Merging contact profiles in Ometria

Ometria merges contact profiles using the identifiers configured for your account. By default these are:

• Email address (email)
• Customer ID (customer_id)
• Phone number (phone_number), when enabled
• Mobile app ID (app_id)

If a contact enters Ometria with information in any of these fields which matches the information in an existing profile, all of their information will be merged into the existing profile. 

If your account uses custom identifiers and automatic merging is enabled, any identifier configured for your account can be used to merge profiles, not only the default ones above.

If a contact enters Ometria with an identifier that is already assigned to a different contact, we ignore that identifier. 

See also: 

• Custom identifiers
• Contacts and profiles
• How do incoming contact records get identified in Ometria?

One identifier with multiple matches

For contacts created after 2024, two different contacts can't share the same identifier. 

Contacts pre-2024

If a contact entered Ometria with only one identifier - i.e. either email OR customer ID, but not both - and there were existing profiles that matched, the contact data was merged with the most recently ingested contact. 

This is regardless of subscription status or any other timestamp.

E.g. Jane entered Ometria with the email address jane@example.com, and no customer ID. There were two other contact profiles using jane@example.com (with two different different customer IDs) - one was ingested in January 2019, another in January 2022. Ometria merged the incoming data with the profile from January 2022. 

Merging a profile with empty fields

If the contact entering Ometria has other fields which contain information that doesn't match an existing profile, e.g. first name, gender, custom fields etc. or there are blank fields, Ometria uses the standard rules of priority to merge the information based on how the contact enters Ometria:

1. The Ometria preference centre
2. API, CSV, Ometria overlays, and changes made directly in-app (i.e. to the single customer view)
3. Ometria's JavaScript tracker
4. Ometria form
5. Importer (e.g. Magento or Shopify)
6. Third party syncs

Common questions

If I update an existing contact’s email address or customer ID, will it get reassigned to another contact? 

No.

Once a listing has been assigned to a contact profile in Ometria, it is never reassigned to another contact.

Can Ometria stop customer duplications from happening?

No.

It's not possible to stop duplications from ever happening. 

For example, Ometria might receive:

{"customer_id": "123", "email": "bob@example.com"}

And then a second listing which creates a new contact profile:

{"email": "bobs_other_address@example.com"}

…and then a third listing, telling us that the first two profiles were related:

{"customer_id": "123", "email": "bobs_other_address@example.com"}

Two contact profiles have been created and they have both been identified as unique contacts.

Automatic merging of duplicate profiles

If automatic merging is enabled for your account, Ometria can consolidate profiles that are later found to share identifiers, reducing the duplicates described above. Profiles are only merged when their identifiers do not conflict, and merging applies to data as it arrives rather than to your existing history.

Automatic merging is enabled per account. To discuss it, speak to your Customer Success Representative. Ometria can also merge profiles using identifiers you define yourself. See Custom identifiers.