Dedupe leads

Hi Ayesha, as Val suggested you cannot automate the merging of leads in Marketo directly. We've found the process to be easier to do in Marketo than SFDC (except when trying to merge a lead and a contact), and we do it via the "Possible Duplicates" smartlist in the Lead Database. It is definitely a manual process, so it's something we do occasionally to keep things clean!

Marketo auto dedupes based on email address for leads coming INTO marketo (not from SFDC to Marketo).
You can automate or manage the deduping process overall with a tool like Ringlead or Demand Tools that work with both systems.

We use a program called Cloudingo for automatic mass deduplication. One of the very few vendors who provide that option.

Salesforce also has a new feature coming soon which will "possibly" help with Dupes - we ae currently testing this as part of the Beta test, but here's the release notes - http://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/api_cti/release-notes/rn_general_dedupe.htm

What will be good for us (so we are inline with Marketo) is to use the email address as the unique identifier in Salesforce and to exclude any exceptions in the rules we can hopefully set in the new product.

Hey Mel, I believe we're also in the beta testing for this -- but correct me if I'm wrong, this is only for newly created dupes? It doesn't pick up existing ones if I understand correctly. Also, if any type of uploader is used in SFDC does it protect against dupes at that point?

Thanks everyone for your feedback.  
I am still a bit confused. 
here is what I am understanding so far. 

If I go in the dupe leads smartlist and find multiple leads and merge them-- then that information will be synced in salesforce correctly?

If there is a lead and contact that I merge-- the lead will get merged into the contact in salesforce?

What if there are two contacts that need to be merged? what will happen in salesforce? 
 

Hi Dory - yes you are right it will only be for newly created records, we're still testing as we have many many ways that data comes into Salesforce so not sure of all the gotcha's yet, but it will help us long term with clean data

Ayesha - my recommendation is to do merging in Salesforce via Demand Tools (as Josh mentioned) - Scenarios can be built and run monthly with ease - also found this discussion yesterday so you cna view what has been merged in Salesforce - https://community.marketo.com/MarketoDiscussionDetail?id=90650000000PzvsAAC

great thanks everyone! just sent ring leads a demo request! wish me luck!