Updating Contacts with New Info

[Anonymous]

We are in the process of cleaning our database and have identified "bad" contacts due to invalid emails. For a number of these, we've been able to identify the contact's new company, title, and email address.

We have an integration with salesforce. What is the best way to leverage this new info?

1. Update the existing record and overwrite the company, title and email with the new values
2. Delete the old record and create a new one with the new values

 

[Tara_Petre]

Updating the record can be tedious, however, doing so prevents you from losing all activity associated to the lead.  Also if the contacts are attached to an account in SFDC, you will need to update that information as well.
 

[Kristen_Malkov1]

I'd update the info in Salesforce, and it let sync back to Marketo. You can use dataloader (which is free) if you have the values as a spreadsheet. Keep in mind all data loader activities are permanent, but it's a great way to update info and keep all of the history. Also, as Tara mentioned, you definitely need to update account info too, but this is easily done inside dataloader. After it's updated, the sync will update Marketo.

Props to you for keeping your data clean and updated! 🙂

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Updating the record for any where the email address isn't the issue shouldn't be so bad as Marketo dedupes on email address. You could simply upload a list, and assuming that none of the fields are blocked from updates from list imports, all of the information will be updated with the new values.

Where the email address is different, you'll want to identify those, change the email address, and then you could use the same process outlined above to update the record with new information.

As Tara mentioned, if the account information needs to be updated, you will have to do this through SFDC. 

I would advise against deleting the records and starting fresh because you will lose everything about them in Marketo, such as emails they've received and campaigns that they've been a part of.