@kgabriel Fun challenge! Unfortunately, you’re not going to find apples to apples functionality in HubSpot.
Here is what I would recommend.
1) Continue to train your sales reps to use the timeline and tighten up their timeline filters. As you know (and @TitiCuisset mentioned), any opt-in, webinar registration, webinar attendance, event registration, or digital engagement on your web properties will reside there.
It can get messy for sales reps if they don’t hyper-focus their filters. That is one of the reasons I don’t recommend simply letting sales reps scan for the third-party import lists on the timeline. There are too many internal and irrelevant lists to be actionable for sales teams.
2) For third-party events, create a custom sidebar called “Third-Party Engagement.” In that sidebar, you’ll include a series of custom contact properties (multi-select) for each third-party engagement status - REGISTERED, ATTENDED, SCANNED/ENGAGED, etc.. Try to consolidate the number of statuses you include so it does not get too complicated.
Then, everytime you upload a third-party list, break out columns associated with each of those custom properties. In the appropriate columns, enter the event name that contact was engaged in.
For instance, in the big industry conference is called ASAE20 and the contact attended and spoke with a rep in the booth, put “ASAE20” in the “registered”, “attended”, and “scanned/enaged” colomns before you upload the file. It is not too much extra work during the list clean-up and upload process.
This way, your sales rep can easily open the property on the contact record to see how the contact engaged. They can also filter contact views using this data. On the marketing side, you can build reports, automation, and segmentation around this data.
It is not a perfect solution, but it keeps this important data simple enough so that sales reps can easily use this information. Good luck!
