Has anyone nailed a safe way to merge contacts when you’ve got shared emails ([email protected]) and multiple phone formats? In HubSpot and Salesforce, our current rule (email OR phone) is over-merging — about 180 contacts in the last 30 days — and it’s polluting lifecycle and attribution; I’m considering switching to email+phone+domain with a nightly review job. What criteria or tools are you using for identity resolution that won’t wreck reporting?
, I’ve been burned by the same thing — 180 merges in 30 days screams that “email OR phone” is too loose. I’d hard-block auto-merges when the email is a generic inbox (info@, team@, sales@), require E.164-normalized phone, and only auto-merge on email+phone+domain when the email isn’t generic; send the rest to a nightly review (Cloudingo helps on SFDC: https://www.cloudingo.com). Do you already maintain a denylist/regex for shared inboxes?
In HubSpot/Salesforce, add E.164 normalization and per-domain merge caps; keep your “nightly review job.” Exclude free domains?
@sebastian7579’s cap idea is solid; I’d add a two-step flow: cluster by company, then only hard-merge when two independent signals align (corporate domain + matching SF AccountId or billing customerId), and block anything with a shared local-part or catch‑all MX — think bouncer asking for two IDs. If you also have a product user_id, use it as the anchor.