How to avoid losing data on first sync with Salesforce (SFDC)?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

We have been preparing to make our first sync to Marketo from SFDC. The problem is that we have more complete and updated data for many of the leads in Marketo than we do in SFDC. However, it seems that this will all be erased wherever the fields in SFDC are blank.

For example, if Joe Smith currently exists both in Marketo and SFDC, we have his job title and phone number in Marketo, but not in SFDC. Once we do the first sync, these fields will be cleared out in Marketo since they're blank in SFDC, right?

So is there a way to preserve the data in cases when the field is not blank in Marketo but is blank in SFDC?

I'm aware that we could block a field from being updated in Field Admin, but since we haven't yet connected to SFDC, that source doesn't exist yet in the block options.

Any insights would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[Josh_Hill13]

I have not heard of such a thing. Usually Marketo would push the value to the SFDC record if SFDC was blank. Who told you otherwise?

SFDC leads that get pushed to Marketo in this situation will NOT be deduped, so you may end up with lots of dupes and not actually overwrite any of your existing records.

You could also do the initial Connection, which then allows you to review the mappings before initiating the sync. That should allow you to display Field Blocking.

[Anonymous]

Hi Josh,

We tested this out in the sandboxes. If we cleared the data from a field in SFDC, it also cleared in Marketo during the sync.

My understanding is that the first sync is unidirectional with SFDC being the master, while subsequent syncing is bidirectional. Is this incorrect?

I also don't see how to do an initial connection without sync. The CRM page in the Admin asks for SFDC credentials and there is only a "Sync Fields" button.

[Anonymous]

I see now that the leads coming in from SFDC are going to create duplicates in Marketo rather than overwriting existing data. So this isn't a problem, although the duplicates are going to be a problem.