Deduplicate records by custom unique value properties when theres no email

[AlanGrace]

Due to the nature of our business not all of our contacts have an email address, phone is a more suitable unique value. When a user submits a form via a landing page if they dont provide an email address I need to be anle to dedupe them still. I was looking at using a uniqie property which I set at the point of form submission that then exists on the contact record, then when they submit the form again I wanted it to see the same unique property and just update the first contact instead of creating a second one. 

It appears though that while this works in theory and for manyally entry that it does not work specifically for form submissions! Has anyone found a workaround for this same issue, specifically on contact records where you dont have an email address to use in the out of the box deduplication. 

[ChrisChin_LLF · Accepted solution]

Can't see how the unique values would help here, unfortunately Hubspot does not automatically deduplicate by anything other than a record ID or an email address. So your having phone numbers come through primarily is something of a challenge.

Option number 1: is a custom coded solution on Ops hub that you could have a developer set up for you to automatically deduplicate these.

Option number 2:  Real chunky workflow solution, would be to setup a workflow to trigger if a phone number is known but an email address is not known. You could then add in a combination of the phone number + @something.com to create a new "email address" that is functionally the phone number. You'll need the @something.com to meet email validation rules. You could then use this to de-duplicate. If it were me, I'd also set all these as non-marketing contacts and unsubscribe them from emails to prevent someone from accidentally sending a bunch of spam from your hubspot account.

3) You can do a less regular export from Hubspot contacts into excel or something like that. Find all record ids that are duplicate phone numbers (example here: https://www.xelplus.com/return-multiple-match-values-in-excel/). And re-upload them with all those matched records added to a list that you could then delete.

If my reply answered your question please mark it as a solution to make it easier for others to find.

Cheers!

Chris Chin

Local Leaf Marketing

Book a call with Chris

[AlanGrace]

Hi @TomM2,

Yes, I am aware of the unique properties but it appears from that documentation that you can't set this unique property from a form.

The following behavior is expected for unique value properties:

• Unique values are supported when manually creating or editing a record in HubSpot, and when creating, updating, or associating records via import.
• Unique values are not currently supported in forms. If your goal is to update or associate existing records via form submissions, it's recommended to use the default deduplication properties instead (i.e. Email, Domain name, Record ID).
• If you create a unique value property for contacts, when visitors are converted to a contact record, any visitor property values that violate the unique property requirements will be cleared. Learn more about identifying visitors.

I am wondering if this has changed or there is a workaround or way to do this in forms.

[AlanGrace]

Hi Tom,

Yes, I am aware of the unique properties but it appears that when the submission comes in from a form (as opposed to an import or manual creation). See below.

The following behavior is expected for unique value properties:

• Unique values are supported when manually creating or editing a record in HubSpot, and when creating, updating, or associating records via import.
• Unique values are not currently supported in forms. If your goal is to update or associate existing records via form submissions, it's recommended to use the default deduplication properties instead (i.e. Email, Domain name, Record ID).
• If you create a unique value property for contacts, when visitors are converted to a contact record, any visitor property values that violate the unique property requirements will be cleared. Learn more about identifying visitors.
  
  
  I am wondering if this is still a restriction or there is another way around?

[TomM2]

Hey @AlanGrace you can set a property to "require a unique value" for up to 10 properties in a pro and enterprise account. HubSpot will then use these values to de-duplicate from this property. More info on the knowledgebase here.