Contacts with Services / Products - Best Practices

[StPatrick]

Hi,

When we started with HubSpot we had a few services and we were able to tie in what services a particular client used with 3 columns (hosting type, GMB service, SEO service).   Per our HS approach, we use Companies as our main contact item, and we set the company to "Active Client" if they are an active client. So far, so good. 🙂

We've started selling online courses via Podia and we have around 5 courses (paid and fee) that we offer, and my goal is to be able to segment our list by people who have purchased/not-purchased a partiuclar course or courses. We push the contacts/purchases into HS (via Zapier/etc). and my problem now is how to track what items people have purchased. 

I don't want to make everyone who puchased a course into an Active Clients - as active clients have a specific definition for us.

Would it make sense to make a property under Contacts called "Courses" and then have a list of the courses as a drop-down so we can track the course(s) that the contact purchased? 

I want to use the Contact for this beacuse we may have a company where "person X" purchased a course, so we need to tie the purchase to the person and not the company. 

Thank you so much as always!

[Jonno_Price · Accepted solution]

Hi @StPatrick , yes I think the options you mention make sense.

You could also create a custom lifecycle stage called "Course Customer" or similar and use this in conjuntion with a multi-select proprty that has all your courses.  So you could update the lifecycle and the relevant course they purchased and use these to create lists, automated email responses etc. 

Or you could have a Sales Pipeline specifically for Courses which creates a deal for each course sold and associates the deal to the contact. So for example this could sit alongisde your main Sales Pipeline (e.g. your SEO, hotsint etc. offerings).. 

Many ways to approach 🙂

[StPatrick]

GREAT idea, thank you.

Right now all of our incoming contacts have a lifecycle stage of lead set by default, and most of our leads are at MOF or above, so "lead" had a very specific meaning in our workflow. 

Now hopefully some of these contacts will buy a course (stage = course customer) and then inquire about our other services (stage = lead) and then become a client (stage = active client). 

Using this custom lifecyle stage approach, what happens if someone is moved up to the lead stage and doesn't pan out, I don't want to lose the information that they are a course customer.

Thanks!

[Jonno_Price]

"Using this custom lifecyle stage approach, what happens if someone is moved up to the lead stage and doesn't pan out, I don't want to lose the information that they are a course customer."

Hi again. 
Perhaps you can also have an active list that includes anyone where the "Courses" property is known. So you will always have a list of someone who purchased a course - even if the lifecycle is no longer "Course Customer"

Good luck with it all. Sounds like you have an interesting setup. 

[RCoutu]

Hello @StPatrick,

It makes absolute sense as a solution and it is the easiest to implement. Word of advise: make sure, you documented properly this custom field, beacause it's easy to lose track if you create many of them. That is the RevOps job to do so.

If you have Enterprise version and need more reporting capabilities and flexibilities in capitalizing on your products, you can create a custom object name products and attach more information per product, such as course number, course definition, etc. HubSpot is a relationship database and creating an object is creating a table. It is also important to document this object for future reference. https://knowledge.hubspot.com/crm-setup/use-custom-objects

Here is an how to guide: https://www.auxilio.io/en/hubspot-tips-and-tricks/how-to-create-custom-objects-in-hubspot-without-co...

[kvlschaefer]

Hi @StPatrick,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and for this detailed post! 🙂 

I would like to invite our subject matter experts to see if they have any advice.

Hi @Aakar, @Phil_Vallender, @Jonno_Price - Do you have any tips for @StPatrick?

Thank you! ⭐ 

Best,

Kristen