Using Duplicate Fields Filter in Trigger Campaign

[Conor_McCormick]

We are currently sending "Thank You For Your Inquiry" emails using a triggered smart campaign to leads from our websources. One of our Get A Quote (not a Marketo Form) sources can sometimes produces multiple leads for a single inquiry due to the way the form is set up, which creates leads that are MOSTLY identical - the form is designed for people to explore their options and tinker with their quote, but each tinker produces an additional lead when an "Update Quote" button is clicked, sending duplicates to SFDC and Marketo.

Questions: 

1) Are their any smart list filters or campaign options that will allow Marketo to only send one email per email address?

2) What's the best method to prevent duplicates from being generated in Marketo in this situation that does not involve redoing the web form? - the multiple quotes/leads are a bug in my role, but a feature for other areas of the business.

[Devraj_Grewal]

Conor,

Marketo will de-dupe automatically during batch sends of emails. Which means if the email is sent through a single email program or a single batch campaign. If two leads with the same email address enter that same email program or the same send email flow step of the same batch smart campaign at the same time, only one will receive the email.

Marketo will also de-dupe on form fills if the same email address is used to submit. I would strongly suggest transitioning to Marketo Forms 2.0 and embedding the form on the webpage. If you cannot rebuild the form for some reason, then you can query people who have filled out any of those "update quote" forms each day by querying visits to the follow-up page. Then you can manually merge them if they are the same person.

[Raquel_Babb]

Hello! I have a question regarding the initial part of your response. When two leads have the same email address, MKTO only sends to one. How does MKTO identify whom to send the email to based on both records having the same email address?

[Michael_Mason]

My understanding is that if you have duplicate email addresses in Marketo, it will send to the first email address it finds. That, however, depends on how Marketo puts the results together. Meaning it could be sorting via Company name, or First Name, or some other criteria you specified, so unless someone else can answer the EXACT way Marketo sorts, it's a toss-up. You have no way of knowing which one will be selected.

If I'm wrong, please someone correct me. I hope I'm wrong.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Have a look at this thread - each scenario can be different: If duplicate leads are an issue, be aware of how Marketo determines which lead is active

[Michael_Mason]

Thanks Dan, upvoted your idea!

[Dory_Viscoglio]

As Devraj suggested, batch campaigns will dedupe -- but triggered campaigns will not. It's likely that you're probably triggering a response at the time of form fillout since a nightly batch of "Thanks for your inquiry" is not the ideal user experience.

Unfortunately there isn't a great solution for you here if duplicates are a feature for other areas of your business. You might be able to look into the form post on submit, which might be able to prevent duplicates as it will post directly to Marketo. But, this will also overwrite form information each time as it will only allow a single record to be created.

[Conor_McCormick]

Would I be able to use a batch campaign on that lead source that ran hourly or say every 10 minutes? What would the drawbacks be?

[Dory_Viscoglio]

No, a batch campaign can only be scheduled to run once a day so unfortunately that wouldn't be an option for this.