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Set up HubSpot transactional email surveys
Set up HubSpot transactional email surveys
Alex Bitca avatar
Written by Alex Bitca
Updated over a week ago

The transactional email campaign gives you the possibility to survey your contacts based on events triggered in your HubSpot workspace.

Follow the step by step tutorial to learn how to configure a transactional email campaign in Retently, and how to connect it to HubSpot workflows using a webhook link.

Note: The Retently webhook link can be added only in HubSpot workflows. The Workflows feature is supported in the following HubSpot subscriptions: Marketing Hub Enterprise, Sales Hub Enterprise and Service Hub Enterprise.

Set up a transactional email campaign in Retently

To create a new campaign, go to the Campaigns page, choose a survey metric (NPS, CSAT, CES, 5-STAR), next select email as your survey channel, and from the dropdown list with campaign types, select the Transactional option.

Assign a survey template

In the campaign editor, start with choosing the survey template that your contacts, who match this campaign, will receive in their Inbox. You can select an existing email template, or create and customize a new one. 

Make sure the survey template has your company’s logo, otherwise you will not be able to select and use it.

When everything looks ok, hit the Assign button to add it as the main survey template in your campaign.

Filter your audience

As a rule, your campaign audience will be defined by the HubSpot event and only the contacts that trigger the event will be surveyed in this campaign.

However, you can apply an additional layer of filters to narrow down your audience.

Let’s assume that you have a HubSpot workflow that is fired when a deal is closed, and you are also storing the country of your contacts as a tag. This would allow you to add some extra filters in Retently and survey only the contacts that live in a particular country.

Your audience filters would look as in the example below:

In most cases, there is no need to adjust the audience filters at all. But, if you have to, we recommend checking our article to learn more about the audience segmentation in campaigns or you can request assistance from our support team.

Edit the survey schedule

The first thing to do in the Schedule section is to specify how your surveys will be triggered. Since we are configuring this campaign for Zendesk, choose this service from the drop-down menu. 

NOTE: It’s important to select the needed service because the content on the Setup page will adjust based on your choice. For our goal, we will need a webhook link that will be automatically generated and available for you to copy in the Setup section.

Next, you have three options that will help you configure how and when your surveys will be sent to your campaign’s audience:

  • Sample audience: Choose what percentage of triggered events will be surveyed. When switched off, all triggered events will result in a survey.

  • Delay survey: Send the survey at a later date from the triggered event. When switched off, the survey will be sent immediately.

  • Throttle survey: Throttle helps avoid over-surveying customers if they have been surveyed recently in this campaign. When switched off, customers will be surveyed in this campaign every time they trigger an event. This option won’t affect the schedule in other campaigns.

Reminders

Reminders will help increase your survey response rate. For instance, if a contact didn't respond to your survey within three days after opening it, our system will send them a reminder email survey. This way, you will be reaching your contacts once more when they might be more likely to answer the survey. 

Moreover, you can choose a different survey template for your reminders, with a different wording or style, that might be more appealing to your survey respondents. You can create a new email survey template in the Templates section of your campaign, or on the Templates page.

Notifications

In the Notifications section, you can create custom notifications and keep track of your progress.

When creating a new notification you will be asked to choose one or more event types you want to be notified about, the notification frequency (immediately, daily or weekly digest), and the channel (email or Slack).

Don't forget to save your notifications and make sure they are enabled. 

Autoresponders

In this section, you can create a set of email auto-responders meant to engage with contacts who did not leave any text feedback, left a Detractor score or simply to ask Promoters to leave their reviews on specific platforms and spread word-of-mouth. Autoresponders will be sent to respondents with a random delay between 5 and 60 minutes from the moment they've answered the survey.

Webhooks

Webhooks allow you to send HTTP requests to another web application every time an event is triggered, be it new feedback, a bounced survey or an unsubscribed contact. Don't forget to save each created webhook and make sure they're enabled. 

Setup

In the Setup section, you will find a unique webhook link that will be used to receive contacts data from HubSpot and trigger the transactional survey. Make sure to keep this link handy because you will need it soon when configuring the HubSpot event.

NOTE: If the webhook link is not displayed, then go back to the Schedule section and make sure that HubSpot is selected in your services drop-down menu.

Activating your campaign

The final step is to activate the transactional email campaign by switching the toggle button ON. 

No surveys will be sent just yet because we haven’t connected the campaign to a HubSpot event. We will do this next!

