New Contacts show form submission as the first activity - Why?

Marketing & Content Hub Reporting & Analytics
1

I’m doing some work for a client and we are trying to figure out which email marketing efforts are most effective for generating new contacts (Linkin ads, google ads, emails, etc).

One thing we are running to is that several new contacts show their first activity on the account as being the “Contact Us” form submission.

If I didn’t know better, I would think someone emailed them the link to the form and they submitted directly. I highly doubt this is the case though because none of these contacts are related.

Any ideas why the form submission is the first piece of activity HS is recording?

How do I tie these submissions back to one of the marketing campaigns?

Thanks for the help!

2

Hey @BamaBoy, thanks for reaching out! This is a great question.

First, I want to share this HubSpot Knowledge Base article containing definitions of HubSpot default properties. I’m assuming that you’re looking at the “First conversion” contact property, which is “the first landing page and form the contact submitted on.”

This property is tracking the first HubSpot asset that the user engaged with (i.e., form, HubSpot Meetings link, chatbot).

If you’re interested in the channel/source from which the contact originated, or most recently engaged (i.e., email, organic social, organic search, direct traffic), you’ll want to check out the following properties:

  • “Original source” — the first known source through which the contact interacted with your business. This is automatically set by HubSpot. The property options are not editable, but an individual’s Original source value can be manually changed to any of the options.
  • “Original source drill-down 1” — additional information about the source through which the contact first interacted with your business. This is automatically set by HubSpot and cannot be manually changed for the contact. Learn more about the possible values.
  • “Original source drill-down 2” — additional information about the source through which the contact first interacted with your business. This is automatically set by HubSpot and cannot be changed for the contact. Learn more about the possible values.
  • “Latest source” — the source of the most recent interaction a contact had with your business. This is automatically set by HubSpot. The property options are not editable, but an individual’s Latest source value can be manually changed to any of the options.
  • “Latest source drill-down 1” — additional information about the most recent source for the last interaction the contact had with your business. This is automatically set by HubSpot and can’t be manually changed for the contact. Learn more about the possible values.
  • “Latest source drill-down 2” — additional information about the most recent source for the last interaction the contact had with your business.This is automatically set by HubSpot and can’t be manually changed for the contact. Learn more about the possible values.

Those properties should give you a much better sense for the channels and initiatives that are driving leads into your CRM. Just definitely make sure that:

  1. You’re using UTMs for all campaign-specific links
  2. You have your ad accounts (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn) integrated with HubSpot
  3. You have your social account (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter) integrated with HubSpot (if you have HubSpot Marketing Professional or above)
  4. You have Facebook Messenger integrated with HubSpot

Connecting those channels to HubSpot directly will give you much better tracking and performance insights!

Hope this helps!!

3

Hi @BamaBoy,

Contacts will not have source information (Original source, Original source drill-down 1, Original source drill-down 2), if these contacts have not accepted cookies. If you’re saying that what you’re experiencing is the case for some contacts but not all, that would explain it. The first touchpoint is the form submission because they haven’t confirmed that you can save information about their source and pass it along with the form submission.

Best regards!