Deduplicate HubSpot Contacts, Companies, and Deals in Bulk

Navigate to Data Management > Merge Duplicates, and select the database and record type from the top menu. Then explore the templates for an existing solution that may be close to what you need.

To find duplicates, you need to define how to match records. Step 1 looks through the records in your database examining the fields that you specify for a match. For example, to find duplicate people you may use the "First Name," "Last Name," and "Email Domain" fields. People with the same first name AND last name AND email domain will show as possible duplicates.

Each row in the Find Duplicates step is for a field you want to look at for duplicates, along with some parameters on what to look for. You can add fields by clicking the + Field button, or remove fields by clicking the “X” button at the end of the field row. 

Choose fields that, in combination, give a high degree of certainty that the matched records are duplicate records. See the Advanced How-Tos for more detail on using these fields.

When finished, click the Find button and Insycle will generate a list of duplicates for you to review.

Expand Criteria for Matching Duplicates

If you'd like to look at the data in two different fields (that contain similar data) as if it were one, you can set up Related Fields under the Advanced tab. For example, you might want to look at both the Email and Additional Email fields for duplicate values.

The Conditions tab provides rules one or more of the records in a duplicate group will need to meet.

• Value Required in All Records - Each record must contain a value in this field to be considered a duplicate.
• Empty Allowed in Any Record - A record can still be considered a duplicate if this field is blank. Allowing empty values requires using two or more fields to identify duplicates.
• At Least One Record With Non-Empty - At least one record in the duplicate group must contain a value.
• At Least One Record Match - At least one record in the duplicate group must match the specified value, and the other records cannot be blank. If none of the records have the specified value, the duplicate group will not be merged.

Records that have the same values in the fields specified in Step 1 are considered matches. When two or more records represent the same entity (person, company, or other) based on your matching rules, they are clustered together into duplicate groups. Each duplicate group shows the total number of records that were identified as duplicates based on your settings. For example, if you had four records for the same person, it would count as one duplicate group with four duplicate records.

In this view, each row represents a duplicate group. When you click a row, it expands and shows the records that belong to that group.

Explore the record data in the duplicate groups. Double-check to make sure that the fields you set up in Step 1 are showing what you expected. 

Looking at the record details in several duplicate groups, decide the best way to determine which is the master record the other records will be merged into. Learn more about common practices for picking a master record.

Add more columns to the view using the gear button on the right end of the Step 2 header to get more context and analyze the records.

The most efficient and sustainable way to merge duplicates is in Bulk mode. This allows you to set rules for determining the master record automatically across all records in your database. With Bulk mode, you'll be able to use saved templates and recipes to repeat the process on a regular basis. 

Under Step 3: Choose Operation, the Bulk operation tab is automatically selected. Leave this as is.

If you have duplicate groups that contain more than five records, you may want to change the value in Skip duplicate groups with more than 5 records per group to make sure you can get them all.

Note: When merging in bulk, Insycle limits the duplicate group size to five and skips groups that contain more records. You can adjust the default value of five records as needed, up to 100 per duplicate group. This is a precaution to ensure that if you use a duplicate matching filter that is too broad in Step 1, you do not accidentally merge many non-duplicate records together.

In Manual mode, you have complete control over which records are merged together by selecting them from the Record Viewer. Manual mode should be reserved only for cases where you need a careful, controlled process. Learn more about manually merging duplicates.

Configure Rules to Automatically Select the Master Record

Under Step 4 on the Records tab, you define how all of the matching duplicate groups should be merged at scale. To do this you need to create a series of rules that specify which record from each group should become the master.

The goal is to identify one record from each duplicate group as the master, this is the record that will remain after the merge. For example, if you had four records representing the same person, they would make up one duplicate group with four records, all of which would be merged into one master record. The other three records would not exist anymore.

At the right end of the Step 4 header, the Priority Match option is selected by default and is appropriate for most deduplication tasks. As soon as a record meets one of the criteria, Insycle makes the master selection and skips the rest of the rules on the list.

For each duplicate group, Insycle will look at each Master Selection rule to see which of the records in the group meet the criteria. Rules are read in order, from top to bottom. So if a master record meets the first criteria, the others on the list will not impact the selected master record. The first record that matches one rule will be selected as the master record, and further criteria won’t be analyzed.

