Doesnt the lead record merge on a dupe?

[Mark_Wallace1]

Hello All,

I always thought if an anonymous lead was created but then became known and that lead already exists the leads will be merged.  It seems if the lead exists but another lead is created without an email address and then is identified as the existing lead these records do not merge.

The merge only happens on lead creation.  The system ignores dupes if the email is added to the contact after creation.

Is this correct?

thanks

Mark

[SanfordWhiteman]

Yeah, this is standard/expected. Deduping doesn't work the same way via every API/UI.

[Mark_Wallace1]

Thanks for your reply.  Seems silly.

It leaves us with a manual merge to save the history in the older record?  I'm thinking to delete any lead created without an email!!!!!  to avoid the issue before it starts.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Depends on how those leads are created.  If you deliberately upload a bunch of email-less people, say for a direct mail campaign, then they have definite significance. How are you creating these leads now?

[Mark_Wallace1]

Hello

I have a business group that are pushing a lead from a button click with a web API.  It comes in anonymous and they then hope a form fill at a later date will identify the lead and the activity history may prove useful.  The problems start when the lead already exists and the merge then doesn't happen as the lead was created without an email address.

I though one of the selling points of Marketo was that the anonymous leads are tracked and when you get the form fill or click they are identified and you can see their history.

The merge on creation doesn't suit this scenario at all.

thanks

Mark

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

A lead without an email address is not the same as anonymous: that lead could well have other information filled in, like FN/LN/Phone/Street Address, and it's a full-fledged (and *billed*) member of your database.

Anonymous leads are those created automatically by Munchkin, the web analytics module. They're stored in a different part of your instance, where their web activities (pageviews and clicks) are recorded. You aren't billed for these records. When the anonymous lead is identified -- by one of four main methods, email click, form fillout, Munchkin API call, or back-end API call -- prior web activities show up on the newly id'd lead.

[SanfordWhiteman]

... in other words, the concept used by this business group was incorrect and it should not have been implemented this way. Anonymous to known promotion is an automatic feature and doesn't require special coding to be in place.