I would like to have duplicate leads created and have other flow steps attach to thenew lead not old lead | Community
Skip to main content
Trish_Voskovitc
Trish_Voskovitc
Level 5
February 5, 2015
Question

I would like to have duplicate leads created and have other flow steps attach to thenew lead not old lead

  • February 5, 2015
  • 5 replies
  • 1895 views

Hi all,
we are moving to a sales process of having all new activity trigger a new lead (this is SFDC best practices) whether there is already a contact or lead record for that email address in SFDC. we want to follow the process of looking for duplicates when a "new activity" lead comes in and sales will determine if they merge leads or convert to an existing contact or not.

Anyway support told me how to create duplicates (you do an "add to queue- new responses" flow step)

this works but the problem is that all other flow steps or smart campaigns update the original record not the new one.
for example i had these 2 flow steps in my testing program after a smart list of fills out testing form i set up:
1. if already contact, add to queue new response
2. change data value - Lead Status = New Activity.

So the duplicate lead was created but the old contact record got the updated status of "New Activity" and the new lead record still had the old/original status from contact record. 

As all my forms on pages have specific SFDC campaings to add people to and interesting moments specific to those campaigns this will become a huge problem if old records get all this new data but the new lead sales is lookign at does not.  i did a test smart campaign on my test form/page. it was fills out form and then "add to campaign" and "interesting moment" again both were appended to old contact not new lead.

there has got to be  a way to create new leads and assign all most recent activity and flow steps to that new lead, i don't even mind if the flow steps added to both records since same person so would still be correct. so not sure how to have stuff trigger in right order so that it gets added to both or if only one then the new record.

anyone?  and yes, we have thought about and we do want the duplicates for various reasons:)
 

5 replies

A
Anonymous
February 5, 2015
Well I won't question the wisdom of this approach -- although I must say it feels inherently wrong to try to deliberately create duplicates :). But assuming you want to do this for good reasons...

I will say it is a tricky problem. Marketo is set up to help you AVOID duplicates rather than deliberately create/manage them. 

If you have two records with the same email and that lead does something and is identified with their email (form fill out), then how does Marketo know which record to update? 

I suppose if the munchkin cookie was different than that could be something....but the cookie could still be the same for the the "old" lead when in your process it's now a "new" lead.  

 
Trish_Voskovitc
Trish_VoskovitcAuthor
Level 5
February 5, 2015
yes, it is turning out to be tricky. munchkin code wouldn't be different. they have a way to add to a queue and create duplicates as many companies work this way (and SFDC says this is best practice when working with their product) but it makes no sense to create a duplicate lead in a queue with no new information telling the salesperson why they popped up in queue.

other products like Eloqua allow the duplicate lead to get a new status of say "new activity" so sales knows person did something new. but we cannot change vendors at this time as we just renewed with marketo.

also why wouldn't all the new info get added to both records then since same munchkin? this would be fine. then at least when looking at "new" lead they could see the latest interesting moment, the new lead status, new campaign the person was added to. it is just so odd that all this info gets appended to the original lead or contact but not the new one when it is created. if truly a duplicate then why not all the same inf??? hmmmm
A
Anonymous
September 25, 2015

The actions in the Flow are going to work on the current lead in the flow.  When you Sync Lead to SFDC in the 1st Flow step, that doesn't change the current Lead in the Flow.  (And doesn't the duplicate lead only exists in SFDC at that point anyway, until it comes back around on the next sync?)

How about -- 1) set the current lead Status field to value "New Activity", 2) Sync Lead to SFDC queue, 3) clear the Status field New Activity value on the current lead.

Or maybe you need 2 fields, so you can set a Hold Status field to the current Status, set the status to New Activity, Sync Lead to SFDC, Change Status value back to the Hold Status value to restore it.

A
alex.stanton
Level 7
September 26, 2015

There are different schools of thought about duplicates in Salesforce - for example this SFDC Admin Best Practices suggest to avoid them​, but I have also seen them created on purpose. While that would not be my preferred course of action, I understand you have your reasons to move ahead with duplicates, as you said above.

The thing is that Marketo best practice is to avoid duplicates so, since your process in Salesforce requires them, some things will not work right in Marketo (as you already saw). You might find some workarounds for some processes, but some others will simply not work. And while queues will create the duplicate you want, Marketo is not designed to associate activity to one duplicate or the other the way you describe in your question, so it will keep trying to find "the one record".

Alternatively you could consider using SFDC tasks (you can create them from Marketo) that associate to the original record or implement custom fields on the single record that could provide the visibility you need.

A
Anonymous
September 28, 2015

If my understanding is correct, you are synching a Contact record that already exists in Mkto to SFDC and assigning the record to a queue, which then creates your duplicate. That right?

We have used this as well and the best way that we have found to ensure that all relevant data is added to the newly created record is to run the record through a smart campaign and add it. Activity history is not added to the newly created record because the record is created in SFDC, not Mkto. Actual values on the record will be duplicated over, but not campaign membership, we pages visited, etc. because Marketo sees the record as net new with a source of SFDC.

I would recommend updating the Contact record with a unique value in a unique field, and then set up the campaign to look for a record created with that unique value and run them through the smart campaign again. This can be a standalone smart campaign, or you can use the same smart campaign using choices to update the newly created record.

Hope that helps!

Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement

Loading footer...