Assistance needed with Marketing Contacts

[JLobdell]

I am new to the program of "marketing vs. non marketing contacts". We recently accidentally bumped up a tier on marketing contacts and i want to refrain from that happening again. I wanted to run something by you all to see if I am thinking about this correctly.

So am i able to change a marketing contact to a non-marketing contact before the start of the next month and then it will no longer be in that "marketing contact" pool of people? We are very new to HubSpot so wondering what the downfall would be if we simply moved ALL to non-marketing contacts before the start of the next month and then began adding back to marketing contacts as we needed (we're not in a place to strategically review who all we would want to be marketing month over month). Thanks all!

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @JLobdell,

Setting a contact as non-marketing will not take effect immediately but only for the next month. Setting a contact as marketing will take effect immediately. That's why you can't just bulk mark contacts as non-marketing on the last day of the month.

This is also explained here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/account/understand-marketing-contacts-billing

One way to mark unnecessary contacts as non-marketing, by the way, would be a simple workflow as shown below:

Best regards!

[JLobdell]

Thanks so much for the fast reply Karsten! One quick follow up question/scenario. Say I go into my HubSpot today and move all Marketing Contacts to Non Marketing Contacts (we're at the 12,000 contact tier). Then on April 1st, technically we will have zero of those 12,000 marketing contacts tagged correct? So then I can begin slowly adding lists of "new marketing contacts" that I want to market to in April, up to that 12,000 cap - correct? thanks again!

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @JLobdell,

If you mark all contacts as non-marketing contacts today, that would take effect on April 1st. Until then, they're marketing contacts. Starting April 1st, they're non-marketing contacts. And sure, you could then start marking them as marketing contacts again, although I'd probably skip this step and simply try and find contacts who should not be marketing contacts. I get the urge of starting with a blank page but if you have any automation set up at all, HubSpot might hold back automated emails in a blank page scenario.

Also, your contact costs will probably not go to $0 but whatever you've purchased / negotiated as a marketing contact baseline.

Best regards!