Set up HubSpot events for your survey campaign

(Optional) Create a “Tags” custom property

When a HubSpot event will be triggered, your contacts’ data will be pushed through the Retently webhook link. The following data will be available for Retently:

  • Contact’s name

  • Contact’s email address

  • Contact’s company name

  • (Optional) contact’s tags

These properties are required because in order to send a survey in Retently, our system has to create a new customer in your Audience (or update a customer if you already have them in your account).

While the name, email address and company name properties are default in HubSpot and will be exported automatically, there is no default tags property. Therefore, if you want to be able to further segment your audience in your Retently campaign’s audience (see the “Filter your audience” section at the beginning of this tutorial), then you will need to create a custom property and add it in your contacts’ profiles.

To create the custom property, follow these steps:

Access the Setting page and choose the Properties category from the left sidebar. Next, click the “Create property” button.

Give your new property the following values:

  • Object type: Contact

  • Group: Contact information

  • Label: Tags

On the next step, in the “Field type” selector, choose the “Single-line text” option. Finally, click the Create button. 

Any values you will add to this property in your contacts’ profiles, will be imported as customer tags in Retently.

Create a HubSpot workflow

Select workflow type

You can track specific events in HubSpot by configuring a workflow.

Follow this tutorial to learn how to configure a new workflow (this is the official HubSpot tutorial on creating workflows):

In your HubSpot account, navigate to Automation > Workflows, and in the upper right corner, click Create workflow.

In the left panel, choose whether you want to start your workflow from scratch, or from a template.

  • Start from scratch: to begin with a blank workflow, click the Start from scratch tab. Then select Contact-based, Company-based, Deal-based, Ticket-based, or Quote-based as the workflow type. If you select Contact-based, you can choose to continue from scratch or center your workflow on a date or date property.

  • Templates: to start with a default set of enrollment triggers and actions, click the Templates tab. In the left panel, search or click the Type dropdown menu to file by template type. Select a template to preview the enrollment triggers and actions on the right.

Next, click the pencil icon edit to give your workflow a name, then click Create workflow. 

Set enrollment criteria

Once your workflow has been created, set the enrollment criteria. When a contact record meets these criteria, they'll automatically be enrolled. If you only want to enroll records manually, leave the enrollment trigger box blank. Learn more about manual enrollment.

In the workflow editor, click Set enrollment triggers. Learn more about setting enrollment triggers in workflows.

In the right panel, select a filter type for your enrollment trigger. Set up the criteria, then click Apply filter.

By default, records will only enroll in a workflow the first time they meet the enrollment triggers. To enable re-enrollment:

  • In the right sidebar, click the Re-enrollment tab.

  • Click to toggle the Re-enrollment switch on.

  • Select the triggers that you want to use for re-enrollment. Learn more about adding re-enrollment triggers to workflows.

Add more enrollment triggers if needed, and when you're done, click Save.

Add the webhook action

Click the plus icon + to add a workflow action. In the right panel, select Trigger a webhook and enter the webhook URL and hit the Save button.

Note: There is no need to tick the “Use Request Signature” checkbox, and you don’t need to enter an App ID. 

Manage settings

Click the Settings tab to manage the workflow's settings. On the General page, select days and times that you want actions to execute, enroll contacts from Salesforce, and associate campaigns with the workflow. On the Unenrollment and suppression page, set unenrollment and suppression criteria to automatically remove or exclude records from the workflow. 

Turn on your workflow

In the upper right corner, click Review. Choose to enroll records that currently meet the criteria or only enroll records that meet the criteria in the future:

  • To only enroll records that meet the enrollment triggers after the workflow is turned on, select No, only enroll [objects] which meet the trigger criteria after turning the workflow on.

  • To enroll existing records that meet the enrollment triggers, select Yes, enroll existing [objects] which meet the trigger criteria as of now.

  • If you have a Marketing Hub Starter, Professional, or Enterprise account, in contact-based workflows you can view a static list of contacts that meet the criteria by clicking Use lists to see these contacts. The list will automatically be saved and can be accessed from your lists dashboard.

Finally, review workflow settings, then click Turn on. In the dialog box, click Yes, turn on.

After you turn your workflow on, you can view the workflow history to monitor the records that are enrolled.

From now on, every time a ticket will match your automation’s conditions, the contact will be added to Retently and a transactional email survey will be sent immediately or according to your campaign’s schedule.

Note: If you want to create more transactional campaigns, you have to add the new webhook to the HubSpot workflows.

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