"Add to SFDC Campaign" flow step is happening for leads that get re-created in Marketo

[Kristof]

Hello,

if any of you could advise on any of the below points that would be great!

Since a few weeks, we see examples of leads that are flowing back from SFDC to Marketo - they exist in SF since a few years but are (re)created in Marketo as NEW leads. We are not sure what is the exact cause on why they flow back to Marketo - is it a data point change on a record happening in SF that syncs them back and re-creates them in Marketo? Could there be other reasons?

Some of them could have been deleted or hidden from Marketo in the past, but it does not apply to all of them (we checked).

After they are (re)created in Marketo, we see on ALL of them a repetitive flow "Add to SFDC Campaign" that is happening several times and adding them as members or successes to programs. I have identified that it is actually a sync happening between Marketo and SF, because when we look at their campaign history in SF, all these campaigns and their statuses match with the flow "Add to SFDC Campaign". So it looks like both systems are synching old campaign data for these leads.

I'm attaching 1 activity log for an example lead with their campaign history in SFDC. 

Questions:

1. What are the possible reasons and scenarios a lead gets recreated in Marketo if it existed already in SF?

2. Is it a default-healthy behavior-setup that after a lead gets recreated in Marketo, the flow step "Add to SFDC Campaign" syncs them back to old campaigns that they were members of? Or should this be rather fixed?

3. If this is a NEW person for Marketo, then why it is being added to old campaigns in SF? It messes our lead management process, as these leads then get scored and often reach MQL status which is incorrect, as this is just a sync to old campaigns... How do we need to go about it?

Have you encountered similar issues?

I will really appreciate any advice and insights on this that any of you may have 🤗

[SanfordWhiteman]

Seems normal. Any SFDC record that isn't filtered (either by SFDC sharing rules or by a Marketo-side filter) is eligible to be synced to Marketo.

If you update the record in SFDC – regardless of whether the person was previously synced to Marketo and deleted, or has never been in Marketo in any form – they'll sync. Then they're running through initial triggered SCs.

[Kristof]

Thanks @SanfordWhiteman but I'm wondering how can we "prevent" such leads to be re-added (synched) to their old campaigns? 

We can't identify any trigger, both on SF or Marketo side, that would be adding/synching them back to their old programs. So if such a sync happens by default then this seems questionable to us. 

Such re-sync doesn't make sense, because if an old lead comes back to Marketo, we don't want them to be added to their old SF campaigns, as then they get scored and hit MQL thresholds in Marketo just because they synched to old programs... - not because their actual current activity...

[SanfordWhiteman]

But they're not "old" Campaign Members. The person is new to Marketo and they're in those Campaigns. Whether the Campaign was created a year ago or a day ago doesn't matter.