Set contacts as marketing

In HubSpot, you store and manage information about your potential customers in contact records. However, you may not need to market to all of them.

Please note: this functionality is currently available on a limited basis for test users in the ANZ region. Reach out to your HubSpot Customer Success Manager for more information.

By setting certain contacts as "marketing", and others as "non-marketing", you can control the number of billable contacts that adds to your contact tier and the contacts your HubSpot account can and cannot market to. Learn how to view the number of marketing contacts in your current contact tier.

HubSpot marketing tools will work with marketing contacts only. Keep track of your marketing contacts using the marketing contact default properties.

Once a contact is deemed as a marketing contact, they cannot be set as non-marketing in the same period. Learn how to preemptively set contacts as non-marketing for the next renewal period.

Tools that can only be used on marketing contacts

Marketing tools in your HubSpot account can only work with marketing contacts.

Workflows

If you've access to workflows, all marketing actions in workflows, such as Send email and Add to or Remove from ads audiences can only work for marketing contacts.

Marketing emails

When you plan to send or schedule your marketing email in your classic or drag and drop editor, you may notice not all contacts will receive the email.

• In the Send or schedule tab, click View breakdown on the right.
• In the right panel, you can view the reasons why these contacts will not receive the email and the number of contacts for each reason. One of the reasons possibly is that the contacts are set as non-marketing.

Please note: other types of emails can still reach your non-marketing contacts, including sales one-to-one emails, chat transcript emails from conversations, registration emails, ticket kickback emails, and customer feedback surveys.

Ads

When creating contact list audiences for your ads, you may notice not all contacts will be sent to the ad network. You can see the number of contacts for each reason, including the number of contacts that are non-marketing.

You can identify the non-marketing contacts in your list (e.g., sort by the Marketing status property) and set them as marketing. If the contact list audience is already created, any contacts that are updated as marketing will automatically be synced to your ads network. These contacts will count towards your billable contact tier limit in the current period.

Set existing contacts as marketing

If you have permissions to update marketing status, you can update a non-marketing contact to a marketing contact anytime. These newly set marketing contacts will count towards your billable contact tier limit, going forwards in the current period.

Please note: once you've set non-marketing contacts as marketing, you cannot set them back to being non-marketing in the same period. Contacts will only be set as non-marketing during the 90 days prior to renewal or contract change, and will be effective upon renewal or contract change 

Manually set contacts as marketing in bulk

To set contacts as marketing contacts:

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts > Contacts.
• Select the checkboxes next to contacts you want to set as marketing contacts. You can use a saved view to help you select the right contacts.
• At the top of the table, click the More dropdown menu and select Set as marketing contacts.
• In the dialog box, enter the number of contacts you're updating and click Confirm.

Automatically set contacts as marketing using workflows

If you have access to the workflows tool, you can automatically set contacts as marketing based on their property values.

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Automation > Workflows.
• Create your contact-based workflow and set up your enrollment triggers for the contacts you want to set as marketing automatically.
• Add an action and in the Property management section, select the Set as a marketing contact action.
• Once you've turned on your workflow, contacts who meet your enrollment triggers will be set as marketing contacts when they pass through the Set as a marketing contact action.

Set the default marketing status for new contacts

New contacts created manually

Any contacts created manually will default to No for their Marketing status property. You can only update their Marketing status to Yes after the contacts are created.

New contacts from chatflows

When you create a chatflow, you are creating a live chat or a bot for your website or Facebook messenger. When a visitor chats with your business, a contact record can sometimes be created when they are new to your business.

For each live chat or bot, you can set the default marketing status of a newly created contact that submits to a form.

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Conversations > Chatflows.
• Click the chatflow you want to set the default for.
• In the left sidebar menu, click Options.
• In the Marketing contacts section, click to toggle the Marketing Contacts switch on if you want contacts created from this chatflow to automatically set the contacts as marketing contacts. Otherwise, ensure the switch is off to set contacts created from this chatflow as non-marketing contacts.
• Click Save.

New contacts from forms

When a visitor submits to a HubSpot form and they are new to your business, they will be created as a new contact record. For each HubSpot form, you can set the default marketing status of a newly created contact that submits to a form.

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Lead Capture > Forms.
• Click the form you want to set the default for. If it's a live form, once you click the form, click Edit in the upper right.
• Click the Options tab.
• Ensure the All new contacts will be set as marketing switch is on if you want contacts created from this form to automatically set the contacts as marketing contacts. Otherwise, click to toggle the switch off to set contacts created from this form as non-marketing contacts.
• To take the form live, or update the existing live form, click the Preview tab and in the upper right, click Publish.

New contacts created via import

When importing contacts, you can set the contacts in the file as marketing contacts or non-marketing contacts. In the Details step:

• To set the contacts in the import file as marketing contacts, select the Set all contacts as marketing contacts checkbox. Their Marketing status property will be set as Yes.
• To set the contacts in the import file as non-marketing contacts, leave the Set all contacts as marketing contacts checkbox blank. Their Marketing status property will be set as No.