SFDC/Marketo Integration: Has anyone remapped the marketo address fields to the SFDC Mailing address fields (sfdc contact address fields) instead of the SFDC Billing address fields (sfdc account address fields) since marketo cannot update SFDC accoun | Community
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Nate_Oosterhous
Level 7
January 25, 2017
Question

SFDC/Marketo Integration: Has anyone remapped the marketo address fields to the SFDC Mailing address fields (sfdc contact address fields) instead of the SFDC Billing address fields (sfdc account address fields) since marketo cannot update SFDC accoun

  • January 25, 2017
  • 4 replies
  • 6281 views

Hello All,

Background:

Our address fields were not mapped properly upon the initial set up years ago.  We are thinking we should be mapping the marketo address fields (Country, State, etc) to the SFDC Lead address fields and to the SFDC MAILING address fields (on the contact record) vs the billing address fields which is what we have currently.  The SFDC billing address fields cannot be overwritten because they are a SFDC account field and apparently marketo cannot write to the account object and therefore it makes no sense to have the marketo address fields mapped to the SFDC billing fields right?  So when a SFDC contact fills out a webform it will not update any geography fields.......right?

Questions:

Has anyone remapped the marketo address fields to the SFDC Mailing address fields (sfdc contact address fields) instead of the SFDC Billing address fields (sfdc account address fields) since marketo cannot update SFDC account information? 

If so how do you go about doing so without messing up any address information?

Is this the correct thinking?

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4 replies

Josh_Hill13
Josh_Hill13
Level 10
January 25, 2017

No, I haven't. But that won't stop me from thinking through this. Let's look at details.

A similar thread appeared and I wonder if this was AAA already. https://nation.marketo.com/message/116826#comment-116826

  • City maps to City (L) and BillingCity (A)
  • same with other standard "address" fields including Street, Address, Postal Code under the Company folder in Field Management
  • so if you wanted to play off the SFDC Contact address fields or Mailing fields, you could do so by exposing those fields to Marketo. But they will be orphan fields in Marketo with (C)
  • If an SFDC Contact updates address info, it will overwrite their Marketo record (assuming no field block), but since this is under Company Info and tied to the Account, I'm not 100% sure it will update even the SFDC Contact. That's always been my assumption. However, when I test this with a record (which you should do), I see that Marketo won't allow me to change the Company Info in Lead Detail because it's now tied to the Account.
  • So let's see what happens when I update Mailing Address in SFDC itself...then sync the record. The answer is none of that data appeared in Marketo.


So I learned something new!

(Caveat - your instance may be different, but this does appear to be a standard issue behavior)

My suggestion is to create custom SFDC Contact Mailing Address fields or expose them to Marketo and setup field blocking rules. DO NOT attempt to re-map the fields because you will likely lose data or have to go through a painful data fix process with Support.

Grégoire_Miche2
Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10
January 25, 2017

Hi Josh and Nate,

  • As a standard, Marketo address fields map with lead and contact fields. E.g. Country:
  • The account billing address has its own separate billing fields in Marketo, that a re company / account fields
  • Account shipping fields are simply not mapped, event though they are in theory visible to the Marketo user. It can be a design choice from Marketo, but it can also be a limitation of the old SFDC API version Marketo is using (older API version would not provide access to alll fields). I do not know because I have never asked support to account map shipping fields
  • If this what I described above is not how it's mapped in your instance, it means support has been remapping the things. What they have done, they should be able to undo.

So basically, what Nate wants to do is to revert back to the standard. Support will obviously be able to do it.

With regards to the protection of your data, I would backup the addresses of the contact records FROM SFDC before doing the remapping. The reason is that some contacts may have a different address from their account and these addresses might be replaced by account addresses in the remapping process, since Marketo is currently storing account addresses in lead fields. You will then be able to import back from backup after the remapping is done.

Account addresses bear no risk, since Marketo will never update them whatsoever.

-Greg

Josh_Hill13
Josh_Hill13
Level 10
January 25, 2017

That's helpful. I wasn't 100% sure if my instance still had the old standard. I did recall that Contacts could update their personal details and that was often a concern with Sales.

I personally would create new SFDC Contact fields here and try to map those to the Lead and then to Marketo as totally new fields. The only thing to remember is to use the new fields going forward on Lists and Forms. The risk to data loss is high when remapping existing fields.

Grégoire_Miche2
Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10
January 25, 2017

BtW, You just won the award of the longest post title in the community

    N
    Nate_OosterhousAuthor
    Level 7
    January 25, 2017

    Thanks Greg and yes it was a long one....

    N
    Nate_OosterhousAuthor
    Level 7
    January 25, 2017

    Also doesn't it make no sense to be mapped to the billing address fields since they don't update from web form fillouts and such? 

    What would be the reasons to have it mapped to billing address fields in the first place? 

    Our biggest issue is that for email marketing it is a huge pain because we have to pull contact target lists from salesforce because the mailing address information is their actual location vs billing which is their corporate location and mailing address fields are not mapped to marketo.  Essentially someone's mailing address (actual location) could be different from their billing address (their corporate/account's location). 

    The concern with creating email targets lists by billing address is that we potentially could not be using their actual location and therefore our targeting would be off and that opens up the potential to be in violation of privacy laws.  Does that make sense? 

    N
    Nate_OosterhousAuthor
    Level 7
    January 25, 2017

    Any thoughts on this guys?  All of this is super helpful.

    Grégoire_Miche2
    Grégoire_Miche2
    Level 10
    January 25, 2017

    Hi again Nate,

    I do not think you have much of a choice, you need indeed to reestablish the sync with the contact address. The choice of the method (Josh's or mine) will be yours as they have both drawbacks and advantages.

    -Greg

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    Nate_OosterhousAuthor
    Level 7
    January 31, 2017

    With regards to mapping back to the sfdc contact address fields (Mailing fields), a concern:

    Companies typically populate country, state, and postal code (or even less) upon form fill out and leave out street address.  If someone moves and they fill out a web form with their new location information that information will update in sfdc and marketo but the street address in sfdc and marketo will stay as their old street address since it was not populated.  This will create an overall inaccuracy of address information.  What are the options for combating this and what are people doing for this?

    A
    Anonymous
    January 31, 2017

    Use a Workflow rule in Salesforce and the "ischanged()" parameter.

    Basically if the State, Country or City change (or any combination of these) you can wipe out the street address. This won't be perfect of course (they may not change and the street address might have changed anyway) but it could work.

    @Nate Oosterhouse Your question's not exactly clear but I think that gets you were you want to go. When you say "Address" it generally means the entire Address (e.g. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C, 37188.) I think you're referring only to the Street Address, but if not then perhaps you could clarify.

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    Nate_OosterhousAuthor
    Level 7
    January 31, 2017

    Thanks Skot,

    I edited my reply. to specify street address instead of address.  Could you also do this within Marketo rather than using a salesforce workflow rule?

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