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How to handle updating profile based on email and phone number

  • 28 August 2023
  • 4 replies
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We have an integration with Klaviyo that will pass through standard customer fields like name, email, phone, etc and create a profile for them within Klaviyo.

If that same user then attempts to fill out one of our forms again in the future, we just update that existing contact record with whatever information they provided. Here is an example
 

John@gmail.com fills out one of our entry forms with:

 

Email: john@gmail.com
Name: John Doe
Phone: 111-111-1111
Zip code: 90210

 

In the future, he fills out one of our forms again, and we update the record with any new information:

Email: john@gmail.com
Name: John Doe
Phone: 111-111-1111
Zip code: 78704

 

However, now that more and more companies are just wanting to collect SMS/name instead of email, how do we handle a use case in Klaviyo where a phone number already exists on a contact profile and they submit new information? Should we just update the contact record as we previously had when they were submitting with an email? The only issue I can see with this is if two people in a household share a phone number (or even an email address)

 

Example:
Email: john@gmail.com
Name: John Doe
Phone: 111-111-1111
Zip code: 78704

 

Then John’s wife signs up through a form with just a phone number:

Example:
Name: Jane Doe
Phone: 111-111-1111
Zip code: 78704

 

Should we update John’s record with this information? Try to create a different profile with a different ID, or something else?

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Best answer by Brian Turcotte 14 September 2023, 20:30

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Userlevel 6
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Hi @viralsweep1 I believe Klaviyo’s profile data is linked to email first, so even if two people have the same phone number, if the emails are separate, then those users will have two separate profile IDs. 

 

However, important to note, if both of those profiles with the same number are sent an SMS campaign, one of the profiles will not receive the campaign because it will be considered a dupe, although both profiles will still exist within Klaviyo and you could send separately to them .

 

This post in the community explains it a bit better

Do any other champions have any thoughts? @In the Inbox @Gabriel L. @Omar @Bobi N. @chelsgrove @retention @Akers Digital 

 

Badge +1

Hi @viralsweep1 I believe Klaviyo’s profile data is linked to email first, so even if two people have the same phone number, if the emails are separate, then those users will have two separate profile IDs. 

 

However, important to note, if both of those profiles with the same number are sent an SMS campaign, one of the profiles will not receive the campaign because it will be considered a dupe, although both profiles will still exist within Klaviyo and you could send separately to them .

 

This post in the community explains it a bit better

Do any other champions have any thoughts? @In the Inbox @Gabriel L. @Omar @Bobi N. @chelsgrove @retention @Akers Digital 

 

Thanks, but the problem is if you try to create a new profile with a new email address, but the same phone number on that profile already exists for a different email address, klaviyo API rejects it for duplicate phone number. 

What are we supposed to do in this case where a husband and wife for example share the same home phone number but different emails? When we try to pass a new profile via API with a phone number that already exists on a different profile, we receive an error.

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I guess there is no good solution for this?

 

What we are going to do is if the same phone number is used with a different email address, we will just create a new contact record with that email address and drop the phone number from the contact record. The contact record with the existing phone number will remain the same. This seems like the only viable option when you have two people (e.g. husband and wife) signing up for something with different email addresses but the same phone number.

Userlevel 7
Badge +36

Hi @viralsweep1!

At this time, this is the expected behavior of the Klaviyo API - since phone number is a unique identifier, you cannot have two different profiles with the same phone number.

 

Therefore, the options you mentioned in your most recent post would be the only ways to handle this use case.

 

Best,

Brian

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