Something odd is happening - email fields are being set to null upon Marketo sync to SFDC | Community
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A
Anonymous
February 3, 2015
Solved

Something odd is happening - email fields are being set to null upon Marketo sync to SFDC

  • February 3, 2015
  • 11 replies
  • 3170 views
I was noticing that a bunch of new leads that came in through SFDC via Marketo sync don't have email addresses, which is odd bc it's a required field on my Marketo forms. On further research, it looks like indeed the leads are filling out their email on the Marketo forms, but something is happening upon the sync to SFDC that changes their email field to null. It's not happening to all, just a portion. 

Here's the activity log for a new lead in Marketo.



Here's the same lead in SFDC - no trace on the history of email being changed.


I can only guess that something is set up weird with Marketo sync. However it's not affecting all new leads coming in.

Any direction to help troubleshoot?

 
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Turns out the issue was a permission to WRITE the email field on the lead record in Salesforce.com.

For some reason Christine's Marketo User robot in SFDC couldn't write email addresses on Leads, and therefore caused this nasty glitch:
  1. A new lead would come in from a Marketo form w/email address
  2. Marketo would insert the lead in SFDC, but leave the email address blank (since it couldn't write it in SFDC)!
  3. Next time Marketo would sync to SFDC, it would see a blank email address and DELETE it in Marketo too!
Ouch.

The issue was resolved by changing field level permissions in SFDC on the email field (letting marketo write it).

The good news is that the email address got recorded in Marketo's "Activity Log" - which isn't elegantly accesible, but is better than losing them all forever.

11 replies

Edward_Masson
Edward_Masson
Level 10
February 3, 2015
As your leads are created in SFDC first, its happening there. Your change data values is happening on the SFDC side.

Can you open up the 'Change Data Value' Email address row item to see what is happening?



 
A
Anonymous
February 3, 2015
This is what it says: 

Edward_Masson
Edward_Masson
Level 10
February 3, 2015
You have a work flow rules that is triggering in SFDC when a new lead is created based on some criteria.

Check with your SFDC admin to show you the rules that are being triggered when this lead was created and see why email address is being set at null.

Also, ask to check if the Marketo user (the SFDC marketo user) has any criteria set up on its role
Edward_Masson
Edward_Masson
Level 10
February 3, 2015
Maybe some trigger set up based on a particular lead queue when a new lead is allocated to that queue before it got allocated to a lead owner.

Failing that, please check your program/sync process in Marketo for leads syncd to SFDC.
Other than sync to SFDC, what else is the process is doing?
Josh_Hill13
Josh_Hill13
Level 10
February 4, 2015
Well Ed, the log says Sync Lead to SFDC, insert, so the lead is coming in from Marketo.

What appears to happen is SFDC is erasing the email address. I'd call Support to track this down.
A
Anonymous
February 4, 2015
Could it be that Marketo's access permissions to Salesforce Leads have changed, or email validation rules have been added in Salesforce?

I agree with Josh - Marketo Support should be able to figure this out.
Edward_Masson
Edward_Masson
Level 10
February 4, 2015
Doh! missed that.
Sorry Christine, as I wrote earlier, please check your smart campaign activity thats syncing your leads.
 
A
Anonymous
February 4, 2015
Thanks everyone - Marketo support thinks it's a SFDC issue. So I'm going back to them now with more info.

Edward, can you clarify a bit more about checking smart campaign activity? Screenshots would help. I'm pretty new to Marketo.
Edward_Masson
Edward_Masson
Level 10
February 4, 2015
Your new leads in Marketo can't get synced to SFDC on it's own. They need to go through a flow process in a Program with Smart Campaigns or just a Smart campaign with a flow step 'Sync to SFDC'.

You may have a program set up for lead life cycle, where your running your lead funnel stages. And have one smart campaign to sync all leads created in Marketo to sync to SFDC.

It's this smart campaign you should check to see if anything funny is going on.

Below is a quick example a flow to sync all SFDC when they are created in Marketo:




 
A
Anonymous
Accepted solution
February 6, 2015
Turns out the issue was a permission to WRITE the email field on the lead record in Salesforce.com.

For some reason Christine's Marketo User robot in SFDC couldn't write email addresses on Leads, and therefore caused this nasty glitch:
  1. A new lead would come in from a Marketo form w/email address
  2. Marketo would insert the lead in SFDC, but leave the email address blank (since it couldn't write it in SFDC)!
  3. Next time Marketo would sync to SFDC, it would see a blank email address and DELETE it in Marketo too!
Ouch.

The issue was resolved by changing field level permissions in SFDC on the email field (letting marketo write it).

The good news is that the email address got recorded in Marketo's "Activity Log" - which isn't elegantly accesible, but is better than losing them all forever.
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