How duplicate detection works
Distro keeps one contact per email address, ignoring capital letters. How duplicates are handled when you add, import and choose campaign recipients.
Distro identifies a contact by their email address. Each address can only be one contact in your Outreach workspace, so the same person can't end up in your contacts twice, and a campaign never emails the same contact twice from one audience.
What counts as the same person
Two addresses are treated as the same when they match after removing spaces at the start and end and ignoring capital letters:
| These are the same contact | These are different contacts |
|---|---|
Maya@Example.com and maya@example.com | maya@example.com and maya@example.co.uk |
maya@example.com and maya@example.com | maya.chen@gmail.com and mayachen@gmail.com |
maya+news@example.com and maya@example.com |
Distro doesn't match people by name, company or LinkedIn profile, and it doesn't merge contacts. If someone uses two different addresses, they are two contacts.
The check covers your whole Outreach workspace, including archived contacts and people who unsubscribed or bounced. It doesn't change when you switch products in the sidebar.
Where duplicates are caught
| Where | What happens |
|---|---|
| Add contact | Distro refuses with "A contact with this email already exists." |
| CSV import, address already in your contacts | Handled by the option you pick: leave them as they are, update them from the file, or skip and never create a duplicate |
| CSV import, address twice in the same file | The first row is used, later rows are skipped as duplicate_in_file |
| Pasted addresses | Repeated addresses in the paste are dropped |
| Choosing campaign recipients | Someone in several of the selected lists or tags is included once |
| Same campaign | A contact already in the campaign isn't added a second time |
| Another running campaign | Distro warns "N recipient(s) are active in another campaign." They are still included, so decide whether that's what you want |
The import options in detail
When you import, you choose what happens to people who are already in your contacts:
- Leave them as they are: nothing changes. They count as Skipped.
- Update them from the file (blank cells are ignored): fields like name, job title, city or website are updated with the file's non-empty values. Custom field values and the email address are not changed.
- Skip, and never create a duplicate: they are skipped.
In every option, an import never creates a second contact for an address, and never brings back someone who unsubscribed. See Import prospects with a CSV.
Avoid emailing the same person from two campaigns
Running two campaigns at the same audience means some people get two different sequences at once. Before you launch, look at the warnings in the campaign. If you see "active in another campaign", either remove those people from one campaign or wait until the first one finishes. How to adjust recipients is in Add or remove prospects in a campaign.
Email contacts and LinkedIn prospects
Email contacts and LinkedIn prospects are kept separately, each with its own duplicate check: one contact per email address, and one LinkedIn prospect per LinkedIn profile. The same person can therefore be both an email contact and a LinkedIn prospect. Distro doesn't merge the two records.
On the People tab, a LinkedIn prospect whose work email or LinkedIn profile matches one of your email contacts is shown once, as that contact. See People and the "Can reach by" tags.
Re-adding an archived contact
Archived contacts still count. Adding their address again says it already exists, and imports skip them. Open the contact's page and click Restore instead.
Email us at hello@usedistro.com with what you tried and what you see. Signed in? Help & support in the app has walkthrough videos and a message form.