Looking for Guidance: People being re-synced to Marketo from SalesForce

[Patrick_Vesely]

In our sync set up between Marketo & SalesForce, we have a Marketo Sync checkbox that gets checked as True when a Person is created in Marketo.

I am in the process of cleaning out our Marketo Database - removing people who we are no longer marketing too (they either have unsubscribed, hard bounced, current customer, etc).  I am creating smart lists around the criteria and running the list through a smart campaign that will mark the "Marketo Sync" field as false, wait 5 minutes and then remove them from Marketo (but keep them in SalesForce).

Once these people are removed, I would think that we are good.  Something in SalesForce is updating these records, which is updating the "Marketo Sync" field to True.  This is re-syncing the person - adding them to Marketo programs, which include our MQL program - which passes them to the BDR team (even though they did not take any action).  I can see in the activity log that the person was created with a source type "SalesForce.com".

I have spoken with Marketo support and they have said that this is a SalesForce issue (but our SalesForce team claims it is a Marketo set up issue).  

Questions from the Marketo end:

- Has anyone experienced this before?  Any suggestions on solutions as the BDR team is getting frustrated with Marketo.

- When I remove them from Marketo, is there something else that I should mark on the Person's record?

- Is there a program that could catch all these "Zombie Leads" prior to them running through all the programs?

thank you in advance

[Michael_Florin]

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@Patrick_Vesely wrote:

Something in SalesForce is updating these records, which is updating the "Marketo Sync" field to True. 

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I'd certainly take a look at that. This doesn't happen in our environment, so I assume there is an active Salesforce workflow rule that does this. If your business rules state that all Salesforce records should be synced to Marketo - which I think is reasonable - then this workflow makes sense.

Real zombies - as in unengaged, hard bounced and so on leads - should probably removed from Salesforce as well.

[jatan]

Did you find a solution for this? I'm in a similar situation where records that exist in SFDC but not Marketo are syncing back over when there's a record update in SFDC which then sets off Marketo to basically pick up every old completed and archived campaign that the record should've qualified for. I want to stop these records from running through any programs without having to put a filter in 1,000s of old smart campaigns. 

[Darshil_Shah1]

Well, when the custom sync field (i.e., Marketo Sync) for a synced record is updated to False from Marketo or SFDC, the sync stops and until the custom sync field is updated to True from the SFDC end, the record cannot start syncing back again with the Marketo. Sync cannot be enabled from the Marketo end (only SFDC), this clearly makes this a SFDC issue and there ought to be flow/set up in SFDC that's updating the Marketo Sync field to True upon updates on the record which is causing this record to sync back to Marketo. I'd advise you to look in to your SFDC setup to find and disable the flow/setup to update the Marketo Sync field back to True upon record updates.

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Marketo to basically pick up every old completed and archived campaign that the record should've qualified for. I want to stop these records from running through any programs without having to put a filter in 1,000s of old smart campaigns. 

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Having obsolete (old/archived) campaigns active is not a good idea, you should consider turning them off.

[SanfordWhiteman]

In addition to Darshil’s point, if you want these people to sync back over to Marketo (isn’t totally clear either way) but not trigger campaigns, you will need additional filters.

That’s just the way it is — without a filter, they’re like every other new-t0-Marketo person.