How to classify contacts?

CRM & Sales CRM
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1

I’m new to Hubspot and had a simple question. As I manually create new contacts how should I classify them in order to add them to our first email campaign? I’ve been marking them as Marketing Qualified Leads but that may not be accurate. Most of our contacts will go on our email campain list but we want to be able to differentiate between prospects to reach out to and contacts that we don’t need to reach out to. How should I be classifying these new contacts so that I can easily sort them into our email campaign list?

2

@JWynn wrote:

I’m new to Hubspot and had a simple question. As I manually create new contacts how should I classify them in order to add them to our first email campaign? I’ve been marking them as Marketing Qualified Leads but that may not be accurate. Most of our contacts will go on our email campain list but we want to be able to differentiate between prospects to reach out to and contacts that we don’t need to reach out to. How should I be classifying these new contacts so that I can easily sort them into our email campaign list?

If you have contacts that you don’t need to reach out to, are they not qualified, or just a different part of your buying process/cycle that you need for CRM purposes but not marketing? Depending on that you might want to use Lifecycle Stages (and customize it) to set them at different stages like Lead/MQL/SQL/Disqualified. This is why I mention customizing it because Hubspot is not built to solve everyone’s needs out of the box, but it is intended to be more of a guide to get you started to allow you to develop your own segments/classifications/etc.

3

Hi Ben_M, the contacts that are not Marketing Qualified Leads are contacts like associates, vendors, and providers as opposed to sales prospects who don’t need to be on our email campaign at present. How do people generally classify their contacts in order to include them in email campaigns?

4

@JWynn I would create dedicated lists for each of the other contact types - one for associates, vendors, and providers, so you can decide when to include them in emails and when not to.

With that said, you could use the “Other” lifecycle stage for all of these and have a custom property that defines their role. Some companies create additional lifecycle stages or rename “other” - in my opinion, this complicates the funnel and can negatively impact conversion rates/reporting if not carefully managed.

Once you have the custom properties, creating the additional lists can be done with those properties as filters.

If you have contacts that are not marketing leads and you don’t plan on emailing them, I would make sure you have them set to “non-marketing contacts” so you aren’t paying for them in your subscription.

5

Classifying contacts effectively for email campaigns is crucial, and I understand your concern about accurately identifying prospects. Here are some ways you can approach this:

Using Contact Properties:

  1. Custom Property: Create a custom contact property called “Campaign Eligibility” or “Email Outreach” with options like “Yes,” “No,” or “Pending.” Manually set this property as you add contacts, marking those eligible for the campaign as “Yes”. You can then easily filter and segment your contacts based on this property.
  2. Lifecycle Stages: Utilize HubSpot’s built-in lifecycle stages. Move contacts who downloaded content or showed engagement to a “Marketing Qualified Lead” stage, while others can remain in the default “Contact” stage. This visually differentiates them and allows for stage-based email workflows.

Leveraging Existing Features:

  1. Lead Scoring: If you’ve set up lead scoring, contacts exceeding a certain threshold can be automatically marked as MQLs and added to your campaign list. This adds automation and ensures consistency.
  2. Workflows: Create workflows triggered by specific actions (e.g., form submission) that automatically enroll contacts in your email campaign or assign them the “Campaign Eligible” property. This streamlines the process and avoids manual intervention.

Additional Tips:

  • Consider further segmentation: Within your campaign list, you can further segment contacts based on demographics, interests, or engagement levels for more targeted messaging.
  • Utilize suppression lists: Add contacts who shouldn’t receive emails (e.g., unsubscribed) to a suppression list to avoid unwanted communication.
  • Refine your criteria over time: As you gather data and track campaign performance, adjust your classification criteria to improve targeting and campaign effectiveness.