Fix one channel spelled five ways
MarqIQ groups values that differ only in spelling, shows you the real total behind each channel, and names what keeps creating new spellings. You make the rename in your tool and then close the door that produced the variants. If your problem is values that name no channel at all rather than several spellings of one, read Clear out catch-all sources instead.
Before you start
Connect the tool and let one sync finish. The grouping reads MarqIQ’s synced copy of every person in that tool, counted in the database rather than sampled.
Permissions required
Reading the grouping needs no special role. The rename happens in your own tool, so whoever administers that tool does it under their own permissions there.
Take care
Export the affected records from your tool before a bulk rename. MarqIQ cannot undo a change it did not make, and neither can your tool once the update has run.
See the real total behind each channel
Open Insights in the left-hand menu, then Analysis.
Pick the tool along the top.
Open Source truth.
Find the finding titled 3 sources are written more than one way.
The number is yours. Its first line gives the population: “1,840 people are split across spellings of the same thing.”
Read the grey chips under the evidence.
Each chip is one group, with every spelling and its own count: “LinkedIn (980) · linkedin (620) · Linked In (240)”. At most five groups are shown, largest first, so a workspace with more variants sees the five that matter.
Add the counts in a group to get the channel’s real size.
That total is the number to take to a budget conversation. Each spelling on its own is what the dashboard has been showing.
How serious MarqIQ calls it
The finding appears whenever any group holds more than one spelling. It is marked Distorting your numbers when three or more groups exist, or when the people in those groups are 15% or more of everyone who has a source at all. Below both it is marked Early signs.
What MarqIQ groups, and what it deliberately will not
Two values are called the same source only when they differ in spelling. Meaning is never guessed, so two real channels are never merged into one.
| Difference | Grouped | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Capital letters | Yes | LinkedIn and linkedin |
| Spaces, dashes, underscores, full stops | Yes | Linked In, linked-in and linked_in |
| An ampersand against the word and | Yes | Events & Webinars and Events and Webinars |
| A trailing s, where the word before it is four letters or more | Yes | Referral and Referrals. A three-letter word keeps its s, so Ad and Ads stay separate |
| An abbreviation | No | LI stays separate from LinkedIn |
| A different word for the same thing | No | Paid Social stays separate from Social Ads |
| A tool code and its label | Already merged earlier | Two stored values that your tool shows under one label are counted as one source before this check runs |
Take care
The two rows that say No are the ones to read. An abbreviation such as LI is a different value to MarqIQ and will not be in the group, so add it to your rename by hand. MarqIQ refuses to guess it, because guessing meaning is how two genuinely different channels get silently merged.
Note
The Every source, side by side table below the findings shows the 25 largest values. A small variant can be inside the finding and off the bottom of that table, so build your rename list from the chips in the finding and not from the table.
Decide the value to keep
- Keep the spelling with the most people, unless a smaller one matches how the rest of your list is written. Consistency across the list beats consistency with the past.
- Write the rule down where the list lives — in the field description in your tool — so the next person adding an option follows it.
- Decide one case convention and one word separator for the whole field at the same time. Fixing LinkedIn alone means doing this again for the next channel.
- Keep the channel and the campaign apart. If a group contains values such as “LinkedIn Q3 Webinar”, that is a campaign name in the channel field, and it belongs in its own field.
Make the rename
MarqIQ does not do this one for you. Changing a value that is already there is a replacement, not a fill, and a change set fills an empty field only. The standardising that MarqIQ can write back does replace values, and covers country, state, industry, job title, phone, name, company and website — the source field is not among them.
Check what your own automation listens to on that field.
Do this before anything else. A workflow that fires on a source change fires on every record in a bulk rename.
Export the affected records from your tool, filtered to the spellings you are replacing.
Keep the export. It is the only route back if the update goes wrong.
Run the bulk update in your tool, one spelling at a time.
Doing it one spelling at a time keeps each step countable: the number you updated should match the count on the chip.
Delete the emptied options from the list where the field is a fixed list.
An option left in the list will be chosen again. Deleting it is the part that makes the fix hold.
Reload Source truth after your next sync and confirm the group has gone.
The analysis is cached for five minutes per tool and per date range, so allow for that as well as for the sync.
What it would need if MarqIQ did offer it
A rename is the class MarqIQ calls Replaces existing values: undoable from MarqIQ’s record of what was there before, and approvable only by a Workspace Admin, refused on the server for anyone else. No operation in the product produces one of these yet, so the class is what to expect rather than what to use.
Stop the next spelling appearing
MarqIQ names the cause from what your field actually is, and the two causes need different fixes.
| What the field is | Why spellings appear | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A fixed list already | These were not typed by hand. Something is adding options: a form or an import that creates a new option whenever it meets a value it does not recognise | Find it — the newest spelling is the clue — map that value onto the existing option, then delete the duplicate options |
| Free text | Anyone can type a new spelling, and eventually everyone does | Turn it into a fixed list holding exactly the values you keep, and map every form, import and integration onto that list |
- Build every campaign link in UTM Builder and save the naming convention there, so the value arriving from a paid click is spelled the same way every time.
- Give each integration that creates people an explicit mapping onto your list, rather than letting it write its own words.
- Add the rule to your import template, so an import cannot introduce a spelling that is not on the list.
What to tell anyone reading the old reports
Until the rename runs, every report splits that channel. Say so with the number: “LinkedIn shows as three values totalling 1,840 people; the dashboard’s largest of those is 980.” A report covering a period before the rename keeps showing the split afterwards, because the records carried the old values at the time.
If it did not work
The finding is not there although you can see two spellings
Why: The two spellings differ by something MarqIQ does not treat as spelling — an abbreviation, or a different word for the same thing.
Fix: Read the table above. Add those values to your rename by hand; MarqIQ will not group them and should not.
A group contains two things that are genuinely different
Why: They differ only by case, punctuation or a trailing s, so by the rule they are one value. A singular and a plural that mean different things in your business is the usual case.
Fix: Rename one of them to something that is not a spelling variant of the other, so the two stop colliding in every report as well as here.
The rename ran and the group is still on the page
Why: The analysis is cached for five minutes per tool and per date range, and it reads MarqIQ’s synced copy rather than your tool live.
Fix: Run a sync, wait for it to finish, then reload the page.
New spellings appeared again a month later
Why: The options were emptied but not deleted, or the thing that creates options was never found.
Fix: Delete the emptied options. Then look at the newest spelling and work back to whatever wrote it — a form, an import template or an integration.
The chips show fewer groups than you expected
Why: At most five groups are shown, largest first.
Fix: Fix those five, then reload after the next sync: the next five take their place.
A variant in the finding is missing from Every source, side by side
Why: That table shows the 25 largest values only.
Fix: Build your rename list from the chips in the finding, which are not capped that way.
Your tool refuses the bulk update on some records
Why: A validation rule, a read-only field, or a record locked by a process in your tool.
Fix: Take your tool’s own message to whoever administers it. MarqIQ is not involved in this write and has no record of it.
Next steps
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