Retaining Data When Merging HubSpot Duplicates To Avoid Critical Data Loss
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2024 8:25 am
In the world of CRMs, data is king. It drives our understanding of customer behavior, informs our marketing strategies, and fuels our sales efforts. But what happens when that data is compromised by duplicates? This is a common issue faced by many businesses that have data flowing into their HubSpot CRM from a variety of sources.
Duplicate data can create a myriad of problems, including lawyer database skewing reporting metrics, wasting valuable resources, and negatively impacting the customer experience.
But simply merging duplicates at random to rid yourself of their negative effects isn’t viable.
Let’s consider an example:
A customer, Jane Smith of Acme Inc., has three total records in HubSpot. The data that you actually want to keep may be split up between all three records. One might have Smith’s correct work email, another holds notes from sales and support conversations, and the third contains her most recent address, phone number, and job title from when she recently filled out a form. You want to keep all of the important information, but that kind of field-by-field level of control just isn’t possible using standard deduplication features.
In HubSpot, the merging process generally keeps the data from the record that has the most recently updated value. While this might seem like a logical approach, it's not always ideal. For example, if an older record contains more accurate information, this data would be lost in the merge, leading to potential inaccuracies in your CRM data that could impact the customer throughout their lifecycle.
Let’s delve into the intricacies of merging duplicates in HubSpot, focusing on the challenges of data retention. We'll explore how data retention when merging impacts your business, how HubSpot handles different fields during the merging process, the potential pitfalls to avoid, and best practices for maintaining the integrity of your data.
Duplicate data can create a myriad of problems, including lawyer database skewing reporting metrics, wasting valuable resources, and negatively impacting the customer experience.
But simply merging duplicates at random to rid yourself of their negative effects isn’t viable.
Let’s consider an example:
A customer, Jane Smith of Acme Inc., has three total records in HubSpot. The data that you actually want to keep may be split up between all three records. One might have Smith’s correct work email, another holds notes from sales and support conversations, and the third contains her most recent address, phone number, and job title from when she recently filled out a form. You want to keep all of the important information, but that kind of field-by-field level of control just isn’t possible using standard deduplication features.
In HubSpot, the merging process generally keeps the data from the record that has the most recently updated value. While this might seem like a logical approach, it's not always ideal. For example, if an older record contains more accurate information, this data would be lost in the merge, leading to potential inaccuracies in your CRM data that could impact the customer throughout their lifecycle.
Let’s delve into the intricacies of merging duplicates in HubSpot, focusing on the challenges of data retention. We'll explore how data retention when merging impacts your business, how HubSpot handles different fields during the merging process, the potential pitfalls to avoid, and best practices for maintaining the integrity of your data.