Flag new lead as existing customer

[Anonymous]

Is it possible to have the following run when a new lead comes in to check if it is part of an existing customer organization (based on email domain) and flag it as such?

For Example:

Acme is a customer of ours, and is synced with SFDC.

A new lead comes in via form fill that has the email jdoe@acme.com

Some process runs and identifies the jdoe@acme.com record as an existing customer and not a prospect.

Considering setting up something in SFDC to run the search - but before I go down that path I wanted to check if anybody had done something similar in the past.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Hi Justin,

You could set up a trigger campaign that looks something like this:
Trigger: Lead is Created

Filter: Email Address 'contains' '@domain1.com, @domain2.com, etc.'

Flow: Change Data Value for whatever field records their status as a customer

The challenge is that it would require updating the filter with new domains when new customers are created - manually (unless you're comfortable enough with Marketo APIs to update the campaign that way).

Grant

[Anonymous]

Also - remember you can't just separate the domain values by commas, you have to click the green "+" button on the filter and put the domains on separate lines in the dialog box that appears.

[Edward_Unthank_]

I find this makes much more sense to do in SFDC. Marketo's cross-lead lookup functionality through the UI is nearly non-existent, with the exception of "duplicate field" filters. I'd have an SFDC workflow run upon the SFDC lead creation, and if there's a customer match, mark a separate SFDC field (synced with Marketo) to show that the record has a customer match based on email address.

That way you can run automation based on that field becoming "Customer" or not, such as your Lifecycle Processing to move them from MQL to Customer. If you're writing to that separate field, also, you can have a more modular setup where you're improving the accuracy of writing to "Customer" field or not—you'll quickly see there are other exception situations running where you'll want to improve the logic, and it becomes easier to improve the logic when you're writing to a separate field with workflows so you don't just need one monster workflow to supply all use cases.

E.g.:

• Workflow triggered upon SFDC lead creation looking up against existing customer email domains and marking the new lead as 'Customer'
• Workflow triggered upon an SFDC lead/contact being unmarked as a customer, and then unmarking all matching email domains to no longer be 'Customer'
• Workflow triggered upon an SFDC lead/contact being marked as a customer (new customer), then marking all matching email domains as 'Customer'

I think maintaining the customer list of email addresses in Marketo becomes really unmanageable very quickly. You have to add a daily task for two individuals (one Marketo person, one customer list-holding person) to update it; it isn't real-time, just updated once a day; it's easy to overlook when someone goes on vacation or is sick or has too much work. Doing it in Marketo with a "customer" email address smart list isn't scalable or robust.

Cheers,

Edward Unthank | Founder, Etumos

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Edward.

The only issue we have is that we don't have new leads automatically sync with SFDC (although I may try to press for that). I am thinking that I will setup an SFDC trigger and expose it via the REST api and then create a webhook in marketo to call it upon lead creation on the Marketo side. The only issue then is that if a new customer is created, I would have to write something else to identify all the corresponding leads to mark them in Marketo...

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Justin,

Stephen Schimmel​ had a very close question, linked to named accounts.

Here is the stream Assigning Newly Created/Qualified Leads At Named Accounts

-Greg