Duplicate Leads Automatically Being Created in Marketo - Possibly from Microsoft Dynamics

[Julie_Colwell1]

Hi All,

We have an integration with Microsoft Dynamics (MSD). When people get synced to MSD it creates one or more duplicate persons in Marketo and MSD without an email address. In the person activity, the duplicate record says it was created from a Form Fill Out but the form source says <unknown>.  We've reached out to support and they can't find the <unknown> form.

We've come across a couple of thoughts:

1. There is hidden campaign is causing duplicates to be created
2. The duplicates are being created from an MSD workflow (although the create date is first in Marketo is earlier than the create date in MSD)

Has anyone ever come across this before? Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Julie,

We have many clients using the MSD connector and have never experienced such an issue, so I would probably look into the direction you are stating.

The first thing to do is to look into the activity logs of these duplicates and more precisely into the lead creation and sync ones.

-Greg

[Dan_Stevens_]

Can you post a screenshot of the Activity Detail in the activity log - specifically for the "web form fillout"?  It almost sounds like a local webhook may be creating these as part of some trigger campaign.

[Elliott_Lowe1]

By 'form source' are you referring to the Webform ID in the Fill Out Form activity entry in the Activity Log and/or the value in the Registration Source Info field?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

HI Elliott,

"Person is created" activity has 2 useful information:

• Source type
• Source Info

These are key to understand how the leads where created

-Greg

[Julie_Colwell1]

There is no activity beforehand, just scoring and operational programs that follow afterwards.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Look on page 1 of your log. All these activities have the same time stamp, so it's possible that the form fillout is on the previous page.

Otherwise, we have a form created person without a form fillout, which is a case for support...

-Greg

[Julie_Colwell1]

Thanks Grégoire Michel​!

So in the original record I'm able to see the form fillouts and call to webhook which then created the duplicate record above. But it will also create the duplicate record without email address when that original person never filled out a form. For example we had an event list that was imported and synced to MSD. The brand new people to Marketo were uploaded to a static list and our Sync to MSD campaign pushed them over. We still saw duplicates from that list import in both Marketo and MSD.

We originally thought it was a deleted form that was doing this and reached out to support to see if they knew where it was, they couldn't find anything since there is no Form ID.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Do you know every smart campaign that is calling the webhook ?

I am a little lost here, I have the feeling some parts of the process are missing, but I do not know where to tell you to look. The deleted form is a good pick, but if this is the case, this should stop now that the form is deleted.

The key it to understand all the "new person" sources on the duplicates and check these are all forms.

Also, check you are not running a "sync lead to Microsoft" multiple times on the same lead, with different "Sync As" (once as a lead and another time as a contact).

-Greg

[Julie_Colwell1]

Dan Stevens​ and Elliott Lowe​

Here is a duplicate record that was created with no email address. The first item in the activity log and the activity details is below.