Meeting 'Original Source' over written with 'Offline Sources'

[patricko]

Given HubSpot is a marketing platform I don't know why when a Meeting is booked the 'Original Source' settings are overwritten with 'Offline Sources': http://take.ms/eTb5f

We know a meeting has been booked we care about what marketing spend delivered this prospect. Can we remove this from being recorded or allow it to be configurable as we have had to build a complex workflow and ask the user for their email address twice (which makes us look back) just to get around this issue: https://www.gatekeeperhq.com/book-gk-demo-step-1

[Phil_Vallender]

Hi @patricko

Original source is hardcoded and automaticlly populated by HubSpot and is focussed on online channels, as you mention. This means that everything else ends up in the 'offline' bucket. 

There is a difficult balance to be struck as if HubSpot makes the property editable or tries to support every imaginable non-website source, the property will become clunky and less useful. 

We have the same happen where a contact's first contact with us was booking a meeting, and it took us a while to track that down. Your screengrab of the original source drilldowns made me realsie that we can potentially do something with that property when it contains 'meeting', run a workflow or build a list for example. 

Not the perfect solution to your problem, but I hope this helps somehow.

[patricko]

Thanks, Phil I appreciated the response but the issue is tracking marketing channels.

As you know HubSpot uses cookies to save the Original Source tracking on an unknown user. To then overwrite this when a meeting is booked doesn't make any sense at all.

We are losing the marketing channel attribution value that was stored in favour of data that means a meeting was booked. We know a meeting was booked I want to know what part of our marketing spend went into converting the prospect. 

[Phil_Vallender]

Ah right, that sounds like a bug - if the cookie contains the true original source, then the meetings app shouldn't overwrite it. Unless there is some problem paring an anonymous visitor with a meetings-created contact. 

@edjusten any chance you could comment on this?

[edjusten]

Hi @patricko I can certainly understand your conceern here, but I don't see where a change was made in the Original source or drill downs due to the booked meeting. The property histories for Original Source and Drilldowns indicate the contact was created due to a booked meeting. 

The value of sales-meetings-booking won't show as an original source as it is a too narrow definition for this property. The broad definitions of the Original Source property can be found here. 

If your goal is to segment those users for later broadcast email sends, the Origianal source and Drill Down properties are available as criteria for smart lists.  

Thank you,

Ed Justen

cc: @Phil_Vallender

[patricko]

Hi Ed

Thank you for your response however it is not accurate. The link was to clarify the area I was referring to not a specific prospect that has this issue/error. 

The issue occurs when any visitor who is acquired via any channel, let's use Google PPC as an example, who then books a meeting would have the accurate Original Source information over-written with 'Offline Sources'. So HubSpot is essentially making any marketing investment untrackable if the goal is to book a meeting. This is why during implementation we worked with our HubSpot implementation specialist to create the Book a Demo process here: https://www.gatekeeperhq.com/book-gk-demo-step-1

This is far from ideal and means asking for the email address twice in the process increasing drop out (I'd be discouraged from engaging with a company that asks for my email twice). Once at the start to ensure we can workflow them if they do not complete the process and again at the Meeting stage as we cannot bring in this email value in the form. 

[edjusten]

Hi @patricko   

"The issue occurs when any visitor who is acquired via any channel, let's use Google PPC as an example, who then books a meeting would have the accurate Original Source information over-written with 'Offline Sources'. "

Do you have an example contact I could look at? Better for me to address a concrete example then to talk in generalities. There are parameters that will cause the Original Source to change, but this doesn't look like oneo of them. If there is an issue, I'll be happy to look further. 

Ed 

[clioi]

Any update on this? @edjusten, I've just noticed that if a contact is created via HubSpot chat or bot, the source is updated to 'offline source' and this just doesn't make sense. Any chance you could look into adding a dropdown menu to the offline source with more options? Thanks

[Phil_Vallender]

Hi @clioi

I came up against this issue again recently with contacts created from chat or chat bots. 

I have been told by HubSpot support that, in the case of chat anyway (and therefore I assume meetings), that it takes a subsequent visit to the website for the tracking code to put the true original source of the annoymous visitor together with the converted contact record. So, if they come back to the site again, the original source will update to the real value. Strange, but that's how it works apparently.