Remove group of leads from Marketo and not Salesforce

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hello, I'd like to remove a group of leads from Marketo, but not Salesforce. They are inactive in Salesforce or the email is invalid, so I want to keep them in Salesforce to retain information, but remove them from Marketo. If I select false for "delete from CRM" it doesn't seem to delete leads from Marketo. Is there any way to remove these smart lists from Marketo, but not Salesforce?

16 REPLIES 16
Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Hi Kate,

You can delete them from Marketo and select the "Delete from CRM = False", but yes, they will keep coming back as soon as something changes on them in SFDC. Furthermore, is these leads reactivate later on you would have lost all the past history.

The best solution is not to delete them but to deactivate them and erase their email address in SFDC. This will leave them in Marketo, but with an empty email address. You can them suspend them in Marketo. You will also be able to exclude them from smart campaign with a "email address in not empty" filter. And because the email address in empty, they will not count against your Marketo license.

Best regards,

Greg

Anonymous
Not applicable

There is technically a way to prevent them from syncing back. If you are sure you don't want those people back in Marketo, you can work with support to hide records from the integration user. We created a checkbox called "Hide from Marketo," checked the box where applicable, and submitted a ticket. For us, it was a way to prevent a large volume of records from syncing back when a system update was made.

Not for everyone, but technically possible.

Roxann_McGlump1
Community Manager

I was about to suggest the same thing.  Support could enable a custom sync filter that would prevent leads from syncing back down to Marketo.  The steps are pretty easy:

1. Create a boolean field on the Lead and Contact objects in SFDC called "Blocked from Marketo" (or something similar.)

2. Set the field value to true/checked for the appropriate records in Salesforce.

3. Let the new field and values sync to Marketo.

4. Open a case with Marketo Support to enable a custom sync filter based on the field you created.

5. Once the sync filter is in place, you should be able to delete the leads from Marketo without them syncing back down from SFDC at a later date.

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Hi Heather and Roxann,

IMHO, the key question here is to know why should these leads be deleted from Marketo and not SFDC and why there are later updated in SFDC.

Based on the answer to the question, it will be easier to find the best solution amongst the one that are proposed here.

If my understanding is correct, the "sync with SFDC" checkbox has a big drawback: Marketo will never know it has been unchecked, so it will not be possible to create a filter on this field in Marketo and delete all the corresponding leads.

-Greg

Dan_Stevens_
Level 10 - Champion Alumni
Roxann_McGlump1
Community Manager

Hello Gregoire,

Perhaps I misunderstand you, but Marketo will see whether the "Blocked from Marketo" box is checked, so you can use it in a filter to remove the leads.  I've used this method with many customers during my time in Support.  If the box is unchecked at a later date, the lead will then sync back down, because the system modstamp will be updated and the lead will meet the criteria to pass through the filter.

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Hi Roxann,

I just ran a test and when the "Blocked from Marketo" is checked in SFDC, the sync stops immediately and the field remains unchecked in Marketo while checked in SFDC. The other drawback is that any other field update that might have triggered the "Blocked from Marketo" field to be checked will also remain unknown to Marketo.

I'll be working on a workaround and publish it in a blog post.

-Greg

Danielle_Wong
Level 8 - Community Advisor

I just want to confirm... if a lead doesn't have an email address, it won't be counted toward our limit according to our license?

Dory_Viscoglio
Level 10

Hey Danielle, I'm pretty sure this is not correct. Greg clarified on March 2nd and said that any records with a method of contact would be counted against the limit. Would be great if someone at Marketo could chime in here because this is something that everyone would likely benefit from! We have thousands of contacts without email addresses because our sales team likes adding people to accounts in SFDC.

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

HI Dory,

I had it recently confirmed by a sales rep @ Marketo.

-Greg

Dory_Viscoglio
Level 10

So just to confirm, those without an email are not counted? Or those without phone, address or email aren't counted?

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Hi Dory,

Any lead that can be reached by at least one communication vector (email, phone or postal) is counted.

-Greg

Anonymous
Not applicable

I'm interested in doing the same thing. Is there a way to mass remove email addresses from leads in Marketo?

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Hi Emily Carr,

Yes. Use a change data value with a New value = NULL. (works for any editable field, BTW)

-Greg

Diane_LoBiondo1
Level 1

Hi Greg,

Quick additional Q related to this string....will this free up contact counts within Marketo?  We have a lot of "inactive" leads that we wanted to purge so we can free up quota counts to use with our Workspace partitions.

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Hi Diane,

AFAIK, no, suppressing the email will not remove the leads from the count. My understanding is that Marketo counts all leads that can reached by at least 1 way, so you would need to remove all phone numbers and office/personal addresses.

As soon as contacts in the CRM become inactive, you may consider just deleting them in Marketo, but not from the CRM (delete lead, with a delete from CRM: NO option) if they have no past significant activity (such as filled out forms or program success). This will really free some space in your DB.

-Greg