Marketo custom objects - unique identifiers for dedupe?

Phillip_Wild
Level 10 - Community Advisor

Marketo custom objects - unique identifiers for dedupe?

Hi all

 

I'm creating a Marketo custom object and think I'm missing something obvious...

 

I have a one-to-many relationship setup. Basically, there's an ID field in Salesforce on our Person Accounts that is the ID of another account. It represents the travel agency that a person last booked with.

 

So I'm creating a custom object to hold further information around that agency. Fields on the custom object would be something like this:

* Agency ID (link field, dedupe)

* Agency name (string)
* Address (string)
* Phone number (string)

 

So this all makes sense to me - I link the Agency ID custom object field to the "Last Agency Used" field on Company (since we use Person Accounts).

 

But here's where I'm struggling to understand how it works: with the current structure, as I understand custom objects, each unique custom object record can only be associated with one person in Marketo. But, each travel agency can make many bookings! 

So if I upload a csv of agencies by ID, then that particular agency won't be associated with ALL of the customers it booked - but instead, simply one. Right? That's not what I want.

 

But I don't think this should be a "many to many" relationship since one person can only have one agency that they last used. But, that agency can have many customers that last used it. Any ideas?

 

I understand this probably isn't the ideal setup (you could do this via custom objects in Salesforce more easily) - but long story short - since our Marketo instance holds both consumers and travel agents, we can't associate those custom objects with both of them.

1 REPLY 1
Oz_Platero
Level 6

Re: Marketo custom objects - unique identifiers for dedupe?

Hello @Phillip_Wild 

 

But here's where I'm struggling to understand how it works: with the current structure, as I understand custom objects, each unique custom object record can only be associated with one person in Marketo. But, each travel agency can make many bookings! 

 

It sounds like you may want to explore a Many:Many where people are able to book many trips/bookings "through" an Agency. 

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/Marketo-Whisperer-Blogs/Custom-Objects-in-Marketo-Part-6-Many-to-Many-...

Also notice that the way objects are linked remains the same (link field), but you will have to pay attention to multiple Foreign keys|Primary keys to create the proper Many : Many relationship.

 

Thank you,

 

Thank you,