topic Re: Two contacts, 1 email address in CRM

Two contacts, 1 email address

theXO — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 13:28:52 GMT

Is there any way to assign the same email address to two different contacts? I would like profiles for up to 3 or 4 different contacts to track separate interactions but they share a sales@suchandsuch.com type address. Is there no way to give them each their own distinct profile while using the same email address? I'm not concerned that all emails will be tracked to all profiles.

Thank you in advance.

Matt

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

Phil_Vallender — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 15:53:08 GMT

Hi @theXO

It's not possible I'm afraid. HubSpot uses email address as the unique identifier for contact de-duplication, so entering a second name to an existing email address just overwrites the first one entered.

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

theXO — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 15:57:31 GMT

Thank you for your help Phil.

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

Camirand — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 16:25:15 GMT

Could this thread be moved to Hubspot Ideas.

Most of my old customers use only one email for the couple. When i want to email one more than the other and would like to have the note in their respective profile, it get complicated. I have to copy paste...

Thanks

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

FSS-DGA — Sat, 31 Mar 2018 02:21:53 GMT

This is going to create problems for me. Some of my client contacts have shared email addresses. Not being able to add both with the same address is an issue. Is there a workaround?

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

bsummerville — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 19:06:15 GMT

I have the same issue. 2 clients in the household, 1 email address for the both...takes up more time to "copy and paste" into the "other" record.

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

MatthewShepherd — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 19:04:58 GMT

Removing duplicate comment

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

MatthewShepherd — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 19:03:03 GMT

Removing duplicate comment

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

MatthewShepherd — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 19:04:02 GMT

This is an issue we often struggle with.

I can't guarantee that this is the right solution, but a workaround I'm exploring at the moment is adding an incremental string and number into the email addresses, to allow us to create a second contact record, and then opting out those incorrect emails (by importing as an opt-out list - i.e. never contact unless the contact manually opts in).

You want to add a short string and number to the email (and not at the end so it still validates) to make sure everyone can using the crm can be sure that this is an invalid email that we created on purpose e.g. myname-hs-multi1@test.com.

If you have a lot of these contacts working with them in an Excel workbook can help with adding those incremental string and numbers and then creating a list of contacts (with invalid incremental email addresses) for opt out.

Here's how I do that in Excel:

First Name Last Name Email Count Multi Identifier Final Email

Matthew	Shepherd	test@test.com	1		test@test.com
Joe	Smith	test@test.com	2	-hs-multi1	test-hs-multi1@test.com
Jack	Black	test@test.com	3	-hs-multi2	test-hs-multi2@test.com
Matthew	Shepherd	hello@test.com	1		hello@test.com
Joe	Smith	hello@test.com	2	-hs-multi1	hello-hs-multi1@test.com

With formulas:

First NameLast Name Email Count Multi Identifier

Matthew	Shepherd	test@test.com	=COUNTIF($C$1:C2,C2)	=IF(D2>1,"-hs-multi"&D2-1,"")	=SUBSTITUTE(C2,"@",E2&"@")
Joe	Smith	test@test.com	=COUNTIF($C$1:C3,C3)	=IF(D3>1,"-hs-multi"&D3-1,"")	=SUBSTITUTE(C3,"@",E3&"@")
Jack	Black	test@test.com	=COUNTIF($C$1:C4,C4)	=IF(D4>1,"-hs-multi"&D4-1,"")	=SUBSTITUTE(C4,"@",E4&"@")
Matthew	Shepherd	hello@test.com	=COUNTIF($C$1:C5,C5)	=IF(D5>1,"-hs-multi"&D5-1,"")	=SUBSTITUTE(C5,"@",E5&"@")
Joe	Smith	hello@test.com	=COUNTIF($C$1:C6,C6)	=IF(D6>1,"-hs-multi"&D6-1,"")	=SUBSTITUTE(C6,"@",E6&"@")

That way, you have multiple contacts one with a valid email that can be used for marketing and the rest that have an identifiably modified email address that stay in the CRM but are in your opt-out list and therefore not counting toward your contact tier.

