SFDC/Marketo Integration: Has anyone remapped the marketo address fields to the SFDC Mailing address fields (sfdc contact address fields) instead of the SFDC Billing address fields (sfdc account address fields) since marketo cannot update SFDC account

[Nate_Oosterhous]

Hello All,

Background:

Our address fields were not mapped properly upon the initial set up years ago.  We are thinking we should be mapping the marketo address fields (Country, State, etc) to the SFDC Lead address fields and to the SFDC MAILING address fields (on the contact record) vs the billing address fields which is what we have currently.  The SFDC billing address fields cannot be overwritten because they are a SFDC account field and apparently marketo cannot write to the account object and therefore it makes no sense to have the marketo address fields mapped to the SFDC billing fields right?  So when a SFDC contact fills out a webform it will not update any geography fields.......right?

Questions:

Has anyone remapped the marketo address fields to the SFDC Mailing address fields (sfdc contact address fields) instead of the SFDC Billing address fields (sfdc account address fields) since marketo cannot update SFDC account information? 

If so how do you go about doing so without messing up any address information?

Is this the correct thinking?

[Josh_Hill13]

No, I haven't. But that won't stop me from thinking through this. Let's look at details.

A similar thread appeared and I wonder if this was AAA already. https://nation.marketo.com/message/116826#comment-116826

• City maps to City (L) and BillingCity (A)
• same with other standard "address" fields including Street, Address, Postal Code under the Company folder in Field Management
• so if you wanted to play off the SFDC Contact address fields or Mailing fields, you could do so by exposing those fields to Marketo. But they will be orphan fields in Marketo with (C)
• If an SFDC Contact updates address info, it will overwrite their Marketo record (assuming no field block), but since this is under Company Info and tied to the Account, I'm not 100% sure it will update even the SFDC Contact. That's always been my assumption. However, when I test this with a record (which you should do), I see that Marketo won't allow me to change the Company Info in Lead Detail because it's now tied to the Account.
• So let's see what happens when I update Mailing Address in SFDC itself...then sync the record. The answer is none of that data appeared in Marketo.

So I learned something new!

(Caveat - your instance may be different, but this does appear to be a standard issue behavior)

My suggestion is to create custom SFDC Contact Mailing Address fields or expose them to Marketo and setup field blocking rules. DO NOT attempt to re-map the fields because you will likely lose data or have to go through a painful data fix process with Support.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Josh and Nate,

• As a standard, Marketo address fields map with lead and contact fields. E.g. Country:
  
• The account billing address has its own separate billing fields in Marketo, that a re company / account fields
  
• Account shipping fields are simply not mapped, event though they are in theory visible to the Marketo user. It can be a design choice from Marketo, but it can also be a limitation of the old SFDC API version Marketo is using (older API version would not provide access to alll fields). I do not know because I have never asked support to account map shipping fields
• If this what I described above is not how it's mapped in your instance, it means support has been remapping the things. What they have done, they should be able to undo.

So basically, what Nate wants to do is to revert back to the standard. Support will obviously be able to do it.

With regards to the protection of your data, I would backup the addresses of the contact records FROM SFDC before doing the remapping. The reason is that some contacts may have a different address from their account and these addresses might be replaced by account addresses in the remapping process, since Marketo is currently storing account addresses in lead fields. You will then be able to import back from backup after the remapping is done.

Account addresses bear no risk, since Marketo will never update them whatsoever.

-Greg

[Josh_Hill13]

That's helpful. I wasn't 100% sure if my instance still had the old standard. I did recall that Contacts could update their personal details and that was often a concern with Sales.

I personally would create new SFDC Contact fields here and try to map those to the Lead and then to Marketo as totally new fields. The only thing to remember is to use the new fields going forward on Lists and Forms. The risk to data loss is high when remapping existing fields.

[Nate_Oosterhous]

Hi Josh,

It sounds like we have two differing opinions on whether or not to remap.  I comprehend Greg's suggestions however I am a little fuzzy on yours.  Could you explain a little bit more by what you mean by creating new custom SFDC Contact fields and mapping those to the lead.  Do you literally mean:

1. Create new custom SFDC Lead and Contact address fields. 
2. Map them to one another in salesforce upon conversion from lead to contact in salesforce field set up
3. Take existing data and populate these new address fields.
4. Replace fields on SFDC page layouts.
5. Map to Marketo and new address fields to use.  Essentially do not use the original fields and mapping at all moving forward but using the new?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Nate,

To this list of todo's, you also have to add:

     6. Change all forms in Marketo to use these new fields to capture

     7. Swap the fields in any smart list and smart campaign flow

     8. Hide the old fields in the Marketo admin -> field management so that no Marketo user continues to use them

Decommissioning fields in Marketo can be a very cumbersome task. Which is why I prefer my approach

But where Josh is right is that sometimes Sales hate when a contact fills out a Marketo form and updates his address. If this is a concern and you want to prevent it, I prefer to block update rights to the address fields of the contact object on the Marketo user profile IN SFDC.

-Greg

[Anonymous]

It seems like the answer to every data challenge in Marketo is "...just add new fields." How is that sustainable?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

No, my proposal to handle it does not require any new field

-Greg

[Grégoire_Miche2]

BtW, You just won the award of the longest post title in the community

[Nate_Oosterhous]

Thanks Greg and yes it was a long one....