HubSpot Ideas

seobrien

More efficient way to find and merge duplicate contacts

The Sales CRM functions more as intended for lead capture from a web form where one email would be provided to create the contact record.  

You're thinking in terms of the CRM as a Sales and Marketing tool, which it is, but it's also just a CRM: Connected to Gmail it's getting new records daily from people that have multiple email addresses.  Moreover, just doing an import of addresses from other databases can result in multiple Contacts being created for the various email addresses someone might have.

Consider myself as an example, I have 12 different email addresses.  When I take a new client or job, I'll have another.  Those are 13 different records. They are all just me and each of those email addresses should be more easily uncovered as associated with the same person and merged.

 

What needs to improve
Today we have to go into a Contact records and use the Merge function to find the other emails and merge them.  That's a manual process. A pain for large Contact databases.

The Contact list should have a "Find and Dedup" option.  The CRM should find likely duplicates not based on the email identifier but other personal identifiers: same name, similar name in same location, etc.  Flag those in the list and make it easy to check the duplicate Contacts and "Merge" them.

This really needs to be done as part of the platform as growing companies, teams with many people using Gmail as part of their outreach, etc. will constantly result in new Contact records that can go unnoticed as duplicates of existing records.

143 Replies
809CharlieTango
Participant

Does anyone know if there is something similar to RingLead, but integrates with HubSpot? https://www.ringlead.com/marketo/#.WbARDNOGNE4

Fitzwalsh
Member

Can't wait for this new feature!

DanOasisFun
Member

To lower possible programming and user frustrations, maybe not relying on the import to catch duplicates, but a button to select to search for duplicates and some how see some details of the contacts so we can verify if they truly are duplicates or if actual different contacts, or to see and select to merge the information of the contacts. 

 

We had it where one associate imported contacts and another associate imported contacts, as we got started with the program, and there are duplicates.  Some with more information than others.

tabbs
Member

Is there any movement on this feature?

As a company who's fees are largely formulated based on the number of contacts in our systems, this is a critical feature in which you should already be providing to us. It is also one of the most basic features found in almost any CRM in which the purpose is for correctly tracking contact and interaction history. 

This is a very horrible inefficienty, but that it also means for us additional sunk costs in the time it takes to manage manually as well as how your monthly fees are structured is just salt in an open wound.

realizeit
Top Contributor

This is a must have--especially for those of us paying for the CRM. We need an easier function to find duplicate names and merge them, either by filters or some other EASY process (and not within the Marketing side of things, either). Who the heck needs Snippets when this duplicate pairing function is a core of most good CRMs? Do you folks at HS look at the number of requests for features before placing new features in the "upcoming" queue? Do "needs" surveys?

jameslyons
Participant

HubSpot, it's been many months and a lot of people have voiced their support of this change. Any updates at all?

malcolmslater
Member

I developed a dedupe feature for data which I roadtested in several lrage public sector organisations over the last few years. Just wondering if there's enough support here for it to be worthwhile creating an extension to hubspot?

DanAt3DV
Contributor

@malcomslater - this would certainly be beneficial. Happy to beta test...

jameslyons
Participant

@malcomslater - we would very much appreciate the extension you described. Thank you!

realizeit
Top Contributor

As long as it's simple to use w/step-by-step instructions, would be great!

Leahm14
Member

I have to voice the same concern many others have voiced. Since you charge users based on contact volume, providing a deduping option seems like it would be a logical (and morally sound) function. 

 

Dirty data is an issue database management teams have had for years, and Hubspot's lack of dedup functionality seems really behind the times.

809CharlieTango
Participant

 @malcolmslater you bet it's a big requested feature. To have, doing it manually once a month sucks. Takes up about 4 hours to go through a list in excel, setting up formulas, etc. Even setting up formulas isn't a foolproof way of doing it because then I have to go back and check if a duplicate record is truly duplicate or if a contact just happens to be someone with the exact same name and an entirely different email address. 

 

Our company works with school districts and higher education and our contacts can be the same or different depending on the email address our contacts use. I would be cool if a feature would scan through the list based on the region, location and/or IP address of the contact to notify a HubSpot user to merge or check and see if a contact is duplicate or not. 

 

Thanks, 

Orlando 

jakekirsch
Participant

Strongly agree with everyone voicing the need for deduping in hubspot using more criteria than email.

 

Case scenario.

Contact requests info from our company and providers email 1. (personal email for example)

Later contact purchases from our company and we receive a different email for the same contact (work email for example)

 

Our company continues marketing to this person via Email 1 and We look like a dumbass.

 

Our database is around 100k contacts. Even exporting to excel and updating customer contacts with additional email addresses, then deleting duplicate contacts is a task BEYOND painful and time consuming.

 

How is this not a HUGE need for every company?

 

How has @Hubspot ignored this issue?

 

Could it be the basis of hubspots billing method? More contacts = More money.  Positively!

 

 

 

 

mattmayo2
Member

Please implement this.

martin_montreal
Member

yes! how does one vote Yes, yes, yes asap!!! 

Sfahl
Member

I'm a new user and am very impressed. Well, at least I was. The inability of CRM to display duplicates or possible duplicates is amazing to me. Especially since your users have been requesting it in a big way. 

 

In my scenario: One of our current customers signed up for a webinar with a different email address. She is now part of multiple work flows for non-users complete with sales tasks (such as calling).

Negatives:

1. It's hard enough to get sales persons to use a CRM, add to that they are now calling people who are already clients and the problem multiplies.

2. Very annoying for a current customer to get marekted to as if they aren't a customer. We lose some or all the hard work we put in to make our customers feel specail.

 

 

RiccardoPisani
Top Contributor

+1

jmihaljevic
Member

Just found this thread as duplicates are a major point in my database of 45,000 records.  Please hurry up this essential feature!

kgrider
Participant

Yes, this would be great! We have so many duplicate contacts in Hubspot because they have multiple email addresses. 

Coco2302
Participant

shocking to see how you guys just ignore this thread. Quite disappointing for a company that publishes books on how helping the customer and providing great service is are ultimate objectives...