Alternatives to LifeCycle Stage

[Sheeny]

Hi there!

Does anyone else ignore LifeCycle Stage and use their own custom alternative? 

We are a sales lead organisation - so the concept of Subscriber > MQL > SQL > doesn't really work for us as our funnel is a little more bespoke. 

I just wanted to check if I'm crazy for doing things my own way and not using the Hubspot standard? e.g. Will I still be able to create funnel reports for my own custom field? 

[bradmin · Accepted solution]

Hi, @Sheeny. You can absolutely create a custom lifecycle stage property - some customers prefer doing this because they want to add custom values not configurable through the standard lifecycle stage property.

Doing this isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, but it does come with tradeoffs. There are a set of contact properties labeled 'Became a [lifecycle stage] date', which can only be populated by HubSpot, when the default lifecycle stage changes. Similarly, if you're using deals, associating contacts with deals only updates the lifecycle stage property (although you could create custom workflows to emulate this sort of functionality on the custom property, if desired).

If your organization doesn't need any of those HubSpot defaults, and you need more lifecycle stage values than what HubSpot provides, creating a custom lifecycle stage-esque property can work well. 

[Sheeny]

Thanks for your advice - I really appreciate that. 

I guess the 'deals' reporting aspect is probably the bit that concerned me most - but if we can use workflows and create a workaround, then that will be fine. 

Thanks again for putting my mind at rest. 

[bradmin]

Using deals and your custom lifecycle property is still very doable - you just need to make sure all your use cases are accounted for. If your custom property has ten different values, you'd need to review which of those values you'd want opportunity changes to update.

(Also important is that you'd need contacts associated with deals in order to make any HubSpot automation work here. That part of the scheme is as necessary as letting deal changes kick off a workflow which changes your custom lifecycle property.)

[Sheeny]

Thanks for clarifying. 

Does Hubspot use the standard LifeCycle Property for top level reporting displays against Forms, Landing Pages and Ads (e.g. to determine 'leads' as in the image below)? 

I'm just thinking that this ability to quickly determine the success of a campaign is a good reason to try and work out a way to ensure the LifeCycle Stage works for us...

[bradmin]

Those are tied to lifecycle stage, yes. Any place HubSpot refers to customers in its reporting is tied to the lifecycle stage. As an alternative, if you have workflows updating a custom lifecycle property, you could also use the same workflows to update the standard lifecycle property. If all you're concerned about is a customer count for HubSpot reports, simply update the standard lifecycle to Customer as part of your automation scheme.

[Sheeny]

Great, thanks - Good to know there is a workaround for that too. 

Final question (I promise) - How is the 'Lead' aspect of those reports calculated? Is it based on the LifeCycle stage being either MQL or SQL - or something else? 

I'm assuming there would also be a workaround (through Workflows) to ensure this figure is correct. 

[bradmin]

I'm not certain how that's calculated. This article is best I could find, but it doesn't describe that specific bucket. As a general rule, I'd say that any default HubSpot reporting or functionality which specifically has something to do with leads, customers, or a specific lifecycle stage value, is based off of the default lifecycle stage property.

[Sheeny]

Thanks for all your help bmampe - Really appreciate it.

I'll reach out to Hubspot directly to get an answer on that final point. 

Thanks again, 

Chris 

[Zbatty]

I have a follow-up question here. If we create our own custom lifecycle stages, are we able to create custom funnel reports? I know you can do this with deal stages, but what about lifecycle stages?