Marketo creating duplicates: flow step or expected behavior from marketo?

[Anonymous]

I was told marketo doesn't de-dupe when the source of the dupe is salesforce.com, but  how does matching work in marketo for making updates? If a contact exists in SFDC and someone fills out a form on our website with the same email address, will marketo update the contact or create new lead? I'm seeing marketo creating a new lead in this scenario and not sure if this is standard or part of our flow or some other issue:

Exact scenario I saw:

1) User fills out form on website at @1:23 and lead created in marketo (marketo does its thing, updating values in marketo - doesn't sync to SFDC for about 10 minutes by design. we need several values to be filled in prior to sync to SFDC )

2) A Contact was then created in SFDC @ 1:27 pm via another application tool (matching contact email address to the lead in marketo)

2) Record (from original form fill) syncs from maketo to SFDC at 1:35. (This is when a dupe lead is created....)

If a contact was created at 1:27, why didn't marketo catch the match of the email address before the 'sync' at 1:35 and then update the contact?  It created a new lead instead.

There is a flow step to sync lead to SFDC (insert ) after several fields are updated from campaigns/flows, but I assumed if there's a match in SFDC, a new record won't get created at that

sync step. In my mind, that data would just be added to the existing contact.

Thanks for your help!

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Juliane,

This is because the matching is done in Marketo, not in SFDC. When the person fills out the form at 1:23, the lead is created in Marketo. At that time, Marketo is not aware of a potential contact in SFDC, so this is expected. The only case in which Marketo would not have created a new lead at that moment would have been IF the SFDC contact existed in Marketo at 1:23. After this it's too late, you have 2 records and you will have to merge them.

Any process that enables you to create the entry via 2 uncorrelated sources will lead to this type of issues.

but I assumed if there's a match in SFDC, a new record won't get created at that sync step. In my mind, that data would just be added to the existing contact

This is not correct, unfortunately. Marketo does not check matches in SFDC. It only checks for matches in Marketo.

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Thank you for clarifying!! So it has nothing to do with timing of sync from marketo > salesforce. It has to do with whether the email address exists in marketo prior to the lead filling out the form. So we'd need the contact to come through the other source first, for marketo to catch the dupe...is this accurate?

I'm sure many people ask this but how does one fix this gap?    We need the two sources to exist but of course not have dupes. Are there reports for us to run or notifications when a dupe is created?

We need to two data sources. One is a lead/web form for our potential students to get 'more info' while the other is a direct engagement via an application for a program.  We want to see (within one record) that they applied to our program after visiting one of these forms. I know once we merge the records we'd see these two campaigns but i want to try to catch the dupe faster if we can't stop it.

[Jep_Castelein2]

Hi Juliane, fixing it "at the source" would be the best: it would involve changing the sequence of events so that the Marketo creates the record in SFDC, not an external process. However, fixing it "at the source' is not always possible or cost effective. You could consider using the "Marketo AutoMerge" solution as offered by Marketo Consulting. It will scan for duplicates every 5 minutes and merge the records with the SFDC-record being the surviving record. All field values and activity history are combined, in addition to combining List and Program Membership. If this would be of interest, please email services@marketo.com and mention AutoMerge.

[SanfordWhiteman]

We need to [have] two data sources. One is a lead/web form for our potential students to get 'more info' while the other is a direct engagement via an application for a program.

Why do either of these forms need to be a non-Marketo form?  What's special about the application process that it can't be submitted using the Forms JavaScript API? Basically any standard HTML form can be submitted that way.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Juliane,

I happen to have a lot of customers in the Executive/higher education and this is a problem almost all of them have with their online application systems

The best solution is to tackle it at the source, but this will require a change in the process and therefore a change in you online application system, so that it posts the lead to Marketo first (checking for an existing duplicate) and then reconciles with the lead in SFDC once Marketo has pushed it there.

The other alternative are auto merge solutions. I have never tested the one proposed by Martketo services, it's new to me. But otherwise, there are services out there such as Ringlead that can do a pretty good job.

-Greg