Marketo Sync Behavior: Unchanged Field ‘bulkupdate’ Persisting as TRUE in AEP | Community
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M
mustufam5967803
Level 4
May 25, 2026
Question

Marketo Sync Behavior: Unchanged Field ‘bulkupdate’ Persisting as TRUE in AEP

  • May 25, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 51 views

Hi Team,
We have a business requirement where, whenever bulk data is ingested in Marketo, the records should flow to AEP with the attribute bulkupdate = true. Subsequently, for any genuine (normal) updates to the same records, the bulkupdate flag should be reset to false, and the updated data should flow to AEP accordingly in the same flow run.


However, based on our testing, we are observing that bulkupdate = false is only being set when specific attributes are updated. Since it is not feasible to include all attributes in a Smart Campaign trigger, this approach is not scalable.

Could you please advise:

Which attribute or trigger should be used to reliably identify any genuine update to a record?
Is there a recommended approach in Marketo to handle this type of logic, where a field needs to behave like a reset flag after any update?

For example, we attempted to use Updated At as a trigger, but it is not qualifying records as expected.


Looking forward to your guidance on the best-practice approach for this scenario.
 

2 replies

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
May 26, 2026

We wouldn’t say the 2 types of update are “bulk” and “genuine”. Perhaps “bulk” and “individual” but even that is quite squishy, e.g. If you upload a CSV with one record in it is that a “bulk” update?

 

Better if you exactly define your terms. Is it “bulk” if there’s a CSV uploaded via the UI? What about a CSV uploaded via the API? What about a batch smart campaign with Change Data Value? A Sync Leads API call with 1-100 leads?

 

Please provide complete details, then we’ll continue. 

M
mustufam5967803Author
Level 4
May 26, 2026

Thank you for the response ​@SanfordWhiteman, Let me define our requirement more precisely.

Bulk Update - Means the file loads operations done by Marketo team and the AEP should not share these updates to the destination platforms hence we are thinking to enable bulk update flag at Marketo end and AEP can avoid sending this data to Other Destination Platforms.

 

Genuine updates/Normal updates - Standard day to day updates on profiles from different sources

When Marketo team is doing bulk updates on certain records the expectation is to set bulkupdate = true and this should flow to AEP

After that, for any subsequent update to the same record (regardless of which attribute changes), we want bulkupdate = false in same flow run and reach to AEP so that downstream systems do not continue to treat the record as part of a bulk operation.

As Marketo Engage Connector is streaming the data flows real time to the destination hence we don’t want bulkupdate = false to run independently.

 

Regards,

Mustufa Momin

 

 

 

 

 

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
May 28, 2026

There’s no such thing as a metadata flag like “The last update to this person as a whole was via list import.”

 

Plus even if there were such a flag, cleared out upon manual update, it would still be tremendously leaky. Say I update fields A-Y using a list import. Then a minute later I manually update field Z. You’re still gonna end up pulling all those fields changed by the list import because you wouldn’t know which fields were affected by that recent manual update and have to assume they all were.

EllenSchwier
EllenSchwier
Level 4
June 1, 2026

Marketo has the option to block field updates from different sources. Do you want to block Marketo from being updated by “untrusted list import” for example? Then there is no worry about the data going downstream. What is the purpose of having the data in Marketo but not in other systems?

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
June 1, 2026

Think the idea (which I sympathize with overall) isn’t to not have the values synced to other systems, ever. It’s to more “lazily” sync low-priority update sources while “eagerly” triggering on what are considered high-priority interactive updates.

 

Presumably, at the time of the trigger then everything would flush including low-priority changes previously ignored..  

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