Deduplication
How to dedupe contacts into a golden record
To merge duplicate contacts into one golden record: pick a match key (email, phone, or a
fuzzy fingerprint of name or company), then set survivorship rules, keep the most complete
or most recent record and fill its blank fields from the duplicates. Sift collapses each
duplicate group into a single best record, in your browser, with nothing uploaded.
Dedupe your list in Sift →
Jane Smith · jane@acme.com · (no phone)
Jane Smith · (no email) · +1 415 555 0100
J. Smith · jane@acme.com · 4155550100
→
Jane Smith · jane@acme.com · +1 415 555 0100
What a golden record is
A golden record is the single, best version of a contact or account, assembled from its
duplicates: one row per person, with the most complete and correct value kept for each field.
It is what you want in your CRM instead of three half-filled copies of the same person.
Match: how duplicates are found
- Email, the most reliable key for people.
- Phone, after normalization, so different formats of the same number match.
- Fuzzy fingerprint, for names or companies, matching "Acme, Inc." with "ACME Inc" and different word order or casing.
Survivorship: which record wins
Once a duplicate group is found, survivorship rules decide the result:
- Most complete wins, keep the record with the fewest blanks.
- Most recent wins, keep the newest by a date column (e.g. last activity).
- Fill the gaps, take any field the winner is missing from a duplicate, so no data is lost.
Blank keys are never merged: contacts with no email (or no key value) stay as separate rows,
so unrelated people are never collapsed into one.
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