Updating contact lifecycle stage without Events API?
Our company has HubSpot Marketing Pro, so we don't have Events, but I'd still like to track when our contacts become customers after signing up for a trial.
Here's what I had envisioned:
When a contact signs up for a trial on our site, we'd use the Forms API to submit their data into a form, thus adding them as a contact. They would then be enrolled in an email workflow as a Trial user that attempts to convert them into a paid customer. My only problem is this:
If a contact clicks on one of the sales emails we send them and converts, how will HubSpot know this? This is important as I'd have to unenroll them from our Trial workflow and place them into another workflow (don't want them to get sales emails once they've already purchased). I thought maybe we could use Forms API again with a second form that our leads must fill to become customers, but I don't know how HubSpot would know that the person signing that form is the same person who signed up for a trial.
If anyone can help me with this I'd greatly appreciate it.
That's ok; if a sales email click isn't always a conversion, you don't have to include it as your conversion criteria. Maybe contacts that click a sales email links get their Lifecycle Stage updated to 'SQL' instead of 'Customer'. There's a lot of flexibility there.
Form submissions are associated with the same contact based on both email address and cookie tracking. If a submission to "Conversion form A" counts as conversion criteria, you should update that contact's Lifecycle Stage property to 'Customer'. For existing contacts, you'll also see their previous trial form submission.
If you have access to the CRM, you have access to deals. But like I mentioned above, if this particular method doesn't fit with your existing sales process, you don't have to use it to track conversions.
For updating the Lifecycle Stage property to reflect conversions, it's not quite as important to consider all the different paths a contact could take to convert. Rather, you want to look at the specific actions that mean a contact has certainly converted. Some contacts may come from sales emails, and some submit forms, while others may request meetings. If the all have to submit a specific form to actually convert into a paid user, that is your conversion criteria, and that's what you should use to update the Lifecycle Stage.
Does that all make sense? Let me know if I can clarify anything or answer any other questions.
Can you give me a bit more information on this conversion process? It's fairly straightforward to set a workflow goal to unenroll contacts that have met a certain set of criteria. If the contact converts to a paid customer, that conversion would need to somehow make it into HubSpot to unenroll them from the workflow. This could happen in a wide variety of ways, but most often the email link click, some form submission (e.g. "Request a quote"), or the creation of a Deal act as the goal criteria in HubSpot. Check out the Knowledge Base article below for more info on workflow goals. For workflow/conversion optimization info, you can also contact our Support org by clicking the 'Help' widget in your portal or by calling 1 888-482-7768 x3.
Updating contact lifecycle stage without Events API?
Hey Derek,
There will be a few ways for our customers to convert. We'll have sales emails, we'll have forms available on the site for people to convert without external pressures, etc.
There are a few problems I see with your suggestions:
If someone clicks a link in a sales email, they don't always convert.
Form submissions could work; however, without Events API, how will HubSpot know the contact who submitted the initial trial form is the same one who is submitting the form to become a paid user?
I don't think our package has deals.
Sorry for the confusion. Let me know if I've made any incorrect statements or assumptions.
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