How Do I Avoid Duplicate Lead Creation in this Circumstance...

[Anonymous]

I have about 1000 leads in Marketo that were uploaded from a list import without email addresses.  If I then find some of these email addresses, let's say 500, how do I import this new list without creating duplicates in Marketo, since it matches on email address? (and  it's way too many to update these leads one by one)

Any feedback on how to import this without creating duplicates would be great -   

[Anonymous]

Unless the first list is synced to your CRM and you are getting value out of having a lead with no email address, I'd just delete the 1000 names without email address and upload the 500 with email address, dupe free.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi Angela,

Do you have SFDC?  

If you need to keep the other 500 without email addresses (sometimes people have to because they might be sending a DM piece and maybe you had their address details) or maybe you just needed to enrich some of your accounts...either way, try importing the email addresses through SFDC.  

Two ways you could potentially do this: 1.  You can match on import into SFDC by Name and don't need email address as the Unique ID, thus can upsert the email addresses into the existing records.  2.  If you're a bit nervous about that, you could export the list from SFDC - making sure SFDC ID is one of your exported fields, update the email addresses with a vLookup and then reimport the records using SFDC ID as matching ID.

If you don't have SFDC...please ignore ;).

[Anonymous]

Michael - Just what I was looking for - thank you!

[Kimi_Heskett1]

I'd do what Delinda or Michael said. 🙂