# How to Plan a CRM Deduplication Project in 3 Phases | Dedupely > Plan a CRM deduplication project in three phases, sort duplicates by certainty and risk, and pick the right merge type for legacy cleanup and ongoing automation. - URL: https://dedupe.ly/knowledge-base/how-to-approach-crm-deduplication - Section: knowledge-base - Site index: https://dedupe.ly/llms.txt - Any page: append `.md` to its URL for this plain-text form --- ## How to Approach CRM Deduplication Updated September 25, 2026 A practical guide on structuring deduplication, categorizing duplicate certainty, and combining merge types for legacy cleanup and ongoing automation. What defines a duplicate depends on your CRM architecture, team workflows, and business needs. At Dedupely, we recommend a three-phase deduplication project: #### Phase 1: Clean Legacy Data Merge historical backlogs to establish a clean baseline in your CRM. #### Phase 2: Clean Current Data Isolate, review, and merge active duplicates created by daily sales activity, form fills, and integration tools. #### Phase 3: Keep Future Data Clean Set up continuous background (Auto Merge, Auto Match, and CSV pre-cleaning) to manage incoming duplicates automatically. ### Categorizing Duplicates Before creating duplicate searches or setting up merge rules, group your duplicate types based on certainty and risk tolerance. Dedupely does not enforce fixed duplicate definitions; instead, your team determines which matches are good-to-go and which require extra reviewing based on your CRM structure and how much human oversight is needed. Use this framework to categorize duplicates across your CRM: #### Obvious Duplicates Any duplicate where your team has high certainty and minimal risk of false positives. What qualifies as "obvious" depends entirely on your data (such as matching exact names and emails). Once verified, these are safe for bulk merging and background automation. #### Conditional Duplicates Searches where records likely represent duplicates, but specific field-level rules are required to protect valid data (for example, ensuring placeholder data from dialers or integrations does not overwrite existing contact details). #### Complex Duplicates High-stakes or ambiguous searches where a mistaken merge could impact billing, account ownership, or custom ERP syncs. These require human verification via review queues before merging. ### Common Duplicate Searches To give you a starting point, here are some of the most common duplicate search configurations used across Dedupely accounts for each duplicate type: #### Obvious Duplicates - **Exact Contact Match:** Common for double form submissions or event CSV list imports. First Name: Exact, Last Name: Exact, Email: Exact. - **Exact Company Match:** Common for duplicate lead list imports. Company Name: Exact, Company Domain Name: Domain Root. #### Conditional Duplicates - **Integration Call Logs:** Common for calling apps. Phone Number: Similar (matches on the last 7 digits). Filter: Blank First Name or Email. - **Domain Variations ("Ghost Companies"):** Company Domain Name: Domain Root. Ignored Terms for legal suffixes like Inc., LLC, or Ltd. #### Complex Duplicates - **Financial & ERP Identifiers:** Custom Tax ID, Customer Account Number, or ERP ID matching across records linked to external billing or accounting systems. - **Regional Account Overlap:** Similar Company Name + Same City/State with conflicting Account Owners or active deals requiring cross-departmental review. ### Overview of Dedupely Merge Types - **Custom / Single Merge:** Compares records side-by-side, allowing field-by-field manual selection. Best used for verifying merge rules and inspecting edge cases. - **Bulk Merge:** Merges multiple/all your duplicate sets simultaneously. Best used for merging legacy data or massive imports. - **Auto Merge:** Runs continuously in the background on a set schedule without manual intervention. Best used for recurring duplicates. - **Auto Match:** Scans in the background and notifies when a set number of matches reaches a pre-set threshold. Best used for complex or high-stakes edge cases requiring approval. ### Example Scenario To see how these match categories work in practice, consider an example scenario of a team where Marketing manages the CRM while handling constant imports from Sales and Ops teams. Adapt these steps to your own data sources and business