HubSpot Ideas

Nigeldb

Stop Contacts being added automatically from Outlook email

Hello all.  I've split this discussion off from Stop contacts being added automatically after sending Gmail email. because it is about Outlook not Gmail.

 

There are really two parts to the discussion

1. Automatically creating the contact:   Provide some choice about whether to create a Contact, for example, we don't want Contacts created from emails sent to suppliers etc.

2. and then once a contact is created... Fine tuning the Logging and tracking of emails for Contacts that are in HubSpot... especially when CC and BCC used.  

 

This thread is just about the first part, automatically creating new contacts

 

DEAR HUBSPOT, by creating a Contact from my outgoing emails, especially the ones I don't want, is the system making me breach privacy and GDPR as I don't have their opted in permission to track their emails or personal info,like their email address.  Creating a Contact from an email has to be a positive action.

 

Here is a suggested fix

When we send an email in Outlook, please can HubSpot check all email addresses and for any that it doesn't recognise (could be more than 1), we get a pop up that says "Hi, we don't recognise some of these emails. Would you like us to add this person (or "these people" if more than 1) as a Contact in Hubspot, or would you prefer us to ignore this email address forever?"  and then have two check boxes to the right of each email address:  Add or Ignore  and then two buttons Save and Cancel.

 

If I click Save

...for every Ignore, Hubspot remembers the email address but does not create a Contact.  Maybe in the Hubspot Outlook Sales plugin settings, we need another box like Never log but instead called Not Contacts.

 

...foe every Add, HubSpot creates a Contact.  This may require a popup for each contact so we can fill in the details.  Now here is where it gets a bit tricky....How best to deal with GDPR and Privacy for new Contacts created via email.

 

Maybe in the plugin, there should be an option to "Automatically send link to form asking for New Contact to opt in to Data Privacy, Consent to process data and Subscriptions"  If the option is turned on, the System should then  automatically send them a link to a from they can fill in. 

 

21 Replies
MFrankJohnson
Thought Leader
jennhh
Participant

No that solution does not help with the challenge we are facing. 

Nigeldb
Contributor

Hi MFJLabs, unfortunately this doesn't fix the problem.  

 

This simply stops emails from being logged to a Contact in HubSpot.  This discussion is all about a step before that.  How to prevent a Contact being added toHubspot in the first place

 

Every time I'm in Outlook and send an email to a supplier, the HubSpot Sales box on the right keeps asking me to "Add to CRM"  What we need is

 -  a second button that says "Never add to CRM"

 - and even a third that says "Never add emails to this Domain"Hubspot Ignore.JPG

 

 

 

 

MFrankJohnson
Thought Leader

>>"This simply stops emails from being logged to a Contact in HubSpot.  This discussion is all about a step before that.  How to prevent a Contact being added toHubspot in the first place."

 

Oh, you mean this part ...Same Article!Same Article!

Tried to help. Hope you solve it.

#nlmtt #nlmtu

 

 

Nigeldb
Contributor

Hi MFJ Labs, thanks for pointing that out. Unfortunately it doesn't fix the problem.

 

This is an opt-out approach.  As per the first note in this thread, ".... is the system making me breach privacy and GDPR......Creating a Contact from an email has to be a positive action.", i.e opt-in.

 

For example, I have just sent an email to a person who I do not want in HubSpot. Their email is not in the Never Log and I did not click "Add to CRM"  before sending the email.

 

The trouble is that Hubspot has automatically created a Contact with this email address and attached the email.  I now have their personal information in Hubspot. I did not want this to happen, and because of Privacy and GDPR,   I now have to go into contacts and delete them.

 

Not very user friendly and is it in contravention of GDPR etc? 

 

The good news is that the Never Log (Ignore?) functionality is there.  HubSpot just need to make Creating a contact from email and opt-in rather than opt-out. 

 

SGLPGT
Participant

We would like the ability to tell HubSpot not to create users at all, period. If they are a user, log the email. If not, don't do anything.

 

Our issue has been that more than one user is emailing the same contact. Even if they were 'unassigned' in HubSpot, they become assigned once the email is sent. What happens to the contact, then, for the other user?

delishops
Member

dont know about about the GDPR bit, but this is becoming a problem for me.  Hubspot is sucking in everything - my wife my mother the place we are having my kids birthday.

