I have been merging contact records via the Data Quality tool, and now I have boatloads of contacts with multiple open lead records! What do I do?? Is there an easy way to clean up and manage these duplicate leads? Thanks.
Hi,
This usually happens when contacts are merged but the associated lead records do not consolidate properly. The easiest fix is to filter leads where the same contact has multiple open records, keep one primary lead, and bulk update the rest to Closed or Disqualified. Going forward, review duplicate rules in the Data Quality tool to prevent this from repeating.
Hope this helps.
Pankaj
Hi @Stacks42,
As far as I know, this is currently not possible natively and neither do integrations like Koalify, Insycle, or Dedupely support it yet.
I would definitely advise against flat-out bulk closing / disqualifying a large number of leads as these could currently be worked and you can’t be sure you’re deleting the right half of two duplicate records.
Depending on the volume, it’s very likely going to be the best course of action to create a filtered leads view: Create and manage saved views
In this view, sort leads by name (which should for the most part “group” your duplicates) and display columns which help you judge which one to keep - activity dates, current stage, owner etc.
Then start selecting the checkbox at the beginning of the row to delete the ones you consider a duplicate.
As far as solving the core issue goes, the reason for duplicates is typically not the fact that contacts are merged but more that HubSpot’s default pipeline automation is creating leads and that there are additional sources for lead creation on top of that (workflows, manual creation). Using a custom report (data source: lead) you can check what the origin of these leads is.
Workflows that are creating leads, for example, can be easily set up to first check in a branch whether there is an open lead - and only create a new lead record if there isn’t.
Best regards
Thanks for mentioning us, @karstenkoehler . Quick update: Koalify now supports merging leads. Our clients kept running into exactly this after contact merges, so we added it as a workflow action.
It also deals with your point about deleting the wrong half. You set rules for which lead to keep (e.g. the most advanced stage or the most recent activity), and the duplicate is merged into it instead of deleted.
Your branching tip is still the best way to stop new duplicates. I included it in our write-up of all the options: How to Merge Leads in HubSpot (Manually or in Bulk)