Marketo integration with Custom Contact database

[p4vankum4r88]

Hi,

We are looking at integration of Marketo with our own CRM system (contact database ), Has any one here done that? if so, can you please guide me on what is the best approach for this? 

We are looking at creating a lead/contact/opp sync to our contact database?

Regards

Pavan

[Michael_Florin]

Hi Pavan,

I think you're asking a little too much from this community. A custom integration with a CRM is complex project where you'll need the Marketo and the CRM's API, most likely an orchestration layer or middleware in between, and team of experts from the involved parties. Overall, I believe it's a good idea to ask for help from an experienced Marketo agency. And expect this to take a year or so.

Good luck!

[Darshil_Shah1]

I agree with @Michael_Florin! This is a huge undertaking and requires a thorough analysis of your present systems, architecture, and requirements, including analysis of the contact database and its architecture. Marketo has a set of APIs that you can use to GET/POST data to it. Additionally, you’d also require the corresponding GET/POST APIs of your contact database for data transfers. You could use a middleware or create a custom application to integrate the platforms. The latter option is, of course, more development and maintenance effort than the former.  

[SanfordWhiteman]

Third-ing @Michael_Florin and @Darshil_Shah1’s comments!

Yes, numerous Marketo users have custom integrations — some complement native integrations such as the SFDC integration without replacing it completely, others are fully standalone integrations with bespoke CRMs.

You’ll need an experienced integrator to get this done. The Marketo API has lots of interesting anomalies that won’t be recognized unless the backend dev is also a seasoned Marketo user.

[p4vankum4r88]

Thank you all for taking time to comment.  Native integration is not cut out for our business as we have multiple salesforce instances and lot of data sources. we are looking at using a middleware to achieve this if the development effort is too much, do you recommend any third party tools? I am aware of Zappier, Bedrock and Mulesoft, are there any better middleware than this?

Regards

Pavan

[Katja_Keesom · Accepted solution]

My first question would be whether you have one platform (DMP, CDP) where all information from different Salesforce entities comes together and is normalized to have visibility on your one golden record? If so, I think that would be the platform I would leverage to sync with Marketo and use as a hub to determine which Salesforce entity your Marketo data would need to flow to.

[p4vankum4r88]

We do, we have both DMP and CDP and data is normalized in our Contact DB, My question is can we make Marketo access different segmentations outside Marketo and only have that data flow into Marketo.

can we define event listeners for Marketo outside Marketo?

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

Well, “better” is subjective and not something to be conclusively answered here.

Zapier is objectively incapable of maintaining a custom Marketo ↔︎ SFDC integration. You should look into Workato and Tray.io. Of course, those platforms themselves (like Mulesoft) come with a learning curve: not like they have an “integrate Marketo with multiple SFDC intances” toggle.

Again, it would be reckless to try to do this without an integration partner. To put it bluntly: the project will fail if you’re not working with someone who’s done most of this before. I know there are people who are particularly skilled at using Workato w/the Marketo API.