If none of the records in the duplicate group match any of the rules, the automatic master selection for the group fails. See the Troubleshooting section below for more detail.

With Absolute Match, the master record must meet all of the listed rules in the Record tab in Step 4. This is appropriate for less flexible master selection. 

Learn more about Priority Match vs. Absolute Match in the Advanced How-Tos section below.

Configure Rules That Determine Values to Keep

After Insycle has identified the master record, it will use the Field selection rules to automatically pick which values from a duplicate group will be used in the master record.

Duplicates may be exact match versions of another record, but often there is only partial data overlap between the records. When data is split between two different records, both records may contain unique and important information about the customer you'd like to keep.

Under Step 4, click the Fields tab. For each field you want to control the data retention for, you need to select a Field and tell it where the data for the field should be taken from. This is merged into the master. Any data that is not in the master or not copied to the master is deleted.

The Criteria dropdown gives you various options for choosing how data should be retained:

• From master record – Use the value that exists in the master record.
• From master record (even empty) – If the field on the selected master record is blank, keep it that way. Don’t automatically fill it in with a value from the most recently updated record.
• From record where value – Select data from one of the records in the duplicate group based on the values. These options vary depending on the field type. For example, retain the data in the Employee # field that is associated with the record with the most employees.
• From record based on other field value – Look at the value in a different field to decide which value from the duplicate group should be kept. The example above highlights how a Last Modified Date value can be used to determine which Lifecycle Stage value to use.
• Combine and append all values – You can merge the values from the selected field for all records in the group. For example, if there is some type of Notes field, you could keep the notes from all of the records in the duplicate group.
• Collect all values from other field – Select a destination field to copy and combine values into, then select what field the data should come from. For example, this could be used to keep the record Owner values of all duplicates and combine them into a custom field.
• Collect non-master values from other field – Aggregate the values of all the duplicates that are not the master, meaning this excludes the value from the master record itself. This can be especially helpful if you want a record of the object IDs that were removed, so you can also remove them from another system and keep the master. Select a destination field to copy and combine values into, then select what field the data should come from.

Preview Merged Changes in CSV Report

Now with the filters and master record set up, you can preview the changes you are making to your data. That way, you can check to ensure your deduplication configuration is working as expected before those changes are pushed to your live database. The CSV report that Insycle generates includes records from all the duplicate groups.

Under Step 5, click the Review button and select Preview mode.

Click the Next button to go to the Notify screen, where you can select recipients for the email report. You can also add additional context on this screen.

On the When tab, click the Run Now tab, and select which records to apply the change to (in most cases this will be All), then click the Run Now button.

Insycle will generate a preview CSV and send it to your email. Open the CSV file in a spreadsheet application.

The Duplicate Group ID shows the Record ID of the master record on each duplicate that was successfully merged into it. 

The Result column displays:

• Duplicate – The record is part of a duplicate group.
• Master – The master record that was chosen for the duplicate group based on your rules.
• Master (After) – For each duplicate group, the Master (After) row will show the data the final record will contain, based on master selection and field data retention settings.
• Error – If Insycle was not able to determine which record would be the master, an error message will appear here. See the Troubleshooting section below for more detail.

When a field value in the CSV says "(Default)," it means that HubSpot will be using its default processes for dealing with the field. This is typically done for situations such as blank fields, or system IDs.

If everything in the After column looks correct, return to Insycle and move forward with applying the changes.

Apply Changes to Your HubSpot Records

When you're satisfied with the results in your preview, you can apply the merge changes to HubSpot.

Under Step 5, click the Review button, then select Update mode.

On the When tab, you should use Run Now the first time you apply these changes to your HubSpot database.

Save Templates and Setup Automation to Maintain Formatting

After you've seen the results in HubSpot and you are satisfied with how the operation runs, you can save your configuration as a template, and set up automation so this formatting operation runs on a set schedule. 

By automating with a template, you'll save time and ensure that your fields are consistently cleaned up on an ongoing basis.

Here is what happens when you bulk merge HubSpot duplicates in Insycle.

