access the data in case we deleted them from Marketo? I appreciate any insights that can help solve this issue.

[Rob_Cummerson]

Hi Edem,

We have had this issue and built a "do not sync" to marketo process. In which we update the lead/Contact in SFDC and then it pushes the update to Marketo, once the "do not sync" box is ticked in Marketo it runs through and process and is deleted. This will not sync back into Marketo as SFDC does not allow it due to the lead/contact being updated.

Happy talk you through our process.

[Dhanikh_P]

Here is something from Marketo product docs, hope this helps.. Delete Person from SFDC - Marketo Docs - Product Documentation

[Carey_Picklesi7]

I concur with what Veronica Holmes​ says above. If you are going to add field that blocks them from coming back to Marketo, a synctoMarketo field is the best practice. I would also recommend the following steps:

- You'll need a way to alert the sales reps that the record isn't syncing to SFDC. (Consider showing the synctoMarketo=True/Falese or creating a Lead Stage that says "Disqualified. Deleted from Marketo"

- Consider if there are ways that a record would qualify to be changed to sycntoMarketo=True and resync to Marketo. Is it because the sales reps moved them to a life style stage? Job title change? Whatever it would be, you may want to build a workflow in SFDC that changes synctomarketo=true

Lastly, if you delete them from Marketo and they are still in SFDC, if that lead comes back into your system, perhaps via a web form or a list import, you are likely to create a duplicate record in SFDC because the record will appear as a new record to Marketo.

[Ankit_Dua]

To keep the leads in Salesforce make sure you keep " Delete from SFDC"- False and you should be good here.

[Edem_Jimbo]

Oddly I don't see the Remove from SFDC option when I tried to delete a person. Where exactly did you go to get this pop up screen if you don't mind sharing?

[Ankit_Dua]

Here, either you can select delete from CRM "False".

If you are deleting decent amount of leads, I would recommend deleting it via smart campaign

In smart list you can say " email address is abc@abc.com and in the flow you will get the option of "delete from sfdc" where you can check it as False

Thanks

Ankit

[Ankit_Dua]

Also, to add here, you will have to hide these leads from Salesforce else once you delete it, these leads will be synced back.

To solve this, you can create a field " Hide from Marketo" and make sure you hide this field from Marketo user and check the field " Hide from Marketo" for the leads which you do not want to sync back to Marketo.

[Veronica_Holme4]

Using "Hide from Marketo" is really not best practice - using the negative can seriously confuse things. You are better off building a "Sync to Marketo" field and marking the ones you DO wish to sync, not the ones you don't.

Have a look at the full guidelines first before making any decisions on this, and have a good read of info on pages such as this. https://nation.marketo.com/community/product_and_support/blog/2017/05/14/instructions-for-creating-a...

[Jon_Wu]

Veronica Holmes​ do you mainly recommend against "Hide from Marketo" because it's a negative? Are there any technical reasons not to go that route?

For an existing database of millions of leads that should be synced by default (and are already synced), a technical reason to go with the negative from the Salesforce side is that you can't add a new field on leads and automatically populate all existing leads with it. You'd have to do a bulk data load. By checking the box, the UX is something that's opted in to, and isn't the default. I think of it kind of like unsubscribe, so if the usual case is to be synced, but you just want to deprecate some people, it seems like having a "Hide from Marketo" field could have some benefits.

[Veronica_Holme4]

Hi Jon

The issue I have with "Hide from Marketo" is not only that it's a negative, but I think it potentially could fool people into thinking you can "hide" something from Marketo that is already synced, which isn't actually true. Ticking that box will stop future syncs, but won't remove that person from the Marketo sync if they've already been synced. It's generally a usability thing. If Syn to Marketo is true, you know they are there already, and can work to exclude.

The best practice is usually "Sync to Marketo", where you deliberately have to put set rules in place to include people in the sync, not to exclude, which in practicality I find easier to manage ongoing. Yes, sometimes it makes the original process more difficult, but ongoing I find it easier.

[Jon_Wu]

Hi Veronica,

Thanks for that insight. I agree that people could be confused into thinking you could hide something that was already synced so I'm trying to think how we could work around that. We're trying to keep a superset of people in our Salesforce instance and trim people from Marketo to save money on people who aren't valuable to email to.

We're about to build this out, but I'm wondering if we could also detect when somebody who was previously synced to Marketo was set to not be synced anymore after a checkbox update in Salesforce.

1. Ideally, if we could detect that sync was turned off for a given lead from the Marketo side, we could just delete them automatically, but it seems like this wouldn't happen since sync would just be blocked and we wouldn't know about it from the Marketo lead's perspective.
2. Maybe we can have a trigger that calls the Marketo API to delete the lead when the checkbox is checked. Downside here is that this requires light programming.
3. Alternatively, we could have 2 checkboxes in Salesforce. One of them is user-facing and isn't the one that filters the Marketo sync. When you change it, we can use a Salesforce workflow rule to wait 1 day (to be pretty confident that this value has been synced back to Marketo), then check 2nd box that tells Marketo to skip the sync. Then we can have a Smart Campaign on the Marketo side that waits to see a change of the first checkbox value to known when to delete the lead from Marketo since that will be synced before we use the 2nd checkbox to stop syncing.

[Veronica_Holme4]

Jon - I have very often used option #3 to do the controls exactly as you described. It's a bit clumsy but works well.

[Jon_Wu]

Good to hear! In practice, do I need a significant delay before checking the 2nd box? My concern is that if I update 1 million contacts in Salesforce, both boxes will sync at the exact same time due to the sync backlog (which might take days at that volume). Can't really think of a way around this though besides having a huge delay.

[Ankit_Dua]

I totally agree with you Veronica Holmes​, but to stop this leads from syncing back from Salesforce to Marketo, he will have to hide those particular set of leads, I am not sure what will be the other way to do this. Do you have any recommendations here?

[Edem_Jimbo]

Thanks Ankit, I appreciate your help.