If you have identified duplicate accounts for a customer, you can resolve the issue in a few simple steps.
How do these duplicates occur? Our system does not allow duplicate emails, but you can have many customers with the same First or Last name. For example, you can have two John Smith accounts, but only one john@original.com. If someone tries to create a second John@original.com email, the system will prevent signup and notify the customer that the email is already taken. Sometimes customers will create a secondary account with a different email address. In this case, John Smith will end up with one account for john@dupe.com and another for john@original.com. When this happens, there will not be a way to stop them at signup and it will need to be fixed post-signup.
There are a few different ways to handle duplicates. If a customer created a duplicate account and has not yet made a purchase, you can simply delete and suppress the email (skip to step 16). If a customer created a second account and made a purchase, the orders will need to be reassigned before the account can be deleted. In this case, please follow these steps because the process is not merely a merge of two customer accounts.
1. Click on Customers
2. Enter the name of the customer in the Search
It is best to search using a name that they share in common. For example, if the last name on both accounts is "Bailey" then enter "Bailey" into the search so it will pull in results for both accounts.
3. Make note of the customer ID number for the account you want to keep
4. Open the account you want to delete
5. Click on the Orders tab to pull up a list of orders
6. Select the order number of the order(s) you want to reassign
7. Click on Reassign Customer
8. Click on ×…
9. Enter the Customer ID for the account you want the order to go
10. Click on Update
11. You will see a green banner with "Customer ID updated for this order" when the process is complete.
12. Recalculate the Customer Lifetime Value by clicking on Settings
13. Click on Customers
14. Click on Recalculate Customer Lifetime Value
This will recalculate the totals for the customers not that orders have been reassigned to different accounts.
15. Search for the Customer accounts and you can see the new totals under the "Lifetime" column
16. Select the unwanted account to Delete
Now that the orders have been reassigned from ID 89 to ID 81, you can delete ID 89. Any notes, addresses, or other data will need to be copied and pasted into the new account. Sorry, it is not possible to reassign credit cards.
17. Under the Actions menu, select 'Delete Customer'
18. Unsubscribe or Suppress the duplicate customer email
This process can vary depending on the email marketing software you are using. If you are using our integration with Campaign Monitor, go to Lists & subscribers, then select the Suppressions tab on the left side and choose the 'Add to suppression' list button. Next enter the email and click "Add to suppression List.' This will ensure they do not get email communications going forward and create a duplicate account all over again.
