Migrate from ContactDB to Pipedrive

ContactDB contact records map directly to Pipedrive Person. Each ContactDB record carries name fields (first_name, last_name), email address, phone number, job title, and firmographic attributes (industry, company size, SICCODE, credit rating). We map these to Pipedrive Person standard fields and apply email-based deduplication to prevent duplicate Person records where the same contact appears across multiple list segments. Records missing a valid email address are flagged for customer review before import.

ContactDB does not expose a standalone Company object; company name is an embedded attribute per contact. We extract all distinct company_name values from the contact export, deduplicate by normalized company name (trimmed, lowercased), and create a Pipedrive Organization record for each unique company. Each ContactDB contact then links to its corresponding Organization via the Pipedrive Person-Organization relationship at import time. Organizations are created before Persons to satisfy the foreign-key constraint.

ContactDB segments contacts by industry, profession, title, country, and software usage criteria, but these are not exported as standalone tag objects. We reconstruct each segmentation axis as a Pipedrive custom Person field. Industry, profession, and country become text or multi-select fields on the Person record. Software usage becomes a multi-select or checkbox-style custom field. The customer confirms during scoping which segment categories are meaningful post-migration; unused axes are omitted from the target schema.

ContactDB provides job title per contact. We map this directly to the Pipedrive Person label field. Title is used as a deduplication signal alongside email: if two records share an email but have different titles, we flag for customer review rather than merging automatically, since title changes often indicate a real person who changed roles.

ContactDB firmographic attributes SICCODE and credit_rating are company-level signals stored per contact. We map these to custom text fields on the Pipedrive Organization record. The Organization's Industry field maps from the ContactDB industry attribute. These custom fields are defined in Pipedrive before the Organization import and are set via the Pipedrive API during the Organization creation phase.

ContactDB does not implement a pipeline or deal-tracking model. There are no Deal records, pipeline stages, or deal amounts in the source. Pipedrive Deals cannot be migrated because there is no source data to map. The customer's admin creates Pipedrive pipeline stages and Deal templates post-migration as part of the CRM setup. We provide a written pipeline design worksheet to guide this configuration.

ContactDB is a purchased contact database, not a live CRM. It does not store engagement history: no email logs, call records, meeting records, or task completions. Pipedrive Activities cannot be migrated because no activity data exists in the source. Any historical warmth or engagement signals must come from the customer's outreach platform (email tool, calling system, or sequence tool) and can be connected to Pipedrive via native integrations post-migration.

ContactDB does not implement a Lead object. All records are flat contact profiles without qualification status. Pipedrive Leads are not applicable to this migration scope; all ContactDB contacts map directly to Pipedrive Person records. If the customer intends to use Pipedrive's Lead feature for future prospect tracking, they configure it post-migration as a separate workflow.

ContactDB is a data product, not a team CRM. There are no internal user accounts, owner assignments, or team member records to map to Pipedrive Users. The customer's Pipedrive admin provisions Users within Pipedrive before migration begins. Owner assignment on migrated Person records is set to the admin User or left unassigned for the customer to assign during post-migration onboarding.

ContactDB does not store document attachments against contact records. There are no files, PDFs, or linked documents in the export package to migrate to Pipedrive. The Attachment object is out of scope for this migration.

ContactDB does not document a custom fields schema. Any extended attributes proprietary to the platform are not exposed in the export package. We configure Pipedrive custom fields (Industry, SICCODE, Credit Rating, Software Usage, and original Segment Source) as part of the migration setup phase before any data import begins. Custom field API names follow Pipedrive naming conventions (e.g., cf_industry, cf_siccode). The customer approves the custom field schema during the scoping review.