Salesforce Account Merge doesn't trigger contact updates in Marketo

[Kim_Wieczner]

We've discovered an issue where when an account is merged in Salesforce, a triggering event does not occur to update the merged contacts in Marketo. i.e. Account B is merged into Account A but the contacts from Account B are only updated in Salesforce but not in Marketo. When I make an update on the Marketo record, the changes pull through but how do we ensure a merge of this type would trigger this on its own? Has anyone come across this before and have a recommended fix?

[Josh_Hill13]

Are you saying that the SFDC Contacts are not associated to the surviving Account?

Has the sync occurred on those records yet?

[Kim_Wieczner]

In Salesforce all records are exactly as expected, but the contact records in Marketo showed no edits until I updated something else on the contact record in Marketo.

[Veronica_Holme4]

The golden rule is that Marketo doesn't update records from Salesforce unless the SystemModStamp on the Contact record is updated. Check one of the Salesforce Contacts pre and post account merge and see if this stamp is updating. It's possible (in weird circumstances) that the Account merge doesn't actually change anything on the Contact record itself, or perhaps only impacts formula or roll up summary fields that Marketo struggles to recognise updates to. If the sysmodstamp is updating in the Contact in Salesforce but this is not syncing to Marketo, it's time to call in Marketo Support to do a deep dive analysis of the issue.

[Kim_Wieczner]

Thanks, Veronica. It does seem like the field in question is a lookup field in Salesforce...when an account is merged or a contact is moved from one account to another, the "Account Name" field updates on the contact but this is only a lookup on the Account entity. Do you have a recommendation to ensure that account updates such as this get picked up in the SFDC>Marketo sync. Alternatively, is there a way to auto-update the System mod stamp for occasions like this?