Who builds a database and uses an element of the data as a unique identifier? Basic database design would suggest generating a unique key for each contact record so that, in future, any item of data in the record can be changed - you are not locked in.
People change email addresses all the time. They change jobs. Their email account gets compromised. They have a side business, a personal email, whatever.
In my case, I have the incorrect email address for a contact because that was the email forwarded to me by a mutual acquaintance. I merged a record with the correct email, but it is the secondary, not the primary. It’s a problem because I have to remember to use the secondary and not the default!
I imagine the thought was to avoid duplicate data e.g. 2 records with the same email, which would cause problems matching incoming / outgoing email traffic to a record. But a simple data validation step any time one of these fields (e.g. email, phone number) that ought to be unique is entered, would prevent duplication.
At this point it looks like I will have to take another look at ZOHO - fortunately I decided to experiment a little with HubSpot before committing. Your product has so many great features, but how many other flaws are there in the design that I haven’t run into yet?
When I buy a bicycle I am not inerested how bearings work… I want to get from A to B and be my guest to add some requirements of comfort. Thus, what you wrote is an insight into the technical side of the topic - irrelevant for me, The User of HubSpot /if you don’t mind the capitals/.
My two cents, email address as an ID of the contact-record is a… ‘peculiar’ decision.
Furthermore, I tried to associate/link/connect (whatever your jargon would be) a contact to more companies. Guess - did not work: left the last one only. It’s more then common that people have roles in various organisations - this is the era of the startups, don’t you agree?
Basicaly, I face certain situations when n:m relations of various items are part of the reality - to keep it on the technical side. Building a CRM and etc. apps based on 1:1 assumption… khm.
Btw, yes HubSpot has some cool features - there are bicycles with cool features that ‘alter’ the basic functionality. In the XXI. century, when IT resources are (almost) endless, keeping the code this simple is somewhere before the MVP. /again, my opinion/
It appears that this issue may have been resolved. Now, when I merge 2 emails into 1 contact, it retains the second email. The test will be whether Hubspot recognizes the “merged” email when it is forwarded/bcc’d. Has anyone tested this yet?
It does work - in my case the emails to the correct email address get associated with the correct contact. My problem is that I can’t change the primary email address which is used to populate an email - I have to remember that the primary email address is wrong and to use the secondary.
If the database had been correctly designed, there would be an email address table where you specify the type of email address (primary, business, personal, whatever) for each contact record.
If I had a thousand contacts, how would I do that?
I suppose given the limitations of the CRM, it really cuts down on manual labor to triple-check that the primary email address is the one being kept. In case where the wrong email is kept as the primary, I would probably delete the “merged” email from the record. Re-enter it into HubSpot, and then merge again ensure the correct email is kept as the primary. Hope that’s a helpful workaround.
Ideally we would have the ability to identify within the record which email is which though!
Inspired by your suggestion, I did the following and it worked!:
1) Delete the (correct) secondary email from the contact, leaving the (incorrect) primary
2) Create a new contact using correct email, first and last names
3) Merge the old contact record into the new
4) Delete the (incorrect) secondry email from the new contact
The history all came over, so all is well.
I guess the way to ensure that multiple emails are associated with a contact is to create a new contact with the email you want to add. If the new email is what you want as the primary, merge the old into the new. If the new email is not the primary, merge the new record into the old.
Be very careful with merging records in HubSpot. We use Saleforce as our CRM - thinking of switching to HubSpot CRM be will not because of this major issue.
- I came across a partial solution for the “email as table key” problem.
I have a number of contacts whose email I do not yet have - most of my new contacts come from LinkedIn and I often message back and forth a number of times before getting an email. I found it frustrating that I could not start immediately tracking the relationship in HubSpot as I thought you had to have an email.
Turns out you can create a contact in HubSpot without an email. Furthermore, if you do that, you can add and edit the email later! This doesn’t solve the multiple email problem, but it does solve the problem where the email is immutable.
