Two unrelated records merged

[#1]

Hello,

We had a new form submission come through and instead of creating a new contact in Hubspot, it added the email address (and all information gathered in the form submission) to an unrelated contact. Is it possible the existing contact forwarded a marketing email to this new person, and they clicked somewhere in the email to our website, and submitted the form? If so, how can we prevent this from continuing to happen? If not, anyone have any other thoughts? They are completely unrelated - one is an entirely new name, the other has been in our database for months.

[#2]

Hi @mwilliams,

Well - the forwarded email would be a relationship, right? 

That is a potential explanation.  Another would be that the two contacts used the same computer/device to submit the form, or perhaps the same IP address (although in most cases the latter would not be enough to cause the issue).

Short of turning off Cookie Tracking on your form, which would create a new record for every submission, but would also result in the loss of most of the activity tracking data on your website, I don't think you can prevent it

You could create a workflow for yourself to make it easy to watch out for situations like this.  Just create a workflow that enrolls every time a Contact Email address is known AND the first conversion date is more than 1 day ago.  Allow customers to be re-enrolled everytime the criteria are met.  This should re-enroll people every time their email changes. From there, you can send an email to your marketing team to check on the contracts, or add them to a static list that you go back and check on every so often.

[#3]

Hi @mwilliams,

Well, the forwarded email is a relationship, right? 

That is a potential explanation for your problem.  In addition, the situation could also be caused by two visitors using the same device to complete a form, and possibly different devices on the same IP address (although that normally would not be enough to cause the issue.)

Short of turning off cookie tracking on your form, which would create a new contact for every submission, but would also cause you to lose all of your website tracking on actions before and after the form submisison, I don't think there is a way to prevent this from happening.

You can build a workflow that helps you keep an eye out for situations like this so you can fix them before there is a problem.  Just build your workflow to enroll every time the email address is known, AND ther first conversion date is more than 1 day ago.  That should enroll existing contacts when their email changes.  Also, be sure to allow them to be re-enrolled every time the criteria are met.  From there, you can either send an email to your marketing team to check and make sure the change is valid, or add the contacts to a static list that you check periodically.

[#4]

@mwilliams,

Interesting. Are the contacts on a separate domain all together?

[#5]

In our case, yes. They are usually from the same company!

[#6]

We have the same problem with ours! I hope somebody has a solution because we often lose some data when trying to sort it out!

[#7]

My understanding is that it has to do with the underlying cookies.  These people may seem to be unrelated..but could be friends, roommates, co-workers, husband/wife, etc. We have it happen all the time.  : (

Or maybe they are going to the same library.  I wish there was a notification when this happens so someone has to approve combining them as one contact or making them separate contacts.