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rinkjuliane
Contributor | Diamond Partner
Contributor | Diamond Partner

Personalization in Poland / polish email personalization

SOLVE

Hi all,

 

writing from Poland: I want to personalize my emails. As you guys propably know, there is a specific version of the first name that I need to use if I adress someone directly (vokativ).

It would be weird to ask people directly about it, by putting it into a form, for example. So I have a whole list of those vokatives for the most commen names - but how do I personalize my emails if I dont have this vokativ property filled out automatically? Going into every single account and filling this property manually is not an option.

I thought about creating a workflow that reads somthing like 'if you have this name in the the first name property put that in the vocativ' but I would need to do that for every single name.

 

Is there any smarter way to achieve this?

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1 Accepted solution
karstenkoehler
Solution
Hall of Famer | Partner
Hall of Famer | Partner

Personalization in Poland / polish email personalization

SOLVE

Hello Juliane,

 

I don't speak Polish but I have a few thoughts on this that might help:

  • Usually the best alternative to manual data entry in HubSpot is a contact import. Excel files have a wider range of formulas and commands and allow for easier data manipulation.
  • When you import a contact file, matching properties will be updated in existing records. (see here)
  • If you have a list of vokatives mapped to common names, we can make use of VLOOKUP in Excel. You could prepare a contact import file that has a first tab with one column including the email address of each contact (needed for matching, see my bullet point above), one for the first/last name and one column (empty for now) for the vokativ for that name specifically. The mapping of vokatives and common names we'll put in tab 2. You can use the Excel formula VLOOKUP to fill the empty column in tab 1. (For each name in tab 1, Excel will check the mapping of common names and pick the correct one.)
  • Once you're done with the VLOOKUP, you can either manually fill missing vokatives or you leave them empty. By leaving them empty, you'll be able to use a default value in HubSpot.
  • The last step would be to create a custom property in HubSpot for the vokativ and import the file, mapping the new column to the custom property that you just created.
  • I assume that you'll have new contacts entering your database regularly. If you want to automate this process, you could use Zapier between HubSpot and Excel / Google Sheets. (Sending new contacts to a spreadsheet, doing a vlookup there, sending the new contact information including vokativ back to HubSpot.)

Hope this helps!

Karsten Köhler
HubSpot Freelancer | RevOps & CRM Consultant | Community Hall of Famer

Beratungstermin mit Karsten vereinbaren

 

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View solution in original post

4 Replies 4
ryan-cambium
Contributor

Personalization in Poland / polish email personalization

SOLVE

Hi Juliane. You've probably found a workaround to this problem, but in case someone new comes by with a similar question, we have a new solution. 

 

My company recently released a "VLOOKUP for HubSpot" solution on the marketplace. It avoids Zapier, and allows you to easily look up values from a HubSpot record in a Google Sheet and bring back a value that you can write to another field. 

 

Hope that helps!

 

- Ryan

Cambium Apps

0 Upvotes
karstenkoehler
Solution
Hall of Famer | Partner
Hall of Famer | Partner

Personalization in Poland / polish email personalization

SOLVE

Hello Juliane,

 

I don't speak Polish but I have a few thoughts on this that might help:

  • Usually the best alternative to manual data entry in HubSpot is a contact import. Excel files have a wider range of formulas and commands and allow for easier data manipulation.
  • When you import a contact file, matching properties will be updated in existing records. (see here)
  • If you have a list of vokatives mapped to common names, we can make use of VLOOKUP in Excel. You could prepare a contact import file that has a first tab with one column including the email address of each contact (needed for matching, see my bullet point above), one for the first/last name and one column (empty for now) for the vokativ for that name specifically. The mapping of vokatives and common names we'll put in tab 2. You can use the Excel formula VLOOKUP to fill the empty column in tab 1. (For each name in tab 1, Excel will check the mapping of common names and pick the correct one.)
  • Once you're done with the VLOOKUP, you can either manually fill missing vokatives or you leave them empty. By leaving them empty, you'll be able to use a default value in HubSpot.
  • The last step would be to create a custom property in HubSpot for the vokativ and import the file, mapping the new column to the custom property that you just created.
  • I assume that you'll have new contacts entering your database regularly. If you want to automate this process, you could use Zapier between HubSpot and Excel / Google Sheets. (Sending new contacts to a spreadsheet, doing a vlookup there, sending the new contact information including vokativ back to HubSpot.)

Hope this helps!

Karsten Köhler
HubSpot Freelancer | RevOps & CRM Consultant | Community Hall of Famer

Beratungstermin mit Karsten vereinbaren

 

Did my post help answer your query? Help the community by marking it as a solution.

POZENA
Participant

Personalization in Poland / polish email personalization

SOLVE

Hi Karsten, 

 

I just bumped into your post and the genius solution hinted within. I have exactly the same problem - PL vokativs (although we call them "Salutation" as per HS lingo, or "Forma Adresatywna").

The numerical story with Polish first names is that to hit just about 99% national coverage you need to manually create the mother of all workflows, with some 2000 logical branches. That's a bit of a kerfuffle, although it would very well sort out the gender-recognition challenge, and the Salutation grammar challenge, and therefore enable much else in terms of client comms. The problem being... that monster data entry job.  

Shame about HubDB; that on surface seems like a valid feature to facilitate database table lookup - but the HubDB product just won't play along in this context at all. That's only for the CMS, and it probably can't be fooled. 

Whoever runs Enterprise (I don't) can employ webhooks instead, plus an external database of any sort. That seems neat enough. 

But to me, your Zapier proposition seems most feasible. Only - while I'm no complete stranger to neither HubSpot nor Zapier - pulling what you're describing with excel and vlookup is on another level! It is easy enough to collect all the required grammar in columns in excel. But then what?

Would you perhaps be so kind and offer a more detailed suggestion as to how exactly you would handle excel cofiguration in Zapier so that it does what you've described? 

Many thanks,

Adam 
Adam.Grabowiec@pozena.com

0 Upvotes
rinkjuliane
Contributor | Diamond Partner
Contributor | Diamond Partner

Personalization in Poland / polish email personalization

SOLVE

Hi Karsten,

 

thank you very much about your explanation!

Maybe I was not clear enough about this. My problem is not the initial import of those vocatives (I did that as you described it) but with the ongoing contact coming into my account (via import that would be no problem) by form or calling. Because, as I said before, this is not something I can put in a form - that would be weird. So how can I manage to keep my incoming leads updated on that side?

Maybe there is someone from the polish HubSpot Community who can tell me about how they solved it?

0 Upvotes