SmartList of Current Customers

[Rich_French1]

As with a lot of companies we are struggling with the best way to identify our current customers to make sure they do not receive marketing emails.  We have a Customer Type field on each Account in SFDC that identifies each company as Customer, Prospect or Suspect.  New Leads are brought into Marketo or SFDC that often are not associated with the Account.  What is the best way to compare each lead in Marketo to that list of Account types?

Thanks,
Rich

[Anonymous]

I've been struggling with this idea too. The best I can come up with so far is to use your customers' emails (just the @company.com). So then you would list those or throw into a smart list and use the filter 'does not contain email addresses' or 'is not in that smart list'.

Let me know if you figure something else out!

[Rich_French1]

Kim,

That sounds like a good way to go.  Thanks for the response.  I'll give it a shot.

Rich

[Anonymous]

Yeah just keep in mind though that some may customers may use personal email addresses which wouldn't be caught in this case. Hopefully a better solution will come along!

[Anonymous]

That's a very common problem, Rich. Unfortunately, there's no great solution. I've seen two approaches that seem to be most common:

1. Create lookup lists to associate Leads to Accounts. This one requires some ongoing maintenance. Basically, you would have to maintain a list of customer accounts, and populate an "account type" field on the Lead based on company name, email domain, inferred company, or all of the above.
2. Market development team qualifies and converts Leads to Accounts. This one requires more overhead, but is much more effective. Market developers would qualify and categorize every Lead that comes in, and associate it with the appropriate Account.