Capture Individual Form Submission Dates on Contacts

[kennedyp]

HubSpot Forms are a valuable tool to collect new leads and grow your business. There are many ways to analyze form submission data to evaluate the performance of your lead capture. That said, some users seek more advanced date-based reporting options for form submissions– see some examples requested on the Ideas forum here. 

Limited form submission dates are stored in the Forms tool and on each Contact record, which includes the First Conversion Date and Most Recent Conversion Date properties. Individual form submission date properties at the Contact level would be helpful for reporting between the initial and most recent conversions.

This guide will walk you through how to set up individual form submission date properties to store on each contact and use in Custom Reports. 

Part 1: Create a Custom Date Property 

Create a custom property to store the date of the form submission: 

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to the settings in the top right corner of the main navigation bar

2. On the left sidebar, navigate to ‘Properties’ under Data Management 

3. Use the orange Create property button to create a custom property   

   • Choose Date picker from the ‘Field Type’ dropdown menu Create custom Date Picker property
4. Once your property is created, move on to Part 2. 

Part 2: Create Workflow

Create a Workflow to set the custom date property when the form is submitted:

1. In your HubSpot Account navigate to Automation > Workflows 
2. Use the orange Create workflow button to create a blank Contact-based workflow from scratch
3. Click Set up triggers in the workflow editor.
4. In the left panel, choose When an event occurs. Learn more about event enrollment triggers. 
5. Select Form Submission and + Add trigger in the filter Group 1 section to define the Form name  Add Event enrollment trigger based on form submission
6. By default, records will only enroll in this workflow once:
   • To only capture the very first date this form is submitted, then no action is needed
   • To capture and update the submission date every time a contact submits this form, select Yes, re-enroll every time the trigger occurs  
7. Click Save.
8. Click the + plus icon to add the CRM Set property value action
   • From the Property to set dropdown menu, search for the newly created custom date property
   • Select the Date of step option Create action to set custom date property as the date of step
9. Click Save.
10. In the upper right corner, click Review & Publish > then Turn on the workflow.

**Please Note: this will set the submission date for new form submissions moving forward. Historical form submission dates will be imported in Part 3**

Part 3: Import Historical Submission Dates

Now that all form submissions moving forward will have their date set by default, the existing submissions need to have their contacts’ Form Submission Date retroactively updated. This can be done by exporting existing submissions and importing them to the new property.

1. In your HubSpot Account, navigate to Marketing > Lead Capture > Forms
2. Hover over the name of the form > Actions > Export Submissions > Export
3. Download and open the file and edit the columns:
   • In the spreadsheet, delete all columns except for the contact Email and Conversion date  
   • Change the label of the Conversion Date column to match the name of the custom date property from Step 1  Delete extra columns and rename the Conversion Date column header

      

   • Highlight the cells with the dates and format them to Date only
     • This step may vary depending on the program you are using: 
       • Format Dates in Numbers on Mac
       • Format Dates in Excel  
     • Export and save this spreadsheet as a new CSV. Here is an example of what the spreadsheet should look like: Example of revised spreadsheet

        

4. In your HubSpot Account, navigate to Contacts > Contacts > click Import on the top right.
5. Follow this Knowledge Base article to complete a single-object Contact import: 
   • On the Upload step, choose ‘Update existing Contacts only’  Update existing contacts only
   • Check that the Conversion Date column is properly mapped to your custom date property 
6. Complete the import. 

Great work! Now you will have an individual conversion date for each contact that can be used in reporting. 

See submission dates on Contacts

You can repeat these steps to collect submission dates for any forms of your choice. 

Your feedback is the best way for me to improve my service– leave a comment below if I can provide any additional clarification. 🙂