Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

OG2
Member

Duplicate - private and business contact

Hi everyone, I just joined a company and would like to clean up the Hubspot contact database.
I have read that one of the first activities is to remove the duplicates. However, while editing these, I noticed that there are contacts that are stored once with their personal email address as the contact and once with their business email address as the contact. In principle, does it make sense to merge the private and the business contact? If yes, why?

If we merge the two contacts, only the primary email address could be integrated into a workflow, right?

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danmoyle
Most Valuable Member | Elite Partner
Most Valuable Member | Elite Partner

Duplicate - private and business contact

Thanks for the tag @christopher-RVO@OG2 as Chris said, I'd start with a case-by-case audit of the contacts to see if there are any cons to merging. 

 

Here's my thought FWIW: Humans are humans. Whether I'm using my work email, my free gmail, my podcast email, or my non-profit email, it's me. When I'm on your website and I'm cookied and you're tracking me, it's me, the human. So merging my multiple contacts will ensure all of my activities are tracked in one record. As for which email to use, I would find the email where they interact most often and most recent, and make that the primary email. If you want to email the additional email, that is indeed where you'd have to swap it to primary (email resource here), which may become an issue. But in my experience, it's rarely a problem. 

 

Bottom line: Were I in your shoes, I would test it over a dozen contacts, then make it happen for all if you see no real issues. 

 

Did my answer help? Please "mark as a solution" to help others find answers. Plus I really appreciate it!


Dan Moyle

HubSpot Advisor

LearningOps | Impulse Creative

emailAddress
dan@impulsecreative.com
website
https://impulsecreative.com/
Jnix284
Most Valuable Member | Diamond Partner
Most Valuable Member | Diamond Partner

Duplicate - private and business contact

Thanks @christopher-RVO, happy to share my two cents 🙂

 

Hi @OG2 , much like @danmoyle suggested, there really isn't an easy way out on this, it is going to be in your best interest to go through the process of reviewing each duplicate one-by-one.

 

I had over 200 duplicates with a similiar situation, not just business/personal, but agency/client domain emails. I set a task to review 10/day and chipped away at it, there really wasn't a way to roll with it after auditing 10-20 because there wasn't a common thread.

 

In the end, I was left with 18 that I kept separate and the other 192 were merged. The 18 were outliers and it made sense to keep them separate, this may not be the case for you, but it's important to consider that there could be exceptions to the rule.

 


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



Jennifer Nixon - Delivery Lead at Aptitude 8

connect with Jen on Linkedin

christopher-RVO
Key Advisor | Diamond Partner
Key Advisor | Diamond Partner

Duplicate - private and business contact

@OG2 this is a tricky one as it depends on the nature of how someone does business with you. You could merge the contacts per the screenshot below and keep the business email as the primary. 

 

Why are there private and business contacts in the CRM? What industry and service does your company serve and provide?

Screen Shot 2022-11-21 at 12.01.29 PM.png


Christopher Barnett - VP of Revenue at Aptitude 8


OG2
Member

Duplicate - private and business contact

@christopher-RVO 

We supply food to people. We have both B2B and B2C customers. Besides that we have investors (with a business address) who also like to be private customers at the same time. Therefore, sometimes we have both a business and a private contact. 
If the private contact is then subscribed to our newsletter, it must be stored as the primary address or? And if we would want to integrate the business address into a workflow, it would also have to be stored as primary address or? So it probably makes more sense to separate the two contacts private and business?

 

Thank you in advance

christopher-RVO
Key Advisor | Diamond Partner
Key Advisor | Diamond Partner

Duplicate - private and business contact

@OG2 These would probably need to be handled on a case by case basis. Maybe a custom property of a sort that would tag the email address that needs to be sent the newsletters. 

 

Tagging some other experts to chime in:

 

@danmoyle @Jnix284 @jolle 


Christopher Barnett - VP of Revenue at Aptitude 8