SFDC Custom Objects & Marketo

[Jessica_Hendrix]

Hello nation!

Riddle me this: how can I use a form in Marketo to populate data in a SFDC custom object?

We are launching a partner program where we want to capture the partner information and then also have the leads they provide attached to their partner "account". So far, we have a Marketo form embedded on our website which captures the partner details - easy enough. We also have created a custom object in SFDC for the partner details - custom object was chosen as we don't want partners to be leads or accounts because we don't want sales to see them and call them.

Problem 1 - how do I connect the Marketo form fields to the partner custom object fields in SFDC? Is this even possible?

Problem 2 -from the form capturing the partner details, Marketo needs to be able to create the partners in the custom object in SFDC (like it creates normal leads). Is a custom object in SFDC the way to set this up? Can we use an additional API to connect the partner custom object to Marketo?

Future problem - How do we attach new referral leads from partners to the partner accounts, if setting them up as accounts is the way to go? Help!

[Ankit_Dua]

I think one of the way to do it is to capture the form data into Marketo field, now you will have to wait for the field to sync with Salesforce.

Once synced, you can create a trigger in Salesforce to capture these fields and add it to Custom objects in Salesforce.

I am sure there are better ways to approach this, Sanford Whiteman​ sir, can you please throw some light here?

[Veronica_Holme4]

Honestly I think you've overcomplicated it for yourself choosing custom objects, and certainly made it harder for Marketo. A "partner" record type for accounts would have done the job just as well in terms of keeping these records away from your sales teams, and then you could have just used pretty standard Apex triggers in SFDC to auto convert the lead, and build some workflows for account matching. Custom objects are going to make this much harder.

[Jessica_Hendrix]

I agree, I think the custom object made things more difficult, but we just got a new SF person and they don't have any Marketo experience so it was done before discussed. Now that it's not working we are trying to find the easiest and most effective way to set everything up.

[SanfordWhiteman]

If you are stuck with the Custom Object, follow Ankit's advice. Marketo has no native feature to create new SFDC CO records (nor the ability to update existing synced CO records, which are read-only in Marketo).

Create a Textarea field in SFDC, synced to Marketo. Save the most recent form data as a JSON string. Then in Apex, can parse the string back to a living object and add it to the Partner CO.

The other way to create SFDC CO records from Marketo is to use a webhook that calls directly into SFDC; however, this only works once the underlying Marketo person has been synced to SFDC and if you have someone to do the Apex side, that's easier.