Webhook creating new leads instead of updating existing ones

[Jesse_Richard]

We recently purchased a data cleansing and enrichment solution to help clean our Marketo database and get updated data for our records. We're using their webhook to essentially cross-check our database's information with theirs and update the lead record if there's new information. For the most part, it works fine, but when the webhook/solution partner finds an updated email address (either new nomenclature or at a new company [e.g. our database has joe.smith@acme.com, theirs has jsmith@acme.com), Marketo creates a new lead via the info pulled from the webhook, instead of updating the exiting record. Is this normal behaviour from Marketo, or is it something controlled by the webhook/solution partner? I brought it up with them and they're looking into it, but figured I'd reach out to the community to see if anyone had any ideas or thoughts. Ideally, we'd like to just update the pre-existing record, as keeping the old record and creating a new one leaves us with bad data in our database, and more duplicates.

[SanfordWhiteman]

You can't update the Email field directly from a webhook response.

You have to write the updated email into a proxy field, then switch the proxy value into the real field using a Change Data Value ​step.

[Jesse_Richard]

Ah. So just to confirm, I could setup a field, then have a Smart Campaign trigger set up for anytime that field is populated, to automatically update Email with {{lead.custom email field}} and that will update it?

[SanfordWhiteman]

Yes. Of course the webhook service needs to cooperate.