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Recorded: Thursday 11 May 2023 | Published: Friday 19 May 2023
As wonderful as the HubSpot timeline is on a contact - ie tracking how contacts interacted with you - it’s never the full picture.
It can be easy to think that the way contacts become prospects and then customs is a similar path for all of them.
For example: they Google search, then visit your site, then return later and fill out a form, then consume content, then talk with sales, then convert.
If only it were that simple!
The reality is that almost everyone’s path is different - different interaction points, different timings, different content they engage with, different style if sales discussion, etc
If this is common sense for you - great! But don’t assume everyone in your team thinks the same.
A simple example: thinking that a trade show or conference is the starting point for most leads
A recent client of ours said they first wanted to work with us more than a year ago (after listening to the podcast). But for a variety of reasons on their side it didn’t happen. It took them 12 months before they finally reached out to us. But when I checked their contact timeline I only see their recent activity, coming via a Google Search:
If I rely just on this, I’d think Google SEO is a key driver.
But because we asked them, we learnt that their ‘path’ (or journey) started long before. And because it was likely done on another device (ie no cookie tracking to link it together) we’ll never know how or what they interacted with prior.
Key takeaway: Don’t be shy about asking your prospects and customers how they heard about you.
And potentially look at adding a custom Source property - sales reps can ask when they chat - how did you hear about us?
Use this in combination with both the Original and Latest Source fields showing on a contact as well.
You still won’t have the full story, but you’ll at least have some further insights.
Here’s a few quick items of interest we noticed:
It’s the simple things… a quick reminder about the Filter options on the Activity Timeline of a contact (or deal or ticket etc).
These are really handy for highlighting specific details - but don’t fall into the trap of only showing a few interactions and then missing the others:
Recent example: a client didn’t have Form Submits included and thought that forms weren’t working on their website. Once they ticked it in the Filter again, they could see all the form submits.
Here’s how easy it is to update 100s of records
After clicking Edit you will see a popup like this:
This is important for people who are wanting to use emails to reply out of HubSpot on the contact.
What you see will look like this:
So check your Channels where the shared email is configured:
Then make sure you have the access allocated to it.
Note that if you select users based on teams you need to make sure that users are in teams or they won’t be able to access the email to send.
This is a handy feature for managing domains that you don’t use, but want to redirect into one of your sites.
They are easy to set up from your Website > Domains & URLs settings:
HubSpot will guide you through the DNS entries to be added.
Set these up for:
Here’s an example of how we use these for one of our sites: Our main site is www.xencreate.com
Here’s some of the redirect domains we have added:
You can easily set up workflows that send an automated email (eg a marketing email) when a contact fills out a Ticket based form (eg a typical Customer Support form).
However, if they have opted out of (ie unsubscribed from) receiving marketing emails, they won’t receive them.
If you have Transactional emails added into your portal, you can switch the marketing email to be a transactional email instead and overcome this.
You should also check your Re-subscription email settings to make sure you have resubscription emails enabled, however this only applies for contacts who have opted out of everything.
Hard to believe that global companies like Google still send emails with ambiguous dates like this:
Is that 6 July, or it 7 June?
I’m guessing it is 7 June, based on the mention of June in the paragraph towards the end, but I can’t be sure…
Key takeaway: be super clear in your emails when you insert dates.
This is a handy feature if you are very big on email and are worried about the number of emails a contact gets then you want to make sure that the following is setup in your portal.
We love the fact that you can do it daily, weekly, every two weeks and a month.
But this can also be a gotcha - eg if you set the maximum to 1 email per week, but then send a bunch of emails, your contacts won’t receive them - and you may be puzzled.
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HubShots, the podcast for marketing managers and sales professionals who use HubSpot, hosted by Ian Jacob from Search & Be Found and Craig Bailey from XEN Systems and XEN Solar.
HubShots is produced by Christopher Mottram from Podcastily.
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