HubSpot Ideas

Babel_Gem

Prevent CC'd email addresses from being created as contacts

I'm not sure whether others find this as frustrating (or even know that it happens!) but we regularly find in our own portal and with clients that if you send a sales email using the Outlook or Gmail integration, 'log to CRM' and CC someone who is not a contact in HubSpot, they get created as a contact without you knowing.

 

I assume this is part of an automatic feature which would help you out in a situation where you're emailing a contact who doesn't exist in HubSpot.

 

My issue is that this is not good when you have CC'd an external supplier / partner or even other members of your clients team who need to be involved on a CC loop but are not a contact. Your client may have even emailed a group of people on a subject and you are simply replying.

 

Why is that an issue?

A) the number of contacts rises (and could impact your paid contact tiers) and there is no notification of which contacts have been added by accident this way - we have had to create a very confusing list to filter these people but I still worry some get missed.

B) They are automatically also in the marketing side of HubSpot, which is generally a good feature, but in this case difficult to manage.

 

With GDPR coming into effect soon I hope this is a feature which can be looked at to stop this happening or even to provide a manual check (even a tick box to say 'add these new contacts to the CRM?' so that there is a prompt to then go and mark them as not opted in).

HubSpot Updates
Delivered
February 03, 2021 02:46 PM

Hello,

 

Thank you everyone for your help and feedback during the product development process.

 

This functionality is now live to all Chrome Extension users and we have documentation on this here: 
https://knowledge.hubspot.com/email-tracking/track-and-log-emails-with-the-hubspot-sales-chrome-exte...

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/email-tracking/customize-your-hubspot-sales-chrome-extension-default-c...

 

Let m know if there are any other ongoing questions and feel free to reach me at flora@hubspot.com

 

Best,

Flora

January 04, 2021 07:35 AM

@Saper 

 

To get to this menu, click the orange sprocket in the upper right corner for Gmail. From there, select "Log and Track settings". Let me know if you still don't see this option and I'd be happy to chat over email at flora@hubspot.com

In Beta
July 13, 2020 12:39 PM

Hi everyone,

 

Flora here again! I hope everyone is as well as they can be. We have implemented a setting to allow you to refine which objects should be associated when you are logging an email. 

 

image.png

 

If you are intrested in being in the beta for this, please fill out this form.

In addition, I'd love to chat with any users about their experience around this- feel free to book here

 

Best,

Flora

Being Reviewed
May 07, 2020 02:47 PM

Hi everyone,


I'm Flora, the Product Manager for HubSpot's Sales Extensions.


Thank you all for taking the time to submit, upvote, and comment on this Idea- I know this has been persisting for awhile. We hear you loud and clear, and we agree that this functionality is important.


We are currently evaluating what the best solution to this issue is and we will update this thread. We've recently released a beta for email association which gives users better control of which record an email logs onto as well as a setting that allows you to disable deal association. If you are interested in this beta, please fill out this form here: https://forms.gle/sk196WJ8iFiEBwaw8

 

In the meantime, we are evaluating a more comprehensive solution to making log more consistent. 


Best,
Flora

91 Replies
NanZ
Member

There could be a somewhat simple solution. Since most companies who use a system such as Hubspot would have social media gurus on board who are quite savvy about the use and power of social media, why not just take that route instead of here. Plus, bringing it to the attention of the GDPR instead of here, plus to the attention of industry editors, etc.  Amateurs (those who are not professional social media marketers) out there are getting powerful companies to stop using conflict materials (toxic or causing environmental harm or endangering species) I'm sure professional social media marketers can get this done. 

 

But first, there's this - turning on GDPR functionality in our accounts. Maybe this addresses it already. Need a savvier user than I to determine if this addresses the issue.

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/account/how-do-i-turn-on-gdpr-functionality-in-my-hubspot-account

Sheldonxz
Member

Is this issue still not resolved? It is causing lots of issues in terms of tracking the conversion rate on the marketing side, as additional contacts created are messing up the actual contacts (leads) count.

