Here’re the things that I suggest paying attention to:
- Web-activity/scoring/other activity-based tracking goes to one of the record, because the browser cookie is unique. We’ve decided we attribute this to all of the duplicate records since we can’t distinguish between them. Moreover, since we have a custom merge script that goes and merges duplicates by our custom criteria (which in our case is email address + customer code) most of the pairs like record with customer code AND record w/o the code are resolved without any conflict
- Unsubscribe. This one is easy enough. For marketo it’s not really important how many duplicate records you have of the same email, if one opted out, all of them did. So, you won’t accidentally violate the “no spam rule”. It complicated things a little if you want to remove the lead from a certain communication flow and does not wish to let him become unsubscribed from all. But this problem can also be solved by offering the lead to stop receiving a particular type of communications.
For example we have a custom email footer saying:
If you no longer wish to receive <this type of email> click here.
Adjust your mail preferences or unsubscribe from all communications.
Only second option means global unsubscribe for marketo. Option 1 is just a simple remove from flow.
- List import, again, is simple. If you have custom dedupe criteria, marketo will dedupe leads by that criteria, not just by email address. So you won’t have your different records glued together when you are uploading list. Just make sure that you always have your “Second” criteria present when you upload the list or marketo assumes you have it but it’s blank and create duplicate leads even if that wasn’t your intention.
For example, you have a list of customers in marketo already and you just want to upload a few additional details to the existing list. Make sure I specify to marketo to which customers you want to attach this or marketo will create new leads with these details.
- Also I’d point out to a very tricky part relating to multiple choice send email flow options if you have duplicates. If you have just 1 “send email” option, it doesn’t matter how many duplicates you have in you smart list, marketo will dedupe by email and send 1 email only, but if you have several “if” choices that becomes more complex. For marketo you duplicate leads are independent and if so happens you have several email choices and your duplicates fall under several rules at once, you’d face an issue when you send multiple emails to basically 1 email address.
We’ve learned this the hard way and realized this problem after we got a few complaints.
Now we have always as a first step the following choice:
- If member of smart list <possible duplicates> (this is a system list) à send email A
And all duplicates are neutralized.
It all might sound tricky and complicated, but once you’ve started dealing with it on a daily basis you kind of build your own system of how to move your way around efficiently.
Of course, living without intentional duplicates is much easier and more straightforward but if you know what you should watch out for and set up clear rules, life can still be bearable.
Unfortunately, there is no 100% save “correct” way of doing it because you have different sales structure, business goals and other things you need to take into account, but it's a start.
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