Marketo - Salesforce Sync

Question

The sync between Marketo and SFDC  happens every 5 minutes but what happens if we have a new record in Marketo e.g. via list upload that corresponds to a similar record in SFDC.  How will the synch reconcile it is a record that already exists in SFDC?  Is it based on an email address match?
 
For example:
Scenario 1: We get a new record for  Jane Smith, smith@yahoo.com in Marketo.  There is a contact called John Smith in SFDC with the same email address (smith@yahoo.com).  What happens?  Does the SFDC data overwrite the info in Marketo so that the new Marketo person/lead is now John Smith?
 
Scenario 2:  We get a new record for  Jane Smith, smith@yahoo.com in Marketo.   There is already a Jane Smith in SFDC but with an email smith@gmail.com.  I’m assuming nothing happens?
 
I think we want info to overwrite per scenario 1 because the email address is the unique person identifier and SFDC info “trumps” Marketo info. 
 
And in scenario 2 nothing should happen because the system does not recognize different emails as the same person?  Unless we have some secondary email address field in SFDC that can also be checked?  Ideally in this case, in Marketo, Jane Smith’s primary email would be updated to smith@gmail.com and she’d also be associated with a secondary email smith@yahoo.com. 
 
Then what about Marketo opt-in/out and unsubscribe settings?  If there are two different emails for the same person I think you can only track preferences by email – or do preferences somehow apply to other emails for the same person via the primary/secondary email connection?

PhillipWi1 · Accepted Answer

Hi Vishakha

Long story short is that in a list upload Marketo is matching by email address. Doesn't matter if SFDC ID is your unique identifier in the database generally, Marketo form fills and list uploads dedupe purely by email address.

So what would happen is based on whether that email exists in Marketo already, and what you Field Management settings are (as in, whether you allow a list upload to override field values).

In scenario 1, Jane Smith (the Marketo upload) will overwrite the Salesforce person since they will match on email address. Marketo will then overwrite all new details you provide, with the caveat that you might have blocked field updates via list upload in Admin (in which case it wouldn't overwrite those fields).

In scenario 2, a new person would be created for the new email address in the upload. There's no checking and de-duping against anything except the Marketo master email field. Sorry 😞

Preferences are tracked at the email level, so if you have two different profiles in Marketo with the same email address they will have different preferences, and the upload can't go "across profiles". The only exception to this is the master unsubscribe field. If one profile is marked as unsubscribe, Marketo is smart enough to ensure that anyone sharing that email doesn't get any emails either.

I hope this answers your questions.

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