Eliminating Duplicate Records Before Your HubSpot Migration

TL;DR

Duplicate records disrupt teams, skew reporting, and make CRM migration checklist execution risky. Early investment in HubSpot data deduplication prevents revenue loss, poor forecasting, and failed integrations. Before migration, identify duplicates with data profiling, fuzzy matching, and consistent field mapping. HubSpot’s native tools and automation workflows help maintain clean, trustworthy data long after migration.

Managing customer data during a CRM migration can be challenging, especially when duplicate records exist. These duplicates can distort reports, confuse teams, and delay adoption of the new platform. HubSpot offers native deduplication features and automation to prevent duplicates from compromising data quality. Early preparation ensures smoother migration, accurate reporting, and a stronger foundation for sales and marketing alignment.

Why Are Duplicates a Problem for Your Business?

Beyond being a technical issue, duplicate records directly impact profitability. They distort performance metrics, trigger automation failures, and result in redundant outreach, damaging customer relationships. Businesses often underestimate the time required to clean messy imports after migration. With pre-migration planning and HubSpot’s tools, teams can maintain pipeline integrity, protect reporting accuracy, and simplify adoption across sales and marketing. Duplicates often arise from legacy CRM imports, inconsistent field standards, multiple email addresses for the same contact, partner records, manual entry errors, or merged systems without consistent deduplication rules.

What Steps Can You Take to Detect Duplicates Before Migration?

A structured CRM migration checklist helps identify duplicate records and prepare data for import:

1. Inventory Data Sources – List all CRMs, spreadsheets, and tools feeding contact and account data.
2. Sample and Profile – Randomly sample 1–2% of records and identify likely duplicates using email, phone, company name, and domain.
3. Run Probabilistic Matching – Apply fuzzy matching (soundex/Levenshtein) to flag high/medium/low similarity pairs.
4. Field-Health Checks – Review missing emails, phone formats, and company name variants.
5. Map Unique Identifiers – Identify canonical fields (source_id, contact_id, account_id).
6. Export a Dedupe Report – Summarise duplicate patterns, percentage estimates, and sample records for review.

How Can HubSpot Help Keep Your CRM Clean?

1. Start with a Clean Import Plan – Decide canonical objects (Contacts vs Companies) and define field fallback rules. Document which source wins for each field.
2. Use HubSpot’s Built-In Duplicate Detection – HubSpot flags duplicates by email (contacts) and domain (companies). Run an initial staging import to catch obvious duplicates.
3. Pre-Process with Scripts or Tools – For fuzzy matches, run dedupe scripts or lightweight tools to suggest merges. Keep a “proposed merge” file for audit.
4. Import with Dedupe Keys – Set primary dedupe keys during import; use secondary keys where needed.
5. Use Workflows and Manual Review – Tag high-value duplicates for review via HubSpot workflows; let sales ops approve merges above an ARR threshold.
6. Log Every Merge – Preserve original IDs and create a merge log documenting approvals and reasons.

Takeaways

Invest 10–20% of migration time in detection and rules, as it saves weeks of firefighting and protects revenue. If datasets are large (> 500k records), sources are complex (> 3), or revenue is at risk, involve a migration expert. Ask for a dedupe strategy, staging import plan, scripts/tools, rollback plan, and an audit log.

FAQs

1. How do duplicate records impact ROI during a CRM migration?
   Duplicate data inflates pipeline visibility, leading to misallocated budgets, inaccurate forecasts, and reduced investor confidence.
2. What’s the difference between HubSpot’s native deduplication and custom scripts/tools?
   HubSpot’s dedupe is deterministic (matches exact fields), while scripts/tools handle fuzzy matches (“ACME Inc.” vs “ACME Corporation”). Complex datasets often require both.
3. Can deduplication rules be customised in HubSpot before migration?
   Yes, it is possible via HubSpot APIs and Operations Hub custom code actions. Pre-import dedupe workflows in a sandbox can automate merges during migration.
4. How can I ensure deduplication doesn’t delete valid records or cause data loss?
   Migrate only records supporting current KPIs. Archive older or non-essential data for compliance and reference.