Create new Leads for existing Contacts (Dynamics 365)

[Miika_Niemelä]

I was wondering if someone could help me out to solve this issue. I'm trying to find out a way to create new Leads for existing Contact in Dynamics 365 CRM.

For example I have a contact "John Doe" in CRM and in Marketo (contact entity). John Doe comes to our website and submits demo request form. The Contact entity gets updated in Marketo and the CRM sync tries to update the CRM Contact entity. I would like create a new lead from this and not update the existing Contact.

Logic would something like:

Smart list

- If data value changes (source last)

Flow

- sync to CRM

-- if Microsoft Type is contact, sync as lead

[Grégoire_Miche2]

AFAIK, the connector does not allow this.

We had the situation on a customer already, and the way we did it is that we simply pushed the info to the contact, then have a workflow in MSD to create the lead.

-Greg

[Dan_Stevens_]

Is this a limitation of Marketo - or CRM in general?  Sure, workflows can be created to create leads that have a parent contact, but syncing over a normal contact, without any customization, is not permitted. Also, if the workflow is built in CRM to do this, be sure to leverage the custom sync filter (as "OFF/FALSE") so that a duplicate lead isn't created in Marketo.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Dan,

With the Marketo SFDC connector, there is a trick to force the creation of a lead even if a contact exists. But it is not recommended as it will necessarily create a duplicate in Marketo.

This is not a limitation from the CRM: in both SFDC and Marketo, a lead can exist together with contacts. Historically, this is even how SFDC used to work by default, since the notion of lead cycling through the system did not exist: a lead was created, immediately assigned for qualification and from there either it was discarded to converted into a contact. On conversion if the contact exists, you can merge the lead with the existing contact.

But by default also, in SFDC, unlike MSD a lead is not to be linked to a contact.

I also observe that many MSD customers tend to use leads not as persons but rather as inquiries. To accomodate this, I feel that the Marketo-MSD connector should be able, when a contact exists, to create a lead and attach it to the contact, still attaching the activities to the contact, though.

-Greg

[Dan_Stevens_]

Appreciate the insight, Greg - especially since I'm not that familiar with the SDFC side.  Just this weekend, as we continue to work on the enhanced integration between Marketo/CRM, we ran a test where we populated the "parent contact for lead" value with the ContactGUID, for those people in Marketo that are MS contacts (when creating the purposeful duplicate to sync over to CRM).  Unfortunately, we're getting an error that's preventing the sync.  See here for more details: Error received when syncing a lead - with ParentContactID - to CRM

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Too bad. That would have been a nice workaround.

This only leaves the workflow then.

Greg

[Dan_Stevens_]

I haven't given up on this yet - I'm still destined to make this work!

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Keep us posted then

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Hi Gregoire!

I notice you say 'there is a way to force the creation of a duplicate lead when a contact exists.."

Turns out the marketo instance i was left with allows duplicate leads.  (i'm new with this instance and how it is set up after our marketing manager left the organization)

How do i make sure a duplicate lead is NOT created? I notice marketo updated a contact we have in our CRM with the campaign information (filled out a form on our website) but the lead was still created! And the lead does not have any of the campaign data the contact has from marketo.  So now I have to merge the 2 in both marketo and salesforce.  Where do i find this setting? is it in the flow? Or is it somewhere else? Thanks so much! I can't seem to find this answer anywhere! Thanks for your help!

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Julia,

Better ask a new question than continuing an old thread.

It's better for manageability of the community, and you will be more likely to get someone to answer.

-Greg