Zoom webinar confirmation email with calendar invite

[DigitalJA]

I have spent a while searching for the process to fully manage and set a workflow registration process between HubSpot with Zoom, including, landing pages, and confirmation emails with calendar invites. 

I only found a non hubspot blog about this from 2020: https://www.smartbugmedia.com/blog/how-to-do-a-webinar-with-hubspot-and-zoom

In this blog it states: 
Pro tip: It’s easier and less set-up to have the confirmation emails come from Zoom instead of HubSpot, and the Zoom emails have calendar invites, which HubSpot does not support. However, the Zoom emails do not have your branding, so that’s the drawback.

Now this feels a bit behind the times, one of the reasons we wanted to integrate the HubSpot and Zoom was to have better control over look and feel of our marketing campaign assets (LP, forms with additional qualification questions, confirmation emails etc), not the bog-standard Zoom branded emails.

Is this still the case in 2022?
Is there a process on Hubspot knowledge base/community that I am missing, or can anyone point me in the direction of a solution/workflow process that shows how to incorporate the registration email confirmation with a calender invite? 

[RWR]

 @karstenkoehler,

I went ahead and tried playing around with the solution you suggested. 

I created the custom customer property {{ contact.zoom_join_url }} and then added it to the workflow below. 

 I took the token and added it to the calendar tool you linked and then took the individual links for each ESP and added a button in my email to link people to the calendar invite. 

I then went to test the email by previewing the email from someone who had gone through the workflow but was throwan an error message. 

 Any idea why it's saying the contac.zoom_join_url doesn't exist? It might be worth mentioning that I created the new contact property after the user I used as test for the preview went through the workflow. I'm thinking I might have to re-run the test now that all the steps are in place. 

Another issue i'm experience is when I add the personalization token to the calendar tool {{ contact.zoom_join_url }} , and then copy the output to the CTAs in the email, hubspot flags it as an issue because there is no default value set. 

I know I could set a global default value, only issue with that is the whole point of this is it's personalized and a global default value won't work. Especially once we run this process again for a webinar in the future and the zoom webinar link will be entiretly different. Does that make sense? 

 

[ATelias]

I had this same issue - the token was prepared wrong. Don't just assume the structure is contact.PROPERTYNAME . You need to actually go to the Property and get the internal name, as karstenkoehler showed below. 

[ATelias]

Hi! I'm also getting this error - did you manage to fix the error?

[jassie]

Great question. I've still some remarks that @KARTUS might be able to clarify and reduce the no show rate.

Situation: We have webinars on our website, people subscribe --> Workflow triggers Zoom --> Marketing email w/ personal zoom link is emialed like you suggest here.

Our 2 main 'challenges' we're facing:

• No add to calendar button in either emial/website
• How to get the personal zoom-link property into the calendar invite
• Bonus: An RSVP option.

We've been trying addevent.com, but it lacks

• A proper hubspot integration, only via Zapier, something we won't use
• You take people out of your website - event/agenda/RSVP is on addevent.com environment.

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @jassie,

I have good news for you 😉 Here we go.

My calendar tool of choice is https://www.labnol.org/calendar/. It's free. The links generated here are just concatenated text, see for example Google Calendar, I capitalized the dynamic elements of the link:

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/render?action=TEMPLATE&dates=20221009%2F20221010&details=EVENT%20DESCRIPTION&location=EVENT_LOCATION&text=EVENT_TITLE

Since this is really just text, we can also put personalization tokens in there, as long as they're following the correct HubSpot syntax:

{{ object.internal_property_name }}

The "object" here would be "contact", the "internal_property_name" can be found under Settings > Properties, by clicking on the property and then the </> sign. Here's an example of how to find the internal property name for "First name".

Putting all things together, you have a property with an internal name like, for example, "zoom_join_url". The syntax for the token would be {{ contact.zoom_join_url }}. You can now add this part with the curly brackets in the calendar tool:

Copy the "Add to calendar" links at the bottom of the tool and place them in your email as CTAs or text links.

I highly recommend always testing whether the calendar links work as expected. The easiest way to do this is by taking an existing contact that has a value for this zoom_join_url, and previewing the email for this contact. Click on the links and check the calendar invites.

(The tool is also generating an ics file. Tokens will not work here as they would be stored inside a file.)

Cheers!

PS. You can also use this to personalize calendar invites with "Dear {{ contact.firstname }}", for example. Personalized calendar invites! @danmoyle, I feel like you'd enjoy this solution.

[jassie]

@karstenkoehler  - This works indeed though we still don't have an RSVP.

Any suggestions to add an RSVP button for a physical meetup? 

Situation: We'll invite ±300 clients for an event and would be great to have a good overview of who already RSVP-ed (yes/no). 

[danmoyle]

I'm gonna need to play with this, @karstenkoehler! Thanks for the tag! 

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @DigitalJA,

My preferred process for this is to copy the Zoom webinar join URL into a contact property which can then be used as a personalization token in an automated marketing email:

For your email, you can use an Add to Calendar tool which generates the main calendar links. In the event location field, you can even place a personalization token as long as you follow the personalization token syntax (which I've explained here), for example:

Let me know if you have any follow-up questions!

[DigitalJA]

Thanks for the prompt feedback. I am new to this integration process, so setting up some testing ahead of a full webinar, so please excuse my lack of knowledge.  You say "My preferred process for this is to copy the Zoom webinar join URL into a contact property" - which I'm not sure I fully understand. Isn't the join URL unique to each registrant to enable tracking of the attendance etc?  So where do I find the URL links to add to the contact record in the workflow?  Think I am missing a step?

Also, regarding the calendar invite, that is helpful to know it can be done, but another layer of complexity outside HubSpot, so need to get my head around that. 

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @DigitalJA,

"My preferred process for this is to copy the Zoom webinar join URL into a contact property which can then be used as a personalization token in an automated marketing email" – this refers to a contact-based workflow.

You can use contact-based workflows to add contacts to a Zoom webinar (see the screenshot above). In this step of the workflow, the Zoom webinar join URL (yes, this is individual) is made available.

In "4. Copy property value", this join URL is copied to a contact property – different for each registrant.

Once it's copied into this property, you can use it as a personalization token in a marketing email. For each recipient, the correct join URL is displayed.

Does that make more sense?

Best regards!