Share Contacts in a SFDC Integrated Environment

[Matthew_McLean]

Due to our business model my company is considering implementing Salesforce shared contacts, which allows one Contact record to be linked to multiple Account records.  Has anyone worked with Salesforce shared contacts?  How does it impact the Lead records in Marketo when the two platforms are integrated?

[Veronica_Holme4 · Accepted solution]

Marketo only recognises a direct account relationship, not related contacts or related accounts. Even in a Contacts to multiple accounts model in Salesforce, a Contact record still usually has a primary Account (the rest are usually done using relationships or affiliations or some other junction object depending on how Salesforce is configured). It is that primary account Marketo sees, and will not be able to see others created in different models.

[Matthew_McLean]

Veronica, thank you for the input.  This is extremely helpful.

[Liliana_Cheng1]

Hi Matthew McLean​, has your company implemented the shared contact feature in Salesforce? If so, how has that impacted your Marketo instance?

We are considering it, but I'm hesitant since Marketo is unable to consume related account data on a shared contact. Most of our promotional emails are account-specific, but just because one account is eligible doesn't mean that a related account is eligible. So I'm concerned that Marketo will either be unable to find the qualified contact (if it's not the primary), or be unable to handle account field tokens pulled for contacts that have multiple accounts in Salesforce.

Thanks.

[Matthew_McLean]

I have not had any issues with field tokens. However, any smart filter search doesn't pull those shared contacts, but only direct account contacts.

[Veronica_Holme4]

No problem! Can you mark the question as answered?