 

i am a small busines and do everthing on one computer through outlook.  i like hubspot, and have just taken on a new person.  i want them to be able to see all my hubspot, not jsut what they "own". we are not that segmented, they need to see work i am doing in parallel to theirs.  i dont need them to see what i have bought from amazon.

 

how do i stop hubspot sucking in my entire life?

ThreadsHelp2018
Top Contributor

This article might help?

 

delishops
Member

nope.

mendelcohen
Member

Wow, you guys really just don't understand. It's so simple!!!

 

Read the following SLOWLY....We do not want emails being created into contacts. Meaning, when we get an email, it automatically creates a contact in the contact section. I don't know how to explain it in simpler terms. How do you guys not understand? 


We all want this fixed! Everyone!

 

All solutions you stated do not provide a fix to this problem. I'm sure the worst developer out there can fix this in a heartbeat. You guys need to step up your game on this please.

 

I even receive marketing emails that become contacts. It's outragous! 

 

 

 

Trealoar
Member

I agree!

There may be more to it, if on a paid subscription - the more contacts you have the higher the monthly bill..... makes sense to keep adding contacts right?

MrsAugie
Member

I am BRAND new to HubSpot and was just trying to figure out how to connect my Outlook. We have only had our initial onboarding call. YIKES - reading these messages I don't want to connect my Outlook! Like someone mentioned above, as a small business, I use my business email for pretty much everything in my life. I actually DO want to have vendors and personal contacts in HubSpot but I definitely want to be able to to tell  HubSpot whether or not to make a new contact. And I want to be able to indicate when making that a new contact, who (user permissions) is able to view that contact. It does seem like a pretty simple feature for a platform as robust as HubSpot. 

NWilkinson
Member

Yep I'm only a few weeks into Hubspot but facing this and I'm a very small business. My suppliers or contacts I keep removing just pop up the next day after another email....sigh.

 

Agree with other comments about an "ignore" or "never add" feature. A must have.

 

The very fact that I'm here on this thread means I had to search for how to stop HS from doing this as it was getting very frustrating after only several contacts, I don't want to imagine having to do this over hundreds or thousands of contacts. 

tonydoylei2v
Member

And to make matters worse it keeps adding internal emails to staff as contacts. This is in danger of becoming a deal breaker for us. It smacks of an insidious attempt to drive revenue for hubspot's contact based pricing model.

SDay
Participant

Any update or workaround for this?

YiRui_Chua
HubSpot Employee

Hey team, commenting this for a customer here as well.

Just to add on , would be great if we can have an account wide setting that a Super Admin can toggle on/off to prevent auto creation of contacts from emails.

Currently, this is only a user-wide setting. Thank you!

NOliver
Member

When we first installed Hubspot and connected our Outlook to it, it was auto adding every email that came in. We had to clean thousands of contacts from our HubSpot database. I was abel to conntact support with a trial version of the version that enables phone support. We set up my plugin / Outlook connection to NOT log by default. It was great!!!! The result was that nothing was logged until I opened the HubSpot tool bar in Outlook and made the appropriate "log" and track" options. They were off by default unless I turned them on. I did this for each email that I wanted to log. I was happy. Well, I just recently noticed that it's back to logging every email that comes in and can no longer find the options to turn it "off by default".. This will cause our company to switch to another CRM if it's not resolved. 

 

Good luck everybody.

BMilaszkiewicz
Contributor

How is there still not a fix for this? We moved to Hubspot last year, and at the time the log/track emails was a huge plus for us, as we were a smallish company but operating globally so this cut down on the amount of chasing and following up with sales, presales and support on ongoing deals.

However, I'm finding now that it's a daily task for me to check contacts and companies auto created and remove the majority of them - I've even found internal emails regarding pay and expenses which certainy have no place in our CRM! I'm adding 40+ additional sales users in 2 weeks, with a plan to add the rest of the company (circa 400 employees) over the next few months, so with all the additonal users it will be impossible for me to continue working in this way.
We're just about to sign a contract to upgrade to the enterprise licenses, but considering the limitations such as this, I'm considering other CRM options now. It amazes me that something that seems easy to fix, is being requested by many users, has been an issue SINCE 2018 and Hubspot has done NOTHING about it. 

 

Trealoar
Member
Pretty simple really, more contacts = higher monthly spend. Hubspot charges per contact so get used clearing out the weeds..
froettgen
HubSpot Employee

Push!