Set Contacts as Non-Marketing Contacts & Set Them Back as Marketing Contacts Automatically

[HHoward]

I have about 14K marketing contacts that are not very engaged and they are pushing up our total marketing contacts. To help with this I would like to split these marketing contacts into List A (7K) and List B (7K) and set them as non-marketing contacts (and back to marketing contacts) on alternate months. This way they will receive marketing emails more sporadically and keep our overall marketing contact size under control. I can see how to split the list in a workflow but it's not clear how to automatically toggle these two lists off and on (between being marketing contacts and non-marketing contacts). Does anyone have experience with this? I'd be grateful for any insights.

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

@HHoward Marketing contact status changes are applied on your next bill date - so let's say you have the list A of 7000 and they're currently marketing, and at the end of the month or after you send the email, you trigger a workflow that sets those 7000 to non-marketing - that change wouldn't happen until your bill date. And likewise, when you set list B to marketing after being non-marketing that change won't happen until the next date so you couldn't email them yet.

If you're already paying for a tier that has 14000, it won't be downgraded until your next renewal - so if you all of a sudden cut it to 7000, you're still paying for the total number you had before until the renewal date happens and you have fewer contacts.

I can understand your logic that they're not very engaged so you want to try another strategy, but swapping back and forth between the two won't save you a lot of money:

Additional marketing contacts are sold in increments of 5,000 from $250/month.

That means that cutting your marketing contacts in half will only save about $250, which is probably not worth the time it would take you to bulid a system that toggles them back and forth and everything is timed perfectly with your bill date and email sending cadence.

You'd be better off looking at other ways to engage the full list or using some branching logic to determine a different email cadence to nurture them at different rates - realistically, you probably need to scrub your data first to see how many are viable marketing contacts that match your ICP and target persona. From there you can further customize the messaging and get better engagement.

[HHoward]

Thank you! Good to know that the toggle on/off idea was possible, but I agree that scrubbing the list makes more sense than trying to create a complicated workflow.  

[Jnix284]

you're welcome @HHoward glad we could help you to find the best way forward!

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @HHoward,

Ideally, you would do this with a scheduled workflow that runs yearly on Jan 1: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/set-your-workflow-enrollment-triggers

You would start by branching by group A and B, then use then use this action to set the contacts of one group as marketing: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/records/set-contacts-as-marketing#automatically-set-contacts-as-market...

You would then delay this marketing group until the last day of the month (in January: 30 days), and set them as non-marketing. The other group would be set as marketing. You would repeat these actions until December.

If you do not have access to scheduled workflows, you'd have to turn this workflow off and then on manually every Jan 1st.

Best regards!

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

@HHoward Marketing contact status changes are applied on your next bill date - so let's say you have the list A of 7000 and they're currently marketing, and at the end of the month or after you send the email, you trigger a workflow that sets those 7000 to non-marketing - that change wouldn't happen until your bill date. And likewise, when you set list B to marketing after being non-marketing that change won't happen until the next date so you couldn't email them yet.

If you're already paying for a tier that has 14000, it won't be downgraded until your next renewal - so if you all of a sudden cut it to 7000, you're still paying for the total number you had before until the renewal date happens and you have fewer contacts.

I can understand your logic that they're not very engaged so you want to try another strategy, but swapping back and forth between the two won't save you a lot of money:

Additional marketing contacts are sold in increments of 5,000 from $250/month.

That means that cutting your marketing contacts in half will only save about $250, which is probably not worth the time it would take you to bulid a system that toggles them back and forth and everything is timed perfectly with your bill date and email sending cadence.

You'd be better off looking at other ways to engage the full list or using some branching logic to determine a different email cadence to nurture them at different rates - realistically, you probably need to scrub your data first to see how many are viable marketing contacts that match your ICP and target persona. From there you can further customize the messaging and get better engagement.