How to Merge Duplicate Customers in Shopify for a Clean Database
Learn how to effectively merge duplicate customer profiles in Shopify for a cleaner database, improving your store’s performance and customer experience.
Published January 13, 2025.

Maintaining a clean database is essential for enhancing the customer experience and ensuring smooth store operations. Duplicate customer profiles can lead to errors in order management, loyalty programs, and marketing campaigns.
In this guide, we’ll explore effective strategies to merge duplicate customers in Shopify, helping you streamline your data and improve overall efficiency.
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Primary Causes Behind Duplicate Customer Entries in Shopify
- Multiple checkout options: Offering multiple checkout methods like guest checkout, social media logins, etc., can lead to duplicate profiles if the same customer uses different methods. Without proper account linking and clear checkout disclaimers, Shopify may treat these as separate customers.
- Human errors: Manual entry mistakes like typos in customer names emails, etc. will create duplicate customers in Shopify. For example “Jane Doe” and “Jane M. Doe” may appear as two customers when they’re supposed to be the same one.
- Integration issues with third party tools: Data syncing from CRMs or other third party tools can create duplicates if these systems don’t communicate efficiently.
- Migrating / importing historical data: Importing large data sets without thorough data cleanup can introduce duplicates, particularly if records lack unique identifiers such as emails and/or phone numbers.
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3 Strategies for Preventing Duplicate Customers
1. Define Data Entry Rules
Clean data requires consistency. Standardising how names and contact info are entered - whether by a person, tool, or during an import - goes a long way. Little things like agreeing on one format for phone numbers can make a big difference. Do this at the beginning and make sure to apply to all areas importing/reformatting data such as your Shopify site, third party apps, etc.
2. Require / Encourage Account Creation
Requiring customers to create accounts is a game changer. It keeps all their info tied to one profile using email validation, reducing duplicates significantly. Plus you can incentivise people to create account by highlighting perks to account creation like quicker checkouts and easy order tracking.
3. Use Third Party Tools to Clean up Duplicates
There are numerous third party apps made specifically for combining and cleaning up data sets. Not only can they clean up your data before importing, but they can clean up data in real time - monitoring your data, flagging duplicates, and merging them automatically so you don't have to do it manually.
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1. Identify Duplicate Records
- Go to Shopify Admin > Customers.
- Use the search bar to look for similar names, emails, or phone numbers.
- Use Shopify’s built in filters like "Last order date" or "Most recently updated" to narrow down potential duplicates.
- Note down the profiles that seem duplicated for further review.
2. Compare Profiles
- Open each duplicate customer profile in separate tabs. Shopify displays customer data, order history, notes, tags, etc. directly within each customer profile, making it easy to compare profiles.
- Cross check the customer’s order history, contact details, and any notes/tags.
- Decide which profile to keep, usually the one with the most complete or recent data.
3. Consolidate Data
- On the profile you want to keep, manually add missing information from the other duplicate record (phone numbers, notes, etc.)
Take Note: Shopify doesn’t allow you to merge historical orders between profiles so we recommend combining profiles only when one does not contain order history.
4. Archive or Delete Duplicate Profiles
- For duplicates with no valuable data, click Archive Customer to remove them from active lists.
- If you’re sure the duplicate profile isn’t needed, click Delete Customer to remove it permanently.
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1. Install a Deduplication App
- Go to the Shopify App Store and search for data apps like Rewind or Mergify.
- Choose an app, install it, and grant access to your customer data.
- Configure the app’s settings, such as duplicate detection criteria.
2. Run a Duplicate Scan
- Open the app and start a database scan to identify duplicates. Review the list of flagged duplicates.
3. Merge Duplicate Profiles
- Use the app to consolidate duplicate profiles. Most apps are able to not only merge contact info, tags, notes, etc. but can also combine customer history into a single profile.
- This is another main reason to use a third party app for merging customer profiles as Shopify does not have built in functionality around this.
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Effective Customer Data Management for Shopify Stores
Common Mistakes When Merging Shopify Customer Records
Merging by name alone: Combining profiles based only on matching first and last names can misallocate loyalty points and orders to the wrong customers. Always verify with unique identifiers like emails or phone numbers.
Skipping small-scale testing: Test merge rules on a small dataset first to avoid permanent data loss or costly cleanup from errors in large-scale merges.
Neglecting regular maintenance: Ignoring database upkeep leads to messy records, making tasks like platform migration time-consuming and expensive.
» Learn more: Easy tips to make your Shopify store a better one
Benefits of Maintaining an Accurate Customer Database
Short-Term Benefits
- Improved customer experience: Accurate order histories and customer details create a smoother experience, enabling customer service to quickly resolve issues and enhance satisfaction.
- Marketing efficiency: Accurate data ensures targeted campaigns, better open rates, and lower unsubscribe rates, reducing wasted ad spend and improving email application health.
- Faster operations: Simplifies order management and reporting, reducing time spent on fixing errors and enabling more focus on revenue-driving activities.
Long-Term Benefits
- Reliable analytics and insights: Clean data ensures accurate KPIs like LTV and churn rate, supporting smarter decisions for marketing, inventory management, and product development during scaling.
- Cost savings: Reducing errors minimizes wasted resources in marketing, support, and duplicate management, resulting in significant savings over time.
» Looking for additional ways to enhance customer experience? Read our successful marketing incentives to retain e-commerce customers
Accurate Customer Data Drives Success
A clean and accurate customer database is the backbone of a successful Shopify store. It ensures seamless customer experiences, efficient marketing efforts, and smoother daily operations. In the long run, it provides reliable insights for strategic decision-making and helps reduce costs by minimizing errors and inefficiencies.
Prioritizing database maintenance not only boosts current performance but also lays a strong foundation for sustainable growth and scalability.
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