Duplicate records in Salesforce can cause chaos for your organization, but in this post we'll specifically look at the problems that duplicate records cause in the measurement of your marketing efforts.

We're going to start with a very simple example that is almost certainly happening within your Salesforce org hundreds if not thousands of times over.  

Let's say I'm your prospect.  

You have me stored in Salesforce as a Lead with my email address as jfusaro@ringlead.com.  We talk about your products, but ultimately I decide not to go with them right now because I have Gregg, Michael, John and Matt asking me for help in a variety of different projects.  I clearly don't have the bandwidth to make this decision right now, so I hold off.

About a week later, I decide I'm ready to buy.  But I forget who I spoke to at your company because I'm frazzled from pulling a few all nighters to get all of those projects finished.  So I fill out a new contact form, but this time I use joe@ringlead.com, which is my business-casual email address.

Your standard Salesforce Web-to-Lead form and the web forms that you've built with Marketo, Eloqua or Pardot will not prevent a duplicate record from being created.  Why?  Because all of these systems use exact-match email address duplicate prevention.

Now you have my information in your system (or systems) as two or more different records.

Let's take a look at how this exact scenario would play out.

If you're reading this blog post, chances are you are familiar with buttonclickadmin.com, a well-known resource for all things admin in salesforce.com.  If you aren't familiar… well, I just did you a huge favor filling you in.

Mike Gerholdt, the creator of the ButtonClick Admin site along with Jared Miller, another well-decorated Salesforce expert, host a very popular weekly podcast.  I was honored to be a guest on the show to talk shop with Mike and Jared, my fellow Salesforce MVPs, about everything from duplicates and data quality to how I got started in the cloud.

Click below to listen to the podcast (I also recommend signing up for his email updates):
ButtonClick Admin Podcast: Michael Farrington on duplicate data and learning code

When it comes to data quality, first you make your data habits and then those habits make your database.  Good or bad, it is up to you. In this blog post, we offer some quick and easy tips for spring cleaning in your Salesforce org.

1. Clean up your page layouts & remove unused fields with Field Trip

Tired of those excess fields taking up space on your page layouts? Do you wish there was a quick and easy way to figure out which fields are expendable so that you can go on a field-deletion spree?

Field Trip is a free Force.com app that allows you analyze the fields of any object, including what percentage of the records (or a subset of your records) have that field populated. After the quick installation and just a few clicks, Field Trip will provide you with a report so that you can finally achieve the minimilist page layout that you've always dreamed of.

2. Update Contact Titles for Reduced Email Bounce Rates & Increased Open Rates

Are your Accounts riddled with Contacts who have moved on to a different company?  If so, your sales reps, customer service team and probably even your accounting staff has wasted time calling someone who no longer works at that organization.