New contacts added to HubSpot when emails are logged

[Edyta7510]

Hi, 

Some of our users have synced their account with Outlook and they log important emails on companies/deals. 

The challenge comes where on such an email there are 7-10 names copied - very often most of them do not exist in HubSpot. 

HubSpot creates them as contacts, but this is when it gets dirty. 

Usually it only pulls email address and company, nothing else (job title from the email signature if we're lucky). 

Is there a way to make sure contact data is validated by sales owner on the contact before it gets created? Possibly in the least painfull manner. 

This is creating quite soem gaps in our database. 

Thanks!

Edyta

@zuhalak FYI

[kvlschaefer]

Hi @Edyta7510,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community!

This is a great question 🙂 

I'm not aware of a default feature within HubSpot that allows for sales owners to validate contacts before entering the CRM, however, I wanted to share a few integrations from the HubSpot App Marketplace:

• Email Validation & Enhancement
• Valid8
• Email Validation Integrations

I also wanted to invite our subject matter experts to see if they have any ideas 🙂

Hi @jolle, @danmoyle, @Ian_Matt - Do you have any creative tips for @Edyta7510?

Thank you! 

Best,

Kristen

[jolle · Accepted solution]

Thanks for reaching out, @Edyta7510! And thanks for the mention, @kvlschaefer!

Unfortunately, there's not a way to validate the data before the contact is created as far as I understand. 

It sounds like you may be using this already, but you can toggle contact property population using HubSpot AI (here is the Knowledge Base article with more info). But there is fine print:

HubSpot AI will only scan the email signature of the first response from a contact for any eligible contact properties. If no eligible properties are detected in the email signature of the first response, but they are included in the signature of a subsequent reply, HubSpot AI will not populate any of the properties on the contact record.

While this may help for contacts who respond, it won't pull in info for the copied contacts. 

However, it's worth asking if these contacts actually need to be in HubSpot. Will you ever be actively marketing to them or storing information about them that will be used to make decisions later?

If the answer is no, then I would try adjusting your email log and track settings to see if there are any email addresses that you can exclude. You can also create a running list of contacts created by the HubSpot sales extension for easier tracking and cleanup (using the "Original Source" properties). Check out these properties specifically for your CRM, but they should look something like:

• Original source = Offline source
• Original source drill-down 1 = SALES/EXTENSION
• Original source drill-down 2 = Email integration/BCC to CRM

You can use those properties to identify contacts who are being created from logged emails. You can then layer in unknown properties (i.e., AND First name = Unknown) to round up contacts with missing data.

You could then easily back up and delete the contacts on an ongoing basic.

Alternatively, you could send them back to the contact owner to complete. This could actually exist as a workflow that would assign a task/send an internal notification/send follow-up emails if the record is still incomplete.

Either way, it doesn't hurt to get a better handle on where these contacts are coming from and if they really need to be in your contact database. While it will likely be more of a manual process to complete and update records, you'll know that you're keeping your CRM in good shape!

Hope this helps!

[Edyta7510]

Big thanks to all! @kvlschaefer @danmoyle and @jolle 

@jolle , I have actually been using some of the solutions you suggested, some are new, but very useful!

I already have this one activated, but unfortunately, it doesn't work for copied contacts. It pulls available data for contacts that respond. 

It sounds like you may be using this already, but you can toggle contact property population using HubSpot AI (here is the Knowledge Base article with more info). But there is fine print:

HubSpot AI will only scan the email signature of the first response from a contact for any eligible contact properties. If no eligible properties are detected in the email signature of the first response, but they are included in the signature of a subsequent reply, HubSpot AI will not populate any of the properties on the contact record.

While this may help for contacts who respond, it won't pull in info for the copied contacts. 

I will definitely create a list to keep a track of all those! I'll be able to spot the contacts that can be deleted/will never be used in marketing campaigns. 

I think I will also revive tasks/notifications to sales owners of these contacts, will apply the right filters to make sure this is only send if contact is assigned to a customer/prospect company. (properties in our CRM). 

---

If the answer is no, then I would try adjusting your email log and track settings to see if there are any email addresses that you can exclude. You can also create a running list of contacts created by the HubSpot sales extension for easier tracking and cleanup (using the "Original Source" properties). Check out these properties specifically for your CRM, but they should look something like:

• Original source = Offline source
• Original source drill-down 1 = SALES/EXTENSION
• Original source drill-down 2 = Email integration/BCC to CRM

You can use those properties to identify contacts who are being created from logged emails. You can then layer in unknown properties (i.e., AND First name = Unknown) to round up contacts with missing data.

You could then easily back up and delete the contacts on an ongoing basic.

Alternatively, you could send them back to the contact owner to complete. This could actually exist as a workflow that would assign a task/send an internal notification/send follow-up emails if the record is still incomplete.

---

[danmoyle]

Always with the thoughtful answers @jolle - nice. 

[danmoyle]

I'd have the same advice as you, @kvlschaefer. Another app I suggest to folks is Insycle (which is more about cleaning than vaildating or supplementing data). Unfortunately, I've not used HubSpot in the way you're describing @Edyta7510 to add business data to the records.