Field mapping between Marketo and Dynamics.

Hi Jennifer. We migrated from SFDC to Dynamics in the past year so this is still fresh in my mind. When you initially connect Marketo to Dynamics, the default behavior is that Marketo will pull back EVERY field from the Dynamics lead and contacts tables. Let it do this. You can always "hide" the field later in Marketo if you decide it's not needed. This will ensure you have a complete mapping of Marketo leads to Dynamics leads/contacts. 

Going forward any time you need a new custom field in Marketo you'll want to ask yourself "would I ever potentially need this field in Dynamics (either for reporting or exposing it directly to sales users)". If there's even a slight possibility that the answer is yes, then create the field in Dynamics and let Marketo pull it back so you have it in both environments. If you create a custom field in Marketo it DOES NOT get replicated in Dynamics. I usually play it safe and create my custom marketing fields in Dynamics so they exist in both databases. 

Are you going to Microsoft's Convergence conference by chance? We just signed up and I'm very interested in meeting Dynamics users who also use Marketo. There aren't many of us so it's a great opportunity to meet and share ideas. 

Shad, after reading a number of threads on Dynamics <> Marketo sync issues, I believe you're the go-to expert here on the forums.  We're currently using a third party sync (Boomi) but will be switching over to the native sync.  Does Marketo's native sync with Dynamics create a contact record or a lead record in Dynamics?

Hey Ken,

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here:

>Does Marketo's native sync with Dynamics create a contact record or a lead record in Dynamics?

If you mean creating new records in CRM from Marketo records, these will always be created as leads, since it is not trivial to do account matching outside of CRM.

Hi Ken. The native sync follows this protocol when updating or creating records in Dynamics. Let's use the scenario of someone filling out a web form on your site. The transaction goes into Marketo first of course and then needs to be passed to a sales rep in Dynamics. Here's what Marketo does.

1) It looks in the contacts object in Dynamics for a matching contact. It uses email as the unique identifier. If there is a match, it updates the contact.

2) If there is no matching contact it looks for an existing lead, again using email as the unique identifier. If it finds a matching lead, it updates that record.

3) If there is no matching lead, it creates a new lead in Dynamics. 

Perfect; exactly what I was hoping to hear.  Thanks, Shad.  Jennifer, sorry for thread hijacking.  Doesn't look like I can send private messages on here and I was hoping Shad be notified this thread received a reply.