Enrollment and data

Behavior Reviewed · not yet fact-checked

At a glance

Rule summary

During a CSV import you choose the contact identifier in a drop-down menu. When you choose a unique identifier — such as Email, Last Name, or Phone — it becomes the distinguishing key for each contact and prevents duplicates; once chosen, the other fields become optional. Rows that match an existing record are handled per your matched-records option (update or skip) instead of creating a second record. Separately, Reply normalizes every LinkedIn profile URL to one canonical format, so different URL variants of the same profile are recognized as the same person.

Trigger

Any contact-creating operation: a CSV import, a V3 API import, Website Visitors or RB2B events, email-based or LinkedIn URL enrichment, a CRM integration sync, or manual editing of the LinkedIn field in the contact card.

Decision logic

1. Match the incoming row against existing contacts using the chosen identifier (Email, Last Name, or Phone).
2. On a match, apply the Matched Records option: Update Missing Fields writes new data from the CSV into the existing contact's fields, while Skip leaves the existing record untouched.
3. On no match, create a new contact.
4. Normalize the LinkedIn profile URL to the canonical form https://www.linkedin.com/in/username whenever a contact is created or updated. Duplicate detection by LinkedIn URL is format-agnostic: trailing slashes, query parameters, http:// vs. https://, and a missing www are all recognized as the same profile and will not create duplicates.

Import results report the outcome:

Result

One record per identifier value. Re-importing a list does not double contacts — matching rows update or skip, and the notification after import breaks down exactly what happened. If the reason is unclear, download the full import result file for details.

State changes

Exceptions

• Normalization is best-effort — URLs that cannot be parsed, such as company pages (linkedin.com/company/acme) or a plain username without a URL, are stored as-is without an error.
• CRM background sync historically skipped normalization — this has been fixed, but contacts synced from a CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Copper) before the fix may still hold non-normalized URLs until they are next updated.
• RB2B leads arrive pre-normalized — the LinkedIn URL received from RB2B is saved in the canonical format, so variants of the same profile from that source do not create duplicates either.
• Two identifier values are two records — deduplication keys on the chosen identifier, so a person appearing under two email addresses is not merged automatically.
• Accounts have their own import modes — including a deliberate Duplicate mode that creates a copy with the new data instead of touching the original.

Configuration that changes this rule

At contact import: the identifier drop-down and the Matched Records choice (Update Missing Fields vs. Skip). In Settings > Contact handling, the enrichment settings decide what an update writes when new information is found: Keep existing data preserves current information and skips conflicting new data; Override with new data replaces existing fields. For account (company) imports from CSV, four modes exist: Overwrite existing fields, Update missing fields, Skip, and Duplicate — with Account name mandatory for mapping. See Manage duplicate contacts.

Limits

FAQ

What does "Skipped" mean in my import results?

Skipped rows are duplicates the system removed during the import — the identifier matched an existing contact and your matched-records choice did not update it. Updated rows, by contrast, are existing contacts whose profiles were changed. See Import contacts.

Do LinkedIn URL variants create duplicate contacts?

No. Duplicate detection by LinkedIn URL is format-agnostic — trailing slash, query parameters, http:// vs. https://, and missing www all resolve to the same canonical https://www.linkedin.com/in/username form. The exception is unparseable values like company-page URLs, which are stored as-is.

What happens when the same person has two email addresses?

With Email as the identifier, each address is its own key, so the person gets two records — automatic merging across different identifier values is not documented. Pick the record whose address you actually contact, and see Manage duplicate contacts for cleanup.

Are accounts deduplicated the same way as contacts?

Accounts imported from CSV offer four explicit modes — Overwrite existing fields, Update missing fields, Skip, and Duplicate (which intentionally creates a copy while leaving the original unchanged). Account name is the mandatory mapped field. See Companies.

Related

• Contacts
• Contact enrollment
• Manage duplicate contacts
• Import contacts

Build with Reply

• REST API: docs.reply.io — create/update contact semantics
• MCP: agents.reply.io/mcp