Deleting Leads to Meet Database Limit

[Anonymous]

Hi --

I'm working on a project plan for cleaning out our database to meet our limit. We want to keep the leads/contacts within our Salesforce instance, but remove any from Marketo. I have a few questions regarding this:

1. Say we delete inactive leads in Marketo without deleting them in SFDC, if a lead becomes active again, will it sync back in Marketo? What information will be restored if any?

2. If we removed leads in Marketo, what information is still available on them in SFDC? Will their Marketo history still be stored?

3. What counts towards your database limits? What doesn't?

4. What are best practices on knowing when to upgrade?

5. What are some campaigns you have ran to manage your database size?

Thanks in advance! I've read many posts, blogs and articles regarding this, and it seems to still be a hot topic with no best practices out there.

Thanks, Stephanie

[Anonymous]

3. What counts towards your database limits? What doesn't? - everything in Marketo counts towards your database size (unless you negotiated something different in your contract). When you click on Lead Database, the dashboard will show you the size of your database and that's the lead # they use.

4. What are best practices on knowing when to upgrade? - you should upgrade when you know that there's no way to stay in your current tier and have the budget for it. A lot of people get caught with an unexpected upgrade that isn't budgeted for, which hurts the value that Marketo brings in. If you are close to your limit at renewal, ask your rep for the upgrade pricing so you can start planning for the following year.

[Anonymous]

Apparently I'm wrong about this way of calculating your database. Will update shortly

[Anonymous]

Nevermind that is the correct way to find your database size, but you have to hover over the DB component to get your Total Leads count.

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Yes, and the technical answer that I received from Marketo is that anyone who has a method of being contacted (phone, physical address, or email address) on their record is counted.

[Anonymous]

1. Say we delete inactive leads in Marketo without deleting them in SFDC, if a lead becomes active again, will it sync back in Marketo? What information will be restored if any? - Before you do this, have you set up your Marketo sync profile to block inactive SFDC leads? If you follow that procedure and the lead becomes active again, it will create a new lead in Marketo but not sync to the inactive lead in SFDC. You'll need to uncheck the inactive box so the sync will flow again. It's a pain.

2. If we removed leads in Marketo, what information is still available on them in SFDC? Will their Marketo history still be stored? - no. That goes when you delete from Marketo. Activity/Campaign history in SFDC remains as will any field such as Last Interesting Moment Desc, Rating and Scores.

[Anonymous]

Emily, Thanks for all your feedback. This has been incredibly helpful. For #1, can you help me understand what "...set up your Marketo sync profile to block inactive leads in SFDC" means?

[Anonymous]

As part of your SFDC sync setup you created a Profile that manages what the Marketo sync user can see in your SFDC instance. If you do not want certain types of Leads or Contacts to sync to Marketo, the Marketo sync user should not have access to them in SFDC. Step 2 of 3: Create a Salesforce User for Marketo (Enterprise/Unlimited) - Marketo Docs - Product Do...

This is part of Sharing Settings that your SFDC Admin can help you set up as long your org-wide defaults are set to Private for Leads and Contacts. Here's an example, our Marketo sync user can only see Contacts that are Active with a valid email.

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Hey Stephanie, another thing to look at is how many duplicates you have in your instance. If you have a lot, then this could be a way to clean up without losing data. And how many names are you trying to get rid of (static number, and as a percentage of your total)? All of these reviews are helpful for us when deciding if we're going to be able to stay within certain boundaries. Last, don't forget about durable unsubscribe. If you remove unsubscribed people from Marketo, granted you will lose their history, but if they've unsubscribed then they're much less likely to come back on their own terms. And if they do get back from one of your other systems, Marketo will remember that they were unsubscribed.

[Geoff_Krajeski1]

I too have executed inactive removals before.

Depending on the % over your contractual size, you have options as you've outlined.

The suggestion from Dory Viscogliosi​ is also a great way to attempt to slim down your database!

Typically starting with duplicates is best, then moving to the removal of inactives.

I actually just completed the latest removal campaign this weekend.  Here's what we did:

• All inactives received an operational "Last Chance" email with a CTA button to "Keep me on the list!"
  • The email provided copy that suggested a 24hr time limit to engage, however we gave them a full month
  • Criteria for inactivity
    • 2 years Not Filled Out Form
    • 2 years Not Clicked Link in Email
    • 2 years not has Interesting moment (aside from our customized unsubscribe page link)

              

• Anyone who did not click the CTA in our Last Chance email campaign or unsubscribed would still remain in this list.
• We backed up ALL fields for all remaining leads
• We then ran a smart campaign to remove them, after batch adding them to static lists for smaller batch removal.
  • The reason for batch removal was
    • 1) to test timing on the full list (hundreds of thousands)
    • 2) Allow us to "watch" progress and change the process between batches if necessary for normal business to be unaffected

Also to note, we ran this on leads only in Marketo, and not passed to SFDC.

One final note: Any Lead that is removed will result in the loss of all Activity Log items.  There is no way (that I know) to back up this activity, hence our full field backup prior to removal.