Is there a way to de-duplicate leads from an import on a field other than email?

[Chelsey_Davis]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to de-duplicate/match an import of leads based on a different field other than email address. For example, everyone in our database has an external account ID, but not everyone has an email address in our system (not ideal, I know). I'm trying to send a message to a certain group of people on the latest version of an app (for functionality purposes) and the only way I can get app version populated in Marketo is by uploading a list with this new field. And since not everyone has an email address (and some actually have a different email address in our separate database versus what's in Marketo), I was wondering if I could use our external account ID instead.

Any ideas on how to do this would be much appreciated!

[SanfordWhiteman]

You can use an API import to do this, as opposed to a UI-driven import.

If it's a list of < 10,000 leads a developer would be able to do this in an hour or two tops.

P.S. I don't think you're doing anything wrong in having leads pending email addresses. It's a situation that needs more love from the platform.

[Chelsey_Davis]

Thanks, Sanford. I'll see if I can get one of our developers to give this a try!

[Anonymous]

Hi Sanford, (I am not a developer, so I am not sure if the following question is API capability related or developer skill related)

If a dedup is done via the Marketo API: -

• I assume you would do 300 records per call, correct?
• Does the Marketo API have logic to merge the dups using the data from the newest duplicate record to survive the merge
• Better yet, does the Marketo API have the logic that would allow the customer (us) determine which data (old or new) survives the merge on a field by field basis.

Thanks in advance.

[SanfordWhiteman]

• I assume you would do 300 records per call, correct?

Actually, you can do up to 10MB of data at once (which translates to variable numbers of leads depending on number/length of fields included).

But this isn't an intelligent merge on its own: it merely updates the single best-fit lead, based on the dedupe key, with the data values in the import file (unless fields are blocked or proxied). You can code logic to merge leads but that's a much more robust set of requirements.