Using More Than Domain Name When Connecting Companies and Contacts! Must Have Feature!
Hi Hubspot user and developers,
1. BRIEF:
Our company experienced very major problem using data base with many companies (5000 +). Most of them are small, without websites, therefore without contact domains (the contacts have personal emails). This must be NO ISSUE for platform like Hubspot, BUT unfortunately it happens to be a Huge obstacle. This is not isolated case. I found a lot of same problems in other Hubspot Clients.
2. OBSTACLE:
At that point Hubspot auto connects Contacts with Company based on same domain names. This occurs also when importing large CSV files with company names to bulk change a property. If the file does not include a domain, the changes you are trying to make turn into duplicates of the company.
3. EXAMPLE:
We have a list with 5000 companies. About 2500 of them every month change the value of property “X”. You got a CSV file with those 2500 in which is easy to copy-paste the variable and import the file to bulk change the value, but many of the logs DO NOT HAVE domain names. If you try to import this file in Hubspot the companies with domain names shifts their value, BUT those without are recorded as duplicates.
Similar problem will be trying to import large file with many Contact logs to update companies staff. The ones without same domain and email will NOT be associated with their company. Only because not matching email and website…
4. WHAT HUBSPOT SUGGEST IN THAT CASE:
Hubspot suggest to make the changes manually… This is a huge loss of time! It means manual search all the logs without domain and make this changes manually. Especially considering the fact that if using the search multiply selection is cleared, moving to another page is the same. From this you have 1000+ logs to find ONE by ONE and make the changes on regular base, without things like multiply selection or using file import.
From this fact come the conclusion that dynamical change of data base without domain name is very difficult to handle using Hubspot platform.
5. DISAPOINTMENT:
As you see, this suggestion of Hubspot team is NOT quite the professionalism level that we Clients and Users expect from a partner of this rank.
6. SOLUTION IDEA:
All the domains connected to companies are unique and probably has a unique ID in backend data base. If Hubspot offers in import not to connect company logs by domain, instead of this choosing unique ID as primary recognition value this problem will be solved. With this option, you can export all the companies with adjacent unique ID which correspods to company name and domain (if there is such), processed the data in excel and import the changes back to Hubspot as example like this:
Importing file with following columns:
Company name / Unique ID / property_X
In “Mapping property” choosing Unique ID or Domain as primary matching value.
//This will connect the unique ID’s or domains and make the changes in needed property.
or
Company name / Unique ID / First name / Phone / Lifecycle_stage
//This will connect the unique ID’s or domains and record the contact or if log exist record the new data or changes.
7.THE EPILOGUE:
This idea is just an example. There must be many different and smart ways option like this to be added as a feature. Matching company and contact log with each other with more than domain name will make Hubspot a bit more flexible and satisfying tool when dealing large data base with dynamical changing property values. Which is the reason using Hubspot as marketing tool...
Could you try once more after a browser refresh? The form is currently set as available to all, feel free to comment again if the problem persists and I will spin up another form!
I wanted to provide an update here - the ability to associate objects on import is currently in a private beta. If you are interested in participating, please fill out this form to gain access to the beta and we will be in contact if our beta product is a good fit for you. Please provide as much detail as possible.
Hi everyone, thank you for the valuable feedback here! I wanted to update you all that this is something we are actively working on and hope to deliver shortly.
Before then, I will be sending out emails to those of you who have commented on this post to hopefully collect some additional feedback on a prototype and to gain access to our earliest beta release.
Thanks for sharing this problem - and your idea! I, too, have records for many companies that are too small to have their own domain name. Additionally, most of the city councils and such that I also store as "companies" do not have distinct domain names - many just use free email services. So, up to this point I've had to manually associate every company and every contact in my database. It's absurd, and it is discouraging update of the CRM at my agency because employees don't want to spend their time manually associating contacts and companies.
Very well stated and I second this proposal. We must have the ability to pull/export the Company/Contact/Opportunity unique ID into a spreadsheet to be able to make updates and changes in bulk. SalesForce allows this functionality (even has a separate field for the record ID) and it is key to the administration of SalesForce or any other CRM.
While I am on the subject, we need the ability to import/export in bulk the Parent/Child Hiearchy relationships and the associated Contacts or Deals as well.
It's hard to comprehend how a system as large as HubSpot would not use their own unique system ID for things like Companies and Contacts to allow batch imports. Furthermore to suggest a solution is to manually update thousands of companies is ridiculous.
