is it possible to dedupe against current Marketo records when a new person signs up on a signup form?

[tazzy1234]

My organization is about to roll out an SMS program and we are considering using Marketo forms as our sign up source. However we only want the record to provide minimal details such as their mobile phone number and zip code. I am wondering if there is a way to dedupe these records against our current database. From my understanding Marketo will create a duplicate of any records where an email does not currently exist. Any insight into a sound practice to accomplish the above or create a smart campaign to track against this kind of thing? Could we possibly roll out a progressive profiling plan where once the record has signed up, we later collect and email adress and Marketo would somehow combine the two records ? Any and all options are welcome and thanks!

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

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From my understanding Marketo will create a duplicate of any records where an email does not currently exist.

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That’s not exactly true.

Multiple form submissions with no Email Address field from the same Munchkin session — i.e. associated Munchkin cookie — will be merged into only a single lead.

That’s because the Munchkin cookie is a “strong associator”: if someone already has an associated cookie, in the absence of stronger input, Marketo will continue to connect activities to the same lead.

However, it is true that across different Munchkin sessions, multiple form fills with no Email Address will create multiple new leads.

Now, to your question about looking up leads (I prefer to not say “dedupe” here) by another field like Mobile Phone. First, it’s not possible to look people up directly by that field, since it’s a system field. This is somewhat confusing, but easy to work around: you create a custom field Mobile Phone Lookup and then always mirror the Mobile Phone value into that field (e.g. using a trigger campaign on New Person and Data Value Changes).

Now, you’ll be able to use Mobile Phone Lookup as a lookup field via REST API. Even though dupes will exist for a moment after a form fillout, you can immediately call a webhook-compatible service via API that will loop back and merge together all people who have a matching phone number, resolving the problem promptly.