Opportunity sync to salesforce

[Anonymous]

Hi Everyone! Happy friday. 

I am at present working on a usecase involving salesforce and marketo and need help evaluating the options. 

To lay it out broadly, i am trying to integrate opportunities which are submitted through a homegrown system(unlike where sales created opportunities). I know  i could use salesforce opportunities object but marketing also wants to get the intelligence around the lead and contact as to, if they came through a particular channel or the different touch points on the website before they submitted the form which we call here 'opportunity' . 

So my question is, can i leverage marketo to talk with the homegrown system(maybe through an api) and create a lead and convert it into opportunity in salesforce?

If the lead or contact exists, create an opportunity and tie it to account/contact & opportunity in salesforce? 

Or is my option to directly creat the account/contact and opportunities in salesforce and loose the channel attribution data? 

Hoping someone went through this kind of a scenario. 

Thank you, Rama.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Rama,

Using Marketo to "discuss" with the homegrown system would work, but using the Marketo built-in "convert lead" feature is not a good idea. You cannot pilot account merge nor contact merge if by any change the account or contact already exists in SFDC.

The best option, IMHO, is to create the opportunity in SFDC, indeed.

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Hi Gregoire, Thanks much for the reply!

In our case, the contact will exist, but i thought

since Marketo already stores the contact from salesforce and when user uses the same email address,

it is intelligent enough to create the opportunity linking it to the existing contact..

Isnt that the case?

Thanks!

Rama.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Rama,

Marketo cannot create an opportunity on an existing contact. So you will not have the choice, you will have to go through SFDC.

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Hi Greg, one other clarification. I think i understand the constriants a little better now.

Assuming we leave the leads without converting and have marketo autoconvert and create contact/account&Opportunity.

(i understand this is not ideal but i am trying to evaluate all the scenarios.)

We want the status updates from homegrown system to flow through to the opportunities in salesforce as stages.

I would really like to know if Marketo has the capability to update the stages on Opportunity in salesforce

as they are updated in the homegrown system??

Thank you,

Rama.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Rama,

The SFDC-Marketo sync on opportunities is only 1 way : from SFDC to Marketo. This means Marketo will not create not update opportunities, so surely not update opportunity stage.

-Greg

[Josh_Hill13]

I think you need to walk through the attribution system Marketing wants. I suggest reading my article on Offer-Channel and then considering the process to collect and pass data between your systems.

I agree that you should avoid auto converting records.