Managing fields on Duplicate Profiles

[cagarwal]

As the Marketo form fill only updates one record, I am curious if there is a way to duplicate the values in the same fields on duplicate profiles? (In the same way that it does for full unsubscribe)

We have a combination of data hygiene issues and a legitimate use case that requires duplicates, so having a solution to this would certainly make our preference center more "robust".

[Darshil_Shah1]

I don't think there's an easy /OOTB UI-based solution for this. You'd need a webhook-compatible service that you can call upon form submission to update the form data on the other duplicate records in the database. You can also add a Possible Duplicates SL membership filter in the trigger campaign to only call the service for people on the duplicate SL. Depending on the volume of form fills and duplicates, this may eat up a lot of API calls from your allotted quota (from the querying and updating duplicate records by the external service).

There are also chances that the values updated by the service on duplicate records may not be the values that were posted with the form post on the original record, i.e. it is possible for a lead field to be updated again from other sources before the webhook sends the lead data to the service.

I'd love to hear if there's a better and more efficient way to pull this off from other folks in the community.

[SanfordWhiteman]

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There are also chances that the values updated by the service on duplicate records may not be the values that were posted with the form post on the original record, i.e. it is possible for a lead field to be updated again from other sources before the webhook sends the lead data to the service.

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Well, yes... although we tend to ignore such race conditions in general in Marketo, so this wouldn’t be any different!

With a low-volume task — as this most likely is — I’d worry about even less than in other parts of the platform. But if you want to encapsulate only the values from a single form post, use the method here: https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-blogs/saving-the-last-form-post-all-fields-to-a-textarea/ba-p/...

[Michael_Florin]

If Darshil doesn't know a way, no one does. 🙂

But jokes aside. My first question would always be: How often does that even occur? How many form submits do you get from a duplicate record per week? And if it's below - say - 10, I'd ask if you can't just put 5 minutes aside and copy a few important values over instead of thinking about a full-blown integration that solves a really minor issue for you.

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

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As the Marketo form fill only updates one record, I am curious if there is a way to duplicate the values in the same fields on duplicate profiles? (In the same way that it does for full unsubscribe)

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As the others mention, you’d do this with a webhook-compatible service. We have this running in several instances, it’s about as simple as a ‘hook can be. (While acknowledging that you do need to understand how to use a REST API.)

The steps:

1. Run Get Multiple Leads By Filter Type with filter type = {{lead.Email Address}}
2. Filter the result to exclude the current Lead ID
3. Run Push Lead or Sync Lead, passing the list of remaining Lead IDs

Even with only a few runs per week, this kind of thing pays for itself. IMO you don’t want to have to check a Smart List every single day to see if a lead w/duplicates was updated and painstakingly transplant the values to the dupes.