Duplicate Contact Profiles

Overview

On rare occasions, a second profile is created for a contact. This is something you want to avoid, and in this article, you’ll learn more about why this occurs and what you can do to prevent this from happening.

Creation of Duplicate Profiles

Most often, duplicate contact profiles are created by contacts switching phone numbers. Contacts sometimes ask us to change the phone number on their profile if they know they are switching phone numbers. Other times, a family member’s phone number (like a parent) was listed as the contact's original number and that family member might send us the contact's actual number so we can redirect the messages to them.

When you upload a new CSV file of contacts, our system will match contacts from your CSV to existing profiles in your dashboard based on their unique ID (CRM ID) and keep the updated phone number in the contact profile. This means that it will not revert a contact's changed number back to an old number if your database records are not up to date.

However, if the name of the unique ID field has changed (due to a field name change in your database) or if that contact was not given a new unique ID number, our system will not be able to recognize that it is the same contact and will create a separate, duplicate profile.

How to Avoid Duplicate Contact Profiles 

• Map your unique identifier field to the Mainstay CRM ID field. This is really important as any unique identifier you choose for your contacts (for example, student ID number) will not be recognized as the profile identifier unless it is properly mapped to the CRM ID field. In every import of your contacts, make sure to map the data to this field. 
• Keep your data field names consistent. Before you launched your bot, the data fields you intended to use were mapped in our system. It is extremely important that the names of the fields—especially the unique ID field—stay consistent from one upload to the next as they are what identify the students across files and keep their records clean.
  

• Update changed numbers in your database. Every time you send out a campaign, our system generates a CSV Report with information on any student in that file that has changed their number. You can use this information to update your own database and keep your numbers up to date. This will ensure that when you upload a new CSV file, the information you’re uploading for each student is the most accurate and a second profile is not created. Having the correct phone number for a student is also helpful if you ever need to follow up with a student via a phone call.

Are you receiving a Duplicate Contact Import Error?  

Here's how we define our error: duplicate-contact

• This error is produced because another existing contact in the Mainstay account already has the same Phone as this contact's Phone. This to-be-imported contact will not be imported, to prevent creating a duplicate contact.
• The system does not allow more than one contact in your account to have the same Phone.
• When this error occurs, the entire contact record is skipped.

Are you noticing duplicate contacts within your Audience & Contact page?

Here are some of the steps you can take to clean up duplicate contact profiles (this is only recommended when you can confirm you are seeing duplicates within your contacts page and/or for manual CSV imports and have the correct information to fix it).

For smaller amounts of contacts, you can type UNSET in the field you'd like to reset within the contacts profile and click save. This will clear out any values in the field. For example:

For larger amounts of contacts we recommend: 

1. Create an excel sheet with a list of the contacts and fields you wish to UNSET. We recommend, in addition to the field you wish to clear, using at least First Name, Last Name, CRM ID, and AdmithubID (if there is one for proper mapping). 

2. Set the field/column in excel you wish to clear to UNSET (all capitals for all of the contacts). For example:



3. Upload this list to the Mainstay Platform via the import tool. Make sure to map these correctly. This will officially clear out values within the field(s) you UNSET. 

4. Once you have done this you can then upload a CSV with the correct contact(s) information to the Mainstay Platform via Import (in this case the correct phone numbers). Please make sure you map it correctly and that the correct information is in the excel sheet.