Lead-to-account matching
Lead-to-account matching links a new lead to the existing account record it belongs to, usually by email domain, company name or other firmographic data.
In practice
Without matching, a lead from a current customer or an account already in a deal is treated as new: it is routed to the wrong rep, a duplicate account is created and the account view is incomplete. Matching is what makes account-based routing possible.
Match on normalised email domain first, then fuzzy company name and location, and send uncertain matches to a review queue rather than guessing. Track the match rate and the number of duplicate accounts created each month.