Contacts Merging when we don't want them to

Smart CRM & Sales Hub Account & Settings
1

Hi,

We currently have one gtm instance with the hubspot tracking pixel in, but that gtm instance is used across a main domain, and a subdomain, which are different digital experiences.

We are starting to see contacts merge, and we really do not want this.

Any ideas on how we can prevent this from happening?

2

Hi @SRoberts_BR

Can you elaborate a bit more?

I assume by GTM you mean GoogleTagManager, correct?

HubSpot will merge contacts based on email, regardless of where they are created or converted.

Cheers

Frank

3

Thanks, What we are seeing is differing customer data merging into the same record

Could be something to do with session management? We are stuck on this

4

Hey @SRoberts_BR, thanks for reaching out! It’s tough to provide a solid answer from the info you’ve provided — when are contacts merging? Why don’t you want them to merge?

HubSpot deduplicates contacts based on email address (more info in this HubSpot Knowledge Base article), so if you’re seeing engagement from the same contact with the same email address across your main domain and subdomain, HubSpot is going to store that data in a single record so that you don’t have multiple instances of the same person.

That said, you should still be able to distinguish activities across your domains (assuming you have the tracking code installed and are using HubSpot forms, CTA buttons, etc.). You should be able to drill down into activities and property values within that single contact record, and you get to see everything all in one place. You’re also able to capture a contact’s info in one experience and leverage it in the other, so that makes engagement more seamless.

We’ll be able to provide more recommendations if you can share more info about what you’re trying to accomplish. Thanks!

5

We are actually seeing differeing contact information merge into the same record, i.e. we have had 4 different customers merge into one record

6

Hey @SRoberts_BR just out of curiosity, are these contacts all submitting a HubSpot form and “merging”?

If so, HubSpot forms will by default add all form submissions on the same browser to the same contact record, so if multiple form submissions are happening on the same browser (with the same cookie) the original contact record will continue to update.

To avoid this you can enable “always create contacts for new email addresses” if you’re using HubSpot forms.

However, if you’re using non-HubSpot forms, this feature cannot be enabled and your captured forms will always overwrite the contact record for submissions with matching cookies.