CRM

CQ17
Participant

A Way to Stop Hubspot Automatically Updating Existing Contacts?

SOLVE

Forms that are submitted through Hubspot are updating existing Contact properties such as First Name, Last Name and Phone Number. This is an issue for us because clients sometimes type their name wrong, use a nickname, all caps, or include their spouse's name. We use these Contacts for paperwork in which we need the person's legal name, as well as for mailings where incorrect names result in errors. We don't want Hubspot to stop this function entirely because we still need it to create new Contacts from Forms. Is there a way to stop Hubspot from automatically updating existing Contacts? Or at least certain properties of existing Contacts? 

1 Accepted solution
cchristiansen
Solution
HubSpot Moderator
HubSpot Moderator

A Way to Stop Hubspot Automatically Updating Existing Contacts?

SOLVE

Hi @cq, happy to provide some insight here!

 

Like you mentioned, Form fields do automatically update the applicable property in HubSpot when someone fills out a form. One way to prevent a property from updating when an existing Contact fills out the form is by using progressive fields within your form. Progressive fields allow you to make your forms smarter and more efficient. With standard form fields, the same fields will appear each time the form is loaded. However, if the contact filling out your form already has a value for a specific field (like First Name), you can use progressive fields to set another field to appear in its place.

 

This functionality is available within the Marketing and CMS Professional and Enterprise subscriptions. 

 

Hope this helps, let me know if you have any follow up questions. 

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12 Replies 12
Bjorn-Ramboll
Participant

A Way to Stop Hubspot Automatically Updating Existing Contacts?

SOLVE

Hi, I'm just wondering if there are any updates on this or if this functionality has been created.

To continue CQ17's point, I'm interested in knowing if there is a way to prevent fields from being overwritten by a form submission. This is because a known contact usually (95% of the time) provides the correct details on their first submission, but later down the road, they get lazy and random things can appear.

 

In other systems I've worked with, I had the possibility to go to a property and choose the "If known, don't update via form, import or API. This is because a form looks weird if the First name or Last Name of a form is hidden, and I will add the Country field as a P.P. field as this is another field that does get messed up.

0 Upvotes
brown2020
Member

A Way to Stop Hubspot Automatically Updating Existing Contacts?

SOLVE

What about the situation where the recipient of the form enters someone else's email address? When we tested this, the form still updated the contact information for the email address that was entered, even if that email doesn't belong to the person who filled out the form. What is the best practice for authenticating that the right person filled out the form before changing the contact record?

ASingh28
Member

A Way to Stop Hubspot Automatically Updating Existing Contacts?

SOLVE

I have same issue with hubspot but i am using hubspot addon with gravity form to save new contacts, but every submit updating the same contact. If someone know how to handel this issue pls share

 

0 Upvotes
MConnolly9
Participant

A Way to Stop Hubspot Automatically Updating Existing Contacts?

SOLVE

This is great information, thank you to everyone who has responded! I have a follow up:

 

We collect information that relates to our members' personal information, so anything like an updated address (for direct mail, which must be accurate) or phone number (for contacting) must be accurate to the contact's current information. While the progressive fields will definitely help us in the case of accidental typos and formatting, I'm wondering if there's any way for a contact to opt-in (so to speak) to intentionally update some of their information that we might already have on file (e.g. new mailing address). 

 

Please let me know if anything like this exists or any workarounds would help me in this case. Maybe having a separate form for something like "we already have your address on file. click here if you woud like to update this information."?

0 Upvotes
cchristiansen
HubSpot Moderator
HubSpot Moderator

A Way to Stop Hubspot Automatically Updating Existing Contacts?

SOLVE

Hi @MConnolly9, great question! You could certainly use another form to ask member's to update their information if needed. I think that would be a good route to allow them to "opt-in" to updating their information in a self-service type fashion. You could also include a link to this form within a marketing email if you'd like to send an email to a contact list asking them to update their information. 

 

One other idea that comes to mind is to use HubSpot's AI functionality which can scan contact's email signature information and automatically fill in certain contact properties if they do not have a value. Here is a resource that walks through this functionality: Automatically populate contact properties with HubSpot AI.

 

Hope this helps!

 

cchristiansen
Solution
HubSpot Moderator
HubSpot Moderator

A Way to Stop Hubspot Automatically Updating Existing Contacts?

SOLVE

Hi @cq, happy to provide some insight here!

 

Like you mentioned, Form fields do automatically update the applicable property in HubSpot when someone fills out a form. One way to prevent a property from updating when an existing Contact fills out the form is by using progressive fields within your form. Progressive fields allow you to make your forms smarter and more efficient. With standard form fields, the same fields will appear each time the form is loaded. However, if the contact filling out your form already has a value for a specific field (like First Name), you can use progressive fields to set another field to appear in its place.

 

This functionality is available within the Marketing and CMS Professional and Enterprise subscriptions. 

 

Hope this helps, let me know if you have any follow up questions. 

brown2020
Member

A Way to Stop Hubspot Automatically Updating Existing Contacts?

SOLVE

This solution really doesn't solve our problem, because when the user types in a secondary email, even before any progressive form, HubSpot automatically makes that their new primary email, which is a core idProperty in the system. This is confusing a lot of people because users emails keep changing. It's even more dangerous if you have ever run a de-duplication that has caused some secondary emails to be inaccurate. How do we prevent the primary email to be updated in an inauthenticated way, like what happens whe a random person typing in someone's email on a web form?

VeronikaSit
Participant

A Way to Stop Hubspot Automatically Updating Existing Contacts?

SOLVE

@cchristiansen: Any thoughts on the question above? It wasn't really answered, we run into the same issues in our org. Thx.

0 Upvotes
CQ17
Participant

A Way to Stop Hubspot Automatically Updating Existing Contacts?

SOLVE

That is extremely helpful, thank you so much! One potentially stupid follow up question--how does Hubspot know if the contact already has a value for a field? Is it based off of email, cookies, or something else? 

0 Upvotes
cchristiansen
HubSpot Moderator
HubSpot Moderator

A Way to Stop Hubspot Automatically Updating Existing Contacts?

SOLVE

No problem, @CQ17! Great question actually, you are spot on! It is based off of the HubSpot tracking code which uses cookie tracking. Here is a bit more context as it relates to form submissions:

 

  • Visitors will be tracked anonymously even before they become contacts. If and when a visitor fills out a form, HubSpot will associate their previous page views based on the tracking cookie. If the email address filled in the form is associated with an existing contact, this visitor will be identified as the contact. This includes contacts that were imported.
  • If a visitor deletes their cookies, they will be considered a new visitor and will be assigned a new cookie. However, HubSpot will automatically deduplicate form submissions coming from the same email address, even if different browser cookies were associated with the submissions.
CQ17
Participant

A Way to Stop Hubspot Automatically Updating Existing Contacts?

SOLVE

That makes sense, thank you so much for the quick answer and the great explanation! 

0 Upvotes
cchristiansen
HubSpot Moderator
HubSpot Moderator

A Way to Stop Hubspot Automatically Updating Existing Contacts?

SOLVE

You're very welcome, @CQ17!

0 Upvotes