Contacts List without Email Addresses

Marketing & Content Tips, Tricks & Best Practices
1

We’re working an upcoming trade show. As part of our booth rental, we get an attendee list -- but that list doesn’t include email addresses.

Can I import a list like that? I think email is a required field.

It’s of value to me to see if folks on the list match up with folks on my database.

Scott

2

Hey, you could import your database without email, but it’s more difficult to find a contact duplicate because you don’t have the key field. So you need to find a key field like phone number o the same name or something like this.

JuanGomez0818_0-1670879482777.png
JuanGomez0818_0-1670879482777.png1905×962 69.5 KB

Let me know if works for you, regards. :victory_hand:

3

@LINCScott To clarify on @JuanGomez0818’s note above:
His proposed solution will NOT merge to existing contacts in the CRM. Uploading the data like that will create a net new contact record for each row as his screenshot states. The best way to do this would likely be through the API as it can bypass the native unique identifier of email address.
If this post helped to solve what you were looking for, please mark this as an accepted solution. Happy HubSpotting!

4

Hi @LINCScott,

Thanks for reaching out to the community! This is a common issue, you’re not alone.

Generally, the email address is the unique identifier in HubSpot. That means that if it is available, HubSpot will automatically update existing contacts in place and deduplicate them by email address. If it’s not available, HubSpot will create another contact record.

Scenario 1

(contact 1) Jane Doe, jane.doe@acme.com – already in your CRM

(contact 2) Jane Doe, jane.doe@acme.com – in your import file

Result: one contact record (Jane Doe, jane.doe@acme.com)

Scenario 1

(contact 1) Jane Doe, jane.doe@acme.com – already in your CRM

(contact 2) Jane Doe, email missing – in your import file

Result: two contact records (Jane Doe, jane.doe@acme.com and Jane Doe)

There are two ways to approach this.

If you’re fine with creating duplicates first and then cleaning up, you can use a tool like Insycle. It integrates with HubSpot and lets you define your own rules for deduplication, for example by first and last name instead of just email. You would import your list and Insycle would clean up after. The tool would tell you how many contacts were successfully merged afterwards.

If you do not want to purchase another software for this, you would make this comparison in Excel. First, you would export your contacts. In Excel, you would then compare both files by looking at first/last name and potentially company name as well, using VLOOKUP for example.

Those contacts which you can assign an email to you could re-import into HubSpot and create a list of contacts with emails which attended to the event. Contacts without email I would consider not importing – as they will 100% be the cause of duplicates in the future, unfortunately.

Let me know if you have any follow-up questions!