We all pay way to much money to use a system that doesn’t give us a way to easily do batch imports so we can maintain data integrity. This is a badly needed feature and it's an elementary one at that. I have worked with many systems over the years and if they offer batch importing they have all used some kind of internal unique ID.
I noticed the HubSpot ID is now being included when you export Companies. Let's hope this is the first step towards being able to do imports using this ID. HubSpot team, can you please give us some feedback, is this something that's being considered or better yet worked on?
Agreed. Small companies don't always have a website, but I have to put in -something-. It's a bit annoying. Allow us to skip having a domain name please.
ALSO: Could we add the word 'Website' next to the entry? Some of the staff members wouldn't know what a 'Company Domain Name' is, but if the word 'Website' was used they'd know what the form is asking.
@arthurgruen we're getting really close to an internal alpha release, hopefully in the next 1-3 weeks. Once that happens, we will probably have some more work to do based on what we learn from that testing. So it will be a little while after that before we can release a beta. If you're already in our CRM beta group then you'll get the new import tool a bit sooner than the rest of our customers.
Thanks for your patience. We're really excited about giving you a far better import tool!
It sounds like this may be a slight variation to the challenges described above, but ultimately a similar, relevant and significant pain point, wherein we cannot set Associated Company either via a bulk edit or via a workflow.
Yes - we can open an individual contact record and manually set the associated company. I don't know who has time for that or the extra headcount sitting around looking for a massively time-consuming ongoing project.
Example - We have hundreds of contacts that are franchises of a national real estate company. They often tend to use a localized versions of the national domain - or a generic email (i.e. gmail) but manually enter their company name into their account record.
As a result, HubSpot often does not automatically associate them to national company - which is completely understandable, and I could work with that.
That said, this leaves me with hundreds of records where I cannot automate an assignment to the HubSpot owner that manages that franchise, nor a way to automatically roll those contacts up to include as a user associated to that major account , either with that being the direct associated company, or by aligning the domain-driven local franchised location company record, as a child company, to the main / parent company record.
I've created a workflow workaround to try to capture these for owner assignment based on where the contact property "Company Name" contains part of the parent company name. However, this still doesn't solve the issue of either having to one-by-one associate each contact to the main company as an associated company, or set the associated company (if created) as a child company of the parent.
This is but one example of where this is a challenge, but we have several franchise-esque clients where individual contacts / accounts are supposed to roll up into one master client under an individual's ownership, and there's no way to automate or simplify this, either with bulk edit, workflow, or file imports.
I agree on this. Becuase of this we need to disable the auto syncing of contacts and companies..
Many a times contact belongs to the same company but might have to different email IDs with different domains eg: ***.***@facebook.com and ***.***@facebook.in. In this case, We already have facebook.com saved as a company Facebook Inc. Since facebook.in wasn't available, HubSpot went ahead and created a new company Facebook Inc. This has led to disappointments.
So now I have 2 companies with same name Facebook Inc. It's a mundane task every time to check on the duplications, especially during bulk upload.
Currently, I do not see domain name as a field that can we used when I want to bulk upload CONTACTS. At least this can help us in mapping the contacts against the right company.
Idea:
1.) Allow the customers to include domain name while they are importing the contacts.
Fully agree with the challenges on this thread. We have many customers without domain names which we have had to assign with ficticious domain names to essentially trick the system for the meantime.
The sooner we can import using a different unique ID the better!
The import of Company - Contact association is also a very important one.
Hi everyone, thank you for the valuable feedback here! I wanted to update you all that this is something we are actively working on and hope to deliver shortly.
Before then, I will be sending out emails to those of you who have commented on this post to hopefully collect some additional feedback on a prototype and to gain access to our earliest beta release.
Agree as well. We are looking to start using Hubspot, but need to be able to import our customer details with the Company - Contact association (without a domain name) before we will go there.
I wanted to provide an update here - the ability to associate objects on import is currently in a private beta. If you are interested in participating, please fill out this form to gain access to the beta and we will be in contact if our beta product is a good fit for you. Please provide as much detail as possible.
Hi @Dylan, I'd like to participate in the beta if it's still open, but can't access the registration form (I'm logged in into HubSpot and the community).
@Dylan Google Doc is only visible to viewers within the Hubspot organization - you'll need to make the form publically available for users outside Hubspot
Could you try once more after a browser refresh? The form is currently set as available to all, feel free to comment again if the problem persists and I will spin up another form!
