Primary Key to Change

[Jay00031987]

In Marketo, currently "Email" is the default primary key field, however is there a way to swap that along with another field to define a new primary key? Does Adobe Marketo support help here?

Can it also be done for new as well as old both type Marketo Account?

Also, will there any issue happen like native integration for Facebook, LinkedIn lead generation where user fill out form and email address match merge happened with email primary key? 

[Darshil_Shah1]

Email Address is not the Primary key, rather it is the default dedupe field set in Marketo (FYR, Lead id is the primary key of the Marketo's db). You can change the dedupe field in Marketo by requesting support as this isn't something you can change on the front end of Marketo. IMO having people with same email address in Marketo's db is something I feel like will be a constant headache to manage. Hope this helps.

[Jay00031987]

So, if dedupe key is changed from email address then will it also affect fills out form, Facebook and LinkedIn integration for dedupe data based on email address?

[Darshil_Shah1 · Accepted solution]

Not essentially, I mean you can request support team to enable the secondary custom dedupe criteria for the particular source type say list import/form fill, etc. Whatever you choose, it then applies to all leads that come in through that method. Also, It must be an EXACT match. (For instance, if I chose email address and first name as my criteria, it looks at the EXACT name and email for deduping. If that first name was ever missing, a new lead would be created for that record), Lastly, one of the secondary dedupe criteria must be the email address. The other (or multiple) can be anything you want, a standard or custom field. Your primary dedupe criteria then will apply to all the other source types, i.e., for the source types for which you do not have the secondary dedupe set. While at first this may seem solution most of your problems, if not all, but trust me this when enabled w/o proper strategy and plan to organize/maintain your DB would eventually turn in a headache down the line.

[Katja_Keesom]

I would indeed be extremely careful in making changes like this and if you do, document them very carefully. As @Darshil_Shah1 says, it can cause you massive headaches going forward and there are many scenarios to take into account.

If you can tell us a bit more about your use case, maybe we can advise a bit better.

By the way, there are situations where email address is not a dedupe key at all: Simply look at your native SFDC and MSD integrations, where the key is the unique CRM id...

[Darshil_Shah1]

Agreed, we can provide better recommendation to go about solving the actual business case here if possible in order to avert the necessity to do such monstrous changes to your instance! 🙂