Link contacts together (same household)

[pascallap]

Hi guys,

In my last CRM, i was able to create a relationship between two contacts, such as a couple in the same household or same address. I want to see that this client is the wife of this client, or this client is the father of that client, etc.

Can this be achieved?

Thanks!

[bradmin]

Hi, @pascallap. Relationship fields are not listed among the data types of HubSpot properties. While there are some built-in relationships that exist natively within the tool (like contact-company or company-deal associations), these are not editable, nor is creating custom relationships possible. 

Unless you have an external integration creating associations and syncing those to HubSpot (like the native Salesforce integration), this won't be something you could achieve in a practical way. While you could update data on individual contacts containing the URL of other HubSpot contacts, you'd be responsible for manually providing and updating values. 

[pascallap]

How would you go about creating a field and linking the other contact? What would the field type be called?

Can we link the other contact and also add a text such as wife, husband, etc?

[bradmin]

To do this - which, again, I don't think makes practical sense as a sustainable solution - you'd create a custom text property first. Let's say you wanted to associate Contact A and Contact B. On the new custom text property on Contact A, you'd add the in-app URL for Contact B and save changes. 

I don't recommend this approach, as it's not anything you can automate with out-of-the-box tools (although if developer resources exist, it can be more manageable with HubSpot APIs), and you would have to copy and paste a lot of URLs. That wouldn't apply just for the initial set of records, but if you merged or deleted HubSpot contacts, you'd have to update the custom text values, too. 

[pascallap]

Yeah I don't think this would be sustainable. It's unfortunate that the Hubspot user field is only for users and not contacts as well. That would have solved my problem immediately. Thanks for your help.

[bradmin · Accepted solution]

If it's easier for you to make associations outside of HubSpot, you might be able to hack together a solution in Zapier. An external data source - or even something like a new row in a Google doc - might help handle the automation of updating records, if there's someone/something responsible for providing the associated values you're looking for. 

[Jeffb]

I talked to support and its not a feature that currently exists but i really want it. I know other CRM's have this, I have seen it in Insightly and others so seems like a really obvious thing to add especially if you are doing b2c sales and cannot relate through a company

[mkelly]

This would be a great feature.  The reason I started searching these posts is that I deal with a lot of homeowners and here and there I have multiple customers from one household that I'm in contact with.   Could a group be added called Household, just as there is one called Companies?

[rfourie]

we desperatly need this solution I don't understand why this function is not available not everyone is a company so if you can associate a company your should be able to linkd contacts.  Very sad that this hs been talked about now for 2 years +++ and hubspot still not updated.

[DAnaGuiloff]

Hey @pascallap & @rfourie,

I came across your post and was wondering if you had considered using the "Company" Object as a way to tie them together.

Since I don't know your business I will make some assumptions, including that you sell something (service/product) and you want to do some kind of outreach to contacts.

While your situation may be more B2C (based on how you described what you are trying to do), I have come across this with a previous client trying to make a similar association of "Household".

So Company = Household; Contact = Family Member.

Because you can associate Contacts with a Company in HubSpot, there are built-in association points using this thought process. Each contact can have:

• their own deals (purchases)
• their own contact properties
• their own engagement record/timeline with your company

Hopefully you make use of Personas to know your target audience, but you could take it further and use "Job Title" as their "Family Role" so you know the contact's association to each other.

Then you can use lists & views to find contacts with whom you are looking to do business.

Obviously there would be some manual work to do the association, since it is not as likley for a Household to have their own domain/website URL, but I hope this gets you closer to what you are looking to achieve without moving data outside of HubSpot.

**If it makes sense to know this for your business. You could also use Parent/Child Companies for Adult Family Members that move out, so you can keep that initial relationship tie to the original company.

[mkelly]

This is a great idea!  I can use the X household or X Family as the Company name and associate the contacts to that.   This will help when multiple contacts in the same house are inquiring about the same proposal, etc. 

[DAnaGuiloff]

Precisely. Glad it will help.

Be sure to map it out and make sure anyone working with the data objects (Contacts, Companies, Deals) understands the relationships. It will help keep your data cleaner and more usable.

Happy HubSpotting! 🙂

[RKantner]

I discovered a problem while trying this.... a Contact can only be associated with 1 Company at a time. So a choice must be made: associate the Contact with their Household Company, OR, their real work-place Company.... but not both.

[DAnaGuiloff]

@RKantner That is true. You'd have to make sacrifices to use Company as the family.

The good news, there is always another option. HubSpot introduced custom objects since my original solution last year, and you can now create your own "Family" Object as long as you have Enterprise. You can check out the details about using custom objects here.

Just be sure to add the custom "Family" Object to your data mapping guide so everyone knows how to make the associations in your system.