How to Merge Contacts While Preserving Their Site Permissions

When Merging a Contact May Be Necessary

If you have duplicate contacts in your CRM it may be necessary to merge them to a single contact. You may also want to merge contacts when a customer signs up with 2 different email addresses.

Infusionsoft/Keap

1. Enable Feature In AccessAlly

Go to: AccessAlly -> Settings -> General Setup -> Display Settings -> Merge Contacts Operation > check the box to Enable Merge Contacts.

2. Merge Contacts

Now, go to: AccessAlly -> Permissions -> Merge Users.

Here, you can merge the contacts.

This will both merge the contacts in Infusionsoft and sort out the user login / tags in AccessAlly.

For other CRMS:

For other CRMs, merging is a more manual process. In a nutshell, it involves:

1. Moving all applicable tags from the to-be-deleted contact to the to-be-kept contact in the CRM
2. Add the to-be-kept contact to any relevant automation / campaign
3. Once that is done, you can just update the to-be-kept contact in AccessAlly, so all the tags are synced.

1. Give the “to be kept” user the proper permissions in your CRM

First, you need to make sure that the contact that will be preserved retains the right permission tags:

• Convertkit and Drip: Manually add all the necessary tags to contact that will be kept.
• Ontraport and ActiveCampaign: Your CRM has the ability to merge contacts. You’ll want to merge your contact and this will automatically merge the tags you need to keep.

2. Write down the Contact ID You’re Keeping

Now, document which Contact ID that you are keeping and the one that you’re not. You’ll need these later. (Here is how you locate a Contact ID)

3. Delete old Contact

In WordPress, delete the contact that you’re not keeping. (If your CRM doesn’t have a merge option, you should also delete the contact that you’re not keeping in the CRM as well).

4. Verify Contact ID for the “preserved” user

Verify that the User in Wordpress has the right Contact ID
Go back to Wordpress → Users → Then look up the user’s profile and make sure they have the correct Contact ID.

If it doesn’t match, delete the old contact ID and add the contact ID you have kept.

Make sure to save your changes.

5. Sync the User’s Orders

Lastly, you’ll want to make sure that any orders created by the contact are attributed to the correct contact ID. To do this you’ll use the Contact ID Order Updater Tool.

Merging Lots of Clients at Once

At times it may be necessary to merge a lot of clients at once. This will walk you through that process.

1. Merge through CRM

If your CRM has the option to merge the contacts then you can use this option and merge all contacts that need to me merged together.

2. Sync AA to the CRM.

Once you have finished merging all contacts you will need to sync AA to the CRM. You can do this by clicking on AccessAlly in the top menu bar and selecting Refresh CRM Info.

3. Update Contacts with Invalid IDs

You will then need to delete all contacts that have an invalid ID. You should make a spreadsheet while performing this step as you will need it for the next step. Be sure that your spreadsheet contains the CRM contact ID that you are removing, and the one it is becoming. You can see this article for more details about invalid contact IDs.

4. Update Contact Orders

Once you have finished deleting invalid IDs and you have your spreadsheet you are going to need to update orders that belonged to those old IDs with the new IDs. See this article for instructions.