Recycling closed lost opportunities

[Anonymous]

When a lead is converted into an opportunity in SFDC, then closed lost, what is the optimal way to get them back into Marketo for nurturing? The challenge being that they shouldn't go back into Marketo as a new lead or when they are synched back across to SFDC they will create a duplicate.

[Chris_Johnston]

I am not sure why you are getting duplicates. Are you deleting the lead from Marketo when you create an opportunity? Typically they stay linked and if you use contact roles, Marketo can be triggered when it changes to closed-lost and then add to a Recycle Campaign. There are a few ways we have done this for clients in terms of what is triggered, but it is all based on keeping the 2 way sync.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your reply Chris, let me explain my thinking and maybe you could explain exactly what you mean? So in Marketo a converted lead is exactly that (SFDC lead type 'lead' with lead status 'converted',) but in SFDC it becomes a contact. When the contact is associated with an opportunity that is closed lost I want to start nurturing that lead, but can a contact associated with an opportunity where the stage has been changed to closed lost be set to change the status of the lead in Marketo?

In SFDC the unique identifier of the lead is lost when a lead converts to an opportunity (as it changes) so I dont understand how setting a workflow in SFDC (lead is associated with an opportunity where the opportunity stage = closed lost) could change the lead status of a lead in Marketo from converted to nurture as the unique identifier that connects the two no longer exists.

What am I missing?

[Sara_Greaves]

Hi Robert,

Is someone creating a contact in salesforce specifically for the opportunity? Why can't you nurture the contact that is synced to Marketo via the opportunity?

[Anonymous]

Hi Sara

I could nurture the contact (but I'll have to set scoring up for contacts as well as leads) - but then when they get a score over 40 points and become an MQL again the sales guys they would actually become a marketing qualified contact - and that means they don't have all the normal lead attributes, (lead status etc. ) and I wouldn't be able to report on them together with leads. I could set everything up in duplicate for leads and contacts if thats the only way to do it, but it seems a bit clunky. Is there a better way?

[Sara_Greaves]

Why would you score contacts separately from leads? You also should still be able to access "lead" attributes. You can look at the lead info tab of your contacts and leads in Marketo to verify that they have information you're looking for. In salesforce, your lead detail layout likely just doesn't match your contact detail layout.

Here are some samples with fake leads (so that's why a lot of info is missing)

Here is our lead detail:

Here is our contact detail:

You can work with your salesforce administrator to make sure that your contact detail page displays the information that you need it to when you pass a marketing qualified contact back to sales.

Is that helpful?

[Anonymous]

Hi Sara

Yes, its helpful but still means that I need to work with leads and contacts which isn't what I was wanting to do - but if this is the only way to do it then I just need to make some changes in the contact database in SFDC to be able to treat them as leads.

Thanks very much.