updating marketo records via its ID number

[Petyr_Campos]

Is it possible to update records in Marketo via their "ID" number?  I can't seem to find the field when attempting a list upload.

What if I need to update a number of records that don't have an email address. How do I update those records en mass?  I'd much rather do all my updating via a Marketo id number than an email address. Especially since you have have both a lead and contact records in Marketo with the same email address.

[Roxann_McGlump1]

Hi Petyr,

You can't use the Marketo ID number as an identifier, either for list imports or for search purposes.  We use the email address as the identifier, so that's what you will need to use for your list imports.

[Petyr_Campos]

so it doesn't sound like there is any way to mass update records in Marketo that might not have an email address

[Roxann_McGlump1]

That is correct.  Generally, for Marketo to make full use of a lead record, we need to have the email address.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Depends on what you mean by "mass".  The API can in fact update records by Lead ID.

[Roxann_McGlump1]

That is true, Sanford.  I was thinking strictly in terms of the original question looking at list import, but you can use Lead ID to update via API.

[Petyr_Campos]

Thanks for your feedback Roxann,

Same question to you. How do I mass update lead records by their id via API. This is a pretty big limitation with Marketo in my opinion. As I stated previously you can have the same email address twice in Marketo (lead and contact). However, you can only have one unique id. If I try to update a record that shares an email address with another record, both do not update. Marketo should only allow a single email address in their system to make it a unique identifier, or let me update records via the record id.  Just my 2 cents here.

[Petyr_Campos]

Hi Sanford,

thanks for the answer. So how do I update lead records in Marketo that do not have an email address via the API?

Sorry for my ignorance, but I thought updating data via a list load was via API since I'm not updating records through the UI (e.g. update a single record via the edit button)

[SanfordWhiteman]

You'd use the Bulk Lead API: http://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/endpoint-reference/lead-database-endpoint-reference/#!/Bulk_L...​

It's a lot like the browser-based bulk upload, but it requires OAuth authentication like all REST API methods.

You're right that bulk upload in general could be considered an API because it's "headless," but within the Marketo glossary it's not one of the APIs.