Remove duplicate records from audience results

One person, one record

When several records share an email address or a phone number, an audience can reach the same person more than once. Deduplication collapses those records to one while the audience is still being built, so every count, snapshot, and activation works from the deduplicated set.

Administrators define the rules once per object, and can exempt audiences from them in bulk. Marketers decide whether an individual audience follows them.

Choose whether an audience participates

Deduplicate this audience is offered wherever an audience is created or edited, below the Description field in each case:

• New Audience, when you create one;
• the clone dialog, when you copy an existing audience;
• Edit Properties, at any time afterwards.

The checkbox appears when active rules exist for the audience’s object, and carries a summary of each rule that will apply — for example, By Email → keeps the oldest record.

Until a rule exists, nothing is being removed from any audience of that object, so the dialog states that rather than offering a choice: No deduplication rules are active for this audience’s object, so every record is kept. Administrators also get a Manage deduplication rules link to the settings page. An audience that is already excluded keeps its checkbox either way, so a standing exclusion stays visible and can be reversed even after every rule for its object is deactivated.

The checkbox is on by default, including on a clone — a copy makes its own choice rather than inheriting the original’s. Clear it when the audience must keep every matching record. The choice is sticky, as the field help says: The choice sticks: adding or changing rules later will not re-enrol it.

Because participating is the default, an active rule reaches every audience built on its object except the ones that turned deduplication off. A new or changed rule applies from each audience’s next run — a run already under way keeps the rules it started with.

A sequence decides for all of its components

Components of a scheduled sequence are audiences with their own properties, but mixed settings inside one sequence would be incoherent. The sequence’s own deduplication setting governs the whole sequence and overrides the component-level setting.

Follow the run

Deduplication is part of the run, not something that happens afterwards. While it works, the Background operations monitor shows the phase Removing duplicates. The run is not finished, and its results are not available, until that phase completes.

Expect a run to take a little longer than it did without rules. For most audiences the difference is small; audiences with many duplicates spend more time on it, because there is more to check and more to remove.

See what a run removed

Open a run in Run History. Next to Total Results, Duplicates removed reports how many records the rules took out.

When the count is above zero and the per-record details were kept, the number is a link. Select it to open Removed duplicates, which groups each kept record with the records removed in its favour:

• Record names are links to the Salesforce record. A record that can no longer be resolved — because it was deleted or is not shared with you — appears as Record unavailable.
• Outcome marks each row Kept or Removed.
• Matched on names the field that grouped the records, which matters when several rules are active.

Very large runs record a sample rather than every removal. A banner then reports how many further removals were not recorded. The count itself is always complete.

Archived runs keep their Duplicates removed count, but the per-record details are dropped once run history is trimmed. The count then carries the note The per-record details for this run are no longer retained.

How records are matched

• Records are grouped by the exact stored value of the match field, including its capitalization. Jane Doe and jane doe are two different values and are not matched to each other.
• Blank values never group, so records without an email address are all kept by an email rule.
• The keep sort decides which record of a group stays. Records with no value in that field are removed, and ties are broken consistently, so the same run keeps the same record every time.
• When several rules apply to one object, they run in order and each one works on what the previous rule left.
• The rules are fixed when the run starts. Editing rules while an audience is running does not change that run; the change applies from the next run.
• In a waterfall sequence, component order takes precedence: if an earlier component already holds a value, the later component gives it up. The keep sort only decides within a component.

Matching another field case-insensitively

Email fields are unaffected by the rule above, because Salesforce stores email addresses in lower case. Two people who typed their address differently still end up matched.

Every other field keeps what was typed, so a text, picklist, or URL field can hold Acme Corp and ACME CORP as separate values, and a rule on that field treats them as two different people.

To match one of those fields regardless of capitalization, deduplicate on a lower-case copy of it rather than on the field itself:

1. Create a text field to hold the copy, for example Company Name (lower case).
2. Add a before-save record-triggered flow on the object that writes the lower-cased value into it whenever the source field is set or changed.
3. Run a one-time data update to fill the field on records that already exist, since the flow only fires on save.
4. Choose the new field as the rule’s Match field.

Use a text field, not a formula field

A formula field cannot be used as a match field, even though it looks like it should work. Deduplication groups records in the database, and formula fields cannot be grouped, so CAB will not offer one when you pick a match field. The lower-case copy has to be a real text field that a flow keeps up to date.

For administrators

CAB Settings → Deduplication

A band across the top of the page states the three things that hold no matter what you configure below, and stays visible while you work:

• Where rules apply, covering every audience built on the object unless deduplication was switched off on that audience. Changes take effect from each audience’s next run.
• Matching is case-sensitive, shown as Jane Doe does not match jane doe, with a link to matching another field case-insensitively.
• Run limits, the two ceilings below.

Rules are managed per object, with one row each for Contact, Account, and Lead — labelled with your organization’s own object names and headed by that object’s own icon. Select New rule on a row to open Deduplication rule and set:

• Match field — the field whose shared value identifies duplicates. Choose a text, email, phone, picklist, or lookup field. Formula fields are not offered: deduplication groups records in the database and formula fields cannot be grouped.
• Keep sort — the sortable date, number, or text field that decides which record stays.
• Keeps — Lowest value (e.g. oldest) or Highest value (e.g. newest).
• Active — an active rule applies to every audience of its object; individual audiences can still opt out.

Give an object up to three active rules to deduplicate by one field and then another. The order in the table is the order they apply in; use the reorder controls to change it. Each active rule is a further pass over every result, which is why the number is capped; inactive drafts do not count and can sit alongside the active ones. CAB states the consequence on the row: Rules apply in order: each one deduplicates what the one before it left. A record is never removed in favour of a record that is already gone.

A rule whose field is later deleted is skipped rather than failing the run, and the row flags it with This field no longer exists. The rule is skipped by every run until you pick another field.

Choose which audiences take part

Manage Audiences on an object’s row opens Audiences in deduplication, listing every audience built on that object. A selected audience is deduplicated; a cleared one keeps every record.

Use it to exempt several audiences at once — suppression lists and control groups are the usual reasons — or to bring an excluded audience back in. Nothing is written until you select Save, and the dialog reports what is waiting, as in 1 to exclude, 1 to bring back in. Nothing changes until you save.

The dialog lists the first 500 audiences and says so when the object has more. Search by name to reach any of the others; a change you make to a search result is kept when you clear the search, so an audience found that way can be excluded even though it never appears in the list itself.

Rules and participation are separate decisions: this dialog never edits a rule, and saving a rule never asks about audiences. Where no rule is active yet the dialog says so, and the exclusions set here apply as soon as one is activated.

Run limits

Deduplication fails a run rather than deliver a partly deduplicated audience. Two ceilings apply:

Limit	What it counts
50,000	duplicate values, across all rules of the run
100,000	records removed by a single rule

Past either, the run fails and publishes nothing: no results, no campaign additions, no scheduled actions. It appears in Run History as a failed run with a linked error, not as a run that quietly returned less than expected. A pass that stopped part-way would leave a membership that is neither the original nor the deduplicated one, and publishing that is worse than failing.

Phone numbers match on the stored value

Matching compares stored values, so +49 30 1234 and 030 1234 are different numbers. To deduplicate reliably by phone, match on a normalized phone field maintained by a flow or trigger rather than on the raw field or a formula field.

Deduplication is available in the Professional Edition and upwards. Where it is not included, the page explains this instead of showing rules.

Rule management is reserved for CAB administrators and cannot be delegated: a rule decides which records leave a segmentation result. Everyone with regular CAB access can read the rules, which is what the per-audience summary needs.