Deduplicate users
You might have several users, who in fact are the same person. We have a way to remove all duplicates and keep all your valuable data.
Deduplication is an additional service we can offer you in case you have a problem with the duplicated users in your database. It's done on demand after your request and acception of the conditions written in this article.
Such a process, deduplication of users, can be done on our side through User.com Customer Support. You need to request it via chat and define the time period for repeating the action. Our specialists will set the deduplication for you. It can run once in 1, 7, or 30 days, or another time interval you need.
The process runs at night CET. So, if you request the deduplication today, you will see the results tomorrow the earliest.
How does it work?
The system goes through all your users and group together those with the same email. Then it decides who will be the 'base user', meaning what user's timeline and automation logs will be taken as original.
How does the system recognize the 'base user'?
To become this base user, priority is given to the user with a User ID. If you have several users with the same email and some of them have the User ID, we will choose the one that was updated most recently. The others will be left untouched or expelled from the group. So, for the moment, we have a group with one base user and a few others with the same email but without a User ID.
The system can't merge users who have the User ID, because the system recognises them as different users, no matter if they have the same email address or not.
If 'base user' has a lack of some attribute values (like phone number, city, OS etc.,) they will be taken from the others. But priority goes to those with the higher "Status" (‘user’ is more important than ‘visitor’) and those who were updated more recently.
The same happens with custom attributes. All chat conversations, emails, events, deal, tags etc. will be kept and assigned to this base user.
Page visits will be summed up. If there is different information about when he or she was last contacted, last seen, or when you last heard from him or her, we will take the most recent value.
Automation logs will not be merged.
Please, remember to provide the support agent with the time period you want the deduplication to be repeated. (Once in X days)
NOTE:
Please, be aware that the automation logs are not merged. It means that in some cases the automation can stop after the deduplication for a specific user and in other case - it will be triggered for the second time.
Example 1.
If you have two users Y and X and user Y started some automation before the deduplication. However, user Y didn't become the 'base user'. It means that after the deduplication the final user won't have the automation logs from user Y, and as a result will not continue the automation process.
Example 2.
The opposite situation happens if you have two users Y and X and user Y went through some automation trigged with Added to List/Tag Added/Client Attributed Changed triggers before deduplication. Again the user Y didn't become the 'base user'. It means after the deduplication the final user will receive the tags/lists/attribute updates and will trigger this automation again.
How to avoid duplicates?
You need to implement the User ID correctly. User ID is a standard attribute that is empty by default and you can send any value to it to identify your users. More about it is described in this article.