Lead flow On Post URL calls and API calls from form fill outs outside of our website

[Anonymous]

What criteria does Marketo use to determine whether to map a lead to an existing record vs creating a new lead?  Just the email alone or a combination of the email and any other fields?   I'm running into problems where Marketo is creating a new lead and the SFDC assesses that the lead is a duplicate record.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Depends on the actual endpoint you're using -- you aren't giving enough information.

Posting to /save or /save2 dedupes on Email.

API endpoints allow you to select a dedupe key as part of the payload.

[Anonymous]

Well, we have merely provided these 4 vendors with several fields to pass along to us (name, email, company, title, state, phone) into a form I have provide each of 3 of the vendors, and just specific fields for the vendor using API calls.  I don't believe we specified anything to dedupe on.  I didn't realize that was an option.  So, by not specifying, is the default only the email?  If there are more than one record with duplicate emails in Marketo, which one does it map to?  I'm in the process of deduping the records based on emails now just with the Marketo database tool.  There aren't that many, less than 100. 

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

Well, we have merely provided these 4 vendors with several fields to pass along to us (name, email, company, title, state, phone)

Across just those 5 fields, would you even want to have a less granular dedupe key than Email? If your dedupe key were Email + Company, that would lead to more duplicates, not fewer.

Generally the desire for a compound dedupe key (Email + something else), or a single dedupe field other than Email, comes when there's another string field that's unique when Email isn't.  For example, if your db had a Member ID field sync'd in from an outside system and (as long it didn't get edited in Marketo) it could be guaranteed to be unique, then you'd want to dedupe on the combo Email + Member ID or just Member ID.

So, by not specifying, is the default only the email?

Yes.

If there are more than one record with duplicate emails in Marketo, which one does it map to?

Please read this post for more on that: The Unintended Consequences of Duplicates in Marketo