Managing different types of contacts

[Anonymous]

We have been been using Marketo for just over a year now and are looking for best practices on how to manage a diverse contact base.

We currently use Marketo to manage our communications with a variety of different contacts including;

- leads

- current clients (b2b)

- members (individuals using our services, these are employees of our clients)

- partners (that we work with to sell our services)

- prospective employees

- additional business segments operating as separate brands

We are integrating with more than one database (currently our CRM MS Dynamics) and soon an in house data base that was created internally. Up until now we have used the account type field as the key way to determine which type of contact we are addressing, however as we move forward that will no longer work as one contact can be more than one type at a time. Example: a contact could be a client and a member at the same time.

We are looking for best practices or recommendations on how other companies are managing this type of issue. Thanks!

[Josh_Hill13]

You really have to sit down with the database manager and stakeholders to properly bucket the groups and decide on how you know certain things about them.

if Account Type=X is the primary method, then why is that not going to work?

What data is in each db?

How is it synced?

[Anonymous]

Hi Josh, thanks for your comments.

The reason this doesn't work is because there isn't a primary type of contact. We are a group insurance company so we have our B2B business contacts (our clients) and we also have our individual plan members (employees of our clients) and sometimes these contacts can be both types at once.

Our CRM database houses our lead and client information, while our in-house database is where our individual member information is stored. This data has not yet been synced, which is why I'm asking these questions now. Creating Boolean fields has been suggested and is looking like our best option at the moment. Do you have any thoughts on this?

[Andy_Caron3]

Hi Sarah,

Yes that's tricky one, since you have crossover you can't use segments or partitions and it sounds like one field, even if it's a multi-select, isn't going to cut it. I'd explore smart campaigns that add members to static lists, master campaign membership that you can search across CRM/MKTO or sadly a group of boolean fields until you have better communication between the systems. How frequently is your in-house database being synced with CRM and/or Marketo?

[Anonymous]

Both the CRM and in-house database will be updating nightly. And yes, I'm beginning to think Boolean fields might be my best option unfortunately.