'Failed to merge people' error

[Preeth_Kumar]

I just synced our SFDC and Marketo and noticed many duplicates--all of which originated from our CRM, since no new people have been created in Marketo yet.  I tried merging them using the default "Possible Duplicates" filter, highlighting the duplicates, and clicking "merge." I got an error screen (shown below).  Any advice on how to resolve this? 

[Grégoire_Miche2]

A few considerations here:

• Marketo does not duplicates records coming from the CRM with records already in Marketo. Hence your situation.
• You normally always be able to merge a SFDC Sync'ed Record (SSR) (SFDC Type [person] is not empty) with a Marketo Only Record (MOR) (SFDC Type [person] is empty). Double check that you are indeed in this situation. If this is the case, log a support ticket.
• Attempting to merge 2 SSR in Marketo will force an attempt to merge them in SFDC first. If the SFDC merge fails, the Marketo merge will fail as well. These merges are theoretically possible, but are submitted to multiple rules in SFDC and fail more often that succeed. You might be in this case.

-Greg

[Justin_Morris]

So we have the second scenario - one lead is in Salesforce, the other is only in Marketo. Some of these will merge fine, some of them will fail. We contacted support about this, and their suggestion was to sync the non-SF lead to Salesforce, then try. But our Salesforce admin has dupecatcher in place which will not allow the dupe to sync. Do you have any other recommendations? We're a little confused why Marketo won't merge a non-SF lead and a SF lead - it's been no problem in the past.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Justin,

Better open a new thread than posting on an old one.

this is really weird. Sure, pushing both leads to SFDC is NOT the solution. It's even a s....d idea.

Make sure that you are keeping the sync'ed record as the winner. Usually, it will be the one with the most recent creation date.

-Greg

[Jep_Castelein2]

It should work, but make sure to select the SFDC-synced record as the survivor (the checkbox in the purple table header). You shouldn't have to sync the Marketo-only record to SFDC, as Greg mentioned, merging 2 SFDC-synced records from within Marketo commonly fails.

[Gerard_van_den_]

Another issue might be that salesforce doesn't allow you to merge a Lead with a Contact.

How it works in SFDC: You need to convert the Lead into a Contact, attach it to the same Account as the existing Contact. At that point you can have Salesforce auto-merge them (Attach to existing John Doe) or create a new John Doe, and then you can merge them on your own.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Not sure if it's the same in SFDC, but in MS Dynamics, the other way to merge a lead and a contact is to use the MSD API.  This eliminates the need to qualify/convert the lead into the existing contact, which will ultimately skew your reporting.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

HI Dan,

Having participated in projects with Both CRMs, I can testify that things are slightly different in SFDC from Dynamics, because in SFDC leads are completely separated from contacts and need to be converted. On conversion, you can "merge" with an existing contact of create a new one. In both cases, all the lead activities are transferred to the contact. After conversion, the lead can no longer be seen on the interface, except in some reports. But the Marketo connector has the intelligence to automatically reroute the sync'ed record to the contact.

Although I tend to prefer SFDC to Dynamics as a CRM, but on the topic of lead management, Dynamics is really superior with the capability to Link leads to contacts when you "qualify" them.

-Greg

[Dan_Stevens_]

Thanks Greg - good to know; and thanks for providing these details.

[Amy_Lepre1]

We are able to merge leads and contacts with one of our Marketo instances, but not another. So this is not always true. If the Marketo user profile is granted access to convert leads from SFDC, then you can merge leads and contacts in Marketo.