Fuzzy name matching for same-email contacts

When the same email address is submitted multiple times with name variations (Alice Smith, A. Smith, ALICE SMITH), a naive upsert creates duplicate contact records or silently discards the newer name with no record of what was changed. Multiple records for the same email send duplicate campaigns to the same person, overcount subscribers in reporting dashboards, and create ambiguity when the contact later requests deletion under GDPR Art. 17 — which record is erased? Without a defined merge strategy, data quality degrades with every import, and the marketing list progressively diverges from reality.

Define an explicit merge strategy in the upsert path rather than letting the ORM choose implicitly:

await db.contact.upsert({
  where: { email: normalizedEmail },
  create: { email: normalizedEmail, name: incomingName },
  update: {
    // Prefer the more complete name (longer string = more information)
    name: incomingName.length > (existingName?.length ?? 0)
      ? incomingName
      : existingContact.name,
    updated_at: new Date()
  }
})

For split first/last name fields, log the discrepancy to a review queue instead of silently overwriting. The review queue is a simple DB table with contact_id, field, current_value, incoming_value, created_at — populate it in the upsert transaction and surface it in your admin interface.