Data 360 Identity Resolution for Leads

Identity resolution in Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud) links records of the same person or company into one unified profile. A ruleset holds match rules, which decide which records belong together, and reconciliation rules, which decide which value the profile shows. For B2B teams, a lead, the contact it becomes and their Pardot activity link to one unified individual.

This article is part of our guide to Data 360 for B2B marketing teams.

How Does Identity Resolution Work in Data 360?

A ruleset runs on one primary object, the object whose records it unifies, such as Individual or Account. It compares those records with match rules and writes the result into unified profiles. Salesforce's Help defines rulesets this way:

"Rulesets contain match and reconciliation rules that tell the customer data platform how to link multiple sources of data into a unified profile. Unified profile information is stored in data model objects created by the ruleset."

A match rule holds one or more criteria, and "Profiles are matched when all criteria within a match rule are satisfied." Across rules, one is enough: "A unified profile is created if any single match rule is activated." More criteria make a rule stricter, fewer make it match more.

Map your data before you start: if no objects appear when you create a ruleset, Salesforce's Help says to make sure your data is modeled properly.

The result is a unified profile plus unified link objects, records that point back to every source record. Salesforce describes unified profiles as keys to your data, "but they aren't golden records." Nothing is merged or deleted in Salesforce: "The reconciliation process doesn't delete or change any source profile data, update your connected source systems".

Which Match Rules Should B2B Teams Start With?

For people, start with the ruleset Marketing Cloud Next generates. For accounts, match on name plus address, or on a party identifier such as a D-U-N-S number if your data carries one. The table lists the rules Salesforce documents for both.

Criteria from Salesforce Help, checked 16 October 2026. Three more defaults for individuals use name with phone, with address, or with phone and email.

How the Match Methods Differ

Each criterion uses a match method: Exact, Exact Normalized, or Fuzzy at high, medium or low precision. Salesforce sets the trade-off: "Selecting a less precise match method typically raises the consolidation rate, but can result in undesirable matches."

• Exact works on every field and is case-insensitive by default. For values where case matters, such as the 15-digit CRM ID, select Case Sensitive.
• Exact Normalized cleans email, phone and address values before comparing them, for example spaces, brackets, capitalization and address formats.
• Fuzzy catches spelling variants in names; Salesforce's medium-precision examples include "Cathi, Cathie".

Device to Known works once a visitor identifies themselves: anonymous web activity is linked to the person after a form submission or a click on a tracked link, which Salesforce says "can take up to 24 hours".

One rule applies without any configuration: "Identity resolution will match records that have the same Individual.Id, even if you don't create a rule to match them."

What Do Reconciliation Rules Decide?

They decide which single value a unified profile shows in a field that holds only one, such as a first name. You set a default per object and can override it per field.

• Last Updated takes the value from the most recently changed record. It works only when the Last Modified Date field is mapped from the data stream; on a tie, the value is chosen alphabetically.
• Most Frequent takes the value that occurs most often; on a tie, the last updated value wins.
• Source Priority ranks your data sources (data lake objects). Salesforce recommends it for IDs: "To stabilize ID values, use the Source Priority reconciliation rule on ID fields."

An example: one source says "Katharina", another "Kathi". With Last Updated, the profile shows whichever changed last; with Source Priority, it shows the value from the source you ranked first. Select Ignore Empty Values with Most Frequent or Source Priority, so a blank field can't win.

Email addresses and phone numbers are not reconciled: "Reconciliation rules don't apply to contact points such as email or phone number. All contact points remain part of a unified profile". Consent works the same way: in Marketing Cloud Next it is tied to the contact point value, the email address or phone number, not to the unified individual, so each email address keeps its own opt-in status after unification.

Salesforce's setup guide for Pardot customers names the trap with the most recent value:

"this identity resolution is based on the most recent update–lower priority data can be stored over preferred field values if the lower priority fields were updated more recently. For high-value account merges, we recommend highlighting critical records and manually verifying that the correct data is stored and that any existing consent records aren't orphaned."

If Salesforce CRM is your system of record, put it first with Source Priority on the fields that matter to sales.

