Email Is A Contact's Unique Identifier
A contact's email address is how VipeCloud determines a contact to be a unique person.
Therefore, it's impossible to have two contacts with the same email address (unless you manually turn this off).
There are still ways that duplicates can occur, such as someone updating their email and then being added to the system, but you won't need to worry about a contact being in the system twice with the same email.
What Happens If I Import A Contact Twice With The Same Email Address?
If you import a CSV with a contact that has the same email address as a contact already in the system, one of two things will happen:
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If all of the data is identical to what is already in the system (name, phone, address, etc) it will simply skip over the contact.
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If the email is the same as the one already in the system, but other data is different (new phone number for instance), it will update the contact with the new data. This is because generally new data is the most up-to-date and correct.
Either way, no new contacts will be created.
What Happens If An Existing Contact Submits a Sign-Up Form?
Sign-up forms have a similar logic as contact imports.
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If a sign-up form is submitted with an email address that isn't already in the system, a new contact will be created with any additional info that is in the form using standard or custom fields.
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If a sign-up form is submitted with an email address that already exists in the system, the existing contact will be updated with any information included in the form using standard or custom fields that is different to what is already in the system.
Reduce Duplicate Contacts With Unique Fields
By marking contact fields as "unique", this will tell the system to not allow a new contact to be created with a field that has the same value.
For instance, if a contact in your system has the phone number 123-555-1212 and you try to add a new contact with the same phone number, the system won't allow you to save this new contact.
For more info on custom fields, check out this help article: https://v.vipecloud.com/help-center/custom-fields
Can Contacts Be On Multiple Contact Lists?
Yes, contacts can be on multiple contact lists. However, this doesn't result in duplicates within the system.
Think of it as you would a playlist in iTunes. You aren't duplicating a song by having it in multiple playlists, you're simply creating multiple groups of songs (or contacts, in the case of VipeCloud).
The reason that a contact can be in multiple contact lists is because contact lists are what is used by the system to send mass emails. A contact might be one one list so they receive your monthly newsletter, another list because they signed up to receive updates on an upcoming service you are working on and one last list because that's the list you used to upload their info to the system, and you want to keep that record so you can track the conversion rate of those contacts.
Contact lists have no bearing on the contact limits per account.