When you use Sales Cloud and the lead object in combination with Marketing Cloud, it is good to know how the conversion of a lead works. When converting a lead in the CRM to a contact. A lead and a contact or both synchronized to Marketing Cloud and are both a contact. They are also both a subscriber if any emails have been sent to the contact in Marketing Cloud.
What happens when a contact in Salesforce CRM is converted?
When a lead is converted to a contact in the CRM the SalesforceID will change. Marketing Cloud introduced the ContactAlternateKeyStore (CAKS) to handle this conversion. CAKS will add an additional layer to the contact model making sure the different SalesforceID’s are mapped and no data is lost.
Below an example of the synchronized data extension “Lead_Salesforce”.
- Converted lead: The field ‘_ContactKey’ is mapped with the ‘ConvertedContactId’ field. The ‘ConvertedContactId’ is linked with the contact in Salesforce CRM. The old leadID is also still available as the ‘Id’.
- Lead: The lead has not been converted yet so the field ‘_ContactKey’ is mapped with the ‘Id’ field.
The field _ContactKey is always mapped with your subscriberKey. This means that the old lead after conversion will still be a contact, but will not be found via the Contact Builder. The subscriber created with the old leadID will also still be available, but won’t be emailed when creating a segment based on the Data Designer in Marketing Cloud.
How does Activation Studio work with lead conversion?
Activation Studio uses the relationships managed by the Data Designer. This means that when creating a segment via Segment Designer we will respect the change in ID. Making sure you will include the correct subscribers in your newly created segment.
