Every month for the past 3 years, I have been generating monthly exports of new contacts created via my landing pages (from Hubspot, .xls format). For example, my report of January 2018 says my landing pages generated 246 new contacts. (I kept all the monthly .xls exports).
Problem, in website analytics, when I display my new contacts created this year via my Landing Pages, I no longer have the same numbers at all. For example, for January 2018, Hubspot now shows me only 159 new contacts created, whereas my export generated in January 2018 says 246. Numbers are wrong for every month, it kills all my KPIs...
Any idea what could cause this discrepancy?
My Customer Success manager advised me to ask support, and support is kinda lost for now. My only guess is that I deleted about 2000 contacts in August of this year, as they were completely unqualified and useless to me. I'm thinking maybe removing those contacts could create the difference in numbers, meaning deleted contacts are notre taken into account anymore in any report generated afterwards? But that would be stupid.
I don't believe I read a clear answer on whether or not deleted contacts are reflected in report data, such visitor analysis and conversion metrics. Simple example: a contact first visits my site on 1/1/18, converts to a contact on 7/1/19 and is deleted on 12/1/2020. Is his visit and conversion reflected in those metrics for those particular time frames, or is a deleted contact and all his data wiped clean? (NOTE: I have no interest in restoring these deleted contacts)
If you look at the recycling bin in your portal you should be able to see if you've deleted these contacts.
I would expect deleted contacts to be reflected in reports for "new contacts gained" (or something like that) because if there is no contact record to associate with the number, then that wouldn't make sense.
If you go to the form on the landing page, you can see the form submissions, including submissions that aren't associated with contact records (they'll show as "no record" I think), so that could be a good place to start?
I tried restoring 200 contacts from the bin, and my monthly reports of new contacts of this year have all changed, so this should mean that deleted contacts are not taken into account in any reports (charts) anymore, and when you restore them, they are back in the charts.
I will go and restore them per batch of 500, just to be careful, and will see if numbers align with what I had before deleting the 2000 contacts.
