# API External Lead

**URL:** <https://community.hubspot.com/t/api-external-lead/125095>\
**Category:** APIs & Integrations\
**Tags:** professional\
**Created:** [January 30, 2025, 9:08am UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/api-external-lead/125095 "2025-01-30T09:08:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![HFimpel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/da6949/32.png) [@HFimpel](https://community.hubspot.com/u/HFimpel)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2025, 9:08am UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/api-external-lead/125095/1 "2025-01-30T09:08:17Z")

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Hey!  
In addition to the leads from our own website, we also receive leads from three different “external” websites / platforms , which are sent to us by email. These emails contain information such as the name, email address, etc. of the respective leads.

We currently transfer this data manually to HubSpot so that the corresponding workflows can be started. However, we would now like to automate this process.

Our idea is, that in future the “external lead emails” will be sent to a our HubSpot address and then this address could automatically create a contact in HubSpot via an API interface and then automatically trigger our “applicant” workflow.  
Does anyone have expierence or an idea how we can do this?  
Thank you so much.

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**Author:** ![Jaycee\_Lewis](https://d10pqhm3lwygmk.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/community.hubspot.com/jaycee_lewis/32/61352_2.png) [@Jaycee\_Lewis](https://community.hubspot.com/u/Jaycee_Lewis)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2025, 9:59pm UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/api-external-lead/125095/2 "2025-01-30T21:59:59Z")

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Hey, @HFimpel Thanks for the great question. HubSpot does not have this parsing ability natively. You’ll need to look into some form of middleware to parse the email and send an API call to HubSpot to create the contact.

After doing a quick search, I found a few options:

- AWS Lambda has this ability
- Zapier has an [**email parsing option**](https://zapier.com/features/parser)

Workflow enrollment considerations:

- Workflow enrollment could be handled by your middleware as well (you may need to incorporate a delay before sending the call to enroll this contact into a specific workflow)  
Or
- Create a custom property like `external_lead_workflow_enrollment` and make it a “[**single checkbox**]([https://Single](https://Single) checkbox: stores only two options, on or off. You can use this field type when you need a property with values that are true or false. In forms, they appear as a single checkbox.)” type of property since we just need a binary option of “yes or no” Then you could send the custom property value in with your request to create the contact

I feel like the second enrollment option will be less “fiddly” as it doesn’t require you to set a delay to make sure the contact is processed into our backend before they get enrolled.

Have fun testing! — Jaycee

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**Author:** ![HFimpel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/da6949/32.png) [@HFimpel](https://community.hubspot.com/u/HFimpel)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 7:25am UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/api-external-lead/125095/3 "2025-01-31T07:25:17Z")

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[@Jaycee\_Lewis](https://community.hubspot.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/127074) Thank you so much for sharing your ideas and considerations. I will look into that.

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**Author:** ![Jaycee\_Lewis](https://d10pqhm3lwygmk.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/community.hubspot.com/jaycee_lewis/32/61352_2.png) [@Jaycee\_Lewis](https://community.hubspot.com/u/Jaycee_Lewis)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 6:52pm UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/api-external-lead/125095/4 "2025-01-31T18:52:33Z")

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No problem, my friend! — Jaycee