Leads in SFDC that sync down into Marketo and cause campaign havoc

[Matt_Stone2]

Most all of my programs in Marketo are synced to a corresponding SFDC campaign. Normally this is great... but I also have some triggered programs that are activated by changes in program statuses (example: webinar attendee alerts are sent to sales when ANY webinar program's status changes to Attended).

The problem I've run into is when a lead might get deleted out of Marketo, but remains in SFDC. Then later on, that lead somehow is re-synced down into Marketo and it brings its campaign history with it. When this happens, those trigger programs fire as if it was something that just occurred, when in reality it might have been a very old activity.

Full example: John Doe attends a webinar in July of 2013. His program status in Marketo for the webinar is set as "Attended" which syncs to the SFDC campaign. John doesn't do anything for two years, so he's purged from Marketo, but left alone in SFDC. Later on, a bulk update to records causes John's SFDC Lead to be updated, and he's synced back down into Marketo, along with the "Attended" status in the synced campaign. That updates the program status, which triggers a new alert to be sent to sales.

Any good solutions for this?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Matt,

The only solutions I see is that you deactivate the smart campaigns that do this or archive the webinars that are 2 years old, so that they no longer trigger the campaign.

But I would question the mere idea of deleting leads that had no activity for a duration, even a long one. I have observed that customers that put Marketo in place very often discover that a significant share of new opportunities come from leads that had been know for a very long time and somewhat neglected. The previous systems would not enable them to detect this, since inactive leads were just not visible at all. But what happens to you just proves that you cannot consider a lead without any activity for 2 years as a dead lead, since after 2 years, it is suddenly updated.

I understand the cost issue linked to Marketo licences, but yet, IMHO, the only leads that should be deleted are the ones that will NEVER come back again or should really not be in your database. Deleting the hard bounced that had no sales activity in the past or who have left the company makes sense. But you would do it after a certain period of time, to avoid modifying reporting. and you should also remove them from SFDC.

-Greg

[Chris_Saporito]

I've recently had somewhat of the same issue, what we did was add a filter into the triggered alert campaigns for "Not Lead Was Converted" in time frame "Today". It seems to be doing the trick so far.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Chris,

This filter will prevent any lead created today to run though the campaign. You should absolutely add a constaint: source type IS salesforce.com.

And event though, you will miss leads that were genuinely created today and that should be going through the campaign. If you really what to go down that route, you should create a formula field in SFDC, in the lead object, that would be equal to the create date. Then you would add a second filter on this field (IS NOT today).

-Greg

[Roxann_McGlump1]

HI Matt,

Have you considered a custom sync filter to prevent unwanted leads from syncing back down to Marketo?  Support can help you set this up.  You would create a boolean field in Salesforce, "Blocked from Marketo" and let the field sync down to Marketo.  Then ask Marketo Support to set up a custom sync filter so only leads that are "Blocked from Marketo = false" will sync down from Salesforce to Marketo.  Once that is in place, set the value for all the old leads in SFDC to "Blocked from Marketo = true".  That way, even though they might be updated in the future, they won't sync down unless you uncheck the "Blocked from Marketo" field.  It's a great way to keep leads that are in "cold-storage" in your CRM out of your Marketo database.