Merging duplicates

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At the same time, the marketing team continues to import contact data (e.g. in XLS or CSV format) into the CRM system without cleaning up the correct fields or data from ongoing projects or campaigns. As a result, issues like contact duplication lead to a cluttered and polluted database over time if it is not regularly maintained or managed.”

James Pollard of The Advisor Coach agrees on the topic of data cleaning:

“For example, a person might have contacted your company using two different email addresses. In this case, you would then send the same message to the same person twice. This gives the prospect a very unprofessional impression and shows them that you don't know what you are doing.”

So how can marketers remove duplicate contacts and other duplicate data from their CRM systems? We've received some suggestions.

Nathan Heider of Campaign Creators performs HubSpot deduplication manually. He recommends the following:

Choose which of the two contacts should contain the data.

Click Actions under the contact name.

Select Merge.

Enter the name of the contact you want to merge.

While some companies only purge duplicate contacts occasionally, several marketers told us they do it regularly. Eliminating duplicates has become a regular part of their work.

"Our company typically purges duplicates and fills in incomplete data in our CRM system once a quarter to keep the database clean and reports accurate," explains Colton De Vos of Resolute Technology Solutions.

During the purge, "the team decides whether to merge the duplicate orders/contacts, delete them, or keep both. This can be a little tricky because some information may be correct in both records. Then deciding what is the right data to keep is difficult if you didn't enter it yourself."

"Cleaning often involves contacting the people listed as the owner of the 'contact' or 'order' to find out what data to keep."

DDI Development "introduced routine review and duplicate checking into our workflows rather than making this a one-time task," Alexandra Zelenko says.

"Again, we use Insycle to identify duplicate contact records. Of course, HubSpot thailand country code doesn't allow a second contact to be entered with the same email address, but because we collect leads from different systems and don't always enter email addresses immediately, there are often multiple records for the same person. We may initially only know the phone number (on inbound calls) or the person may have used a different email address when filling out a new form. So in Insycle, we look for contacts with the same phone number or first and last name and then merge them if necessary. With Insycle, we can find duplicates based on similar field values, so records can be quickly identified and merged," explains Gabriel Marguglio of Nextiny Marketing, a heavy Insycle user.

Bryan Gorman, also of Nextiny, explains this in more detail. As background, he told us that the company uses software like AirCall and CallRail to capture phone contacts. "And that leads to some strange records in HubSpot. When we create a lead in our HubSpot CRM system, CallRail automatically populates the email address field property with [phone number]@call.com. If we have to create lists and sort by 'email address does not contain @call.com,' it's a disaster."

"Thanks to Insycle, the time spent fixing issues like this and lifecycle issues has been reduced from two to three hours to 30 minutes per customer," adds Marguglio.

But it's not just about saving time. CRM data cleaning has an even bigger impact.

Marketing experts agree that eliminating duplicate data fields is key to effective marketing and sales efforts. "[By merging duplicate fields, we get] accurate and up-to-date data that we can use to optimize relationships with our customers, as well as upselling and cross-selling," Zelenko continues.