Unlocking the Power of HubSpot for Financial Services: Managing Contact Email Updates

When marketing to financial advisors and other professionals, maintaining accurate and up-to-date contact records is critical. One of the benefits of using HubSpot for financial services companies is a feature that you'd likely pass by in a features list: automatic clearing of hard bounces and unsubscribes.

If a contact in your HubSpot portal has hard bounced (either globally or within your instance) or has unsubscribed from all emails, updating their email address clears both the hard bounce reason and the unsubscribe flag. This means that if a contact changes firms and receives a new email address, you won’t lose the ability to engage with them due to outdated information.

Why This Feature Matters for Financial Services Marketers

Financial advisors frequently switch firms, and firms themselves often undergo rebrands, acquisitions, or mergers. If you maintain a single contact record for advisors, their history remains intact even as they move between organizations. But old, invalid email addresses with historical errors could render an entire contact record useless—blocking valuable marketing efforts and sales opportunities.

HubSpot's automatic clearing of hard bounces and unsubscribe statuses when emails are updated ensures that you can continue building relationships without manual intervention or the need for duplicate records.

Best Practices for Managing Contact Exclusions and Marketing Status

To fully leverage this HubSpot feature while maintaining compliance and delivering relevant marketing communications, we recommend the following best practices:

1. Maintain a Master Exclusion List

Create an Active List in HubSpot that includes:

• Contacts who have unsubscribed

• Contacts with a value in the Marketing Email Hard Bounce Reason property

• Contacts who have opted out of marketing subscription types

• Contacts at firms you do not market to

2. Automate Marketing Status Updates

• Workflow 1: Automatically mark contacts added to the Master Exclusion List as Non-Marketing Contacts to ensure they are not included in future list emails.

• Workflow 2: When a contact is removed from the Master Exclusion List (and meets your other marketing contact criteria), update them back to a Marketing Contact status.

The Bottom Line

For financial services companies using HubSpot, this built-in functionality provides a seamless way to keep contact data fresh while preserving engagement opportunities. By implementing automated workflows and a Master Exclusion List, you can ensure that only relevant, high-quality contacts receive your marketing messages—driving better campaign performance and stronger advisor relationships.

Want to optimize your HubSpot instance for financial services marketing? Prairie Path Marketing specializes in helping firms make the most of HubSpot’s powerful features. Get in touch to learn more!