SalesForce Integration First Sync Duplicate in Marketo

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Integrating Marketo and SalesForce. Right now we have similar contacts, same emails in both systems. When i turn on the integration for the initial sync, will Marketo create all new leads for the entire database?

Thanks,
Tim

[Anonymous]

What do you mean "similar"? Is the same email address used with different names?

Marketo dedupes based on email address; if they are different names with the same email address, it'll show up in the lead database under 'duplicates'. Marketo won't 'create' new leads; it will just sync over what you have in Salesforce. If you have duplicates in Salesforce, you'll have duplicates in Marketo. Ideally, you'd want to clean and merge Salesforce prior to your sync. Demand Tools is awesome for doing this; run at least the basic scenarios prior to integration if possible.

[Anonymous]

I understand Marketo dedupes on email for imports and all those similar activities, but what is not explained anywhere is for when you begin an integration how will Marketo handle similar leads.

When I say similiar I mean exact email, name, etc. The process was to export from SFDC and import into Marketo to do some marketing as we didn't have the integration set up. 

Based on the above, what i'm understanding is that Marketo will not create a new lead when I turn on my integration with SFDC if only one record exists for the email correct? 

Another way to word this is that Marketo will recognize the lead coming from SalesForce and automatically associate the two as one lead. 

[Josh_Hill13]

Marketo does NOT dedupe when you sync the systems. A lead created in SFDC will NOT dedupe at any time.

The leads you have in both systems will NOT be recognized and NOT be deduped.

Please cleanup your systems before or after the sync to reduce the dupes.

[Anonymous]

Ah, I understand what you mean. I was in a similar situtation--we used our instance prior to the sync as well. For the leads that had email addresses, it appended the data, but the lead source was whatever program we did in Marketo, and not whatever was in Salesforce. It won't create new leads for those email addresses you've already sent to, it'll just match but won't overwrite lead source/program source.

Hope that helps!

[Anonymous]

Thanks Josh and Kristen. 

I have a very clean database in both SFDC and Marketo. We have gone through pre integration dedupe processes. 

It seems like we have two different opinions here...Josh have you previously synced a close to exact match Marketo and SFDC?

If what you say becomes true, I've contacted Marketo for one, a Sandbox and two, an Easy Merge. Is there anything else I could be doing to help eliminate the risk and or be more proactive for when we sync?

[Anonymous]

If your database is clean, you should be good to go! Marketo will match the SFDC information to the email IDs you already have in Marketo. If you don't have duplicates in SFDC, there's no reason why more will be created. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Kirsten. This is reassuring, but Josh's comments do worry me.

"Marketo does NOT dedupe when you sync the systems. A lead created in SFDC will NOT dedupe at any time."

At this point, we will be going ahead with the integration with the hope that Marketo will do it's do dillegence and match leads by email. If not, hello Easy Merge. Just no way around it..