Marketo Integration with Salesforce.com

[Anonymous]

Hello All,

I am working with my client and we are looking to integrate their live instance of Marketo to a vanilla Sandbox (eventual Production) Salesforce.com environment. I have a few questions for the integration and would love the help:

1. The configuration to my Sandbox Salesforce.com with Marketo should be pretty straight forward? I've been hearing that by doing so, it might wipe all of the data in Marketo??!?!
2. How have you guys dealt with your Anonymous Leads? Is it possible to push to Salesforce and maintain from there? From my understanding, there is a "limit" on the amount of Leads you can have in Marketo, so these Anonymous Leads can add up pretty quickly.

Thanks!
Phong

[Anonymous]

Synchronising a production instance to a sandbox, no matter which side is what, goes against all best parctices.

As per your description, the Salesforce may be switched to production. That would break the sync schema so badly you would  need a brand new Marketo instance, loosing all work and data done on the broken one.

My suggestion is short and straightforward: negotiate a Marketo sandbox with your Marketo Account Executive. It is free for 30 days and, depending how it is negotiated, can be extended. 

Anonymous leads should never be pushed to any CRM. They are not marketable. They have no value for Sales. How would your team contact those anonymous leads? Lead marketing automation nurture them, convert and then pass to the CRM.
That practice is valid for any marketing automation solution. 

[Anonymous]

Marketo Sandbox is free for 30 days? My AE wouldn't provide that offer to me!

I'm about to integrate our salesforce instance and marketo and having both sandboxes to connect and test flows would be amazing. 

Can you provide me some further details around this?

[Anonymous]

There was one important word missed on my reply: "usually" free for 30 days.

I stated that based on interactions with customers seeking technical support. I do not know whether that is granted at discrection of AE or set in stone. I am not going to enter uncharted territories. The AE is the most qualified and knowledgeable person to let you know the possibilities. 

The key detail within my reach is the advice against mixing production and sandboxes. That is owed to failure from the outset. It will break so badly it will require a new Marketo instance.

[Anonymous]

Hi Breno,

Thanks for the suggestion!

To summarize, we should get a sandbox Marketo instance and integrate it to our sandbox Salesforce environment. 

Then, when ready, integrate our production Marketo instance to our production Salesforce environment. Even though Marketo is already live, integrating it to a Salesforce environment wouldn't be cause any problems? I'm just afraid because I heard we'd lose all data...

Thanks,
Phong

[Anonymous]

If you have already synced the original Marketo instance to Salesforce, you will have to get another Marketo instance to integrate with a new CRM.   We are going through a transistion like this.

[Anonymous]

Hi Nicole,

Thanks for your response. I apologize for not being clear. I haven't done anything yet and am just planning.

We currently have a live Marketo instance. We are working to develop a new Salesforce instance.
So the plan here is to get a sandbox Marketo instance to hook up to our sandbox Salesforce instance.
When we are ready to go live, we will integrate our live Marketo instance to our production Salesforce instance. 

Will there be any issues with that approach?

Thanks,
Phong

[Anonymous]

That's certainly an ideal approach Phong. May I ask, did you get your sandbox Marketo for free for a certain trail period or did you pay? 

My AE said we would have to pay for the remainder of our contract which is kind of outrageous for a few weeks of sandbox testing in my opinion. 

[Anonymous]

Hi Timothy,

We haven't moved forward yet. I'm still planning. I can keep you updated!

BTW, I'm a vendor working on the Salesforce Implementation. I will be working with my client, who will have to work with Marketo for pricing and logistics...

Thanks,
Phong

[Veronica_Holme4]

Phong - your strategy seems perfectly sound - the only issue I'd point out here is a potential dupes issue. If you have been using Marketo standalone for a while chances are you have data in the system. When you sync to Salesforce, you will most likely have data in Salesforce as well. If the same lead exists in both systems Marketo will NOT dedupe this data on sync it will simply pull in all Salesforce data it has been given permission to access - basically you are in danger of creating duplicate data in Marketo.

Have a look at your data beforehand to see if this is a possibility. If it is, you will need to put a plan in place to dedupe this data post-sync. Marketo has a service available to help with this scenario if required which you could also ask your Account rep about.