logic. ### Obvious duplicates: Event Imports & Form Submissions In this scenario, Sales hosts monthly events while Marketing has monthly webinars, resulting in a continuous stream of spreadsheet import lists and webform entries. #### Pre-Import Cleanup Run event spreadsheets through Dedupely's unlimited CSV import feature to clean list entries before importing into the CRM. #### Legacy Backlog Cleanup - Create a Duplicate Search targeting exact unique identifiers for your use case (e.g., Exact First Name + Exact Last Name + Exact Email). - Set Primary Record criteria (e.g., Record with Most Complete Data). - Preview the merge result, in the "View Match Details" panel. - Merge 1–2 single test merges and inspect the results in your CRM. - Select and Bulk Merge 2 test pages. - Execute a Bulk Merge on the remaining scan results. #### Ongoing Background Automation Enable Auto Merge on this search and set the schedule (e.g., bi-weekly or monthly) to align with your import cycle. ### Conditional Duplicates: Sales Dialers & Enrichment Tools #### Case A: Dialer Integration Logs In this scenario, sales dialer integrations push call logs containing only a phone number, leaving name or email fields blank. - Match on Phone Number using Similar match (compares the last 7 digits). - Apply a filter requiring at least one record in the set to have a blank First Name or Email. - Configure Merge Rules: - **Primary Record Rule:** Set to Record with Most Complete Data (ensures populated contact records win master status). - **Field-Level Rule:** Set Phone Number field rule to Keep Most Recent Value (updates the contact with the newest phone number). - Enable Auto Merge on a daily schedule so call logs consolidate before sales reps begin morning outreach. #### Case B: Company Enrichment - "Ghost Companies" CRMs often create duplicate company entries when domain names vary (e.g., acme.com vs. acme.co.uk). - Match Company records using Domain Root (ignores www, .com, .co.uk) - Set ignored Terms to skip legal suffixes (Inc., LLC, Ltd.). - Set a merge rule for Primary Record selection to retain the oldest record. - Preview the merge result to confirm your matching criteria and merge rules give the outcome you require. - Bulk merge all legacy data. - Enable Auto Merge on a daily schedule. ### Complex & High-Stakes Matches Scenario (Ops & ERP Data) In this scenario, Operations syncs financial data, billing IDs, and contract details from Salesforce or connected ERP systems where merging the wrong account carries high risk. - Create a Duplicate Search using unique identifier fields (e.g., Tax ID or ERP Customer Number). - Enable Auto Match instead of Auto Merge, to set a notification threshold (e.g., Notify when 10 duplicate sets accumulate). - When notified, open the match results and process records as needed: - **Manual Review:** Places the set in a holding queue for team lead or account owner sign-off. - **Merge:** Executes the merge immediately after field survival is verified. - **Reject:** Dismisses the current match without creating a permanent exclusion rule. Mentioned in this article: [Finding Duplicates](https://dedupe.ly/knowledge-base/find-duplicates), [Duplicate Searches](https://dedupe.ly/knowledge-base/search-pads), [Merging Duplicates](https://dedupe.ly/knowledge-base/merge-duplicates), [Merge Rules](https://dedupe.ly/knowledge-base/merge-rules), [Auto Match](https://dedupe.ly/knowledge-base/auto-match), [Manual Review](https://dedupe.ly/knowledge-base/manual-review), and [Rejected Matches](https://dedupe.ly/knowledge-base/rejected-matches). ### Still stuck? - Need help? [Talk to support](https://dedupe.ly/contact) - Questions about plans? [Book a Zoom with sales](https://meetings.dedupe.ly/meetings/hampus-isaksson/dedupely-zoom-schedule) - Reading this with a model? [Read this page as Markdown](https://dedupe.ly/knowledge-base/how-to-approach-crm-deduplication.md) - Feeding it the whole site? [Read llms.txt](https://dedupe.ly/llms.txt) ### Get started for free 20 free trial merges and as much free support as you need to get your duplicates under control. [Talk to sales](https://meetings.dedupe.ly/meetings/hampus-isaksson/dedupely-zoom-schedule)[Try for free](https://v2.app.dedupe.ly/signup) [Or sign up with Google](https://v2.app.dedupe.ly/signup/google) Running CRM cleanup for clients? [See the Partner Program](https://dedupe.ly/become-a-partner) Skip to content