Impact of Marketo Creating Contacts in MS Dynamics

[michellechopin]

Friday Question # 3 (and I promise I'm done, I think 😋).

There have been rumblings of our CMO wanting to "get rid of Leads" and use Contact records for everything (something about wanting everything as the same entity for better lifecycle management/understanding/reporting - I'm not entirely sure of the rationale as it's not been described clearly).

I assumed that Marketo cannot create Contacts because of the necessity to connect it to an Account upon creation (and because I've always been under the impression that Leads are generally marketing-owned so MAPs follow that assumption) - however, I was wrong!

I though that one can sync a record from Marketo to MS Dynamics and choose to do so as a Lead or Contact only for people that already exist in the Marketo database and if Microsoft Type = Empty. I'm not sure why I never thought to revisit our Sync to Dynamics smart campaign, because it syncs them as a Lead and assigns them to our generic Marketing User (and I can see the option to Sync as a Contact):

With that in mind, if we were to change that to sync new people as Contacts:

• Is it necessary to connect the Contact to an Account?
• If so, is it safe to assume that this would be better done via a workflow in MS Dynamics to look for, or create, an Account to associate the Contact with? It would be extremely cumbersome, if not impossible, to have Marketo look for the Account because a) they show as Account IDs in our instance, b) we have hundreds of Accounts in MS Dynamics, and c) if someone comes from an entirely new company, we have nowhere to send them

I feel like I might have answered my own question but would love any additional feedback/recommendations from the Community and anyone who's organization might only work with Contacts.

I appreciate you all and Happy Friday 🎉]

Michelle

[Darshil_Shah1 · Accepted solution]

@michellechopin, from what I'm reading and understanding, account association isn't mandotory, but recommended. Ref this MSD thread. However, despite this, you'd want account tied to contacts so you have complete information about the contact and have visibility into company-wide activities, revenue potential, and engagement. This also helps track interactions, ownership, and decision-making roles within organizations.

Also, I second your thought re Dynamics managing the Account association. Since Marketo doesn’t manage Account creation, in the first place, the best approach is to use a Dynamics workflow to match the Contact to an existing Account or create a new one if needed. I feel this'd avoid data integrity issues and ensures a seamless sync. A Dynamics-side solution, such as a custom workflow or Power Automate process, might be the best way to assign Contacts to Accounts.

Also, typically, leadsare nurtured until sales-ready, while Contacts are expected to be further along in the buyer’s journey. You may need to adjust your marketo campaigns, segmentations, and reports accordingly if you're referencing contacts/leads anywhere.

[michellechopin]

Thanks for the feedback @Darshil_Shah1 - this all makes perfect sense to me and I think I was on this track as I asked my question.

I wasn't aware that Account association wasn't mandatory and agree that it's a solid recommendation/best practice. We have a team that manages our MS Dynamics instance and could create a workflow that would support that requirement as/when it arises formally - then it can follow the requirements that system/our company has around Account creation and, like you said, keep data integrity issues to a minimum (or, ideally, eliminate them entirely).

Your comment that "...typically, Leads are nurtured until sales-ready, while Contacts are expected to be further along in the buyer’s journey" is exactly the way I put it when in these general discussions - I feel validated 😋 and will continue to demonstrate the importance of separating Leads and Contacts for this reason. The vibe I get is that there's messy data between Leads and Contacts, so rather than implementing better data management practices (i.e. fields being transferred properly from one entity to another, establishing SOPs that everyone aligns to, etc.), they want to make everything a single entity for simplification.

However, should we move to being a Contact-only environment, that's a great point to make changes anywhere we reference Leads vs Contacts being created (I think it's only in our initial Sync to MS Dynamics campaign but will make a note to check any/all campaigns to be sure).

I always appreciate your insight and expertise - thank you 😀

[Darshil_Shah1]

You’re very welcome! I am glad to be of help and learn that my thoughts align with yours.

Also, yes- you are right..that could be a potential reason they are looking to unify the leads and contacts; however, as long as this supports the organization’s process and data management you should be good. 🙂