Trim Marketo Database, but don't touch Salesforce Data

[Anonymous]

We are on the cusp of our Marketo database size limit of 30,000 leads. The record count is mostly due it to being a match with our Salesforce database and the initial sync earlier this year.

We only market to ~20,000 of those leads. Rather than pay to up our Marketo license to a higher limit, I'm thinking about trimming down the volume of data in Marketo, but I don't want it to impact Salesforce.

Some questions...

• Is a good place to start by building smart lists/campaigns looking for the relevant records in Marketo that we are not marketing too, who we have no activity, etc? Those being viable candidates for deletion.

• When I delete from Marketo, can I make sure that they are NOT deleted from Salesforce?

• What if that person comes back into our lives and is now needed back in Marketo. What is the process to re-invoke a sync from Salesforce into Marketo so they can be added back to the pool?

• Is this a dangerous road to go down and is it' much safer to just buck up and get a bigger database volume from Marketo?

Any other tips for me?

[Michelle_Tizian]

Hi Scott,

Check this thread https://community.marketo.com/MarketoDiscussionDetail?id=90650000000PlI3AAK go to the post done by Charles T, creating a Sync to Marketo field.  This is a solution that has worked for us.  One thing to be aware of is that whenever a new lead is created in SFDC, you just have to make sure to mark that field true if you want it to sync to Marketo.  

[Josh_Hill13]

Marketo doesn't enforce this rule for unsub/blacklisted records. They also tend to enforce the fee at renewal time.

Using Smart Lists check:

• Unsubscribe count
• blacklisted count
• hard bounced more than twice
• marketo ONLY records (SFDC Type IS EMPTY)
• people with no activity that are only in Marketo
• Non Client SFDC Leads with no activity or bad characteristics.

I would be very careful about deleting records entirely. Make sure you only delete in Marketo: Delete Lead, Delete in CRM=False. Strongly urge you to NOT delete Contacts.

You should backup any record you plan to delete by exporting the smart list before you run the delete operation. You will lose most of your behavioral data.

if the lead returns via SFDC, it will sync over to Marketo. If the lead returns via Marketo, it will be a new lead.

If you delete in the CRM, but not in marketo, and the lead returns to the CRM, then a dupe is created. But you shouldn't have that issue.

[Anonymous]

Hey Josh,

Thanks for the input! I'm concerned/confused about leads who we remove from Marketo, but keep in Salesforce due to inactivity...if they take an action, how do we sync them back to Marketo?

If we remove these leads from Marketo, but they come back, have we lost all previous tracking for them?

Are there any other criteria that you've seen people use for purging their Marketo database, besides invalid entries, inactivity and unsubscribers? Also, what about people who have unsubscribed, but are still taking actions?

Thank you for any and all feedback!