Contacts

• Email: The email address from the master record becomes the primary, and the duplicate email addresses are added as additional email addresses.
• Activities (notes, emails, tasks, etc): Reassigned from the duplicates to the master.
• Deals: Reassigned from the duplicates to the master.
• Attachments: Reassigned from the duplicates to the master. (Note that there may be a short delay before the attachment appears in the merged record.)
• Fields: Use the Field tab under Step 4: Master Selection to determine what data is retained in the master record on a field-by-field basis. By default, the most recently updated value becomes the present value, all other values are available in the history. See HubSpot's merge contacts help article to understand HubSpot's default contact merging behavior.

Companies, Deals, Tickets, Custom Objects, and Line Items

• Contacts: Reassigned from the duplicates to the master.
• Deals: Reassigned from the duplicates to the master.
• Activities (notes, emails, tasks, etc.): Reassigned from the duplicates to the master
• Domains (applies only to Companies): Copied from the duplicates into the master and appended as secondary domains, to avoid future duplicates with the same domain.
• Attachments: Reassigned from the duplicates to the master. (Note that there may be a short delay before the attachment appears in the merged record.)
• Fields: Use the Field tab under Step 4: Master Selection to determine what data is retained in the master record on a field-by-field basis. By default, the value is retained from the master. When a value is empty in the master it picks a non-empty value from the most recently updated duplicate.

When deduplicating child/parent companies in HubSpot, Insycle is able to detect even the most complex company hierarchy associations, ensuring that the correct child company master records are associated with the correct parent company master records after the companies are merged.

The following HubSpot CRM objects are supported in Insycle:

1. Contacts
2. Companies
3. Deals
4. Tickets
5. Custom Objects

Use the filter to work with a segment or smaller pool of records. Then Insycle will only analyze the remaining records for duplicates. To add filters, click the Filter button, then choose the field to look at, select the condition, and set the value to look for. The filter is applied before the matching step runs. 

Most of the options in the Field dropdown match the fields that are found in your HubSpot records, and for Contact records, there are three additional options related to the Email value: 

• Email Username: The portion of the email address before the “@.” For example, if the email address were “maria@acmewidgets.com,” the username value would be “maria.” 
• Free Email Provider Domain: Choose True to filter out records where the email domain is Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and about 10,000 other free email providers. This filter helps ensure these are real clients, or can determine which record is the legitimate one because it’s most likely customer companies aren't using free Gmail accounts (though a contact may have accidentally emailed us from it at some point). 
• Email Top-Level Domain: The top-level domain (TLD) is everything that follows the final dot of a domain name. For example, in the domain name acmewidgets.com', '.com' is the TLD. Some other popular TLDs include '.org', '.uk', and '.edu'. 

Each row in your matching fields setup is cumulative, so records must meet all of the criteria. For example, looking for records that have the same First Name, AND Last Name, AND Phone Number returns only results where all three values are the same.

To match against one field value OR another, you will need to run two different templates. For example, if you want to use fields like Phone Number OR Mobile Phone Number, you’ll run one template for Phone Number, then a second configured the same except with the Mobile Phone Number field.

The searched value must have four or more characters. For example, values of “Joe” will be ignored.

Sometimes, you might want to match duplicates using data in two separate fields. For example, you might want to compare your Phone Number field to a Mobile Phone Number field to identify duplicates.

Using the Related Fields feature, you can use two different fields (that contain similar data) as matching fields to catch more duplicates.

You can set up Related Fields in the Advanced tab of Step 1.

Common Examples of Related Field Matching

Matching Field	Related Fields
Phone Number	Mobile Phone Number, Company Phone
Email Domain	Website, Company Domain
Address	Company Address

When using two or more fields to identify duplicates, records can still be considered matches even if one of the field values is blank. You just need to specify which field(s) allow a blank value.

Under Step 1, configure your matching rules in the Simple tab, then click the Conditions tab.

All the matching fields you included will automatically appear with the Value Required in All Records condition selected. Change the condition to Empty Allowed in Any Record to allow empty values for certain fields. You can also use the At Least One Record with Non-Empty condition to help you determine which is the master record. Make sure at least one field remains required and is a reliable unique identifier to ensure the records are really duplicates.

