Which custom field is best to use for creating tags across contacts, companies and deals

Smart CRM & Sales Hub CRM
1

We work with cliients, the PR companies that represent them as well as Media agencies that represent them and I was wondering what would be the best option to create searchable tags that can relate data. Let’s take an example of two companies: Apple and Dell.

I know Mr. X at Apple and Ms. Y at Dell. I would like to tag them as “Apple” and “Dell” respectively. I would also like to tag Apple as “Phones” and “Computers” and Dell as “Computers” and “Enterprise”

Next, we deal with the PR company that does PR services for Apple as well as Ford. So I would like to tag the company with “Apple”, “Ford”, “Phones”, “Computers” and"Autos." However the two people that work at this PR firm handle the Apple and Ford accounts separately, so Miss A needs to be tagged with “Apple”, “Phones”, and “Computers” wheras Mr. B needs to be tagged as “Ford” and “Auto.”

Finally, we deal with an agency that buy ads for Apple and Dell. I’d like to be able to tag Mr. T with “Apple”, “Phones” and “Computers” and Miss U as “Dell” and “Entertprise”

Ideally, I would then just search for “Computers” and all companies and people that are tagged as such show up. Or search for “Apple” and any companies and contacts associated with Apple show up.

How can I create such tags that aren’t officially supported in HubSpot?

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Q: Which custom field is best to use for creating tags across contacts, companies and deals

Short A: None that I am aware of (at this time).

Longer A: First of all, excellent use case -- well thought out and highly relevant.

HubSpot search is currently limited to Name, Email, and Phone.

Naturally, you can build a generic ‘Custom Tags’ custom property and Filter or select those contacts via a smart list. However, you will not be able to just ‘search’ using the HubSpot Contacts OR Companies search box.

Edited: Furthermore, HubSpot has no search functionality that will return both contacts AND companies.

The guys over in the Dev form have at least one conversation asking about similar functionality for searching contacts via the API. Possible to do, but too code clunky (my word) to be useful currently. Here’s the URL for that convo entitled, ‘Search With Custom Properties’. (opens new tab)

Edited:

Finally, if you decide to embark down the path of adding tags that duplicate company names -- e.g., ‘Apple’, ‘Dell’, etc. -- I suspect this will open a seriously umanageable (unmaintainable) can of worms. Although not searchable (at this time), HubSpot already has built-in functionality to associate contacts with companies.

Sounds like you need a much more customizable CRM.

Wish I had better news bro.


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Please tag @MFrankJohnson if you’d like me to respond.

3

Thanks. That is a bit unfortunate- bit then again, I am using it for free so there’s only so much I can expect.

I’m thinking of creating a multi-select dropdown for categories like phones, computers, auto etc. which could solve part of my problem.

Could contacts or companies relate to each other? That way, I could possibly relate the contact in the PR company to Apple.

4

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Q: Could contacts or companies relate to each other?

Short A: YES. Great question @ajaffarali

Longer A:

All versions of HubSpot can automatically associate contacts with companies using HubSpot Insights -- the HubSpot database with company details of over 20 million businesses. You just need to enable this feature in your CRM.

See the following HubSpot KB articles (in order of importance). You’ll want to read all before you activate this functionality. It will save you from having to build workflows to clean up your CRM (or from doing it manually).

- see How do I associate my contacts with companies if I do not have any existing companies?

- see How do I manually associate my contacts with companies?

Note: you cannot associate a contact with multiple companies.

- see How does the ‘automatically create and associate companies with contacts’ setting work?

Note-1: turning this setting on will associate any current contacts with companies as well as any newly added contacts.

Note-2: turning this setting on will NOT update or sync contact and company property values (i.e. Company Name).

Critical Note (if you’re contacts have free email addresses)

:

If the contact has a freemail email account (gmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.), HubSpot will also look at the contact’s Website URL property to attempt to match the contact with a company’s domain name.

Hope that helps.


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Please tag @MFJLabs if you’d like me to respond.

5

Thanks again Frank but not quite what I was looking for.

I have contacts from the PR company rightly associated with their company. However, as you mentioned, contacts can’t have two companies associated with them which makes thinkgs tricky. Going to think about how I can make this cross-relation functionality working as I really like everything else about Hubspot.

6

I tried a couple of different ways to make this happen but I can’t.

I thought I’d relate the companies but you can’t have more than one parent company so I cannot have a PR company as well as an Advertising company both associate to, say, Apple.

I’ve created a Note for now mentioning the name of the PR and Advertising company which is a really old fashioned way but that’s all I can think of for now. It would have been nice if I could add a contact to that note for someone outside that company but even that is not allowed.

7

While I still havent found a good solution, what I am doing now is that using the company page, I am adding PR and Advertising agency people that work on that company’s account as Contacts for that organization.

This somewhat works but the issue is that you can’t relate one person to more than one organization so using the above, the eomployees don’t appear on their own PR company’s contacts.

Not ideal and if hubspot could allow relating a person to more than one organization then this would make life tremendously easy for me.