Personalize HubSpot SMS Messages with Contact Owner

Last updated: April 15, 2019

How can you personalize HubSpot SMS messages to make them a little more friendly and less of a marketing message? HubSpot uses the Contact owner property to set the ownership of a contact, but unfortunately, the only contact owner attribute that can be defined in HubSpot is the contact owners name.

In this article we’ll walk through how to create personalized HubSpot text messages that allow you to add ANY contact owner attributes you want to your sales message. Using just a single template, we can automatically insert a salesperson phone number, name, title – whatever!

Let’s get started!

HubSpot Contact Owner Workflow Personalization

In order to send HubSpot text messages using Contact owner attributes, you’re going to need to have three things prior to get started:

A HubSpot account. HubSpot is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that allows you to easily manage thousand of customers. To get started for free, go to: https://www.hubspot.com/
Sakari SMS. By default, HubSpot does not have external SMS capabilities. In order to send HubSpot deal text messages, we need to add a third-party SMS service. We will link the two systems using HubSpot integration.
Sakari SMS <> HubSpot integration. Linking HubSpot and Sakari is a simple process that takes just minutes and requires no code. Here’s the guide to setting up HubSpot text messaging integration.

Sending Personalized Contact Owner Messages: Getting Started

Step 1

Create a new workflow

From the top menu, select Automation > Workflows.

In the top right click the “Create Workflow” button.

Step 2

Select Contact-Based Workflow

Select Automation > Workflows from the HubSpot top navigation menu.

Step 3

Set Enrollment Triggers

Now we’ll give our new workflow a name. In our example, we’re going to call it Contact Owner Personalization.

Click the orange “Set enrollment triggers” button to add a trigger.

Now we’ll define the HubSpot workflow trigger. The trigger is what will cause the workflow to begin. In our example, we want a text message to be sent to a customer when a form is submitted. Alternatively, we could select any of the other options as a trigger.

Select the form you want to trigger the text message. Then click “Done” and click “Save.”

Step 4

Add an action

Now that we’ve completed the enrollment trigger, we’re ready to add the action. The action is what happens when the enrollment criteria has been met. Click the orange “Add an action” button.

Select the “Send SMS” integration option.

Step 5

Configure your SMS message

After selecting the “Send SMS” integration option, a new window will appear to configure your text message. There are five fields that need to be set in order to configure your message.

Send SMS Fields

Phone Number – this is the phone number of the contact that will receive the text message
Message – this is the message that the contact will receive
Messaging Type – transactional or marketing
Run As – This will send the text message from a specific contact owners dedicated phone number
Additional Contact Owner Attributes (JSON) – the JSON data that will be used to automatically personalize each text message

Phone Number

The phone number field defines what mobile phone number will be used to send your text message. This field should correspond with how your data is managed in HubSpot.

You have three options for your phone number:

Phone Number (a HubSpot default field)
Mobile Phone Number (a HubSpot default field)
HubSpot custom property

To select your field, click the “contact token” button and select your field from the dropdown list. In our example, we’ll select “Phone Number.” Using the contact token attribute of “Phone Number” the contacts phone number will automatically be added using just a single workflow.

Message

The message field defines what will be sent to your contact. You have a choice of either using an entirely static message, or entering wildcard fields that will automatically populate personalized information specific to that contact. In our example, we will create a message that will automatically insert the contacts first name as well as contact owner attributes.

To add a contact attribute (e.g. first name), select the “Contact token” button and select your field from the dropdown menu. In our example, we added the contacts first name.

To add contact owner attributes, we need to follow a different structure. By default, no contact owner attributes are stored in HubSpot. In our example, we will add two fields using a lookup table we’ll define later. The fields we’ll add are the contact owner first name (the salespersons first name) and the contact owners mobile phone number.

The structure for adding the contact owner fields is:

[[[hubspot.owner.fieldname]]]

The “fieldname” corresponds with the names we’ll define in the Additional Contact Owner Attributes (JSON) step.

Messaging Type

The messaging type defines what phone number will be used. There are two options, marketing or transactional. We will select transactional.

Run As

The Run As field can be defined to send the text message from a specific users phone number. When turned on, the text message will be sent from the contact owners phone number.

In our example, we will leave the field blank, which will use your Sakari shared account number.

For more information about setting up user-defined phone numbers, please contact the Sakari team at: help@sakari.io

Additional Contact Owner Attributes (JSON)

The Additional Contact Owner Attributes field is how we will define the contact owner attributes that will be added to the text message. The structure of these fields is in JavaScript Object Notation.

In our example, for each contact owner we are defining their mobile phone number, first name and title. We can create any attributes here we want. In our example the “user1@email.com” email address should be the email address associate with the HubSpot user.

If you need help structuring your JSON, this JSON formatter is a great resource.

JSON Example

{

  “user1@email.com”:{

    “mobile”:”+1-333-222-4444″,

    “firstname”:”John”,

    “title”:”Sales Associate”

},

  “user2@email.com”:{

    “mobile”:”+1-333-444-5555″,

    “firstname”:”Mary”,

    “title”:”General Manager”

}

}

Step 6

Save your SMS Message

Now that we’ve completed all of the Send SMS steps, we’re ready to save and test our workflow. Click the orange “Save” button.

Step 7

Testing the Contact Owner Messaging

Now we can test the workflow. In our example message, we’re automatically inserting the contacts first name, the salespersons first name and the salespersons mobile phone number.

Looking at the two example images below, we have a single contact record that has been toggled between two different contact owners.

In the first example, with a contact owner of John, whose email address is “user1@email.com.” Based on the JSON file the system automatically added his first name and mobile phone number.

In the second example, using the same template, we changed the contact owner to Mary. Mary’s user email address is “user2@email.com.” Based on the JSON file the system automatically added her first name and mobile phone number.

Contact Owner of John

Contact Owner of Mary

Need help?

If you need help getting started with sending personalized HubSpot text messages with contact owner attributes, contact us at help@sakari.io. We’d be glad to help you get started!

Adam Horsman

Adam is the Co-Founder of Sakari. Sakari is a business SMS service for sending text message alerts, reminders, events and notifications to customers and employees, wherever they are. Manage your entire business messaging in one location, with unlimited users, branch accounts and integration with over 1,300 applications.

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