0–10 minutes: quick prep and safe backups
Start with a short brief: set a 30–60 minute window, pick one person to lead and one to cover day‑to‑day tasks while you work. Open HubSpot in one tab and a spreadsheet in another for notes.
Export the records you will touch before making changes. Use a saved view or list to export contacts and companies (including contact ID, email, phone, owner, create date, last contacted, company domain). Save that CSV as a rollback snapshot.
10–40 minutes: searches, prioritisation and merge rules (exact checks)
- Search: Contacts with identical email addresses — Filter where Email is known and sort by Email. These are highest priority; only merge when sure the addresses belong to the same person.
- Search: Contacts with empty email but same phone number — Filter Phone number contains the same digits or run a list grouped by phone number to spot matches.
- Search: Contacts with same First name + Last name and same company domain — Filter by First name and Last name then sort by Company domain / Company name.
- Search: Companies with identical Company domain name — open company records and check linked contacts before merging companies.
- Prioritise: fix records that block automations (no owner, no email) first; next fix recent duplicates (created in last 90 days), then older historical duplicates.
- Sample merge rules (apply these consistently): keep the contact with the most recent activity for active customers; prefer the record with an owner assigned; prefer non‑empty email and phone fields; keep earliest create date for historical continuity only if it has richer notes. If fields conflict, copy differing values into a free‑text ‘merge notes’ property before merging.
40–60 minutes: safe merges, quarantine and follow‑up checklist
Before merging: mark the pair in your spreadsheet, attach the exported snapshot rows, and add a short note explaining why you merged it. Use HubSpot’s merge tool from the primary contact’s record; confirm the fields HubSpot will keep.
If you are unsure, quarantine instead of merging: set a simple property (for example, Data Cleanup = Quarantine) or assign to a dedicated cleanup owner. Quarantined records are excluded from most automations and give you time to investigate.
Follow‑up checklist (5 minutes): 1) Re‑export the list of changed records and save beside the original snapshot. 2) Search again for the same duplicate types to ensure the pattern is cleared. 3) Add prevention rules: require owner on imports, set a CSV import checklist, populate email where possible, and create a saved list that flags new duplicates weekly. If you’d like a simple session template or someone to run the 30–60 minute sweep with your team, Optira can help.