Migrate from Adobe Marketo Engage to Salesforce Sales Cloud

Marketo Persons (internally called Leads) with lifecycle stages of Anonymous Visitor, Suspect, or Prospect map to Salesforce Lead. We preserve the Marketo lifecycle stage in mkto_original_lifecycle__c and the acquisition program in mkto_acquisition_program__c as custom fields on Lead. The Marketo id (mktoId) migrates as a custom external ID field mkto_lead_id__c for dedupe and future sync reference.

Marketo Persons with lifecycle stages of MQL, SQL, Sales Qualified, Opportunity, or Customer map to Salesforce Contact tied to an Account. The same lifecycle stage and acquisition metadata custom fields apply. A Marketo Persons with no Company link resolves to a placeholder Account during migration.

Marketo Company records map directly to Salesforce Account. The Marketo Company id becomes a custom field mkto_company_id__c used as the dedupe key during import. Address fields (city, state, country, postalcode) map to Account BillingAddress fields. We pre-create Account records before Contact import so that AccountId lookup is satisfied at the moment of Contact insert.

Marketo Opportunities are CRM-derived and read-only when the native CRM sync is active. We extract Opportunity records via the Marketo REST API, preserve the Opportunity Name, Amount, Close Date, Stage, and Owner, and write them to Salesforce Opportunity. We preserve the original stage probability in mkto_original_probability__c because Salesforce recalculates probability from StageName by default.

Marketo Programs have no direct Salesforce equivalent. We extract Program metadata (name, channel, period cost, tags, acquisition program flag) and map Programs to Salesforce Campaign records with mkto_program_name__c, mkto_channel__c, and a tag array in mkto_tags__c preserved as a text field. Email Programs map to Campaign with CampaignType = Email; Event Programs map to Campaign with CampaignType = Conference or Webinar.

Marketo Engagement Programs hold up to 25 Streams with up to 125 content items per stream. We extract the stream structure and content count as Campaign metadata fields (mkto_stream_count__c, mkto_content_count__c) because Engagement Streams have no direct Salesforce equivalent. The stream content sequence is documented in the Program inventory for the customer to rebuild in Salesforce Flow or Marketing Cloud Account Engagement.

Marketo Static Lists hold a fixed set of Person records. We extract the list membership (Person mktoId + list name) and map to Salesforce Campaign Members with CampaignMember Status = Sent. We create one Campaign per Static List with CampaignType = Manual. List membership is preserved as a campaign membership record, not as a field on the Person record.

Marketo Custom Objects with a single link field (one-to-many relationship to Person or Company) map to Salesforce custom objects with an equivalent __c API name. We pre-create the destination schema via the Salesforce Metadata API, including all custom fields (up to 50 per object), the lookup field to the parent Person or Company, and the dedupe field marked as External ID. The relationship is recreated as a standard Salesforce lookup field.

Marketo Custom Objects with two link fields (many-to-many) use an intermediary object. We split these into a Salesforce custom object for the primary record and a junction custom object for the M:M relationship, with lookups to both parent objects. The junction object API name follows the pattern {Parent1}_{Parent2}__jxn__c.

Filled Out Form activities store each form field value as a separate attribute on the activity record. We extract all Filled Out Form activities via the Marketo Bulk Activity API, resolve the parent Person mktoId to the migrated Salesforce Lead or Contact id, and write the form submission as a Task with mkto_form_name__c, mkto_form_url__c, and individual form field values in custom Task fields. Original activity timestamp migrates as ActivityDate.

Marketo email engagement activities (Email Sent, Email Opened, Email Clicked, Email Bounced) map to Salesforce Task records linked to the parent Contact or Lead. Activity type is stored in mkto_activity_type__c, and the email campaign name migrates as mkto_campaign_name__c. These do not map to Salesforce's EmailMessage object because Marketo email sends are from Marketo's sending infrastructure, not from Salesforce.

Web Visit and Score Change activities migrate as Task records with mkto_activity_type__c = WEB_VISIT or SCORE_CHANGE and the original activity timestamp. Web Visit captures the referring URL and page title in custom fields. Score Change captures the old score, new score, and the triggering program or campaign name.

Marketo Custom Activities are user-defined event types beyond the ~70 standard types. We extract them with the same Bulk Activity API pattern as Standard Activities, resolve the parent Person, and write to Salesforce Task with the activity type name stored in mkto_activity_type__c and all custom attribute values in corresponding custom Task fields created at schema time.

Marketo lead and contact scoring values migrate as a numeric custom field mkto_score__c on both Lead and Contact. Scoring models (demographic and behavioral rules) are configuration that does not migrate; we document the scoring rules in the Program metadata inventory for the customer to rebuild in Salesforce Flow with an Apex-based scoring calculator or a third-party AppExchange scoring tool.

Marketo Channels (Email, Event, Webinar, Content, Default, Operacional, Trade Show) are freeform labels assigned to Programs. We extract channel assignments and store them as mkto_channel__c on the migrated Campaign record. If the customer uses channel as a reporting dimension, we map it to the Salesforce Campaign Type picklist where values overlap; non-matching channels are preserved verbatim in the custom field.

Marketo Tags provide freeform Program categorization. We extract all tag values per Program and store as a pipe-separated string in mkto_tags__c on the migrated Campaign. Tags are not Salesforce standard fields; if the customer requires tag-based filtering, we recommend Topics and TopicAssignment as the semantic equivalent.

Marketo Person and Opportunity Owner references are resolved via email match against the Salesforce User table. Any Marketo Owner without a matching Salesforce User is held in a reconciliation queue for the customer's admin to provision before record import resumes. We do not create Salesforce Users; that is an admin action requiring Active Directory or identity management configuration.