Two records, one email address

[Surflottery]

Hi folks - I have an issue in my organisation where we have some contacts who share an email address but need to be communicated with separately based on their product preferences. For example, Joan and John share an email address. Joan buys prize home lottery tickets from us but John interacts with us by making donations. As a result, they end up in different campaign lists. How can we have multiple people with the same email address in Hubspot? Any ideas on how we can treat these cases? 

[inigolekunberri]

+1

[MPamintuan]

Dear HubSpot,

Please make this happen. Our company relies on our client's shared email address and it is causing some internal struggles within our organization. 

[PamCotton]

Hello @MPamintuan, thank you for your feedback! 

I was able to find this post in the HubSpot Community Ideas forum. Upvoting here will alert our Product Team to the popularity of this request. Doing so will also auto-notify you if/when this functionality becomes available within HubSpot. You may read more about how that review process works here.

Kindly,

Pam

[MPamintuan]

Hi just sharing that our company is also having a similar problem. Most of our clients use a shared email address (Principal, teachers, managers) and the HubSpot CRM is giving us a bad experience not being able to have the same email address. 

As a result, we spend a lot of time, fixing and editing the names of our database and this is causing our company to have a bad experience overall. 

[flynn_43]

It looks like that the issue is still current;

In our industry 80% of companies have only one email adress for all the shop workers and cashiers.

It is a real blocage for us, as of course hardly any of them have gmail adresses, and when we did an import from our previous CRM it merged sometimes up to 8 contacts in 1 🙄

The salespeople get more and more frustrated as Deals are never associated with the right contacts.

We have tried creating contacts without email adresses for the other ones, but the annoying thing is that the tracked emails are all logged on 1 single account, and therefore we need to navigate

Anybody got a solution there?

Thanks

[PamCotton]

Hello @flynn_43,

Wanted to check if the solution provided does not solve your current issue?

Since when a new contact is added through import, form submission, or API, HubSpot will look for a matching value in the Email property. If a contact already exists in your account with the same email address, the new contact information will be added to the existing contact record.

Email address is one of the most important information that will help deduplicate a contact ( more information here) 

Since there is not an ideal solution at the moment, 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.

Kindly,

Pam

[SJV]

Has anyone developed another approach aside from adding a +1 to email accounts for gmail users? I have this same issue however often the email address that is being shared is just a general org email address (i.e. info@xxx.com). This said, I don't think the +1 approach would work as it seems this case is just for gmail accounts?

[daniel_reichelt]

We got the same issue. Our Sales team creates multiple contacts with the same email address in their sales tool (because they can and they want to, there is no way to convince them not to do it just because HubSpot isn't capable of adapting). 

Now, when the contacts sync from the sales tool to HubSpot, only one contact with that email address makes it into HubSpot. Or worse: The original contacts from the sales tool get merged into one HubSpot contact.

Any manual workarounds are not a real solution. I got other things to do to invent email addresses and add them manually. Dear HubSpot, please use something else as a unique identifyer for a conctact than the email address (e.g. a combination of different property values, like first name, last name, and email address). Multiple contacts with the same email address are a reality in many businesses. This needs to be addressed.

[SMehra]

We are new to Hubspot and are having the same issue.  Our sales teams have clients that share an email address between husband and wife and we're finding it impossible to send quotes and personalization with only being able to associate one email address per contact.  

Any workarounds besides the +1 method?

Thanks!

[FRuddy]

We are new to Hubspot and are having the exact same issue (while the root of the problem may be a bit different).  We have multiple contacts that utilize the same e-mail address and we don't have either the time or the inclination to 'trick' the system. 

It would be most beneficial if there were a multiple property check for duplicates.  Although, I would suggest something like address and/or mobile phone number - instead of First/Last Name.   There's too much chance of getting a James Doe and a Jim Doe if you are using First name.

[rahulll · Accepted solution]

Probably test this out internally, it worked for me just a few moments ago.

Lets assume the common email address shared by Joan and John is johan@gmail.com

Create a new contact record for Joan with email: johan@gmail.com

Create a new contact record for John with email: johan+1@gmail.com

Despite the +1 in John's email, the email will infact be sent to johan@gmail.com. Hubspot/gmail tends to disregard the +postfix in the email.

So now any email sent by johan+1@gmail.com would actually be sent with John's name and not Joan.

Hope this made sense? Give it a shot and see if it works for you 🙂

[Surflottery]

That looks like an interesting solution. Thanks! I'll give it a go. 

The issue we have with our business is that we often have husbands and wives sharing an email address but supporting our NFP organisation through different product purchases or donations. 

Grateful for all the input. 

Cheers

Louise

[QQ_admin]

Hi Louise,

Did you find that this solution works for you?

Thank you!

QQ_admin

[MFrankJohnson]

'Shared' email addresses are typically role-based email addresses. While you may send to some of these shared addresses in HubSpot, many ESP's block sending to these role-based emails.

- see Log Shared Email Automatically

- see Limits on Role-based Addresses (MailChimp)

Ultimately, if contacts need to be communicated with separately, they'll need separate email addresses in HubSpot. Using the '+' symbol in an email address has drawbacks.
- Limited to Gmail addresses
- Excluded by some services as SPAM
- Cannot be used to login to some services

[bradleyward]

I see that you are moving through the threads with the same reply to boost your standings, but the replies are not helpful.

You need to let Hubspot answer for these gaps. 

There are industries that are unique, like Maritime, where these types of emails are very standard and not considered spam at all.

Again, I think you are trying to help, but you aren't allowing this to develop into something for Hubspot to solve for.

[ElyshaShave]

Hi, 

HubSpot doesnt allow the same email address to have multipul contacts. The only way around this would be to add a different email to then be able to create two records. 

Apologies if this doesnt help.

Thanks,

Elysha Shave