Uploading Contacts into SFDC that are already Leads in Marketo

[Anonymous]

Hi

I am moving over about 10K contacts from our old CRM system into SFDC and attaching them to there current account in SFDC. Since Marketo has been used for the last two years before we moved to SFDC I know most of these contacts exist as leads in Marketo. What I don't want to do is sync them to SFDC as leads then manually have to convert 10K  contacts to there correct accounts in SFDC.

So what I am trying/hoping is that if I create them as contacts in SFDC let them sync to Marketo, Marketo then could merge the two records. So far I haven't got a strait answer  if this can be done. Seems simple enough match on email - update SFDC ID's. So far no one from Marketo has been able to give me an answers so I figure I would ask the community if anyone has done this. I would imagine I am not the first person to have this issue.

[Justin_Gray1 · Accepted solution]

Eric,

Was checking out the new SFDC/MKTO integration docs and saw your name pop up. Hope all is well.

MKTO is a slave to SFDC so any data entered there WILL create duplicates in MKTO which will not be automatically de-duplicated. You will want to first determine which contacts exist in MKTO by evaluating the 'SFDC Type' field - it will be blank if the record does not exist in SFDC. With the exception list the easiest strategy is to import the records that do not exist in MKTO into SFDC and Accounts/Contacts. For the records that do exist in MKTO you will want to sync them across to SFDC taking care to avoid any workflows that would prompt people in the org to freak out. You can then use Demand Tools or Data Loader to convert those bad boys to Accounts/Contacts, do any de-duplication and merging necessary and voila. Those are your easiest options.

You can create a merge leads webhook in MKTO to accomplish the method you outlined but it's not the straightest line as mkto lead merge can be unpredictable when determining the master and requires a greater level of effort.

JGray

[Anonymous]

Thanks Justin, I am doing well.

I started down this road but stopped because I didn't think Data Loader could do a mass conversion of leads to contacts in SFDC. I will look into that and I totally didn't think of Demand Tools. Don't really have Demand Tools in the budget until next year but I might be able to push that up. Thanks for the help! Hope everything is going well with the team!

E

[Lauren_Beth]

Hi Eric -  We also added SFDC onto a very mature Marketo instance. You have my sympathies!  Justin is right on the money particularly on those in our organization not being comfortable with Marketo having too much control in SFDC.  This limited our options.   First I'd establish how much control the sync user has in SFDC. Not thinking this through initially caused quite a few delays for us.   We have limitations on what Marketo can sync and/or delete in Salesforce (only a few fields and nothing gets deleted) and this limits how dupes can be handled, what has priority, etc.  We ended up using the Marketo Easy Merge service once we had both SFDC and Marketo getting along.  This purged most of our dupes and now we use Ringlead for maintenance.  The manual option works (again if SFDC allows the sync user to do so) but is just not feasible for any normal size database.  Hope this is helpful and happy to chat if you have any questions.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Lauren,

This project has open my eyes to a bunch of different things! HA. I will look into the Marketo Easy Merge as well as what Justin suggested above. I am guessing some combo these items will get the job done.

[Lauren_Beth]

Forgot to mention one thing Eric.  We did use a sandbox environment for quite a bit of testing before we flipped the switch here.  I'd highly recommend considering this.  Best of luck!

[Alok_Ramsisaria]

Eric Vitucci​

Possible solution could be:

- Merging the existing records with the new records: We have a dedupe solution in Marketo, where we can merge the records and have Contact as the winner.

- Auto-convert Contacts: We have a separate solution wherein we can do account based match and convert the leads to contacts and assign them to their corresponding accounts.

Happy to show you a demo for these. Drop a line at alok@grazitti.com for details.

[Dan_Stevens_]

We're in a similar situation - I was just about to create a new discussion until I came across your post.  We have a fundamental question around when a lead already exists in Marketo (and as a LEAD record in CRM - we use MS Dynamics, but that shouldn't matter) and Sales decides they want to start using CRM to manage their existing contacts within their accounts (which many don't do today).  When those contacts are entered in CRM, this will obviously create new/duplicate lead records in Marketo.  How are you all dealing with situations like this?  First, you can only merge like records (e.g., 2 leads or 2 contacts; not a lead and a contact).  Second, we want the contact to remain in CRM as the master record, yet allow it to proceed through out lead lifecycle as a lead (today, when the lead is qualified into a contact in CRM, that's where the merge takes place with the existing contact).  But in this scenario the lead exists before the contact record is created.  Anxious to hear your thoughts on this.

[William_Finnen]

Hi Eric,

RingLead can assist you with this initiative.  We have worked with hundreds of other Marketo clients who have been in similar situations as you are.  Feel free to email me at Billy@ringlead.com and I can go over your options with you.