Business Text Messaging
The HubSpot Text Messaging Simple Getting Started Guide
In this HubSpot step-by-step guide, we’ll walk through how to add SMS messaging directly into your HubSpot account.
Learn how to create custom HubSpot reports for your SMS campaigns. Gain insights, make informed decisions, and optimize your SMS marketing efforts.
With the creation of custom reports for HubSpot SMS reporting metrics, you can analyze records and activities in your HubSpot account across almost any dimension. The focus on this post will be the creation of three custom reports to track outbound text messaging performance directly in your HubSpot account.
In this article, we provide a step-by-step guide to creating HubSpot custom reports for your Sakari SMS text messaging campaigns. The reports will use the HubSpot text messaging integration from Sakari.
How to Create HubSpot Text Messaging Custom Dashboard Reports
Prior to setting up your custom reports, you need to ensure you have all of the accounts needed. You will need an account with both HubSpot and Sakari to add HubSpot SMS metrics to your HubSpot account:
1. HubSpot Account
If you don’t already have a HubSpot account, can you get started for free here: HubSpot
2. Sakari SMS Account
Sakari is the HubSpot text messaging service we’re using to send text messages in HubSpit. If you don’t have an account, sign up for a free trial of Sakari here.
We need to create two new custom HubSpot properties to measure our text messaging history. You can call these whatever you like, but we’ve named them:
- Total SMS Sent Qty – this is a number field that will measure the total number of text messages sent to a HubSpot contact.
- Last SMS Sent Date – this is a date field that will indicate the last date a text message has been sent to a contact.
To get started with the creation of the custom HubSpot properties, click the “gear” icon in the HubSpot top navigation bar.
Select Properties from the left navigation menu.
On the “Contact Properties” sheet, click the orange “Create a property” button.
We will be creating two new custom contact properties to measure our HubSpot text messaging performance. One is numeric, measuring the total SMS sent, the second is a date, which measures the last date a text message in HubSpot was sent.
Custom Property #1 - Total SMS Sent Qty Custom Property
- Label – Total SMS Sent Qty
- Internal Name – [populated automatically]
- Description – [optional]
- Field Type – Number (select from the pulldown list)
Custom Property #2 - Last SMS Sent Date Custom Property
- Label – Last SMS Sent Date
- Internal Name – [populated automatically]
- Description – [optional]
- Field Type – Date picker (select from the pulldown list)
Now that we have created two new custom properties to measure our HubSpot texting performance, we need to update them each time a text message in sent in HubSpot. To do that, we will create a new contact-based workflow.
This workflow will be triggered by each outbound text message in HubSpot to a contact. When it runs, it will increment the Total SMS Sent Qty field by 1, and it will update the date of the Last SMS Sent Date field for the contact that received the text message.
To get started with the workflow, click “Workflows” in the HubSpot top navigation.
We will create a contact-based workflow from scratch. Click the orange “Create workflow” button.
Now we are ready to define our trigger. Click the orange “Set enrollment triggers” button.
Using our HubSpot SMS integration trigger from Sakari, select the “SMS Sent” trigger option. Then filter the trigger results where the “Message ID” is known.
Important: Before saving, be sure to click the “Re-enrollment” tab and ensure that all re-enrollment has been turned on. Failing to do this will only allow the workflow to execute once for each contact.
Click “Save” to save the workflow trigger.
Now we will add an action to update the Last SMS Sent Date property each time a text message from HubSpot is sent.
Click the orange “Add an action” button.
Click the “Set contact property value” button.
In the contact property pulldown, select the Last SMS Sent Date property. Select “Date of step” as the new property value. This will update the Last SMS Sent date field to the the date the workflow was executed (the day the text message was sent).
Now we will add an action to update the Total SMS Sent Qty property each time a text message from HubSpot is sent. Each time the workflow executes will we increment the property by 1. This will give us a count of total HubSpot text messages sent for the contact.
Click the grey “+” button to add a new action.
Select the “Increase contact property value” button.
From the contact property pulldown, select “Total SMS Sent Qty” and a numeric value of 1. This will increment the contact property by a quantity of 1 each time a text message is sent in HubSpot.
Name Workflow and Turn it On
Now we will give our workflow a name and review it to turn it on.
Now that we’ve created custom properties and built a workflow to update them, we are ready to create custom HubSpot text messaging reporting. We will walk through three different examples of customer reporting.
The steps outlined in Step 7 will be repeated when creating all three of the custom HubSpot reports.
To start creating a new HubSpot custom report, in the top navigation go to Reports > Dashboards.
Click the orange “Add report” button.
Click the “Create custom report” button.
Now we will select a “Single data set” report, using a contact data set. Click the “Next” button to proceed.
This report measures the total count of contacts based on the last date of a sent text message.
Creating the Report
Beginning with the steps outlined in Step 7 above, we begin by adding the “Last SMS Sent Date” as a selected property. Click the orange “Next” button to proceed.
Now we will create the visualization for this custom report by selecting the following:
- Filters – use a time range of your choice
- Chart Type – line
- Frequency – weekly
- Configuration – Configure the chart to display Last SMS Sent Date measured by the Count of Contacts
This report measures the total number of text messages sent by contact owners over a defined period of time in a pie chart format.
Creating the Report
Beginning with the steps outlined in Step 7 above, we will add the “Contact Owner” and “Total SMS Sent Qty” as selected properties. Click the orange “Next” button to proceed.
Now we will create the visualization for this custom report by selecting the following:
- Filters – use a time range of your choice
- Chart Type – pie
- Configuration – Configure the chart to display the Contact Owner measured by Total SMS Sent Qty [Total]
This report measures the total number of text messages sent by contact owners over a defined period of time in a table format.
Creating the Report
Beginning with the steps outlined in Step 7 above, we will add the “Contact Owner” and “Total SMS Sent Qty” as selected properties. Click the orange “Next” button to proceed.
Now we will create the visualization for this custom report by selecting the following:
- Filters – use a time range of your choice
- Chart Type – table
- Configuration – Configure the table as a summarized data table, displaying the Contact Owner measured by Total SMS Sent Qty [Total]
If you have any questions about getting started with HubSpot text messaging, or creating these custom SMS reports, please contact us or start a free trial now.
