How do we prevent against duplicate contacts?
At UpLaunch, we have built in numerous checks to ensure that we maintain high-quality data for your business. One of the ways we do this is with our duplicate contact handling logic.
The Unique Identifier
In any database, a field needs to be used as a unique identifier - in other words, something that can be used to return just a single result. Like many contact management software platforms, we use the email address as the unique identifier - meaning that each contact in your account needs to have a unique email address.
The Phone Number Conundrum
Once we bridged the gap into SMS delivery, we also realized that we would have to enforce unique phone numbers as well - otherwise, when someone replied to an SMS, how would we know which contact to attach it to?
Other Data Points
Everything else on a Contact Record can be duplicated - name, address, etc. The only things that need to be unique are the name and phone number.
The easiest way to discuss this is to give a few examples:
Example 1: A Web Form Is Filled Out With An Existing Email Address
In this situation, we'll look up who the contact is and take action (if appropriate). Our Platform is smart enough to know when it doesn't make sense - for instance, if a Client fills out a New Lead Form, we won't stop their Client Campaign and enroll them in a Lead Campaign. However, if they fill out something like a Cancellation Request Form, we'll look them up by their email address and take the appropriate action.
Example 2: A New Lead Form Is Filled Out With A Unique Email Address And A Duplicate Phone Number
For this situation, we don't want the New Lead submission to error out, so we'll just save it as a new contact without a phone number.
Example 3: Manually Entering A Contact With A Duplicate Email
In this instance, since it's a staff member manually entering data, we'll prevent it from happening and show an error message.
Fixing Duplicate Contacts
Essentially, the only way that a duplicate contact can exist in the Platform is if the same person fills out a form with two different email addresses, and a staff members realizes that they are indeed the same person.
In this case, just drop us a help ticket with the email addresses of the two contacts, along with which one you want to keep. We'll get them merged for you!