CBader
Contributor | Partner

I am upvoting this idea, with this twist: We want to be able to turn OFF the auto-creation of new contacts to prevent clutter in the CRM. We need to be able to log the email activity with our existing sales leads, without adding "noise" to the database for every co-worker, supplier, shipping agency, etc. that gets included on an email string. All the new, unwanted contacts added to the CRM make it hard to track the ones we NEED to track.

 

HubSpot product management team, this is a very important feature for sales teams. Thanks.

hannahstewart
Member

We discovered this problem last week. I spent a lot of time reading all these comments and numerous other posts in the HS community on it as well before going to HS Support. They still have no fix for it and the suggested workarounds are simply not practical.

 

Not only does it clutter up the system and push us toward our Contact tier limit, it risks noncompliance with GDPR as sometimes we have little legal basis to be processing the cc'd people's data in a CRM system (in the case where, for example as someone has already suggested, a client has cc'd in other suppliers or partners and we are replying to the thread). It means we're responsible for handling more and more personal data that is of no value to us.

 

HubSpot Support could also not communicate a timeline for them fixing the problem - given this has been an issue the Product team has been aware of since mid-2017, I find that disappointing. Right now we are going to have to have all users manually go and delete the auto-created Contact records from cc'd email addresses as soon as they are made. 

 

Surely this should be a priority by now. 

KateH
Contributor

This has become a real issue for us now. 

I have put a couple of checks in place to enable me to filter off these contacts.

I have a field called 'lead source' and I add a new lead source for every campaign.

In all the workflows I set up for our campaigns I make sure that the lead source is added.  That way, when contacts come in from forms etc the leadsource is auto popullated.

Next, I have a filter that filters out leads with no leadsource.

The manual bit is deleting the contacts in this filter that I don't want to keep.

We have a lead source - 'external referral' that I use for the ones I want to keep and that way the filter gets emptied once a week.

 

The other option is that in the HubSpot settings when you create an email you can put domain names in that you want to exclude.  I have used this for some of the repeat offenders.

You will need to give your team directions as to where they can add these.

 

Its not a complete solution but a work around whilst we wait for HubSpot to pull finger on an important compliance issue!!!

 

rickuz
Participant

One thing you can do as an admin is globally block specific emails or all emails from a specific domain from being logged as a contact. I will do this with vendor domains because our sales people will sometimes copy them on emails to prospects and log that email. You can find this under Settings, then in the left menu under Integrations > Email Integrations, then click the Log and Track tab. Scroll down to Never Log, and you can enter an email or a domain and choose to never log it just for you, or for everyone. 

 

I agree, it's rediculous that Hubspot has not resolved this, especially with GDPR and now CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act). 

JasonAtWineman
Participant

When I asked HubSpot, they did not see this as a violation of GDPR.  Regardless of whether it is or isn't, it still means that:

 

1. A large number of people end up receiving our newsletter who didn't request it, and we're not trying to position ourselves as a brand that spams people with emails they didn't request.

 

2. Even if it only doubled the size of our contact list, that's still 50 % noise.

 

Request:  add option to *not* create new contacts for anyone in the CC or BCC field of an email.  This puts the burden on me to put each email address in the correct field (i.e. To, CC, or BCC) if I choose to track an email.

KateH
Contributor

Hi rickuz - thanks for that suggestion
"One thing you can do as an admin is globally block specific emails or all emails from a specific domain from being logged as a contact. I will do this with vendor domains because our sales people will sometimes copy them on emails to prospects and log that email. You can find this under Settings, then in the left menu under Integrations > Email Integrations, then click the Log and Track tab. Scroll down to Never Log, and you can enter an email or a domain and choose to never log it just for you, or for everyone. "
Good idea - not always that easy for us as some we want to log - annoying!!

