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I would like to understand what happens in the case of Duplicate merges in the CRM,

and how does that impact Marketing Cloud?

  1. My guess is that there is no way to merge Marketing Cloud history when this merge happens in the CRM. Is this correct?
  2. Will Marketing Cloud keep the "losing" record of the merge in the Synchronized DE? I would expect it won't.
  3. Will Marketing Cloud keep the "losing" Contact in All Contacts? I would expect it will.
  4. Merge might trigger a journey for the "winning" record if record now meets journey entry criteria (as this is an "update" action). Source: Merged Records in SFDC CRM (Leads, Contacts, Accounts, etc.) & Impact on Salesforce Data Entry Event in Journey Builder
  5. Will the "losing" contacts exist in All Contacts even if there has never been any activity related to them? (i.e. no email/other message sent)

Any other impacts / best practices I am missing?

Thanks

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2 Answers 2

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Merging is currently not supported with Marketing Cloud.

  1. Correct, there is no way to merge Contacts or move send-related history from one Contact to another in MC.

  2. Marketing Cloud actually will delete the merged record from Synchronised Data Extension if the record is deleted in CRM.

  3. Yes it will keep the Contact in AllContacts, which you will need to manually delete.

  4. Correct, any data moved to merged record will count as regular record update and can trigger some automations in CRM or SFMC.

  5. Depends on your Synchronised Data settings, but normally yes. There is the option to turn off no-channel records, but by default this isn't used and all Synchronised Contacts are added to AllContacts table (minus the ones excluded with filtering on Connector level)

Best practice is to collect the ID's of synchronised records (the losing) to a separate Data Extension and then do the standard deletion process for them.

If needed, use API's to remove them from any on-going Journeys to keep statistics and metrics clean.

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  • Thanks @Rain for the complete answer. For #2 - won't keep (in question) = will delete (in answer. So all good. Special thanks for that addition of Best practice. This is gold advice!
    – LimeWeb
    Commented Jun 4, 2020 at 2:53
  • so those merged (losing) that are in the middle of a Journey will finish it, correct? To my understanding, the fact that they are removed from the Synced DEs is "too late" for those already admitted to a journey.
    – LimeWeb
    Commented Jun 4, 2020 at 3:03
  • Yes, the ones in Journeys should continue as normal, since the contact record in MC will still exist (everywhere except Synchronised sources) after merge in SF.
    – Rain
    Commented Jun 4, 2020 at 7:28
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Thanks @rain, what process did you put in place to identify the losing records in the scenario above. How do you identify them in Marketing Cloud ?

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