How Can You Cleanse & Dedupe Existing Records in Marketo?

Maintaining accurate data records is crucial for a marketing automation system like Marketo to work effectively and efficiently. However, as data volume increases, its management becomes challenging. 

According to Filo, 50% of enterprise data is either duplicate or obsolete. And, duplicate data records contribute the highest to inefficiencies and inaccuracies. 

Though Marketo dedupe allows users to manage and merge leads, it does not automatically deduplicate pre-existing records. Therefore, a more mature merging process is required to ensure data accuracy. But before we discuss an advanced Marketo dedupe solution that prevents data duplication, let’s understand why Marketo data deduplication is important.

Why Marketo Deduplication Matters?

According to Gartner, data quality issues can cost organizations an average of $15 Million annually. This whopping cost underscores the importance of maintaining a clean and accurate database. When it comes to Marketo, deduplication becomes necessary, as, over time, the data gets polluted with duplicate and inaccurate records. Let’s discuss in detail why deduplication in Marketo matters.

Enhances Marketing Efficiency

Duplicate records in the database can result in wasted marketing efforts, such as sending multiple emails or making repeated calls to the same contact, leading to frustration. Effective deduplication ensures each marketing effort reaches a unique individual, significantly boosting efficiency.

Boosts Customer Experience

As mentioned above, receiving multiple emails or calls from the same brand can be annoying for customers. By ensuring that the database is free of duplicates, a more personalized and targeted customer experience can be offered. This helps in fostering trust and building positive relationships.

Improves Data Accuracy and Reporting 

Accurate and clean data is essential for an organization. It acts as a backbone for data analytics and reporting, crucial for decision-making as duplicate data can lead to incorrect conclusions regarding a lead, campaign performance, and ultimately ROI. Hence, data deduplication translates to more accurate insights and reporting.

Reduces Costs and Allows Optimal Resource Allocation

Managing and processing duplicate data is time-consuming and resource-intensive. Hence, automated data cleaning is pivotal in reducing overhead costs and allowing the team to focus on more important tasks.

Facilitates Effective Lead Nurturing

Data free from duplicates allows effective lead nurturing by ensuring each lead receives tailored information. This reduces the risk of losing potential leads due to inaccurate or irrelevant data.

Limitations of Marketo’s Deduplication Capabilities

Though Marketo has deduplication capabilities, it still has its limitations. Let’s discuss some of them.

Field Based Deduplication

The deduplication process in Marketo depends on the ‘Email Address Field’ as the main identifier. If the ‘Email Address Field’ is empty, Marketo’s deduplication process might fall short. 

Inaccurate Lead Scoring 

Marketo’s deduplication process is designed to work with incoming data, which means it may not proactively clean historical data. This can result in duplicate data, leading to a miscalculation of MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads). This miscalculation can cause hot leads to be overlooked, resulting in missed revenue opportunities.

Impact on Reporting and Analytics 

Duplicate leads skew data and complicates the analysis. As a result, organizations may struggle to make the right data-driven decisions. This hampers developing effective marketing campaigns and optimal resource allocation.

Maximize Marketo Potential with the Advanced Custom Dedupe Solution: M-Clean 

For organizations looking for an advanced Dedupe solution, M-Clean is an ideal choice. Designed and developed by Grazitti Interactive, M-Clean is a custom Marketo data deduplication solution that enables organizations to tackle duplicates across various data fields. Unlike Marketo’s standard deduplication capability, which primarily focuses on email address matching, M-Clean allows you to tailor field settings according to your business needs. Let’s quickly take a look at its key features:

Unleashing the Data Optimizing Potential of M-Clean 

Automate Duplicate Detection

M-Clean uses predefined rules to identify duplicates with a single click, eliminating manual efforts.

Configure Custom Dedupe Rules

It allows you to configure rules to identify the winning record and select how data should be updated for different fields.

Automate Deduplication Scheduling 

You can set up automatic scans for duplicate records at set intervals, saving time and effort.

Dedupe Using ‘Fuzzy Match Principle’

It allows you to detect and merge duplicates with the same name, and company name, but different emails.

Optimizing Marketo Performance: Steps for Data Deduplication

M-Clean integrates seamlessly with Marketo facilitating comparing and combining records. Here are the steps for data deduplication in Marketo:

• Choose Your Dedupe Configuration: Use the ‘Set M-Clean Mode’ option to select your preferred deduplication process configuration.

• Determine Merge Criteria: Decide whether to merge duplicates within Marketo Engage. Define the criteria for identifying duplicate leads, such as email address, company name, or full name.

• Set Winning Record Rules: Select the ‘Identify Winning Record’ feature to specify how merge rules should be applied. You can select the record with the oldest date, the most recent creation date, or the most recently updated date as the winning record.

• Customize Field Inclusion: Customize the field append settings to specify which fields from the winning record should be included in the merge process.

Some Custom Lead Merging Rules

Note: These rules can be customized as per your requirements.

Conclusion

Clean and accurate records are essential to maximize Marketo’s automation potential. While Marketo has deduplication capabilities, addressing its limitations is pivotal. M-Clean, a more advanced dedupe solution, effectively removes duplicates and enhances Marketo’s deduplication capabilities. This helps organizations significantly improve their efficiency, productivity, and ROI.