For example, on the Simple tab, you may have the matching fields: First Name, Last Name, and Phone Number. But on some of your records, the Phone Number field may be empty. Using the Empty Allowed in Any Record or At Least One Record with Non-Empty, all records with the same name, same phone number, and no phone number will be considered duplicates.

The following unique identifying fields, in combination, give a high degree of certainty that the matched records are truly duplicates that should be merged:

• First Name + Last Name
• Company Name
• Email
• Email Domain
• Company Website
• Phone Number
• ID Numbers

Priority Match: Looks through the master selection rules in order, one by one. As soon as a record meets one of the criteria, Insycle makes the master selection and skips the rest of the rules on the list. The vast majority of duplicate templates should use Priority Match.

Absolute Match: The master record must meet all of the listed rules in the Record tab in Step 4. If a record does not match every rule listed, no master record will be identified. Absolute Match is appropriate for less flexible master selection.

For example, if a company wanted to ensure the chosen master record is in their sales pipeline and already has a sales rep working the record, they can choose Absolute Match and set the Record rules:

• Lifecycle Stage is lead
• Contact Owner exists

Choosing Absolute Match can often result in no master record being identified since the record has to match every rule listed, so in most cases, you should select Priority Match.

Let's say that we have four records that represent the same person—Marta Vaskovitch. The Merge Duplicates module will identify this as one duplicate group that consists of four records.

Here is the data that we have for this duplicate group:

And here are the master selection rules we have set up:

We haven't sent any emails to Marta yet, so when Insycle processes the first three rules—Marketing emails clicked, emails bounced, and emails opened—Insycle cannot eliminate any record because they all have the same value of zero.

In the next rule about contact owner, records 61301, 61201, and 61251 are eliminated since no contact owner exists for those records. Now there is only one record remaining, 61351, and therefore that's the master record.

The Merge Duplicates module allows you to control the values saved in the master record after the merge regardless of the default merge behavior. By adding each field you want to control the data retention for and selecting a Condition, you can tell Insycle where the data for the field should be taken from and how to handle it.

For example, if merging HubSpot companies, by default the HubSpot field “Merged Company IDs” would not be populated with the Record IDs of the duplicates that were merged into the master record. 

Say you want to save all of the Record IDs from records that are merged together and deleted. You can add a new custom field, “Insycle Merged Record IDs” to your CRM.

Then in the Merge Duplicates module under the Fields tab of Step 4, add a rule to override the default merge behavior. Select the "Insycle Merged Record IDs" field, the "Collect all values from other field" criteria, and "Record ID" as the other field. 

You can use the Preview to see how this will preserve the Record IDs of all the duplicates in each duplicate group.

The master record can use values from several different records from the duplicate group, based on the rules that you set in the Fields tab.

In the first example, the First Name and Last Name fields will be retained from the earliest created record in the duplicate group, and the email will come from the most recently updated record. In this situation, all the other fields not specified here will use the master record values.

In the example below, five master field rules have been set up, including two different rules for the Lifecycle Stage. Insycle will look at the first of the two and if it finds a record that matches the criteria, the second Lifecycle Stage rule will be ignored. In the example, if a record in the duplicate group with the "Lifecycle Stage" of "Customer" is found, then the next rule looking for the "Lifecycle Stage" of "SQL," would be ignored.

For situations where there are no common rules you can apply for identifying duplicates for all or some of the records, you may need more granular control for picking records to include or exclude from the process. You can customize bulk deduplication using exclusions and pre-defined masters via a CSV file.

You have duplicate records that have been identified by Insycle but not all of them are merging into the master. Check to see how many duplicates are in the affected duplicate groups. If you have duplicate groups that contain more than five records, you may want to change the value in Skip duplicate groups with more than 5 records per group to make sure you can get them all.

This setting is intended to protect against the accidental merging of non-duplicate records if the filter in Step 1 is too broad.

If the Result column of the CSV report displays this error:

Cannot determine master record because multiple records (#) satisfy the master selection rules. In ‘Master Selection’, change/add/reorder the rules such that only one record satisfies them (if cannot determine master based on field values, use ‘ID is lowest’ as the last rule).

