Salesforce/Marketo Sync and Duplicate Emails

[Hank_Hansen]

Question for Salesforce/Marketo users:

Are there any issues related to having multiple records with the same email address and syncing SF with Marketo in this circumstance?

We currently dedupe in marketo based on 2 fields rather than the email field alone. Until we can change this down the road a bit, we need to allow multiple records with the same email address.

[Josh_Hill13]

Marketo only dedupes by email address for records that enter it directly. Marketo does NOT dedupe records incoming from the CRM/SFDC. So you should be fine.

Marketo will dedupe records that qualify for the same email flow in *most* situations, unless the records somehow got staggered.

[Hank_Hansen]

SugarCRM's Marketo connector (developed by SugarCRM) stopped syncing Sugar with Marketo altogether and we were told this happened because of too many records with duplicate emails. It worked for over a year but when there are "too many" records with duplicate email addresses to sync, it causes a time-out failure, breaking the sync althogether.

I just want to make sure SF will not have the same problem.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Hank,

I do not know what number is "too many" , but surely, the SFDC sync will not stop working. The link between SFDC records and Marketo record is not based on email but on SFDC IDs.

-Greg

[Hank_Hansen]

Exactly 🙂 Thanks for the confirmation - SugarCRM uses unique record IDs for Marketo sync, so it's a mystery why they are having a problem related to duplicate email addresses.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi again Hank,

What kind of lead/contact volume are we talking about ?

It seems to me as a false excuse for another problem (such as inability to handle high volumes, period)

-Greg

[Hank_Hansen]

I'm not at liberty to say but let's just say we're moving forward and in talks with Salesforce 🙂

[Grégoire_Miche2]

That's OK.

The reason why I was asking is because I happen to have customers using SugarCRM and if their is any repeatable issue with high volume handling, I would like to be able to warn them.

-Greg

[Hank_Hansen]

I'd be inclined to guess they'll be okay if they're deduping by email in Marketo. Sugar support claimed the connector would restore sync once we reduced the # of duplicate email addresses but they could not provide any guidance on how many instances of duplicates would need to be addressed.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Hank,

In addition to John's point, always keep in mind that duplicates is the Marketing Automation's best enemy.

Duplicates induces:

• Errors in targeting. You may want to exclude someone based on some criteria (e.g. a contact attached to an opportunity) but the same email on another lead gets selected
• Errors in form fill out attachment. If the person fills out a form, you do not control the lead to which the "fills out form" activity is attached. and it might not be the one you expected
• Errors in lead follow-up. As 2 leads collect the score for one person, each on the lead get's half the score, which prevents, or delays, the lead from popping up to MQL.

-Greg