SFDC Sync: Merging a Lead/Contact/Person sfdc-sync-merging-a-lead-contact-person
Sometimes it is best to just list the rules. Here we go:
- When you merge two leads in Salesforce, the normal sync tells Marketo and the leads are merged automatically as people in Marketo.
- Merging two people in Marketo actually invokes the same process as merging them as leads in Salesforce. It still works automatically.
- Merging a lead (person) into a contact works the same way. You end up with a single contact on both sides.
- When merging, the default score is summed.
NOTE
Merging 3 leads (people) with scores of 10 each, will yield a result of 1 lead (person) with a score of 30.
- Conflicting field values are taken from the “winning record.” (Record = the resulting lead or contact)
- If the “losing record” (the one that is disappearing) had a value and the winning record has none (or is null), we will keep the losing record. In other words, “Some value is better than no value.”
- All activity log items are merged.
NOTE
The behavior of boolean fields in an API merge changed in the March '26 release. Now, a False value is treated correctly as having a value for that field. Only a null value is treated as “empty” when evaluating conflicting fields. See this Community post for more details.
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