I keep getting random "Failed to merge leads [****]" errors and I'm trying to understand the nature of the error. Is this a problem with the records? Salesforce permissions? Issues with the records in Salesforce (merging them violates a validation rule or something)?
I'm new to Marketo... are the numbers supposed to have any significance to me?
Any direction is appreciated. Thanks.
Hi Tim,
So, there's a few possibilities here, but most of them are in fact going to involve Salesforce—the error numbers you're seeing are actually different lead IDs, which means that particular lead can't have data merge into it.
1. Check to see if your Salesforce sync is working to begin with. Are there any new notifications when you log in to Marketo? When you go to the admin section, do you see that your sync is turned off or hasn't synced in a while?
2. What type of records are you trying to merge together? In Marketo, you can only merge in three possible ways:
If you try other types of merges, such as Salesforce Contact with another Salesforce Contact or Salesforce Lead and Salesforce Contact, the system will stop you.
3. Does your Salesforce sync user have the correct permissions set up? The sync users needs field-level access to edit all fields for merges, even if it doesn't write into those fields normally, in order to correctly process merges.
4. Is the record even in Salesforce? When you delete a record out of Salesforce, it doesn't necessarily delete that same record out of Marketo. If your sync was active while the record was deleted, it will change the "SFDC is Deleted" value on the lead to true, but if the Lead/Contact is deleted while the Marketo sync is not in place, Marketo will not see the "SFDC is Deleted" flag change. You can test this by looking up what the record's SFDC ID is and adding that to the end of your Salesforce.com URL (e.g., na6.salesforce.com/00Qmyrecordnumber) to see if it pulls up anything.
5. This is much less likely, but is there a sync exception on the record? Some advanced administrators will set up record filtering to prevent editing of older records and inadvertently lock the sync user from editing and merging these old records.