First of all, I am surprised that there’s been no reaction from HubSpot after all these years. I’ve been working with HubSpot for 4 years and always wondered why this important option is missing.
Let me explain WHY it is important to have Smart Rules based on a contact property. Usually, everyone just uses List Memberships as a smart criteria and then sets necessary property/properties in their active lists. If your contact has been already added to the list, they will see the Smart Content as it should be. But if you are expecting your contact to clink on a link in an email that was sent to them before adding to the list, they will see incorrect contents on the page. A common expample: Double-Opt-In email, that is sent to new contacts instantly (and I love it) once they submit a form. When the contact clicks on a link or a button to confirm their email address, they are redirected to a confirmation page. If you want to create a Smart confirmation page (for example, in multiple languages), you can’t rely on List Memberships because adding a contact to an active list can take a few minutes. So if the contact clicks on the button before they get added to the list, they will see the contents of the page in its default language (which can be very confusing). Often you use Browser based Smart Rules in cases like I described. But browser language is not the contact’s language. So you either have to program the page (if you have the knowledge) or use workarounds, find compromises etc.
We need Smart Rules based on Properties. This will solve a lot of challenges we face regularly when setting up HubSpot portals or working on complex pages.