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Colby_Dix
Level 4
September 14, 2015
Question

reducing the number of leads

  • September 14, 2015
  • 2 replies
  • 5173 views

so you know how it goes... we all want a nice robust pipeline with as many leads as possible, but when MKTO comes calling to let you know (nicely) that you are well beyond your 'tier' cap for leads, you start thinking about some proper pruning. I'd like to get the discussion going here by saying what I'm thinking of doing for clean-up, and I welcome any comments or criticism of them.as well, if you have your own best practices to share, please feel free, I'd appreciate any and all input.

Unsubscribes - well they don't count against our lead total, so that's no biggie

Inactive for over a year - I say we jettison

2 hard bounces in the past 90 days - this is sort of a random and not a huge amount, but too many hard bounces and really, why are we bothering?

invalid emails - this is the one where I want some real input. how are you all handing invalid emails? i was thinking of at least quantifying it a bit based on lead status, which i know not everyone is using consistently, but in our case we have a excellent lead status and flow going, so i can just delete suspects and unqialifieds as opposed to prospects and any qualified leads. this could help me significantly.

duplicate emails - how are you all de-duping? manually? it's a pretty big pile but seems worth attacking in our case.

what else are you doing? thanks so much!

2 replies

Dan_Stevens_
Level 10
September 14, 2015

Actually, Unsubscribes DO COUNT against your total.

Here are some other good tips from our friend, Josh: http://developers.marketo.com/blog/how-to-clean-your-marketo-database/

Josh_Hill13
Level 10
September 14, 2015

Thanks Dan. I vaguely recall Marketo now saying that unsubscribes do count against you...or maybe that was Invalids who were not unsubbed.

@Colby, anyway, you have the right idea. But consider what I say in the post too:

  • focus on non Customers and non SFDC Contacts to avoid removing legally required information.
  • try removing 180day inactives or have a plan to reactivate and then remove non respondents.'
  • anyone who hard bounced twice.
  • Anyone who is email invalid=true
  • anyone marked Invalid or Junk
  • inactive unsubscribes - I guess I'd be a bit careful about these.
  • archive these with all columns someplace safe. There are particular laws for the storage of such information, so ask IT to help you find an encrypted location to store this data.
Colby_Dix
Colby_DixAuthor
Level 4
September 17, 2015

Side note as to processing this all.  Should I delete in MKTO and then also in SFDC? Which should happen first so as to avoid re-syncing? With that, do I perhaps run a campaign that sets all of the 'to-be' deleted leads to not sync to SFDC, delete in SFDC, and then delete in MKTO?

Thanks!

ooooh shiny.
September 19, 2015

For duplication, I think you can try TIBCO Clarity. It has a really powerful and robust de-duplication function.

You can customize your match strategies by columns or by swappable columns or by columns against to a thesaurus table, and then use them to discover duplicate records from any incomplete or partially similar records, even from records in different languages.

In addition, It has deep integration with both Salesforce and Marketo. It can help you directly update and remove duplication data in your salesforce and Marketo account.

you can try TIBCO Clarity for free.   clarity.cloud.tibco.com/landing/index.html

Colby_Dix
Colby_DixAuthor
Level 4
September 24, 2015

says the principal engineer of TIBCO...

ooooh shiny.