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Custom Workflow to Create Marketing Contact from New Lead

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Posted on by 69

I can't believe that this doesn't already exist in the platform, but when a sales user creates a lead manually or via import I want to be able to include this lead in marketing campaigns.

Since D365 Marketing uses contacts, I need a corresponding contact record to do this.

In the Marketing Guide on p664 it suggests a custom workflow to create a marketing only contact and link it to the lead via the parentcontactid column. I do this but it doesn't populate the "Existing Contact?" lookup field in the Qualify stage of the BPF. This field appears to be inaccessible...

Screenshot-2021_2D00_10_2D00_08-090324.png

Does anyone have an example of having done this successfully that they can share?

What are others doing for orphaned leads like this??

  • Suggested answer
    dynamikes365 Profile Picture
    dynamikes365 69 on at
    RE: Custom Workflow to Create Marketing Contact from New Lead

    The marketing only contact is what marketing uses instead of marketing directly to a lead because Dynamics won't do that. Therefore, the "account" is still the company identified on the connected lead record and the actual Account record doesn't get created until the lead is qualified. If you have rules enforcing the requirement to have an account record attached to every contact then you'll have to make exceptions for the contacts marked as "marketing only". FYI you don't have to meet field requirements when importing data-- just when saving it after changes post-creation.

  • mcrthomas Profile Picture
    mcrthomas 152 on at
    RE: Custom Workflow to Create Marketing Contact from New Lead

    Finally getting around to working on this. I see the Marketing Only checkbox in the Contact creation, but we are still required to have a Parent Account for all contacts. Is there some other setting that I'm missing to create marketing only contacts? Are you required to have a Parent Account in your org?

  • dynamikes365 Profile Picture
    dynamikes365 69 on at
    RE: Custom Workflow to Create Marketing Contact from New Lead

    I'm not sure I follow your concern unless you're using the account name or reference in your marketing action(s).

    We're creating the Marketing Contact for inclusion in Marketing specific motions while the lead runs its own course (i.e. getting scored until it reaches a threshold or sales working on it in tandem with marketing actions).

    The lead is connected by the contactid field and it's the lead that gets populated with the account before it's qualified. It then matches up with the Marketing Contact and the marketing only flag is removed, so it becomes a "regular" contact.

    Your rules for required fields and duplicate detection would still apply to the lead.

  • mcrthomas Profile Picture
    mcrthomas 152 on at
    RE: Custom Workflow to Create Marketing Contact from New Lead

    Thanks for posting this. It's pure insanity that this doesn't exist out of the box, but it took them years to get rid of Clippy, so I'm not holding my breath.

    My question related to this is how are you handling the account? In our environment Account is required for contacts which I think will be exponentially more difficult to create via due to variation in account names. I'm looking to create fewer duplicates. Thoughts?

  • sljones76 Profile Picture
    sljones76 45 on at
    RE: Custom Workflow to Create Marketing Contact from New Lead

    Fixed with a workflow!  Thank you, Mike for your help :)  Really appreciate it.

  • sljones76 Profile Picture
    sljones76 45 on at
    RE: Custom Workflow to Create Marketing Contact from New Lead

    Woo-hoo, it worked!  Thank you so much.  My only issue now is it's not changing the Marketing Only to "no" after a lead is qualified.  I guess I need to build a workflow to make that happen separately...

  • dynamikes365 Profile Picture
    dynamikes365 69 on at
    RE: Custom Workflow to Create Marketing Contact from New Lead

    Yea, it's easy to do.
    In the first workflow, when you create the contact record you do not populate the parentcontactid field. This value is generated after the record is created and is used to write back to the lead in the second step.
    The value that you use to populate the lead update step is a value pulled from the Process you're running which displays at the bottom of the list of available tables under Local Values.

    Local-Process-Values.png

    I can't tell if you're using the right values because your workflows are named something different than mine. You're only using the process local value on the lead update step though.

    Hope that clarifies.

  • sljones76 Profile Picture
    sljones76 45 on at
    RE: Custom Workflow to Create Marketing Contact from New Lead

    Ok, now I'm just confusing myself more...lol.  Here is what I have now on the Parent contact for contact and for lead.  Is this look right or am I still wrong?  Thank you.

    pastedimage1664479192309v1.png

    pastedimage1664479240062v2.png

  • dynamikes365 Profile Picture
    dynamikes365 69 on at
    RE: Custom Workflow to Create Marketing Contact from New Lead

    It sounds as though your first workflow did not set the parentcontactid field to link the two records together.

    parentcontactid.jpg

    If the marketing only contact is attached to the lead via this field, then when the lead is qualified it won't create a duplicate because it's already "married".

    The second workflow will set the marketing only flag on the contact to "no" when the lead status changes to qualified.

  • sljones76 Profile Picture
    sljones76 45 on at
    RE: Custom Workflow to Create Marketing Contact from New Lead

    Hi!  Love this.  Created it.  The only issue is now I have two contacts created.  so there is a duplicate contact record.  I thought it would take that "marketing only" contact and make it marketing only "no" when we qualified a lead.  Any idea on what step I need to add for this?  I definitely don't want duplicates.

    Thank you.

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