Merging contact records in Ometria

Ometria uses the following fields to merge contact profiles:

• Email address (email)
• Customer ID (customer_id)

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

Same email, different customer id

Only one contact can exist in Ometria for the same combination of email address (email) and customer ID (customer_id).

This means you can have multiple contacts with the same email address associated with various different customer IDs, but you can’t have more than one contact with the same email address AND customer ID.

If Ometria receives data containing a contact record with a recognised email address but a different customer ID, it will attempt to merge these contact records into single customer profiles. This means that a single customer profile can have multiple contacts records attached.

E.g. Jane has three contact records in Ometria using the same email address but three different customer IDs:

• email=jane@example.com, customer_id=123
• email=jane@example.com, customer_id=456
• email=jane@example.com, customer_id not provided

Or, Jane has three contact records in Ometria using the same customer ID, but different email addresses:

• email=jane@example.com, customer_id=123
• email=janiej@example.com, customer_id=123
• email not provided, customer_id=123

But she can’t have more than one record with the same email address and customer ID.

Merging a record with empty fields

If the contact entering Ometria has other fields which contain information that doesn't match the existing record, 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, App, CSV
3. Ometria form
4. Importer (e.g. Magento or Shopify)
5. Third party sync

Common questions

If two contacts have the same email address but different customer IDs, how does Ometria identify the contact?

If there are two contacts with the same email but different customer IDs, e.g.:

• email=jane@example.com, customer_id=123
• email=jane@example.com, customer_id=456

And Ometria receives a new order with email=jane@example.com, but no customer ID.

We do not guarantee which customer we assign the order to. For this reason, it’s important that you ensure all contacts have a customer ID assigned to them.

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 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 record which creates a new contact:

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

…and then a third record, telling us that the first two records related:

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

As expected, two contacts have been created and they have both been identified as unique records.