This error means that based on the master rules you set, Insycle could not figure out which would be the master.

Check Step 4 to ensure that you have Priority Match selected and not Absolute Match.

With Priority Match, the rules configured in the Records tab of Step 4 are processed in order and your master record only has to match one rule. Using Absolute Match, your master record would have to meet all of the rule criteria. The majority of the time it is best to select Priority Match.

If Priority Match was used, then none of the records meet any of the criteria on the list more than the others. In this case, you'll need to experiment with Step 4, reordering or adding additional rules for fields likely to have unique values.

There are a couple of things to look at that may be misidentifying records as duplicates.

First, you may need a better unique identifier. Under Step 1, if you only use fields that could correctly contain the same values in multiple records, these aren't unique identifiers. In this case, you are likely to identify unrelated records as duplicates and may accidentally merge them.

Unique identifiers are data that is unlikely to be shared by any other record unless it represents the same underlying entity. Fields that are commonly used in deduplication include phone numbers, email, mailing addresses, or ID numbers.

Second, this may indicate the Comparison Rule under Step 1 is too broad. Try using the Exact Match comparison rule instead of Similar Match. Similar Match looks for values that may be close but with a one-character difference (maybe a typo) which broadens the search. 

Remember, always run your deduplication in Preview Mode to confirm things are working as expected before running them in Update Mode and applying the changes to your HubSpot records.

Most of the time when Insycle can't find duplicates, it is due to your matching rules in Step 1. To better understand how to set up your rules, it is important to analyze the underlying data. A useful exercise can be to set up your matching filters to look for exact matches of just First Name and Last Name. 

When you click the Find button, these rules can show you a broad overview of what duplicates are potentially in your database, and what fields might be useful to include in your matching fields. These settings are just for discovery and should not be used for a final merge operation; many people can have the same first and last names and are not duplicates. 

To get further context, click the gear button on the right side of the Record Viewer pane. Here, you can add any field in your database as a column to the Record Viewer to better understand the data inside of these records. 

If the Result column of the CSV displays an error, read the error text for help figuring out how to resolve the problem.

The most common error is:

Cannot determine master record because multiple records (#) satisfy the master selection rules. In ‘Master Selection’, change/add/reorder the rules such that only one record satisfies them (if cannot determine master based on field values, use ‘ID is lowest’ as the last rule).

This means that based on all the rules, Insycle could not figure out which would be the master. None of the records meet more of the rules than others. In this case, you'll need to experiment with reordering or adding additional fields likely to have unique values under Step 4.

It can take a while for Insycle to find and match duplicates if the fields being used to identify them have very long values. The longer the values, the longer it takes Insycle to process the data and generate the results. This might come up when looking for matches based on long ID numbers, LinkedIn bio links, or other URLs with long strings attached (ex, https://www.linkedin.com/in/svadin%C3%ADr-n%C4%9Bmec-1234b31a3/).

You can speed this up by limiting how much of the value Insycle looks at.

If the beginning or ending portion of the values are all unique, you can limit the comparison to the first or last several characters using the Match Parts parameter under Step 1. 

Or use the Ignore Text (Substrings) parameter, then click the Terms button.

On the Ignored Text tab of the popup, add the common portion of the URL or text string.

When using two or more fields to identify duplicates, records can still be considered matches even if one of the field values is blank. You just need to specify which field(s) allow a blank value.

See the Advanced How-To, Step 1: Allowing Empty Values When Matching above for full details.

Yes, you can match duplicates using data in two separate fields. For example, you might want to compare your Phone Number field to a Mobile Phone Number field to identify duplicates.

Using the Related Fields feature, you can use two different fields (that contain similar data) as matching fields to catch more duplicates. You can set up Related Fields in the Advanced tab.

Currently, there are two ways to make sure that the records that you are merging are indeed duplicate records.

First, always run your deduplication templates in Preview Mode before running them in Update Mode. This produces a CSV that shows you how your records would have been merged. Then you can ensure that your Merge Duplicates template is working as expected and not merging non-duplicate records together.

