Discussions
Merge two Contact Records
Comments
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Am I the only one that checks this page every day in hopes of an update? This is the oldest and highest rated unfulfilled idea on topliners.
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This feature would help on the multi-channel strategy within Eloqua. As Eloqua at the moment does not allow Blank email address (unless beta feature is activated - not recommended) some customers have dummy email address on the database in order to store them in Eloqua and send them sms or push notifications. At the moment the end user provides the correct email address, Eloqua needs to be able to merge both records into one instead of creating a new contact
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I have several contacts who misspell their emails in forms a first time and then submit it again, but the cookie gets allocated to the wrong email then...
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Yes we have explored merging activity data as part of this.
Has this been prioritized yet?
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it's should be simple like google contact merge and there should be alert for the similar contact as well.
exactly
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So, the competition has this for a very long time.
Pardot had "prospect merging" since 2011: https://www.pardot.com/blog/prospect-merging/
Marketo had this for a long time too: https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Find+and+Merge+Duplicate+People
In the case of Marketo it allows for duplicates by email address to exist for the purpose of it making sense when syncing with SFDC and not overwriting during integration. When you finally merge, you decide what to keep from which record, then integration merges the records in SFDC as a result of you merging in Marketo. While duplicates by email address exist in Marketo if the record performs an activity (e.g. form submit), the data goes to the most recently modified record (unless the cookie association says otherwise). In short, there are no issues at all when it comes to duplicates with Marketo because the merge is so seamless. This is a very logical approach that I believe Eloqua can implement.
The duplicates by Email Address was a closed beta a few years ago, but I understand there were some serious issues with implementation, I have not heard any updates since. All I'm saying is that the competition had figured this out since before I knew what Eloqua was and it's a real sore point that this is only now being picked up for development. I do believe this is the most requested idea on Topliners, even far exceeding the "recycle bin" idea (Eloqua 9 had an "archive feature" - Marketo and Pardot have this too, but Eloqua 10 does not). I would very much like to continue to encourage the team to prioritize this for new feature rollout as this is one of those things that should have never been left out to begin with.
Final note: I understand that Eloqua charges customers by the number of contacts in the database so the reasoning may be profit-driven, but all I can say about that is that Marketo and Pardot also charge customers by contact bandwidth and yet they've had contact merge functionality for a very long time so I don't see how this could reasonably still be a reason why this development is not accelerated. I think it's hurting Eloqua much more profoundly by not having this feature than it would by having customers have less contacts in their database.
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So, the competition has this for a very long time.
Pardot had "prospect merging" since 2011: https://www.pardot.com/blog/prospect-merging/
Marketo had this for a long time too: https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Find+and+Merge+Duplicate+People
In the case of Marketo it allows for duplicates by email address to exist for the purpose of it making sense when syncing with SFDC and not overwriting during integration. When you finally merge, you decide what to keep from which record, then integration merges the records in SFDC as a result of you merging in Marketo. While duplicates by email address exist in Marketo if the record performs an activity (e.g. form submit), the data goes to the most recently modified record (unless the cookie association says otherwise). In short, there are no issues at all when it comes to duplicates with Marketo because the merge is so seamless. This is a very logical approach that I believe Eloqua can implement.
The duplicates by Email Address was a closed beta a few years ago, but I understand there were some serious issues with implementation, I have not heard any updates since. All I'm saying is that the competition had figured this out since before I knew what Eloqua was and it's a real sore point that this is only now being picked up for development. I do believe this is the most requested idea on Topliners, even far exceeding the "recycle bin" idea (Eloqua 9 had an "archive feature" - Marketo and Pardot have this too, but Eloqua 10 does not). I would very much like to continue to encourage the team to prioritize this for new feature rollout as this is one of those things that should have never been left out to begin with.
