Issue with integration between LinkedIn and Marketo - LinkedIn Lead Gen forms

[claireshenkir]

We have been working on an a persistent issue for a couple months where not all contacts that are obtained from LinkedIn Lead Gen programs are being captured in the corresponding Marketo program. We came to the conclusion with Marketo Support, that the 'Company' field name can cause this integration to fail, and the person will not be recorded within the Marketo program. 

This is only happening with records that already exist in our Marketo database. This is inconvienent and we have to check frequently to see if we have any missing leads and manually add them into our programs.  We are wondering if there will be a solution for this anytime soon? 

[Darshil_Shah1]

We might need more details here- do you have a campaign that adds people to a program when they fill out the linkedin lead gen form? and, when you say missing leads, do you mean people missing the lead gen form fill out activity in their activity log so not being able to get added to the program?

[claireshenkir]

Hi, yes there is a campaign set up to add them to the program, and it works for new leads coming into the database. Yes, missing leads (from the marketo program) do not have anything in their activity log for 'Fills Out LinkedIn Lead Gen Form.'

[Darshil_Shah1]

That is really strange IMO, and tbh, I'm not fully convinced with the support team's response regarding the Company name causing this to fail (especially w/o proper reasoning and explanation behind it). Upon filling out the LinkedIn lead gen form, the corresponding activity should ideally get logged in the act log. Do you see any errors in the LinkedIn lead gen connection in Admin > Launchpoint? Also, did the support give any more insights/details around this as to why (and how) the Company name could cause the lead gen form fill activities to not log in the person's activity log?

[ttseng]

The Marketo Support team is correct. If a lead fills out a LinkedIn lead gen form and includes a company name, when that lead comes over to Marketo, if the email address of that lead matches the email address of an existing lead record but the company names don't match, Marketo rejects the lead that came over and the existing lead record's activity history is not updated with that LinkedIn form fill. At this time, there are no near term plans to change this. We will add a note about this in the user documentation and look at possible changes in the future.

[Darshil_Shah1]

Interesting, and good to know! Thank you, @ttseng! I think the Set up LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms documentation page would be a good place to add this as a Note/Warning so users going through it while setting the integration are aware of this.

@claireshenkir, unfortunately, as of now, there doesn't seem to be an OOTB way to handle the case of the lead gen form fill activity not getting logged in the person's act log if the company they submit while submitting it is different from the one that they have in the Marketo DB.

[claireshenkir]

Thank you both - @ttseng @Darshil_Shah1 

[ttseng · Accepted solution]

Hi @claireshenkir @Darshil_Shah1 ,

I wanted to make a correction regarding my previous post on this topic as I've received updated information from our Engineering team.

In the LinkedIn – Marketo integration, all LinkedIn Form leads will come into Marketo and update the lead record’s activity history, even if the leads have a different company name than existing lead records, if the Marketo subscription is connected to a CRM system.

The only scenario where the LinkedIn leads will NOT come into Marketo is if the existing lead record in Marketo is associated with an explicit company and the subscription is not connected to a CRM system. Even if a LinkedIn Form lead has the same company name as the lead in Marketo, Marketo will reject the request to sync that lead if it’s linked to an explicit company and not connected to a CRM system.

An explicit company is a company record created by one of the following ways:

1. Using Company APIs for non-CRM subscriptions (referenced through externalCompanyId in Marketo)
2. Using CRM sync (referenced through sfdcAccountId  in Marketo).

Apologies for the confusion!

[Darshil_Shah1]

Thank you so much for posting an update here, @ttseng! Appreciate it. 🙂 

@claireshenkir, based on the symptoms you've described and Tina's latest comment, I suppose you'd not have your Marketo instance natively connected with CRM and are just using the plain Company object in Marketo for storing the company data, right?