[Closed] AMA with Karsten Köhler

[sharonlicari]

Hey Community,

@karstenkoehler is a high-valued member and a thought-leader of our DACH and EN Communities. Karsten is currently at the top of our leaderboard in both communities and the quality of content that Karsten has consistently delivered is remarkable. 

Karsten was able to reach 1000 solutions accepted in less than a year and a half.

From the 19th of July until the 23rd of July you will have the opportunity to ask Karsten anything you want about him, his experience, knowledge and HubSpot.

Here are some sample questions could be:

• What is your favorite HubSpot tool
• What is the toughest question you've answered on the Community
• What are your tips for customizing your CRM

Have fun! 🙂

[matthewrungwe]

Hi there @karstenkoehler.

I have a blog, Matthew Rungwe's Blog. I am just hoping to get some tips on how I can improve the way I write my content. I have been doing this for less than a year. I haven't seen much improvement in the number of viewers, comments or engagement on the site. 

I decided to take this course to help me become a better content writer. My main goal is to grow my audience, venture into creating e-books and courses. My hope is that, by the end of the Digital Marketing course, I should be able to make considerable improvements in the way I deliver my content.

[karstenkoehler]

Hey @matthewrungwe,

I can't seem to access your blog – could you double check? In general I can recommend the HubSpot Academy here, there are a lot of resources on content marketing.

Best regards!

[FarahThe1]

Hi, there, sharonlicari! Do you have any preferred programs or apps that you use when designed media content? Is there any SEO guide for multimedia content that you can share with us? 

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @FarahThe1,

Are you looking for something specific? This short blog post is a good starting point for multimedia SEO: How to Optimize Images, Videos & Other Media Content for SEO

Best regards!

[ConnorSlivensky]

Hey Karsten, I thought of another one. You do a lot of freelance work so I'm curious how you approach scoping/pricing projects and such.

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @ConnorSlivensky,

Great question! I work on an hourly rate mostly, setting clear expectations of how much time will be needed to achieve certain milestones, define certain processes etc. For more details, I'd take this to a 1:1 conversation.

Cheers!

[CMayer]

Hi Karsten,

what is in your opinion the best way to develop custom connections / interfaces between Hubspot and other system?

a) Develop Hubspot addons to fetch data from other systems and push it into Hubspot

b) Use Custom Code in the Operations Hub

c) Use a third system (like Google Cloud Platform) to develop a "data bus" like system to move data from one system to the other

Thanks 😀

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @CMayer,

Big, loaded question 😄 This really comes down to the process and data requirements, what the connectors between the solutions look like etc. Depending on each situation, I'd recommend evaluating the expected invest for development and maintenance. These decisions are not to be made lightly since their implications will accompany you for years, probably – there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach, I'm afraid.

This is however also the beauty of HubSpot. Over the years, the amount of options and the toolkit for developers has grown.

Other users are much more knowledgeable when it comes to developing, the developers board in the community is a great place to explore specific problems.

Best regards!

[bashomosko]

Hello @Anonymous - thanks for the amazing feedback. I'm trying to create a person-centered report of our program alumni that would surface contact images in a table. The idea is that we would be better able to relate to and care for the people in our database if we could see them. I can't figure out any way to display images in a report so wondering if you have suggestions for either a HubSpot solution or integration that might be able to build a more person-centered report from our database. Thx!

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @bashomosko,

Uh, that would be a nice report indeed! Unfortunately, I don't think this is possible at this stage. A quick search shows that this should be possible with Power BI which can be integrated with HubSpot: Display images in a table, matrix, or slicer in a report

Not sure if I would introduce a weighty solution like Power BI just for the sake of having images however haha.

As an alternative, you can always add images to contact records and these would be, although tiny, be visible in contact lists and filtered views. If your report is a simple one, a list might do.

Hope this helps!

[POsborne]

The number of people on my Unengaged Contacts just jumped. I reached out to a few of them and they swear that they've been opening our e-mails but all HubSpot shows is that they were delivered. Now they're mad at me and mad at HubSpot. Any idea what's going on?

Peter

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @POsborne,

Not without being able to poke around in your account unfortunately 😉 I'd recommend reaching out to HubSpot support via the purple in-app help widget.

If you don't have access to customer support, you can look at the property value of Sends since last engagement to investigate further (which is the basis for unengaged contacts.). This property refers only to marketing emails. Sales emails do not affect this metric. Whether a marketing email was delivered doesn't say anything about it having been opened, so I'd recommend double checking. Sends since last engagement will count up with each email that hasn't been opened. Ususally these metrics are accurate.

Hope this helps!

[Leroy271]

Hi @karstenkoehler, the world is so small 🙂

One question I have is - how can we track meetings booked by sequence without using a meetingslink? I find this is definitely a feature lacking in HubSpot, as, of course, the meeting rate is the #1 priority, yet the hardest to track. 

Thanks,

Dominic

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @Leroy271,

How are these meetings booked? As far as I know, this currently can't be done, since there isn't any way to filter contacts by clicks of specific links in sales emails.

You could however approach this by filtering for contact who have booked a meeting and then also filtering for contacts who have been enrolled in your sequence, see Last sequence enrolled:

(In the sequence field, you have to add the sequence ID which you can find at the end of the URL of a sequence in HubSpot, not the name.)

You can only assume that the meeting was booked through the sequence but you couldn't be sure.

Best regards!

[Leroy271]

Hi @karstenkoehler, 

Thank you for your replies! Meetings are booked either via phone (which are also part of the sequences as tasks) or a time is agreed upon in the email itself. We don't regularly add meetings links to our emails. Basically, what I'm missing is a report that shows me e.g. which sequences have lead to most deals. That would suffice tbh, as we count meetings by # of deals created.

I just wonder how this feature has been overlooked, or do most HS users heavily use meetings links?

Thanks again!

Dominic

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @Leroy271,

When you say meetings are booked over phone, are you creating the actual invite through the contact record? If you want to report on meetings, they have to be logged to the contact record in some way or another.

Best regards!

[Leroy271]

Hi @karstenkoehler,

That's a very good point! We just create the events in our Google Calendars directly, as we can then also add the Google Meet link directly. But this also creates a meeting on the contact record, so this might not even matter?

In any case, it seems that the type of functionality I'm looking for doesn't exist in HubSpot as of today. Perhaps need to submit an idea. Thanks for all your help Karsten!

Cheers,

Dominic

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @Leroy271,

Have you explored the report library? And which HubSpot subscription level are you on?

Best regards!

[Leroy271]

Hi @karstenkoehler,

We're on the Sales Enterprise subscription and I've checked the reports library. Nothing to be found. 

Thanks,

Dominic

[TBowie]

Hello Karsten,

I am attempting to sort our duplicate companies on our hubspot account for my company and I am finding that we have a lot of duplicates that hubspot doesn't recognize as duplicates because some are missing domain names. Is there a way to make it so that hubspot does recognize duplicates that are missing domain names?

Thank you!