Utilising Marketo partitions to segment two different SFDC data structures?

[anissabrach]

We will soon be merging two SFDC instances for Brand 1 and Brand 2.
Beside the standard SFDC fields we will have two different set of custom data fields for Brand 1 and Brand 2.
There are also going to be different ways of working in Sales for Brand 1 and Brand 2 for now.

I'm thinking we need to have a partition in Marketo for Brand 1 and Brand 2 until there is more alignment in SFDC.

My question is: If I have two partitions, can I map all the custom fields from Brand 1 ONLY in partition for Brand 1 and all the custom fields from Brand 2 ONLY for the Brand 2 partition?

If I have to have all the fields for both brands set up on all the records, I feel this could get very messy, very quickly.

Any top tips on how to handle this and keep things clean?

[Darshil_Shah1]

Have you considered all the caveats of working with Marketo partitions? example, one of the biggest caveats that you should be aware of while using partitions is that people cannot be shared/co-exist (even as separate person records) across partitions. There are ways to create duplicate records across partitions (we can share ways if you're interested), but OOTB Marketo does not allow that. Also, AFAICT, the partitions have no effect on the salesforce sync directly. In fact, Salesforce even ignores in what partition a lead is and does not need to have this info to sync the lead. Similarly, the fields cannot be just synced and made available to people in a particular partition, they are synced to the Marketo instance (i.e., are available to people in the entire lead database), not just to a particular partition. You'd need solid processes and standardiazation in place to ensure that things don't get out of hand and data remains accurate if you end up syncing SFDC fields meant exclusively for each brand to Marketo.

[anissabrach]

Thanks. we actually have duplicates in SFDC with different record types, so I'd split them out to go in the different partitions. One reason would be to manage unsubscribes and preferences better - i.e. one person unsubscribes from Brand 1, but not brand 2 (or all of Marketo). That should work, no?

[Darshil_Shah1]

While SFDC can't see Marketo partitions, you can certainly build a routing setup in Marketo such that people get transitioned to the apt partition when they're created in Marketo based on the brand they're aligned with (you'd need proper criteria to ensure all the input sources are considered for brand-specific person partition transition process, and not just SFDC).

Also, since people aren't shared across partitions, and hence, you'd have to work with the Marketo support team to have your default de-duplication criteria updated and set to something like: Email Address + Brand Tag. However, with this, you'll have 2 separate records in each brand partition and with different act logs.

Regarding brand-specific preferences management, you can always have custom brand-specific subscription fields (datetime field type is considered superior over boolean, as the former serves a dual purpose: indicate someone’s interest and exactly when they subscribed to a given type). You'd need to have a subscription management system that takes care of updating these fields when people change their preferences; you don't really need separate lead partitions and separate person records in each brand-specific partition in the first place for this.

[anissabrach]

Amazing. Thanks for the advice!