Which Ruleset Does Marketing Cloud Next Generate?

Marketing Cloud Next generates a ruleset for the Individual object with three match rules. Salesforce's Marketing Cloud Next Help says:

"When you generate a ruleset for the Individual object, it uses Normalized Email, Lead to Contact, and Device to Known as match rules. Lead to Contact prevents duplication when leads become contacts, and Device to Known matches web visitors to known profiles."

You generate it in Setup, Basic Settings, Identity Resolution Rulesets, with Generate Ruleset under Unified Individual. Rulesets generated after the Winter '26 release include Lead to Contact and Device to Known by default; for older ones, Salesforce describes adding both as custom rules.

Campaign segments "must use the default data space and segment on the Unified Individual object", so the Individual ruleset belongs in the default data space.

You build the account ruleset yourself on the Identity Resolutions tab, with Account as the primary object. Salesforce recommends "only one active ruleset for the Individual object, and one active ruleset for the Account object." You need the Data Cloud Architect permission set.

Choose the ruleset ID, up to four characters, carefully: it "can't be changed and becomes part of the data model object names and API names." For trials, Salesforce suggests the ID "test": compare its consolidation rate, which shows how far it reduced the number of profiles, with your other ruleset, then delete it.

Individuals, Accounts or Leads: What Can You Unify?

You can "unify accounts, individuals, leads, or households", and the primary object of the ruleset decides which.

"Account profiles are always known profiles", while a unified individual counts as anonymous if all its source profiles are anonymous, such as web visitors not yet known. For accounts, Salesforce recommends rules "that match by account name and geographical location"; overly broad criteria lead to poor account matching.

A third option fits sales: cross-object matching. "Cross object matching lets you match your leads to existing accounts so that you can identify customers you already have a relationship with." For that, you select Leads as the primary object of a ruleset.

How Do Leads, Contacts and Pardot Prospects Become One Unified Individual?

Every lead and contact becomes an Individual record in Data 360, and the ruleset combines matching individuals into one unified individual:

"Each time you import or create a new prospect, lead or contact, an individual record is created in Data 360 during the next sync. When your identity resolution rulesets run, any individuals with matching information are consolidated into a unified individual record."

The "prospect" in that sentence is Marketing Cloud Next's own Prospect record, which is not the Pardot prospect. Pardot prospects get into Data 360 another way:

• Prospect fields come in through the lead or contact they are synced with. You give the Data Cloud Salesforce Connector permission set read access to the Account Engagement fields starting with pi_ and add those fields to the Lead and Contact data streams of the CRM connector. Our article on integrating Pardot and Salesforce covers how that sync behaves.
• Pardot activity comes in through the Account Engagement connector, only for prospects already synced with a lead, contact or person account, and only for assets with a connected campaign.

A Pardot prospect that never synced to Salesforce never reaches a unified individual, and neither does its activity. For the mapping, Salesforce's Help says "map Lead ID to Individual ID".

What this means for sales: a lead that converts to a contact stays one person in Marketing Cloud Next segments, thanks to the Lead to Contact rule. In Salesforce itself nothing changes: duplicates stay duplicates until someone merges them there. In the setup Salesforce recommends for Pardot customers, Pardot remains the source for score and grade.

How Often Does Identity Resolution Run?

At least once a day: "Rulesets are scheduled to run at least one time per day after publication." Depending on the data source, Salesforce processes rulesets "as frequently as every 60 minutes to 24 hours".

• The first ingestion, a full refresh or a batch of more than 1 million records can take up to 18 hours.
• After the first ingestion, changes from streaming sources such as website tracking are processed after 1 hour or when 500 changes accumulate, whichever comes first.
• "Rulesets won't run if no records have changed since the previous run", and unchanged records are skipped even after a full refresh of the source.

Timing matters before a send: "The final population of a segment can be affected depending on when these processes finish and when a message is sent." Plan sends with a buffer after the run.

What Are the Limits of Identity Resolution?

Five rulesets per primary object per data space and ten match rules per ruleset are the limits you meet first.

Source: Help page "Data 360 Limits and Guidelines", checked 16 October 2026. With a Profiles licence, the number of rulesets "is determined by the base Data 360 Profile license and can't be increased."