Final note: I understand that Eloqua charges customers by the number of contacts in the database so the reasoning may be profit-driven, but all I can say about that is that Marketo and Pardot also charge customers by contact bandwidth and yet they've had contact merge functionality for a very long time so I don't see how this could reasonably still be a reason why this development is not accelerated. I think it's hurting Eloqua much more profoundly by not having this feature than it would by having customers have less contacts in their database.
Agreed - as mentioned, other competitors have had this functionality for a long time and it is something sorely needed in Eloqua. Keeping our contact database clean is nearly impossible now and we have to leave duplicate contacts in the database in order to preserve the activity history. This enhancement request was originally submitted over four years ago and it has 4,150 up votes, which almost certainly makes it one of, if not the most requested features. Eloqua has completed some great enhancements over the last few years. As such, there really aren't any others left that are as important as this is.
So, it would be great if someone from Oracle could respond and provide an update and whether they intend to ever add it to their roadmap.
Thanks,
Jason
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Agreed - as mentioned, other competitors have had this functionality for a long time and it is something sorely needed in Eloqua. Keeping our contact database clean is nearly impossible now and we have to leave duplicate contacts in the database in order to preserve the activity history. This enhancement request was originally submitted over four years ago and it has 4,150 up votes, which almost certainly makes it one of, if not the most requested features. Eloqua has completed some great enhancements over the last few years. As such, there really aren't any others left that are as important as this is.
So, it would be great if someone from Oracle could respond and provide an update and whether they intend to ever add it to their roadmap.
Thanks,
Jason
Hi Jason and others,
Update is this is something I'd like to prioritize on the roadmap but it isn't there yet. Yes other MA products have this feature and each have their caveats (plus and minuses) for marketers. Additionally, a CRM sync creates an additional layer of complexity. Contrary to Alex's comments, this is not a profit-driven decision and not related at all to the number of contacts in the database but a data/process driven decision based on the best approach that would help all our customers and not a subset.
Thanks,
Thamina
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Hi Jason and others,
Update is this is something I'd like to prioritize on the roadmap but it isn't there yet. Yes other MA products have this feature and each have their caveats (plus and minuses) for marketers. Additionally, a CRM sync creates an additional layer of complexity. Contrary to Alex's comments, this is not a profit-driven decision and not related at all to the number of contacts in the database but a data/process driven decision based on the best approach that would help all our customers and not a subset.
Thanks,
Thamina
Thank you for your quick response, Thamina.
I understand that there is complexity with implementing this, particularly with the CRM sync, as you mentioned. But, based on the number of upvotes and posts in this thread, this enhancement is clearly extremely important for alot of users. This is really the only major feature that is missing and would take Eloqua from being a really good platform to one that is "best in class". So, please do whatever you can to prioritize adding this to the roadmap. Even if it takes some time to deliver, just knowing it is on the roadmap would be a great step in the right direction.
Thanks,
Jason
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Hi Jason and others,
Update is this is something I'd like to prioritize on the roadmap but it isn't there yet. Yes other MA products have this feature and each have their caveats (plus and minuses) for marketers. Additionally, a CRM sync creates an additional layer of complexity. Contrary to Alex's comments, this is not a profit-driven decision and not related at all to the number of contacts in the database but a data/process driven decision based on the best approach that would help all our customers and not a subset.
Thanks,
Thamina
Regardless of the complexities of making this "work for everyone" in an elegant fashion, I think the development team needs to start developing the back-end basics as soon as possible so this doesn't sit unfinished for another 5 years. To get to a final product you'll need start working on API's & processes that can:
1. reassign all digital behavior activities to a different contact ID (website/LP visits, form submits, with an optional flag to merge email activities... to be used when merge is for same identity/mailbox (@ra.rockwell.com vs @rockwellautomation.com - acquisition domain changes is another big one) but don't need it when merging digital behavior for a "typo" email address ) ...this one is SO important and what hurts the most, It would bring so much value to have access to an API that could do this ahead of a full solution.
