Change the unique identifier from email address to a custom field. | Community
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DannyFa
Level 1
October 9, 2017
Question

Change the unique identifier from email address to a custom field.

  • October 9, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 11438 views

Hi, I'm new to Marketo and am transitioning from SalesForce Marketing Cloud (AKA ExactTarget). In our business it is very common for there to be two accounts attached to a single email address. So for example, there could be a husband and wife, each of which have separate account number (i.e. 10000 and 10001) however they share the same email address jsmith@household.com. When we send out an email, we need to to ensure that each of them both get their account relevant email as there may be different content within them. In ExactTarget, we were required to change the "subscriber key" from email address to a custom field (i.e. "AccountNumber") to allow for these instances. Is it possible to do something similar with Marketo?

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2 replies

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
October 9, 2017

First, to be clearer about terminology: in Marketo, the email address is not actually a unique identifier. Not only is it not mandatory (in database terms, that means that all the leads with a blank email address in fact have the same email address) but, as you know, there's far from end-to-end protection against duplicate emails.  Email is merely the default deduplication key when using certain (but not all) Marketo functions. Custom settings exist so that some functions use the email address + one other field as the dedupe key instead, but that still doesn't make it a unique id, and still, not all functions will use the custom dedupe key.

The only guaranteed unique identifiers in Marketo are the Lead ID, Unique Code, and Unique Name. Other fields might be treated (by some functions and outside apps) as if they are unique, but Marketo will not ensure uniqueness. An example is when you sync an outside system to Marketo that has a special guaranteed-unique field associated with each of its records. As long as Marketo settings and flows are careful to never touch that field, it'll stay unique in Marketo as well. But it can still be changed within Marketo and the system won't blink.

Anyway, to your question: the Marketo feature that stops the same batch flow step from sending to the same email address more than once isn't deduplication per se. It's a special feature to stop spam-like behavior, and isn't related to create/update deduping. To work around this feature, have your Batch Smart Campaign call Request Campaign on a related Trigger SC. Everyone who qualifies for the Batch SC will then get the email, since the email step is standalone.

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Anonymous
July 28, 2018

Sanford Whiteman​

Hi, thanks for explanation.

Right now we are integrating with Marketo and also would like to have several leads sharing the same email address.

We are using Marketo Form created in Design Studio and we have added embed code to our site. This form has hidden field that is populated with uuid (generated on our side) in order to distingush our leads.

So as you can guess, each new lead just updates the existing same email lead, because deduplication key for the form is set to email. I know that API has functionality to easily change this deduplication key during API call (it is called lookupField in API reference), but we aim to use Marketo Form functionality, not API.

As you have stated:

Sanford Whiteman wrote:

Email is merely the default deduplication key when using certain (but not all) Marketo functions. Custom settings exist so that some functions use the email address + one other field as the dedupe key instead

Could you, please, tell us where can we change the custom settings for the Marketo form, so that our custom hidden field with generated uuid will be used as deduplication key?

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
July 28, 2018

Could you, please, tell us where can we change the custom settings for the Marketo form, so that our custom hidden field with generated uuid will be used as deduplication key?

The compound key is implemented by Support on the back end. You can't do it in the UI.

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Anonymous
October 16, 2017

Hi Danny -  I am keen to find a solution for the same issue.  We understand that if we can't add leads into Marketo via the SOAP or CSV upload with the same email address nor keep those records up-to-date.  But I am seeking to find a way to be able to allow a couple to have their own names & flags as well as share an email address.  Have you found a way ?

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
October 16, 2017

I don't understand your remark about the SOAP (API). You can insert/update leads based on another dedupe key, not Email Address, if you use the API. What you can't easily do is have a compound dedupe key spanning multiple fields.

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Anonymous
October 16, 2017

Hi Sanford

You can insert/update leads based on another dedupe key, not Email Address, if you use the API.

To confirm, you are saying that we can insert or update Leads in Marketo, and they could have the same email address, as long as we identify another dedupe key.

Is that right ?

For example we want to have

Lead Id Con ID Email Name Interest

001 1 freshwjj@gmail.com<mailto:freshwjj@gmail.com> Jen Health

002 2 freshwjj@gmail.com<mailto:freshwjj@gmail.com> Rob Poverty

And be able to update the records Lead 001 or 002 independently

We have something called a ‘CON ID” which is unique to each record in our CRM. If we made that the dedupe key, could we use the REST API

Can we make that change – change the dedupe key now, with a populated Lead table ?

Cheers

Jen

Jennifer Freshwater | Project Co-ordinator | Oxfam Australia

132-138 Leicester Street, Carlton VIC 3053

Tel: +613 9289 951 | Fax: +613 9347 1725 | www.oxfam.org.au<http://www.oxfam.org.au/>

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