Best practice for contacts who have left a company?

[MikeCNorthrup]

Hi all,

Is there a best practice for indicating that contact has left a company, without removing their historic data from the company record?

[bunners007]

The question is old, but the thread seems alive, so for people googling this, I just want to add a solution (if you want to keep the contact) that wasn't available in 2019. Use "association labels" and create one that says "former employee". Then you have your history intact, and people can understand why marketing emails began bouncing. 

[GSymes]

You want to keep the person's historic details at their previous role ie their title, deal associations and any other cross fireld/object data you have.

By mergingor editing and assocaiting with a new company means this is lost & open to confusion of activity insights. 

My suggestion and best practise I have seen is create a 'left company' tick box and then create a new contact record under the new company. 

[DianaGomez]

Thanks for sharing, @GSymes.

Best,

Diana

[JonDobson]

I would have thought this would be an easy (and obvious) default/out of the box property for hubspot to introduce - it must be common... default value would be current employee, updated value 'left company/date' - until joins another organisation. And/or see history of employment/organisation in companies asscoiated with (past and present).

[MFrankJohnson · Accepted solution]

Disassociating a contact from a Company record has NOT removed the contact's historic data from the company record in portals we've tested. A contact's email address often changes once they leave a company. In these cases, we've set their OLD email address(es) as opted-out of all email to prevent future bounces, then added their NEW email address as Primary before associating them with their new company record.

This disassociation, opt-out, new email, set to primary process seems to consistently retain old data and prevent future bounces while attaching new contact intelligence to the new (or newly associated) company record.

[Philadopolis]

Is there a solution if you have already created a new contact record for that person that is associated with their new company?

[MiaSrebrnjak]

Hi @Philadopolis,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community!

I'd recommend merging the two contact records (instruction here) and making sure their new email address is set as their primary email.  

I hope this helps! 

Cheers
Mia, Community Team

[GSymes]

I feel this method causes inaccurate data management. 

Y

You want to keep the person's historic details at their previous role ie their title, deal associations and any other cross fireld/object data you have.

By mergingor editing and assocaiting with a new company means this is lost & open to confusion of activity insights. 

My suggestion and best practise I have seen is create a 'left company' tick box and then create a new contact record under the new company. 

[STreggiari]

Am I to understand that you've created two custom properties, "Old email" and "New email"? Or do you just opt-out their original email address before you edit the hubspot property "email"? If i's the latter, why are you doing that since you're editing of the email is essentially removing it from the DB so it can't recievei any emails anyway. 

If we just disassocaiate them from the company and delete their email or opt it out until we find a new one for them, will the Company record retain their activity history?

[PamCotton]

Hello @STreggiari , currently there is not an option for old email / new email property, you can add a secondary email under the email property.

I did a test on my end and the email record that is associated with the company will still be saved there even if you delete the contact from your account.

I hope this information helps.

Kindly,

Pam

[Jeff5]

Just for clarification:

Using your suggestion below, 'opting out' the old company email address, then adding their new email address, will increase the contact number count for those with subscription limits. In other words, the old email will still count as a contact, and the new email will count as a new contact.

Is my understanding correct? 

[PamCotton]

Hello @Jeff5 

It will not increase if you update the contact email by editing the "email" property.

If a new contact is created in your account, it will increase.

I hope this helps.

Kindly,

Pam

[MikeCNorthrup]

Awesome! Thank you, Frank!