The Most Common Sync Errors and How to Troubleshoot Them / Marketo and SFDC

The sync between Marketo and Salesforce relies on a built-out API integration. This bidirectional communication for leads, contacts, and Salesforce campaigns ensures changes are visible in both systems. However, other syncs, like Accounts, Users (SFDC Lead/Account Owner), Opportunities, Custom Objects, or SFDC Activity (Event or Task), are only pushed from Salesforce to Marketo. New records in Marketo are sent to SFDC only when explicitly requested via Smart Campaigns or Program-Campaign Sync.

Marketo pulls new and updated Salesforce records based on the Last Modified Date Time every 5-7 minutes, syncing approximately 10-20krecords per object per hour. Keep in mind that changes made after a sync starts will wait for the next cycle.

Most of the time, it’s unnoticeable – if the process works correctly. The problem occurs when, for instance, your sales team awaits the hot new leads that you just deployed to your SFDC and the Marketo system still hasn’t received them.
Or when it only got some of them. If that happens, that’s the time to take a closer look at what causes sync errors and how to handle them.

The reasons behind it may vary but they are often related to the custom rules setup. But how does one even identify the error type?  

Sync errors often stem from custom rules set up on the CRM side. To identify error types:

1. Check  the Marketo Admin Panel: Start by reviewing all sync errors in the Salesforce area within the Marketo Admin panel. This module groups all sync issues together, making it easier to start troubleshooting and improving integration to prevent future problems.
2. Analyze  Error Details: The error type information provides a detailed description of the issue, including the date of failure and error type. To identify the source, examine the activity log and check for missing or invalid data from submission forms.

Errors are listed from the current time to five days prior, so regular checks are recommended.

What are the main reasons behind records not syncing correctly to SFDC and how to troubleshoot them?

As I’ve mentioned, in most cases our team dealt with, the sync errors were caused by the Custom Rules set-up on the CRM side which controls the data accuracy. The reason can be simple, for example, if a person is from the US, the state field needs to be properly filled out. If some thing is missing in the submission form or the data is invalid, the sync can’t be processed. That’s why keeping a clean database helps.  

Other sync errors can be due to custom logic preventing synchronization. For instance, when a client’s system could not sync Contact Objects to SFDC as  the ship-to-address field in Salesforce was empty. Resolving such issues may require updating specific fields in SFDC before Marketo can successfully sync.

The custom logic set-up on CRM is much more complex. Moreover, it has further exceptions making it impossible to cover them all. But these examples show that sometimes less means more – ‘over-engineering’ the process may cause some major synch issues.

When talking about sync errors between Marketo and Salesforce, we can’t forget about the Marketo’s queue. If you would like to quickly sync a large amount of data and add them to a particular SFDC Campaign, it may take some time before the records become available. Sometimes it can even take days! It is so because Marketo has its own queue – and sometimes there are many other personal details that need to be synched first. The synchronization order is as follows:

Lead, Account, Contact, User, Task, Opportunity, Opportunity Contact Role, Campaign, Campaign Member and lastly Campaign Member Status.

What’s more, only a limited amount of data can be processed at the same time. It is also worth noting that synchronization is a process that takes place in intervals.  

You can also prioritize the process yourself. High priority campaigns run in the order they were added to the queue. However, if you are running numerous Marketo campaigns simultaneously, the ongoing updates can make your sync slower. This delay prevents your Salesforce instance from enabling additional events based on campaign status.

How much data can we migrate at once?

Certain Marketo Nation sources suggest that the sync cycle between Marketo and SFDC runs at about 10 000 record updates per hour. We need to remember that some object types have different batch sizes so we can only assume what the speed of syncing will be. The simple scheme (without additional objects) looks like this:

If you have 20 000 lead and contact updates to pull, Marketo will handle 10 000 lead updates first.

• Followed by 10,000 contact updates.
• Then the remaining lead updates.
• Finally, the last contact updates

We also need to keep in mind that updates will only appear if there is no backlog on other objects mentioned above.

Regarding the importance of keeping a clean database –what are the best practices to do so?

The first thing is to standardize data input fields. People tend to make mistakes when it comes to filling out submission forms. The risk of misspellings and entering incorrect information is very high. To avoid that, minimize the space for human errors in your forms or other data sources.

You should know that maintaining a clean database is a never-ending challenge. That’s why specifying a regular cleaning schedule is a very good idea. The frequency depends on your regimen, but personally, I think once a year sounds like the bare minimum.