If soemone on the tech side could weigh in on the possible risks if doing this it would be great.
We are evaluating solution but lack of multiple emails per contact will be dealbreaker. We use Highrise with less functionality, but they have resolved this issue from the day one. Can’t believe this should even be discussed. About 30% of our customers would use multiple email addresses, how do we forward their emails to HubSpot?
To all the frustrated people in this thread, you are knocking Hubspot but not acknowledging that you’re shopping a new CRM because whatever you are using isn’t adequate or too pricey in the first place.
I had a thought, not sure how this would work on the back end if at all, but why not make deals be capable of serving an email address and templates allow deal properties? That way you can keep each contact as the main record and use different email addresses for various deals based on that particular acquisition type or pipeline. You’ll then be able to associate multiple email addresses to a single contact. Not a perfect solution, and again I honestly can’t be confident it’s even possible with how Hubspot is built. Just sayin…
I’ve been riding with the free crm for about a year and a half and we just pulled the trigger to use their Enterprise Marketing platform. We’re in a service based industry (construction) not a merchant, but we’ve put together a very effecient and scalable system with all parts of our customer journey with Hubspot already. I’ve seen a ton of updates and improvements since we’ve started and can’t wait to see their stuff on steriods!
Here is a response that my team is using to better handle multiple email addresses. It’s unfortunate that you need to creat a new contact, then merge the contact to add a second email address vs. just adding in the word “and” or adding a semi colon to signify a second email address.
I do see how if the email address is being used as the unique identifier that this would cause problems but maybe if you assign each email address to a GUID as a record_ID, then maybe you’ll be able to have more flexibility on adjusting and combining email addresses for one contact. I’m sure this would be a major core change.
Thanks so much for contacting HubSpot Support!
It is totally possible to assign multiple emails to one contact. When you merge the contacts, the primary email of the contact you are merging to, will be the contact’s primary email. The email of the contact you are merging will become the contact’s secondary email, but will still live in the email property field. Please be aware, once you do this, you will not be able to create a new contact with that secondary email address. Here is a helpful walkthrough from our academy on what happens when you merge contacts, I think you might find it helpful!
Sincerely,
Andrew
Actually, there is one really clunky solution: You can create a dummy contact with the second email address and then merge it to the first contact. This way you can have as many emails as you wish.
Form submissions will be attributed to the correct contact no matter which one of the emails will be submitted.
Don’t know how this works with the email integration though.
Edit: Just noticed that jesse_AMPTAB already mentioned this solution
I also agree that this is essential for the free version. Many people have two different emails even for the same company (like a shortened one). Even if I merge the contact, I want to have both emails in there.
I think it is critical to be able to link in a contact profile with their LinkedIn profile. Many individuals use their personal email address for LinkedIn and a different professional one. Adding a second field who is also used to search LinkedIn would permit to feed data from LinkedIn directly into the CRM.
Badly required as it’s currently tracking the one person as two different people and their notes and records aren’t up to date if someone calls us we could be looking at only half their activity and notes as some activity might be saved in a work email and some in a personal email. thanks
@Jems212 we have the same problem… and I know I’m in HubSpot’s CRM under 2 contacts - my work and personal emails, based on the types of emails I get from them! We can’t keep on top of the merging of the contacts who use more than one email, and we miss a lot of things based on what info lies in which account.
@mfinocchiaro agree! We ran in to that same issue yesterday again. Someone had booked one appointment via her personal email and another by her work email so now her history is in two seperate places. We don’t want to merge as she would no loonger receive our marketing emails to both her email addresses and because we need to continue to reply to the email address she used initially for her queries.
I agree as well. Not having two email addresses makes it impossible to properly track when prospects are emailing as they may contact us from different addresses. Without manually looking each time, it gets really messy.
I’m a recruiter - candidates first come to me via a jobbaord which uses a a unique job board email address - then as the relationship develops it is via their actual email . So really need to be able to have both logged under one contact .
