Prevent Duplicate Contacts When They Sign-Up Via Web Form?

[JagStyles]

How do you prevent a contact from being added to your database when they already exist and that person signed up to your newsletter through the web form?  I now have duplicate contacts for the same person.  If I delete the contact that was created via the web form, it comes back again whenever I click on GET LEADS - so I'm stuck in this vicious circle of having to delete these contacts every time they are re-added when I click on Get Leads.

[Gary W]

Hi Jag,

The feature will match existing contacts using the email address field when pulling in leads from your webform. If an existing contact signs up through your webform with a different email than what has been entered on their contact record, they will be re-added to your database as a new contact. If you were to update the existing contact with the new email address, then delete the contact created through the webform, this would prevent the contact from being recreated when you next click 'Get Leads'.

[JagStyles]

Then this isn't working properly because in each case, the duplicate contact has the same email address. Which email address field is matched?

[Gary W]

The primary email field on the contact should be matched, named "E-mail" and is present in each new database.

If you follow these steps, does it result in creating two separate contacts?

1. Create contact named Test Lorem
2. Set email as an email address you have access to, that doesn't already exist in the database
3. Using the webform, enter name as Test Ipsum
4. Enter the same email address as used in the second step