JasonAtWineman I have looked into this with various HubSpot experts and apparently not that simple - not quite sure why though
HubSpot don't think it’s an issue maybe because they don't realise that we all use the CRM slightly differently depending on our needs. The things they have in place to cover GDPR are only there for contacts who are added organically through marketing rather than manually added/created contacts.
In our case for email purposes we only market to those with a leadsource.

NanZ
Member

Here's the bottom line - competitors don't do it. So that's that. 

MissTipsi
Top Contributor

Just discovered this issue, can't believe it hasn't been resolved in 2.5 years. Complete pain in the neck and while I'm sure Hubspot's lawyers are better paid than ours, hard to see how it isnt a GDPR issue.

MajdiSleimen
Participant

Agreed, this is needed. It's a shame that you would ignore such a simple request from customers, especially when you're charging for contacts. From an IT perspective, this is a very simple feature to program. 

 

Please do something about this..

InterimGroupMkt
Member

I'm totally agree with this idea and I think it should be fixed soon. It could generate issues with contact number limit and GDPR. When the sales team replies to a contact almost always uses the CC e-mail adress to include a coleage, not another client or prospect. 

Flora
HubSpot Product Team

Hi everyone,


I'm Flora, the Product Manager for HubSpot's Sales Extensions.


Thank you all for taking the time to submit, upvote, and comment on this Idea- I know this has been persisting for awhile. We hear you loud and clear, and we agree that this functionality is important.


We are currently evaluating what the best solution to this issue is and we will update this thread. We've recently released a beta for email association which gives users better control of which record an email logs onto as well as a setting that allows you to disable deal association. If you are interested in this beta, please fill out this form here: https://forms.gle/sk196WJ8iFiEBwaw8

 

In the meantime, we are evaluating a more comprehensive solution to making log more consistent. 


Best,
Flora

ck2018
Participant

One possible workaround in the meantime, maybe, is to remove contacts that are created by the email integration if they're not already existing contacts. This can be done manually using filters directly in HubSpot, or automatically using an app.

 

There is a thread on a similar topic "only log emails to existing CRM contacts" and one of our users posted about the way they have accomplished that.

 

@Flora, would it be possible to set the "Original source drill-down 2" field with a value that indicates whether it's a To or CC contact, something like "Email integration To" and "Email integration CC"? It can be used for sending targeted consent campaigns to CC contacts and also for removal. 

 

I'm with Insycle, a HubSpot App Marketplace partner, if you're looking to remove unwanted or low quality contacts automatically check out the latest blog post: Declutter Your CRM By Purging Low-Quality Data Automatically

 

Flora
HubSpot Product Team

Hi everyone,

 

Flora here again! I hope everyone is as well as they can be. We have implemented a setting to allow you to refine which objects should be associated when you are logging an email. 

 

image.png

 

If you are intrested in being in the beta for this, please fill out this form.

In addition, I'd love to chat with any users about their experience around this- feel free to book here

 

Best,

Flora

SteveVenton
Contributor

I'd just like to be able to copy team members (who are users in Hubspot) without them also being created as contacts (who are my customers.

KateH
Contributor

Hi @SteveVenton 

 

In your email integration settings you can add email domains to exclude when creating contact records - that might help?

Go to the log & track tab and scroll down and you can drop then in there.

 

Good luck

Kate

Saper
Contributor

@Flora, regarding "We have implemented a setting to allow you to refine which objects should be associated when you are logging an email. " How do we access this setting where is it? In your post I guess there is supposed to be a screenshot but it only says image.png. Could you upload a screenshot where we can see how to use this please – if we can use it already?

Flora
HubSpot Product Team

@Saper 

 

To get to this menu, click the orange sprocket in the upper right corner for Gmail. From there, select "Log and Track settings". Let me know if you still don't see this option and I'd be happy to chat over email at flora@hubspot.com

LStOnge
Member

Babel_Gem explains this perfectly. I'm very new to HubSpot, and it creates a bit of insanity for me to have to go to another email account to email my client and CC someone because HubSpot is barring me from doing so! It's my email, I should be able to address an email to whom I want!!

HubSpot, the customer is always right!!