topic Re: Offline sources in Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

Offline sources

Ivanzyt — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 11:33:26 GMT

Does anyone have any tips or suggestions for solving the following problem?

We are a B2B seller. Our product is very technical. All our marketing efforts regardless of what they are will generally result in an inbound email or phone call from a prospect that has found their way to our website.

Most of the contacts we add to HubSpot are added after the sales person has received that initial phonecall or email. They will add them to HubSpot via the Outlook plugin when they are responding with a quote or technical information. As such we have a huge amount of "offline sources" as our "original source". But what I am really interested in is the bit before that. How did they come to make the phone call or email in to us?

We have plenty of IP based data on which companies are visiting us. So, is there a way of getting HubSpot to retrospectively assign an original source after the sales person has added to contact. For example, a company with an IP address has been on our website. They phone us up and we send them a quote by email, at which point the contact gets added to HubSpot. Is there a way that the contact could now be tracked back and linked to the original web activity via the IP?

I guess the basic problem I am trying to solve is how do we attribute the "true" original source rather than the stated original source (which is manual entry).

Any ideas?

Re: Offline sources

TomM2 — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 12:25:31 GMT

Hey @Ivanzyt the IP address is simply the network location for a person. There's no traffic data stored in an IP address to be accessed. HubSpot uses cookies to store web analytics activities, this would just be a small file dropped on the browser when a person first visits your site.

The only way to get this associated with the contact record is through a form submission on that browser, there's no way to reach into the contacts browser and grab the cookie, they would need to submit it. Even if a contact has been created from an offline source, if the cookie was first dropped earlier than this and they submit a form afterwards, this would update the contact record to show the original web source.

So one way to get this data would be to get a contact to submit a form to request a callback or submit their information to be called. If they've already begun the sales process, there might be an opportunity to have them submit a form for feedback, or as I've seen other people do, offer a special gift or download for contacts if they submit a form and email them with a link to a landing page containing a HubSpot form to claim!

Re: Offline sources

Ivanzyt — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 13:06:07 GMT

Ok so maybe I'm confused. When I look at my prospect's data in HubSpot I can see a load of information on which companies have visited my website by IP look-up. Most of these companies are not in HubSpot yet. So, for example, I can see that company X has visited my site 36 times in the last month. If someone from company X is then added manually tomorrow is there a way to then attribute the IP lookup traffic to that contact? There is a common domain name i.e. the company domain name established via IP lookup and the domain name associated with new contacts email address. Sure, I don't necessarily know it was exactly that person from that company's IP that was browsing my site but it's fairly likely!!

I think what you are saying is that the best way to attribute this "pre-contact" data would be to get that prospect to fill in a form of some description after we email them back. Maybe a "submit this form to get your quote" or "submit this form to access the technical data" that way HubSpot would associate the web traffic data accumulated with that contact record. Is that right?

But is there a workflow or something that could do the following
"If the domain name for a new contact = domain name for a prospect with web traffic data THEN attribute that web traffic data to the new contact" It won't give me all the pages visited data but it does seem to have the source (e.g. organic search) logged in HubSpot. I'm no proficient enough on workflows to know if that's even possible!

Re: Offline sources

TomM2 — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 16:20:16 GMT

There's still no information stored in an IP address. An IP address can be seen as a location. It's the location of the network address. A lot of businesses use a static or consistent IP addresses. HubSpot takes in public information on IP addresses and assumes the person is from that company if the IP address is known to be associated with that company.

Think of it as a physical address, if you see traffic come from "Apple park, Cupterino, California" it's a fair assumption that this is an apple employee. It has no idea who I am, what my name is, or why I'm visiting. It just says "This IP is from apple, thus the contact must be a visitor from apple". There's no information saying "This is Tom from apple, his email is xyz@apple.com"

A contact record is either created from an import or create by action from the contact. When I visit a HubSpot tracked page it drops a cookie on my browser and starts logging "This cookie viewed the home page, this cookie viewed the about us page, this cookie viewed the sales page etc".

This is all faceless data. However, when I submit a form and say "My first name is Tom, my email is tom@tom.com, my company is apple etc". The form sends that cookie to the contact record and says "Ok this cookied browser is Tom, send all tha analytics data associated with this cookie to Tom's contact record".

The cookie is dropped as soon as a visitor visits your tracked web page (assuming they have allowed cookies). If that same cookie exists when they submit a form, it will associate all the previously tracked data for that cookie with the new or existing contact record. If that cookie contributed to the analytics you're seeing previously, then yes, all of that data will be associated with the contact record. However, this is all down to it being the same cookie, if they use a different browser or clear cookies prior to submitting a form that information will not be logged to their contact record.

So, for example. If I visit "website.com", poke around, look on 6 pages. Then leave.

Then, a week later one of the website.com sales people reaches out to me, we talk, then create a contact record. There's now a HubSpot record for "Tom" from offline sources.

If I then go onto the same browser I've been previously browsing on a week later and submit a form. I am telling HubSpot "I am this Tom at this email". And the contact record already for that email will update, it will now have that cookie associated with it and with that will also have those previous page visits and source data associated with it.

Re: Offline sources

Ivanzyt — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 11:02:42 GMT

Got it many thanks.
One last question. Would a link to document that requires an email address to be added before the document be downloaded count as "a form". For example, if we upload our datasheets as PDF's to Hubspot as documents and then insert them in our emails as downloads (with the the requires email address to download), would that then be a form that would link previous anonymous data (assuming the same browser is used with the cookie still intact). I assume that this is why there is an option to require an email address for downloading linked documents.

Re: Offline sources

TomM2 — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 13:38:59 GMT

If you're referring to the form before a HubSpot document asking for an email address, no I don't believe this logs a cookie. It would need to be a HubSpot marketing form.

Re: Offline sources

Ivanzyt — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 14:52:02 GMT

Shame, do you know why? It would seem a really logical way to capture and associate the previous anonymous data. They click the link to access the document, put in their email address to proceed (identifying themselves), and open the document in their browser (which will hopefully have the cookie in), and hey presto job done.

Re: Offline sources

TomM2 — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 16:03:48 GMT

I would assume it's because it's not on your website, leaving cookies brings in a host of new privacy and consent issues. Cookies are also domain specific so you would need to host the document on your domain and not a HubSpot one. Which would require both your domain and the HubSpot tracking code, along with privacy banners and consent information.