Duplicate Lead Created in Salesforce When Contact Already Exists

Nina - what is the best # to reach you at, if you don't mind? Thanks! 

Yes, we have a field on the Lead and on the Contact for "Sync with

Marketo" which defines whether a record is included in the

Market/Salesforce Sync. We update the Contact record so Sync with

Marketo is false, and we create the Lead record so Sync with Marketo is

true.

Hi Nina - If we have a duplicate Lead and Contact in Marketo, were you able to implement any customization such that when someone fills out the form, it's the Lead that gets updated and not the Contact?

Obviously our use case is very specific, but you can use similar logic. When someone completes a form in Marketo and it has been several month since their last purchase, we have Marketo update a boolean field on the Contact record in SF, which we call "Create a New Record". When that field on the Contact record is true, it triggers a workflow in SF to create a new Lead record; it also updates a field on the Contact record "Sync with Marketo" to false, which prevents the old Contact record from syncing with Marketo. The new Lead record is automatically set-up to sync wtih Marketo. 

Hi Nina - We are dealing with the exact same problem. Would you be able to share the exact implementation that you have done. Both @ Marketo end and SFDC end..

It is my experience that the new activities will log to the existing contact and any use of the existing email address should automatically link. The only time I have seen Marketo create a new lead is when a new lead is created in SF. So if you have new activity in Marketo which is set to sync with SF but the existing record is set to not sync with Marketo, then SF will create a new lead record. Is that consistent with your experience.

"This will disqualify SFDC Contact records from the campaign." What does this mean? Does this mean that if a contact fills out a form on a campaign, Marketo won't allow it? Or that Marketo won't sync to Salesforce the contact's updated status? I'm trying to get Marketo to stop creating duplicate leads for contacts already in our database. In my situation I'm using Marketo for RSVP forms. A big chunk of my events only go out to known contacts, so all I need Marketo to do is update the person's campaign member record to "registered" when they rsvp. The people are already in the campaign as "invited." The link to the RSVP form includes a query string with the person's email address. This is prefilled into a hidden "email address" field on the form. For some reason, for every event, a handful people will register for our events using the URL with the query string and Marketo will treat them like a new lead. I've removed SFDC sync from the Marketo Program and updated my flow steps to update the marketo program status to registered on form fill, and also change the salesforce campaign member status to registered. I had hoped this would stop all the other SFDC flows that could cause contacts to flow through the queue. Even so, some people are still going through an SFDC insert and Marketo is adding them to the campaign as a new lead.  Why would Marketo see an email address on a form that matches an existing contact and still decide to create a new lead? Could it be an issue with the munchkin tracking?

Hi Bobby,

If someone submits a Marketo form with an email that already exists in Marketo's database, it will update the existing record regardless of whether that record is a lead or a contact in Salesforce, and update that existing record in Salesforce. If you want form fillouts to create new Marketo records that would be sent to Salesforce as leads, you would need to work with Marketo support to set up custom de-duplication rules.

We solved this by creating a workflow in Marketo and in SF that creates the duplicate lead. If a contact in Marketo completes a form, Marketo updates a field on the Contact called "Create New Lead" to true. When this syncs with SF, a workflow in SF creates a new lead. It also updates a field on the Contact to stop ongoing sync with Marketo, so all new Marketo activity is on the new lead. We also plan to move to Opportunities, so we don't have to create leads for returning clients, in the future.

Correct me if I'm wrong. (Marketo/SFDC integration) My understanding is by default, a new lead is created in Salesforce when someone fills out a form with the same email as an existing contact. But for some reason, our instance isn't doing this. If someone fills out a marketo form using the same email as an existing contact, it will be merged in the same contact inside Salesforce. We actually prefer to have a new lead created and synced => auto assigned to the queue. Any suggestions?