Multiple leads with same email address?

[Nicole_Aguilar1]

We use segments in our database to distinguish between different groups of people we send to. Some of the people in our database belong to different groups (sometime 2, 3 or 4), yet use the same email address for each. Can Marketo accept imports via API of people belonging to different groups, but using the same email address since the email address is Marketo's unique identifier?

We signed up for Office Hours and the representative told us we'd have to manually import each duplicate address, but they are in the 1000's so that would be near impossible for us. She said she doesn't know if Marketo can handle this if done through an import via API. Then she said this is a bigger issue than what she could handle and couldn't give us an answer. HELP!

[Anonymous]

Hi Nicole,

To my knowledge, Marketo will still de-duplicate based on email address even if records are added via the API. My suggestion would be to import the records via your CRM. This should allow you to create duplicates.

Hope that helps!

Jeff

[Anonymous]

So you can have purposeful duplicates in Marketo in two ways.

1)  Enter all of these leads into Salesforce (if you have it) and let them sync over.  Then you can have multiple leads with the same email address.

2)  Call customer support and change the default de-dupe field from just email address, to email address plus another field.

Be careful though, as having duplicates can be a problem

[Anonymous]

Jamie Lewis​

I'm trying to create purposeful duplicates on a specific form. We do have partitions and workspaces as well just to note. Only doing this as its business required.

I've been looking for details on how Marketo would treat the change default de-dupe from just email address. Still pending a response from support on this.

Could I for example ask them to create a rule that when a lead fills out a form, Marketo would 1. check for email address per normal and 2. If custom field = false to not create a duplicate and if custom field = true to create a duplicate?

[Anonymous]

Hey Tim,

If I understand you correctly, I believe you are describing what Jamie recommended in his 2nd suggestion. You can ask Marketo to look at Email and another field (custom or standard) and if no other record matches BOTH criteria, a new record will be created. But keep in mind that this will change every import procedure meaning that every record that comes into Marketo will need to have a value for both fields or else you will create multiple dupes.

If you don't want to take that approach, you can always use a custom field to capture email address and then add that info to the actual email address field in the flow step. However, this will create a new record for every form submission.

[Anonymous]

I'm actually exploring both methods you mentioned. Tell me more about this temp field. I've tried the webhook solution and that's not working for me.

Can you help me validate the below. This is having Marketo change the dedupe rules to be email address and a custom field (checkbox).

1. A new lead comes through into the system be it a form, API, Salesforce sync and has the custom field unchecked. (This would be the default for all lead creation activities). 

• Marketo will say that I do not see a record that meets email address & custom field true, I will create this lead as normal.

2. This same lead comes through, but upon form fill (specific form I want purposeful duplicates on) I check the custom field through a hidden field default value true.

• Marketo will say I don't see a lead matching because the custom field is now true, I will create a new lead.

Am I right in saying the above scenario? Any holes to pick at this? I have a feeling it wont work on default false..

If I assign partition as well on form fill, would this now associate leads and not create a new one?

[Anonymous]

The custom field would be any unused field that you would add to the form to capture the email address, and then you can add that email address to the actual email address field in the flow step. You don't need to use a Webhook and as far as Marketo is concerned, it's a new record without an email address so it cannot be deduplicated against.

And to my knowledge, a lack of a field value would not qualify as meeting the criteria, meaning that if a record was created with email address populated and the second field blank, or NULL, then a new record would be created even if a record already existed with the same email address and the second field blank, or NULL. However, I would definitely recommend clarifying with support.

[Anonymous]

By the graces of idk what I actually figured out why the webhook wasn't working right. I'm going to further test this out for now, but this is my preferred solution.

Thank you Jeff!