Deduplication
Deduplication is the process of detecting and merging or removing duplicate records in a database
What it means, how it is used and where it comes up, with its related concepts.
What it is and how it works
In marketing it mainly applies to contact lists and CRM systems: the same person may appear several times because of typos, different forms or imports. Merging those records avoids sending the same message more than once, makes metrics more reliable and helps respect each contact's preferences and opt-outs.
It can rely on exact matches, such as the same email address, or fuzzy matches comparing names, phone numbers or addresses. It should be done regularly, with clear rules about which data to keep when two records are merged. In computing, the term also refers to removing duplicate copies of data to save storage.
Also known as
Dedupe, Record merging
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