Parent Child Relationship

[Hank_Hansen]

Is there such a concept as child records for a lead? For instance if I have survey responses with field values x, y and z that I want to store repeatedly each time a client completes a survey, I'd prefer a method that puulates the same fields each time but within unique records. I'm trying to avoid exploding the number of custom fields so I'm cusrious what the best practices are for this kind of thing. I have other use cases in addition to the surveys where "child" records could be beneficial.

[Justin_Norris1]

Hey Hank Hansen​,

Yes, this is exactly the type of use case that Custom Objects in Marketo are designed for -- basically any kind of child record that is tied to the person or company record in a many to one relationship.

Previously Custom Objects were a bit difficult to deploy, but there is a new beta feature that allows you to create your own Marketo Custom Objects via a GUI. I have this enabled in a Sandbox instance and it's quite straightforward.

Check out this post by John Mattos​:

Custom Objects in Marketo - Part I

You'll need to populate these objects via the API.

It's also possible to create a custom object in Salesforce (if that's your CRM) and pass the data there. I've Fluid Surveys​ which can post results directly to Salesforce standard and custom objects without any coding required.

Just depends on how you want to populate the object and what you intend to do with the data afterwards.

[Hank_Hansen]

Hey Justin,

Thanks very much for the info. This sounds cool. We're using SugarCRM and I would guess the Marketo Connector for SugarCRM will not sync custom objects but I'll check anyway. Good to know that functionality is there with Salesforce.

[Hank_Hansen]

Regarding your Fluid Survey integration, I'm assuming you can use survey response data within a lead record to inform your Marketo campaigns?

[Justin_Norris1]

Hey Hank Hansen​, I haven't worked with the Sugar connector so not sure if it supports custom objects. I think a Marketo Custom Object would be your best bet in that scenario.

The Fluid Surveys integration writes directly to Salesforce (bypassing Marketo). Data can sync back up to Marketo from there but this probably wouldn't be appropriate in your use case because you're on Sugar.

There is a Survey Monkey integration that also writes directly to Marketo but I believe it's only to Lead fields and not to custom objects. This is something I'd inquire about though as maybe you can get it on their roadmap.

It would be great if there was a survey tool that writes to Marketo custom objects -- I haven't seen one yet. Thinking about it, you could also probably do this yourself with a Marketo form, some temporary fields on the lead record to hold the response, and then either an API call or a webhook that copies that response into a custom object record. That would be pretty cool and could be achievable with a small amount of technical work. 

[Hank_Hansen]

So after the survey data goes into Salesforce, can you describe how you proceed from there to use the survey response data in Marketo? I understand it eventually syncs from Salesforce to Marketo – does it go to fields or to a custom object?

I did speak with Survey Monkey and the price tag for their Marketo integration is prohibitive for us.