Can I associate a contact to a deal without logging their email correspondence?

[LandGuy]

We work with various real estate agents on multiple deals. We may work with one agent on multiple deals though a given deal will only have one agent.

Ideally I would like to be able to associate the agent's contact record to the appropriate deal(s) that I'm working on with them but then Hubspot will log ALL correspondence with that agent to EVERY deal they're associated with.

This has led us to just not associate any brokers with any deals and instead we log all correspondence manually (or just ensure that we're emailing the agent from the deal record directly). 

In a perfect world, I'd like to be able to set up workflows so that we could automatically email an agent with updates along various deal stages and also be able to better see reporting across deals by agent.

The question: Is there any way to associate a contact to a deal but not have Hubspot automatically log correspondence from them to the deal moving forward?

A proposed workaround I've heard is to set up the agent (who is an external third party) as an internal Hubspot user with no permissions so that we can send internal emails from workflows. The challenge there is that the internal Hubspot emails have huge HUBSPOT branding on them and could confuse the agent so we haven't gone down that path (plus the fact that we have to ask the agent to set up their own password and profile which frankly is a bit of an ask for a busy agent to do).

[MiaSrebrnjak]

Hi @LandGuy,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community! 

That's correct, that's the default setting for contact activity association: if a call, one-to-one email, meeting, note, task, postal mail, LinkedIn, SMS, or WhatsApp message is first logged on a contact record, it will be automatically associated with the contact’s primary company and the five most recent associated open deals.   

You can, however, configure the default log & track settings if you're logging your emails with the help of the HubSpot Sales add-in or extension (instructions - Chrome extension, Outlook Sales add-in). If you're sending emails from HubSpot, you can manually adjust the associations via the associations tab in the bottom right corner of the email.

An idea:

You could also explore the use of association labels or a custom object to manage real estate agent data in your customer portal. 

I wanted to ask a couple of subject matter experts for their input too: 

Hi @Olivia_Bagnall, @Ben_M, @JoAnnAtTheShore, do you have any advice for @LandGuy? Thank you!

Cheers
Mia, Community Team

P.S.:

Further reading: Check out this Community thread for some helpful tips on how to set up a real estate pipleine.