Manually Resubscribing Contacts to Email Subscriptions

Smart CRM & Sales Hub Tips, Tricks & Best Practices
1

Hello! Curious if anyone has ideas for us. We are a wellness/fitness subscription based app. For lead generation we run a few free challenges a year where we require an email address to opt-in. We’ve found it sometimes takes someone joining one of our challenges or evergreen promos 2-3 times before making a purchase.
ISSUE We’re facing:
- During these free challenges we see a high number of contacts opting into the challenge/and our emails who had previously unsubscribed from our email.
- Because we want these folks back in our funnels we are taking the time to manually resubscribe them (going into their contact record and updating subscription preferences and providing legal reason)
- I know HubSpot Forms allows for us to send an email to folks when they are submitting a form but had unsubscribed and ask them to resubscribe but we know that a large percentage of folks won’t take that extra step
- We’d love to find a way to automate these resubscribes! ICurrently you can’t do it in the workflow tool.
Anyone have any other ideas?

2

Hi @JKElwell,

Since January, see below, you shouldn’t need to have to manually resubscribe anyone:

What is it?

We are simplifying the process for previously unsubscribed users to start receiving marketing emails again for all portals.

If a contact submits a form associated with a subscription type(s), they will be automatically set as subscribed for the subscription type associated with the form. For Pro+ portals they no longer need to click the message (“Looks like you’ve opted out of email communication. Click here to get an email and opt back in”) on the form to send an email to themselves and update their preferences. And for Free/Starter portals, they will be subscribed.

Why does it matter?

Gain back former subscribers. Unsubscribed contacts who attempt to signup again for email communications via a form are subscribed (without going through additional steps).

How does it work?

If a subscription type(s) is associated with a form, the contact will be set to subscribed on form submission; they do not need to click the ‘magic link’ displayed to receive an email that allows them to update their preferences.

If using legitimate interest in forms:

  • If the contact is “unsubscribed from all email” and a subscription type(s) is associated with the form they submit, then their portal/BU opt-out status will be removed and they will be subscribed to the subscription type(s) associated with the form.
  • If the contact is unsubscribed from some subscription types (they do not have a portalwide or BU opt-out) and a subscription type(s) is associated with the form they submit, then they will be subscribed to the subscription type(s) associated with the form.

karstenkoehler_2-1744053082088.png
karstenkoehler_2-1744053082088.png1381×605 134 KB

If using the consent checkbox for communications in forms:

  • If the contact is “unsubscribed from all email” and the contact agrees by clicking the consent to communication checkbox when submitting the form, then their portal/BU opt-out status will be removed and they will be subscribed to the subscription type(s) associated with the form
  • If the contact is unsubscribed from some subscription types (they do not have a portalwide or BU opt-out) and the contact agrees by clicking the consent to communication checkbox when submitting the form, then they will be subscribed to the subscription type(s) associated with the form.
  • If the contact does not agree and fails to click the communication consent checkbox when submitting the form, then they will not be subscribed to the subscription type(s) associated with the form.

karstenkoehler_3-1744053086607.png
karstenkoehler_3-1744053086607.png1158×1018 209 KB

If no subscription type is associated with the form:

  • They will not be subscribed, there will be no change to their subscription status on form submission.
  • Your contact must navigate to their preference page to update their preferences.

Notes and Omissions

  • For Pro+ users with the resub setting enabled (“on”), the ‘magic link’ still appears at the moment, but is not required to be clicked on by the contact in order to be subscribed so long as a subscription type is associated with the form.
  • This applies to the HubSpot form builder experience. This works for new forms created via the legacy forms editor experience as well as the new (beta) forms experience. It will work for previously published forms if they have a subscription type(s) associated with them.
  • Learn more about how to associate subscription types with forms here.
  • This experience works for contacts that are either fully unsubscribed from all emails OR if they are unsubscribed from the subscription type associated with the form they are submitting.

Who gets it?

Marketing Starter, Marketing Pro, Marketing Enterprise, Marketing+ Pro, Marketing+ Enterprise

Can you double check if you’re using the right consent options on the form? If someone unsubscribed and checks the consent checkbox, they would be simply resubscribed, see above. No need for manual actions.

Resubscribing a contact manually if they previously unsubscribed is generally not possible. HubSpot will always respect an unsubscribe, it cannot be overwritten – only if a HubSpot user unsubscribed a contact.

Best regards

3

Thank you! This was super helpful and I hadn’t seen this update! We haven’t been using HubSpot Forms (we wanted more design control and had been using Wordpress and integrating with HubSpot). We had been open to using HubSpot forms if it could more easily correct this issue for us - which looks like it will now so we can consider switching!

4

Edited - I found it. Thanks!
Hi again! Can you send me a link to that article you shared in your post? Thank you!