Custom Events Should Automatically Populate Touchpoint Source

HubSpot Ideas
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Status: Idea Submitted

1

Idea / Request / Recommendation: Hubspot should automatically apply existing “conversion source” logic to the Custom Events “touchpoint” property, when Custom Events are tracked via JS, API, or Visualizer.

The Hubspot Custom Events Tool [accessed by going to Reporting & Data > Custom Events, or via Custom Events | HubSpot {where your account ID replaces 123456789}] automatically creates a default event property called “touchpoint source”, which has the internal name hs_touchpoint_source.

There are 4 ways of creating event data:

  1. Visualizer
  2. Spreadsheet import
  3. Javascript
  4. API

For the latter 3 (Spreadsheet, Javascript + API), users are expected to define the touchpoint source from the list described at Accounts Dashboard | HubSpot. Yet in the latter two cases (Javascript + API), the code a user might need to write in order to get and populate the appropriate data is a replication of existing Hubspot code: Hubspot already knows the “latest converstion source” data for these user actions. It just needs to be applied to the Custom Event data.

Worse yet, for the first method (Custom Events tracked codelessly via the Events Visualizer) it’s actually not possible to define the touchpoint source. So these events lack the critical source information that would make them useful marketing data.

Thus, my recommendation:

Hubspot should automatically apply “conversion source” logic to the Custom Events “touchpoint” property, when Custom Events are tracked via JS, API, or Visualizer.

2

For additional clarity: My objective is to be able to create custom events in Hubspot, and then create report of those events which break down the Contacts who completed them based on the source of the session at which they created event.

“Original Source” data isn’t useful — sometimes these contats have been in my database for several years, with hundreds of session. But I only want to know the source of the specific session at which the event was completed.

“Latest Source” data isn’t useful — when my contacts come back for their next session, this data is replaced.

This is theoretically possible by creating Custom Events, connecting them to a Contact List, and using a Workflow triggered from the List that to copies “Latest Source” into a Contact property for the source of each event I want to track. But really what that means is that instead of creating a Custom Event and then forgetting about it until I need it, every time I create a custom event I would need to also create 3 other Hubspot objects (List, Workflow, Property), and make sure they work together properly. It’s a lot of overhead for what should be something very simple, nevermind that even Enterprise accounts have a limit of 1,000 custom properties.

3

I definitely agree.

Have you found a workaround for this that you are happy with now?