Has anyone gotten SMS texting add-on to work based on phone number formatting limitations?

Marketing & Content Hub Tips, Tricks & Best Practices
1

I am struggling to make the SMS texting add on from HubSpot Usable. After I got all the consent requirements figured out, now the issue I am running into is getting people subscribed into the SMS feature.

After working with Support, I learned the phone numbers have to be formatted a specific way but there is no way to automate the format changes (ie from 555-555-5555 to +1 (555) 555-5555). It’s a lot of work to monitor and manually update every single phone number and then go back and manually subscribe them. Workflows are not helpful in this area - as far as I can tell.

Anyway, if anyone has any advice on automating phone number formatting and automating SMS subscriptions, that would be really helpful.

As of now, this tool isn’t usable.

2

Hi @hkoops,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community!

I wanted to check if you’re maybe using a paid version of the Operations Hub? There is this feature available (Format your data with workflows) in premium versions of the Ops Hub which could be what you’re looking for.

I also wanted to ask a couple of subject matter experts to see if they have any advice on bulk formatting of data in HubSpot:

Hi @Franci, @OPerek-Clark, @johnelmer, do you have any advice for @hkoops? Thank you!

Cheers
Mia, Community Team

3

Another note:

@hkoops you could also ask one of our top community contributors Mike Eastwood for advice: He’s hosting an on-demand AMA on HubSpot portal audits and CRM health this week and would be happy to answer any questions on data quality.

Cheers
Mia, Community Team

4

Yes we do have the paid version of the operations hub, but the ‘Format your data with workflow’ option actually doesn’t allow you to format phone numbers. HubSpot Support and I tried to find a workaround in workflows, but we were not able to do so.

5

I see, thank you for letting me know @hkoops!

I found some helpful information in two relevant Ideas posts:

@Olivia_Bagnall mentions in the comments that this could be done with programmable automation: Olivia could you tell us a bit more if you see this? Thank you!

@RBozeman mentions in the comments that they’ve built an integration that could help with this (Insycle).

Mia, Community team

6

I’m running into the same wall right now … we added the paid version of operations hub with this purpose in mind, but the phone number reformat template that exists in data formatting workflows is for removing all of the parentheses etc. and there’s just no solution in sight. I keep seeing Insycle advertising their services for this, but it seems like something Hubspot should have mentioned prior to us canceling our prior text service and adding theirs.

7

Has anyone figured this out? Running into the same issue.