What Does Identity Resolution Cost?

Identity resolution is billed under the Unification usage type: 75,000 Flex Credits per million source profiles processed at the base rate of the Flex Credits rate card of 31 August 2026.

"Usage is calculated based on the number of source profiles processed by an identity resolution ruleset. After the first time a ruleset runs, only new or modified source profiles are counted. A source profile is an individual and their related records, such as contact points and party identifiers, which are included in the identity ruleset."

At list price ($500 per 100,000 Flex Credits), a first run over 50,000 leads and contacts costs 3,750 credits, or $18.75. If 5,000 profiles change in a month, the next runs cost 375 credits, or $1.88. Our Data 360 credit calculator does the same sum for your own numbers.

Orgs on Data Services credits use a different card: Profile Unification there is 100,000 credits per million rows (card last updated August 2025). With a Profiles licence, identity resolution rulesets aren't billed; the unified profiles they create count toward the profiles you pay for. Our article on Data 360 pricing and credits works through a full month.

What drives the bill up:

• Full reruns. Changing match rules, reconciliation rules or filter conditions, or mapping a new data lake object or field to an object the ruleset uses, makes the ruleset process every profile again.
• Extra rulesets. "All profile records processed by all active rulesets are summed when calculating billable usage."
• Deletions and opt-outs. On the Flex Credits page, "modified" includes deleted profiles and profiles suppressed through Consent API preferences.

One lever works the other way: filter conditions on the ruleset's primary object keep records out of processing, which Salesforce says "reduces credit consumption".

Which Pitfalls Does Salesforce Document?

Most come from rules that match too much. Salesforce's Help names these:

• Match on Blank. "Selecting this option can result in low match quality or unusably large profiles when applied to the wrong fields or when data quality is low."
• Shared emails and placeholder phones. Salesforce suggests "filtering out records with email addresses that occur more than 1000 times or standin phone numbers such as 888-111-1111". In B2B, think of info@ and sales@ addresses on many leads.
• Broad account rules. They also cause missed matches: when too many source profiles match, "some records can be skipped during processing", and different ones on each run. Salesforce's fix: include city or postal code.
• Deleting a ruleset. It "permanently removes all unified customer data" and the history of previous runs.

Salesforce suggests comparing match methods with several rulesets. Every active ruleset is billed, so compare in a sandbox and keep one active ruleset per object in production.

Your Options

• Stay on Pardot: doing nothing is a valid outcome. Identity resolution changes nothing in your Pardot or Salesforce records.
• Add Marketing Cloud Next: generate the Individual ruleset, add an Account ruleset and set Source Priority for the fields sales relies on. The order of all setup steps is in our guide to implementing Data 360 for Marketing Cloud Next, and our Data 360 setup includes rulesets for people and accounts.
• Move more of your marketing to Marketing Cloud Next: fix your Pardot sync first, because unsynced prospects never reach a unified individual. Our Marketing Cloud Next consulting covers that move, Data 360 included.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is a Unified Individual in Data 360?

The profile identity resolution builds from all source records of one person, such as a lead and a contact. It links to those records and doesn't replace them. Segments for Marketing Cloud Next campaign flows are built on it.

Does Identity Resolution Merge Duplicates in Salesforce?

No. It doesn't change source data or connected systems. Duplicate leads and contacts in Salesforce stay until you merge them there.

Can Data 360 Unify Accounts?

Yes. A ruleset with Account as the primary object creates unified accounts. The default rules match on account name plus address; D-U-N-S numbers work as party identifiers if you maintain them.

Is Identity Resolution Real-Time?

Scheduled rulesets aren't: they run at least once a day, and a first run can take up to 18 hours. Real-time identity resolution, for visitors active on your site or app, needs the Sub-Second Real-Time Profile & Entities add-on and a real-time data graph, and runs all criteria as Exact or Exact Normalized.

How Much Does Identity Resolution Cost in Data 360?

With Flex Credits, 75,000 credits per million source profiles at the base rate (card of 31 August 2026); after the first run, only new or changed profiles count.