2. update the Cookie -> Visitor -> Contact linkage so prepopulation reflects the merge
3. Auto re-map all linked custom data object records with an optional flag to change the value in the defined "email address" CDO field (for those of us who rely on CDO data for external reporting)
4. Merge the two sets of contact data with survivorship definitions/rules
4Thought marketing just released something last month to help with this, but it's not good enough without the seamless transition of digital behavior (My comment #1), and their plan to recreate activities as external activities wont ever cut it for ease-of-segmentation and lead scoring purposes.
https://4thoughtmarketing.com/eloqua-merge-contacts-cloud-app
Any chance any of what I've mentioned above has already been vetted or thought through in a structured manner that indicates progress towards this goal?
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yes, as a kind of user profile id, with two or more email addresses attirbuted to one contact (like e.g. business and private email address)
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Yes, we need this so much!
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what is the purpose of this Dream IT section if after 5 years Oracle has still not taken into account this request from 5000 customers ?
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what is the purpose of this Dream IT section if after 5 years Oracle has still not taken into account this request from 5000 customers ?
Hello Xavier - Oracle has spent considerable time on this and at one stage I believe there were some clients on a Beta instance to try and make this happen. From what I understand it's a monumental change in code which may mean it's something that would cause massive investment e.g perhaps something for an Eloqua version 11 type of change.
Here are some tips on ways we've chosen to manage what is our B2B contacts - I appreciate in a B2C world the need can be a little different.
1. We have some clients who we have listed in our database with their work email address and we notice at some stage they've provided a personal email address e.g. gmail. Our approach is that the person has made a conscious decision at some stage to provide a second email address, the merge them may suit us, but is not honouring the client and the choice they've made to provide a second email address.
2. A known contact may move from on employer to another and now has a second/new email address. In the CRM, we will generally merge the contacts, however Eloqua will create a second Contact with the new email address. In the past we've eventually deleted the old contact from Eloqua becuase in most cases the old email address will be a hard bouce at some stage so merging in Eloqua would serve little value becuase all comms/campaigns are in the context of their previous role.
I'm sure there are more scenarios where merging of a contact would be helpful. However I trust the above helps in some way.
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Has this been prioritized yet?
I guess not
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Hi, just raising this one again. Any news?
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It's April 2022 and this feature hasn't received any traction yet from Oracle. @Thamina Christensen-Oracle do you have any update here (if still with Oracle)? Thank you very much in advance.
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@Thamina Christensen-Oracle Hello, can you provide an update on when this feature might be available. Reading through the prior comments, there doesn't appear to even be workaround.
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@User_L2EUQ and @User_AUL46 This particular feature has not been prioritized. Many customers complete contact merging in their CRM database with a consolidated contact in Eloqua using the "Change Contact's Email Address" form processing step or CRM step.
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@Thamina Christensen-Oracle Thanks for you quick response. Can you provide me more details on how others have done this? Is there a post I can refer to?
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@User_AUL46 Here is documentation for the Salesforce integration. https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/marketing/eloqua-user/Help/Apps/SalesforceApp/Tasks/EmailAddressChange.htm
CX Sales user guide can be found here: https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/marketing/eloqua-user/Help/Apps/CXSales/CXSalesApp.htm
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Thamina,
what happens if the email address we are changing to is already in eloqua. Will the "Change Contact's Email Address" action work when both the old and new email addresses are already in eloqua. For example we have [email protected] in eloqua and eric@newdomain in eloqua. We want to change [email protected] to eric@newdomain. Will the "Change Contact's Email Address" action work?
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I really need to be careful with what I wish for...
@sachin.z.jain-Oracle any updates on this?
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Thank you for submitting your idea to the "Dream It(Idea Lab) section of the Oracle Topliners community.
This idea is under oracle review but has not been added to the roadmap.
Thanks
Sachin Jain
Stay Safe | Stay Healthy
Thanks, and Best Regards
Sachin Jain | CX Community Manager
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There is no native solution to merging contacts but there is an app you can install to allow you to do it. Check this app out: https://youtu.be/ndT-Fx8qNR4 It's called The Merge Contacts Cloud App
