Merging Contacts in HubSpot Process

Best Practice for Merging Contacts in HubSpot

Identify Duplicate Contacts

• In your Contacts, click Actions > Manage Duplicates 
• You will see a list of all contacts that are potential duplicates

• Click on review

• Do not merge them right away. Check the contacts first. Click through to them.

• Aside from merging potential duplicates, you can also merge a contact directly. If you want to merge a contact with another manually, go to the contact you want merged with another and click Actions > Merge 

• You can choose which contact you want to merge it with by typing in the name or email address

Review Contact Properties

• Check the contact properties of both duplicate contacts to ensure they have accurate information.
• Pay special attention to properties related to marketing preferences or subscription status.
  

Documentation if details do not match

• Document information, especially if they differ. 
  
  • i.e. if properties are different, or lifecycle stage differ in one contact vs the other etc.

Select the Primary Contact and Merge

• Choose one of the duplicate contacts to be the primary contact. This will be the contact that retains most of the information after the merge.

• Blank Values: Blank values that have never been updated will not overwrite existing values in the other contact record.
• Cleared values (those that were once filled but later emptied) on the other hand will take precedence over existing values if they are more recent. This means if a value was cleared more recently than the corresponding value in the other contact, the cleared value will be retained in the merged record regardless of whether the value is from a primary or non-primary record.

Review Merged Contact

• After merging, review the merged contact to ensure all relevant information has been retained.
• Check that the email addresses are correctly merged and that other contact properties are accurate.
• The primary email address/profile is first in order.

Set Marketing Property

• Manually set the marketing property for the merged contact to what you want if it is incorrect.
• This property indicates whether the contact has opted in to receive marketing communications.
• You can find this property in the left hand side bar.

Check and Update Subscription Status

• Manually update the subscription status of the merged contact to reflect their marketing preferences. This may involve adding them to relevant marketing lists or segments.
• You can do this by going to the bottom of the left hand sidebar in a contact.

• There will be a list of subscriptions for both the subscribed ones and unsubscribed items.
• You can chose to unsubscribe from or subscribe manually.