Q&A Follow-up | Custom Automation Workshop on email validation using Kickbox

jackcoldrick — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 15:25:22 GMT

Hi everyone!

Thanks very much for joining the session yesterday where we covered how you can validate email addresses using Kickbox with custom coded worklfow actions. I really appreciate you all joining and for the great engagement in the chat throughout. Also, thank you again for bearing with us during the technical difficulties!

There were quite a lot of questions asked and we couldn't address all of them on the call so myself and Jan wanted to follow up here. If you do have any other questions please feel free to comment and we'll make sure to address them.

Thanks again, and hopefully we will see you on next weeks session where we will be building out a referral program. You can sign up here.

You can find all the other resources (incl. recording) here.

Q: How to validate an email with custom code before the redirect to the confirmation page and the access to the downloadable asset? I'm trying to reduce the usage of bogus emails just to access various HS assets.
A: In a situation like this you wouldn't be using custom coded workflow actions as the submission would already have happened. Something you could do here is implement some validation on your form and ensure that the email is syntatically correct using regular expressions and also valid using a service like Kickbox. HubSpot provides a way of customising the form embed code, you can execute logic based on certain callback functions. Custom Coded Automation is particularly useful when you consider contacts are coming into the CRM not only from conversion on your website but from other sources whether that is manually, via lead gen advertisments, third party systems and imports. In scenarios like this is is helpful to validate emails after they're created.

Q: When you're starting to learn how to code there is a lot of trial and error involved. Would you recommend starting out in an IDE for a project before moving into the custom code action in a workflow?

A: Yes, in full transparency, even when I'm working on things I use an IDE (Integrated Development Environment). It makes it a lot easier, because of its linting, color-coding, auto-completion, and so on. Highly recommend writing code outside first and then pasting it into the workflow. One of my personal favourites is Visual Code Studio.

Q: Can you reference the custom code in a 'delay until' action? For example, waiting for a record in a 3rd party to be updated before continuing with the workflow?

A: Currently it is not possible to reference custom code in a "delay" action. One thing you need to consider is that each custom coded worklfow action has a max run time of 20 seconds. If you are running jobs that fall outside of that window your action will fail. Please see here for more information.

Q: What are the best resources to get started with the basics of programming? I’m at the start of my programming journey. I’ve started with an App called Mimo. Any other recommendations?

A: Google is your best friend, always! A couple of other great resources: Freecodecamp is a free way to learn and they have a ton of great tutorials. Recommend following on LinkedIn, they post tons of great tutorials daily. Another great one is Codecademy, which has a free option. I prefer these interactive sites as opposed to books. You learn by doing rather than reading!

Q: We have around 500 contacts created every week via API. Would batch email validation work better here?

A: Certainly when you're dealing with a high volume of data, batching calls is better. I believe Kickbox even has a HubSpot integration that can batch validate emails. Custom code won't help there because they work in relation to a specific contact flowing through the workflow at that time.

Q: Does HubSpot have a library of code that we can copy over?

A: Yes, we do have a library. Programmable Automation Use Cases. If you click into any one of these, you'll get an overview of what the code does, and clicking the CTA will bring you to the Github Repo. You may need to change one of two things, but you can basically paste it into your workflow and it should work.

Q: How would you recommend using this custom code on current contacts in the database?

A: It depends. When you create a workflow, you have the option of enrolling contacts moving forward or just enrolling contacts that meet the criteria when you turn it on. You could also explore the option of building a scheduled workflow that would run a job on a particular cadence using the data in your CRM.

Q: Can we sync bi-directionally with other databases?

A: Yes, using the custom code actions you can both get data from other sources as well as send data to those sources. However, keeping contacts in sync continuous two-way is a very complex matter, and is probably better done through integrations, like data sync by HubSpot.

Q: We are upskilling some key team members in code. Would you recommend they learn JavaScript or Python?

A: It's difficult to say, some would argue that Python is much easier to learn for those learning to code and in terms of structure and readability it's much more logical and easier to understand. Admittedly, I have more of a preference towards Javascript.

Hope to see you at our next workshop

topic Q&A Follow-up | Custom Automation Workshop on email validation using Kickbox in Data Hub

Q&A Follow-up | Custom Automation Workshop on email validation using Kickbox