Additionally, you can reduce the risk when merging duplicates by narrowing your duplicate matching settings in Step 1. Try the Exact Match Comparison Rule instead of Similar Match. Then make sure that you are using actual uniquely identifying fields—first name, last name, email, and phone number are popular choices. The more tightly defined your filter is, the less likely you are to merge non-duplicate records.

If the Result column of the CSV report displays this error:

Cannot determine master record because multiple records (#) satisfy the master selection rules. In ‘Master Selection’, change/add/reorder the rules such that only one record satisfies them (if cannot determine master based on field values, use ‘ID is lowest’ as the last rule).

This error means that based on the master rules you set, Insycle could not figure out which would be the master.

Check Step 4 to ensure that you have Priority Match selected and not Absolute Match.

With Priority Match, the rules configured in the Records tab of Step 4 are processed in order and your master record only has to match one rule. Using Absolute Match, your master record would have to meet all of the rule criteria. The majority of the time it is best to select Priority Match.

If Priority Match was used, then none of the records meet any of the criteria on the list more than the others. In this case, you'll need to experiment with Step 4, reordering or adding additional rules for fields likely to have unique values.

Yes. You can use a customized list of duplicates and use the Magical Import module to tag duplicates in your HubSpot CRM, then use the Merge Duplicates module to deduplicate in bulk. Include ID numbers from HubSpot in your CSV.

Yes, Insycle allows you to select which field data is retained in the master record using the Fields tab under Step 4. See the Step 4: Set Rules for Master Record Selection and Data Retention section of this article for more details.

Yes. You can exclude records from deduplication by including a "Deduplication Exclude" field in your CSV, as detailed in the Customize Bulk Deduplication Using Exclusions and Pre-Defined Masters article.

When merging HubSpot contact records using the “From master record (even empty)” data retention rule, the property history in HubSpot shows that Insycle set the value to “empty.” This is a nuance of how HubSpot manages the history of empty values. You can verify that the master record value before the merge was indeed empty by reviewing the Activity Tracker report in Insycle.

Yes, if your HubSpot objects have attachments, the attachment will be merged into the master record. Note though that there may be a short delay before the attachment appears in the merged record.

Yes, there are several ways to share details and get approval before merging duplicates.

You can manually approve master records and mark them in a CSV, then use Insycle to bulk deduplicate down to those master records. Consult with this Customize Bulk Deduplication Using Exclusions and Pre-Defined Masters article to learn more.

Or, you can run the Merge Duplicates module in Preview Mode, then deliver the preview CSV that Insycle generates. The CSV report that Insycle generates includes your entire merge operation down to individual duplicate groups but does not update your live data. Then your team can approve the merge based on this report, before running Merge Duplicates in Update Mode.

Additionally, team members can review duplicates and manually select the master for each record under Step 4. Review the Manually Merge Duplicates article for more detail.

No. The Similar Match Comparison Rule found in Step 1 looks for values that may be close but with a one-character difference (maybe a typo) and broadens the search.

This search behaves like when Google shows results for a slightly different term, or says “Did you mean...” For example, if an Email of, “huey@coahulldu.co” is found, it could include records with the values “hueyy@coahulldu.co," or "hue.y@coahulldu.co,” as a match.

You should be careful when using Similar Match as the looser criteria can incorrectly identify non-duplicates as duplicates. 

Review the Understanding Similar Matching best practices for more detail.

Insycle shows 50 records on the module screen as a preview, this isn't the entire list of records. Include All records when you view the Preview CSV report to see everything.

Insycle can process thousands of duplicate groups in one operation. Potentially, you could deduplicate your entire database in one operation. 

You can merge up to 100 duplicate records into a single master record. 

If you have duplicate groups that contain more than five records, you may want to change the value in Skip duplicate groups with more than 5 records per group under Step 3 to make sure you can get them all.

This is a precaution to ensure that if you use a duplicate matching filter that is too broad in Step 1, you do not accidentally merge many non-duplicate records together. If you are going to set this number at a high level, it is a good idea to run Preview Mode first to make sure your deduplication template is operating as you intend.

All plans include unlimited usage, unlimited users, and unlimited operations. See the pricing page for more details. During the free trial, there is a cap of 500 records updated, cleansed, or merged.