Best Practices for Managing Multilingual Contact Segmentation

[ramiren]

Hello Hubspot Community! 

We are experiencing a unique challenge with our CRM contact property/segmentation strategy and are seeking advice on best practices for managing multilingual contact properties.

Our company publishes web content in over 12 languages, and we've encountered a situation where individuals might submit forms in multiple languages (e.g., English and Spanish) if they land on different web pages. This results in the same contact being added to multiple language-specific lists, which leads to them receiving duplicate newsletter emails in different languages.

Here are the key points of our issue:

• Multi-Language Form Submissions: Contacts are submitting forms in two or three different languages, indicating possible multilingual preferences.
• Assumed Language Preference: Based on their form submission, we segment contacts into language-specific lists for targeted newsletter distribution.
• Duplicate Communications: Contacts added to multiple lists receive the same newsletter content in different languages, which is not ideal.

We are looking for advice or tips on how to effectively use contact properties to manage this scenario. Specifically, we're interested in understanding:

1. How can we best manage or merge contact properties to reflect a primary language preference, without losing the insight that a contact is multilingual?
2. Are there any recommended strategies or tools within Hubspot for automatically updating contact preferences based on their most recent interactions or form submissions?
3. What are the best practices for segmenting multilingual contacts to ensure they receive the most relevant communications without duplicates?

We appreciate any insights, experiences, or examples of how you might have tackled a similar challenge within your CRM strategy.

Thank you in advance for your help!

[trevordjones · Accepted solution]

Hi @ramiren ,

I would use a multi-checkbox property to track the language of their form submissions, so you have insight into all of the languages they use to communicate with you.

You might also consider a checkbox property for "multi-lingual" that is set with a workflow when you have form submisisons in multiple languages.  This would allow for easier segmentation and reporting on specifically multi-lingual contacts.

From there, perhaps you can use the predominant language of their country of origin as a "tie-breaker." For example, someone in the USA might speak English and Spanish, but the dominant language in the country is English.  Assuming you have submissions in both, you can track that with your multi-checkbox, while putting them mainly in an English speaking segment.

If you are not capturing the country in the form submission, you could use IP Country as a surrogate for that.