Deduplicate

Description

Deduplicate prospect lists, merge data from multiple sources, and ensure data quality across columns. Use when user asks about "deduplicate", "duplicates", "remove duplicates", "merge sources", "merge columns", "multiple data sources", "data quality", "clean up list", "duplicate contacts", "Clay auto-dedupe". Do NOT use for email verification (use clean-validate) or ICP scoring (use define-icp).

What this skill does

1. 1Identifies and removes duplicate contacts using a priority key hierarchy: email first, then LinkedIn URL, then name plus company domain.
2. 2Merges multi-source data (Apollo, Sales Nav, Clay) into unified final columns using source priority rules.
3. 3Applies conditional formulas to avoid re-enriching or re-verifying records that already have valid data.
4. 4Builds and maintains a cross-campaign suppression list covering contacted, bounced, unsubscribed, and not-interested records.
5. 5Runs post-dedup quality checks: empty emails, free providers, role-based addresses, job change flags.

When to use

• You imported leads from two or more sources and suspect 30-60% overlap between them.
• You are combining email columns from multiple enrichment providers into one clean field.
• You want to prevent the same prospect from receiving emails from two different campaigns simultaneously.
• You are about to run a campaign and need to cross-reference against all previously contacted prospects.

Tools used

Frequently asked questions