Dentists often share inboxes like reception@practice.com but in HubSpot, that breaks everything. The platform requires each contact to have a unique email address, so shared inboxes lead to duplicate chaos, overwritten records, and inflated marketing contact costs.
In this episode of How I Fixed Your Data, we spoke with Ed Frame, founder of Exemplify (a Platinum HubSpot Partner based in Melbourne, Australia). His team solved the duplicate nightmare for a dental client by redesigning how contacts were stored and using Koalify to safely merge duplicates.
The result? Contacts reduced from ~50,000 to ~20,000, lower subscription costs, and far greater sales clarity.
🎥 Watch the full conversation with Ed Frame from Exemplify:
Dentistry is a perfect storm for duplicate contacts. Many practices rely on shared inboxes:
admin@brightdentists.com
That’s normal for the industry, but in HubSpot, where email = unique identifier, it breaks the CRM.
Imports collapse: Uploading dentists with the same email merges them into one record.
Forms overwrite contacts: A new dentist using the same inbox overwrites the previous contact.
Sales confusion: Sales reps lose visibility into which individual they’re speaking with.
Marketing cost explosion: Everyone ends up marked as a marketing contact, inflating subscription costs.
As Ed explains: “This isn’t just a data problem — it’s an industry structure problem. Dentists will always use the same inbox. You can’t change that; you have to architect around it.”
The first step was to stop relying on HubSpot’s default Email field.
Exemplify’s solution:
Added a custom property: Practice Email.
All forms, imports, and integrations captured Practice Email instead of HubSpot’s Email.
For generic inboxes (reception@, info@, etc.), workflows created a Generic Contact:
First Name / Last Name = Practice Name + “Dental Contact.”
Marked as a marketing contact so campaigns could still target the shared inbox.
Prevented overwriting individual dentist contacts.
This meant sales could still work with individuals, while marketing retained the ability to send to the shared inbox.
With HubSpot’s default email matching disabled, the risk of duplicates increased, unless deduplication was done smartly.
That’s where Koalify came in.
Merge rules used:
First Name + Last Name + City/Suburb
First Name + Last Name + Practice Name
First Name + Last Name + Phone/Mobile
Key safeguards:
Generic Contacts excluded from merges.
City/Suburb made a required property on forms, ensuring enough context for safe matching.
Merges reviewed monthly or quarterly for accuracy.
This balance of automation + review allowed Exemplify to maintain clean data without risking accidental merges of different people.
The impact was immediate and significant:
Contacts reduced: ~50,000 → ~20,000.
Lower subscription costs: far fewer unnecessary marketing contacts.
Sales clarity: Each dentist retained as a distinct contact, reducing confusion.
Company-level cleanup: Dental chains with 20+ locations were structured by Practice Name + Suburb rather than domain, fixing franchise duplicates.
As Ed notes: “Without Koalify, we’d be drowning. With it, merges are handled cleanly and we can keep live data usable.”
The biggest takeaway? Sometimes what looks like bad data is really an industry pattern.
HubSpot’s default assumptions (email = ID, domain = company) don’t always match reality.
You can’t ask every dentist to stop using reception@ — you need to adapt the data model.
The right fix is a combination of:
Custom properties (e.g., Practice Email).
Workflows (Generic Contact logic).
Koalify deduplication rules (context-aware matching).
In Ed’s words: “It’s not about blaming the client for messy data. It’s about designing creative solutions around industry realities.”
Q: How do HubSpot partners fix duplicates when email isn’t unique?
A: Use a custom property (e.g., Practice Email) instead of HubSpot’s Email field. Create a Generic Contact for shared inboxes, then use deduplication rules like First+Last+City with Koalify.
Q: What tools do HubSpot agencies use for deduplication?
A: Many partners use Koalify alongside HubSpot workflows. Koalify automates safe merges based on flexible rules while excluding generic contacts.
Q: Can I email a shared inbox in HubSpot without breaking contacts?
A: Yes. Store the shared inbox in a custom property, create a Generic Contact for marketing, and keep individual contacts separate for sales.