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

Sabine — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 14:01:26 GMT

Hi there,

I tried your workaround the way I understood it:

I added 1 contact with sales1@test.com and one with sales2@test.com (actual mail address of both is sales@test.com).

Now I wanted to add the real sales@test.com address as a second email address in both contact records. However, for the second one, it wouldn't let me do it, but the second email address disappears again after a second.

Can you please tell in more detail how you do this?

Best,
Sabine

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

Echologie — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 07:18:13 GMT

I have a list of 20k contacts with duplicate email address. This is going to be a real issue for me.

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

vy — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 15:10:13 GMT

why not use phone number as the indentifier?

phone number is unique and everybody has one!

in my area many people just don't use email... is that mean i have to create an fake email address for each of them?

much workload you know....

also, people won't change their phone number often, they use their phone number as long as they can.

but people will change their email address.

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

JonathanDobson — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 11:06:01 GMT

I agree - this is a problem (although I get it). Would be really great to get around this - for example we keep the good email address against the child/daughter/son record of the contact (as they normally drive the comms process/need) and the parent/mum/dad has to have no email and we tyherefore loose that ability to email mum and dad about parent stuff.

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

HaaWee — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 14:41:40 GMT

Having a unique email address makes no sense at all in real life. There are plenty of customers out there who share corporate email accounts, e.g. sales@companyA.com, finance@companyB.com, etc.

We can't expect CRM users to force customers to pick another email address, just because 'our computer says no'.

It's fine when you want to use the email address as part of *potential* duplicate detection, but it should not enforce a unique email address.

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

PamCotton — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 22:15:22 GMT

Hello @HaaWee ,

I would highly recommend you to please post this idea at our ideas forum (here).

Our product team, who monitors the forum regularly, can read your specific use case and understand why this would be a useful functionality or change. It also helps other customers facing the same issue to advocate for its implementation on your behalf by upvoting on the thread as well.

Thank you,

Pam

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

bendonahower — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 18:27:06 GMT

Most of my team doesn't have phone numbers, at least for business use, and a lot of phone numbers I call are the main business line which is associated with multiple contacts. I see how email works for expediency but would be great to use the contact ID number as the primary unique identifier because of this.

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

katherineladue — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 18:26:02 GMT

Has anyone figured out a good workaround for this besides just using a placeholder email address, maybe with a custom object or something? We have a client for whom this is going to be a huge issue, and placeholder email addresses help a little bit to at least get the records into the database but there's so many HubSpot sales tools that you can't use when you don't have an actual email address in the default email address field. They went through the whole sales process not realizing that this would ever be an issue so they're understandably very frustrated right now.

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

HaaWee — Sun, 10 Apr 2022 09:27:55 GMT

This is not about identifiers, it is about the way Hubspot uses the email address to detect and prevent duplicates.

If they would use the phone number in stead, that would create exactly the same problem. Only one contact with any given phone number can exist in the database. So forget about family members using the same home phone numer, office workers that use the company's main number, etc.

There is only one solution: Hubspot should change the duplicate prevention rules to

- allow for multiple contacts with the same name, phone number, email, etc

- allow the user to define the duplicate detection criteria (e.g. a combination of name and email)

- allow the user to specify what needs to happen if potential duplicates are found: ignore, warn, block

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

HaaWee — Sun, 10 Apr 2022 09:35:47 GMT

That may be a technical workaround but completely counter intuitive. Opt in/out is regulated in many countries and can not/should not be used for other purposes.

Marketing staff should define market segments without having to worry about duplicate email addresses. They think in terms of contacts. Whenever a market segment is using in an email campaign, only one email is sent for each email address, and in Hubspot we (should) know how many contacts we targeted.

Re: Two contacts, 1 email address

sbeacham — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 16:25:25 GMT

This is an issue we face aswell. We have many clients from and older generation who share an email address. We also work with caregivers and guardians who are the single point of contact for multiple clients.

I understand that HubSpot is setup the way it is, but it would be nice if an actual solution could be developed which would allow us to give two (or more) different people the same email address.