How can we determine the “Original Source” of “Email Marketing” if the Contact does not exist in your CRM before sending an email?

To answer this question, let’s understand how “Original Source” works in the first place.

“Original Source” is a HubSpot object property available to Contact and Company objects. While it is possible to manually override the values of this property, it is automatically handled by the HubSpot system and normally gets overwritten with a value that the HubSpot system thinks is more accurate. 

How does HubSpot set the “Original Source” properties?

Most links, if not all, generated or rendered in web assets within HubSpot are attached with parameters called UTM parameters. This does not only occur in HubSpot, this is a normal practice across the internet to track user traffic data including the source of the user.

As an example for this specific context, links within marketing emails would be appended with the following UTM parameters:

utm_source=email

or

utm_source=marketing_email

Note that HubSpot categorises a traffic source as “Email marketing” as long as there is email in the utm_source parameter.

This is done so when users click on a link within a marketing email, an analytics system like HubSpot analytics would track the traffic as coming from a marketing email asset. Therefore if a user ends up as a HubSpot contact, its “Original Source” property will have the value of “Email Marketing”.

How can a HubSpot contact have “Original Source” as “Email marketing” if the email in question was not a HubSpot contact?

A user must have clicked a link to your HubSpot website or other websites with your HubSpot tracking code that contains the UTM parameters as shown in the example above. HubSpot analytics know that this user came from a link that was originally in an email and when this user eventually converts to a HubSpot contact, its “Original Source” will be set to “Email marketing”.

There are few scenarios of how a user could end up clicking on a link as described above. The first could be a marketing email that was sent to an existing contact, then forwarded or shared to other people or even possibly across other mediums as long as the original link contains the same UTM parameter. Another scenario could also be an external entity running email campaigns that contain links to your website. Ultimately, it all depends on the UTM parameter contained in the link that a prospective contact is clicking on.

If the original link came from an internal email marketing, is it possible to track the name of this email?

Yes, as long as the email name was in the UTM parameter when clicked. To do this in HubSpot, contacts with “Email Marketing” as “Original Source” should be filtered. There are 2 drill-drown properties that will contain further information about the contact’s original source.

“Original source drill-down 1” would contain the HubSpot campaign name and “Original source drill-down 2” would contain the HubSpot email name. These properties can only be set when the values are available on the link’s UTM parameters.

There you have it, you have just learnt how the “Original Source” of a contact can be set. We understand this article contains technical elements some people are not always accustomed to so if you have any questions feel free to Contact Us and we’d be happy to help!