Using unsubscribe links in Smartlead and syncing with HubSpot

If you want to know how to use unsubscribe links in Smartlead to remove prospects from campaigns—and sync the data with HubSpot using OutboundSync—then you’re in the right place!

This comprehensive guided tutorial details the setup process, including attaching webhooks, configuring campaign settings, and handling unsubscribe events.

Harris emphasizes the importance of custom tracking domains and demonstrate the synchronization of unsubscribe statuses between Smartlead and HubSpot.

Additionally, Harris explores how to update Smartlead block lists using HubSpot lists with OutboundSync, ensuring that contacts are not re-engaged in future campaigns.

Transcript

Introduction to Unsubscribe Links in Smartlead

[00:00:00] Harris Kenny: I want to take a few minutes to walk you through how unsubscribed links work in Smartlead, how you can use them to remove prospects from your campaigns, and then how you can use OutboundSync to not only add them to a list and opt them out of a subscription type in HubSpot, but also sync that block back if you want to, to Smartlead to the block list to make sure that they don’t get contacted again.

[00:00:27] Harris Kenny: Now, I want to make a distinction that this is not the only way to do this. You can use lead categorization and smart lead, and you can use those reply based opt outs where you’d include in a signature like PS. If you’re not interested in hearing from me anymore, let me know. Tell me, no, thanks. Something like that.

[00:00:45] Harris Kenny: And you could use categorization and you could actually do a similar process that we’re going to show today with OutboundSync with the HubSpot synchronization between the two platforms. Um, but for now, this video, I’m going to focus specifically on the links, how to use them, what they look like when they’re clicked and, um, and then how to pass the data back and forth.

Setting Up Webhooks and Campaigns

[00:01:03] Harris Kenny: So first, we’ve got an example because we’re using OutboundSync. We want to have our webhook attached to a client. In this case, this could also be a user webhook and we want to include the lead unsubscribed webhook event. We’ve got our campaign built and in the campaign settings, I just want to flag.

[00:01:21] Harris Kenny: There’s a couple of things here. So we want to make sure that we are tracking link clicks and that we are sending in HTML. In other words, that these two boxes are not checked. Because those are necessary for how the unsubscribe link works in SmartLead. And I’m going to show you that link in a second.

Configuring Unsubscribe Links in Emails

[00:01:37] Harris Kenny: First, I just want to show you where you can add the unsubscribe message. And then below this is an unsubscribe header tag. But whatever you put here is going to be the text that SmartLead puts for its opt out unsubscribe inside of the email that you’re sending. Now I’m going to take a step back and just show you the sequence.

[00:01:53] Harris Kenny: This is what it looks like in the sequence editor. If you have that unsubscribe setting turned on with the text, it will automatically put it at the bottom of your email. Unless you choose to put that unsubscribed text earlier. In the email, which you can do. It doesn’t have to be at the bottom. You could put it in the middle of a paragraph or something like that.

[00:02:14] Harris Kenny: When you go to review your email, unless it’s sent, it won’t be shown here. And if you send a test, it won’t be shown until or after the email sends. Then the rendering shows what actually went out of smart lead.

Tracking and Testing Unsubscribe Links

[00:02:27] Harris Kenny: And so in this case, you can see the link. Now I’m hovering over this and just in the bottom of my browser, and I’m going to show you what it looks like in a second.

[00:02:33] Harris Kenny: On the email client side in Gmail, it’s previewing using the custom tracking domain that we have attached to this account. And so that’s definitely a best practice. If you’re going to be doing the unsubscribes through link clicks from smart lead, it’s definitely best practice to have your tracking domain turned on a custom tracking domain set up.

[00:02:52] Harris Kenny: Now our campaign has gone live. We’ve included the unsubscribe link in the email. You can see this email here at the bottom. And then when that email is clicked, this is what it looks like. It’s loading the tracking link here unsubscribe. And then this is a unique identifier. That’s going to. Fingerprint back to the initial lead that you sent to in the first place.

[00:03:15] Harris Kenny: So this is what the lead sees. They are not going to go to like a subscription preferences page where they can uncheck multiple types of subscriptions and things like that. They will only be shown this simple page. And then from here, this is going to generate a webhook event. That’s going to roll over to HubSpot.

Managing Unsubscribes in HubSpot

[00:03:30] Harris Kenny: So let’s talk about what that looks like. Now in HubSpot, we have set up a workflow that’s listening for. That lead unsubscribe event. And so this is a timeline event and we’re using this integration filter in OutboundSync to trigger when that lead lead unsubscribe event occurs when it’s known. And when it is known, what we’re doing here is we are actually adding this contact to a subscription type.

[00:04:00] Harris Kenny: Now this isn’t the only way to do it, but I think this is a pretty nice way to manage your opt outs inside of HubSpot in a really clean, straightforward way using subscription types. And then we’re going to use that subscription type to update a list. And that list is going to be how we make the block list happen.

[00:04:17] Harris Kenny: So we’ve got a list built here, just called unsubscribes. And in this case, we’re using that email subscription opted out of one to one. This could also be cold outreach, outbound campaigns, et cetera. There’s another way of doing this because OutboundSync will also write to a contact property called last unsubscribe time.

[00:04:32] Harris Kenny: So if that were known, you could also build a list in that way. Either way, it’s going to show up here. This is our contact. This is the one that clicked. The unsubscribed link earlier in our email, and I’m going to show you the actual contact record really quick. So you can see the exact history here. You can see that on that webhook event that occurred.

[00:04:52] Harris Kenny: You can see all this workflow activity being synced here, the subscription chain to list membership change. And this is how we are. We are synchronizing the unsubscribed status between the two platforms.

Synchronizing Unsubscribes with Smartlead

[00:05:05] Harris Kenny: Now to take it one step further, if we want to do that unsubscriber opt out all the way through back to smartly to the block list, we’re going to use outbound syncs block list feature where we select that list in HubSpot.

[00:05:18] Harris Kenny: This one that we were just looking at, we select our API key and smart lead. We select the type of blocking in this case, individual email address, a domain level block would be more for like customers, competitors, suppliers. That would be like, you never want to email anybody from that company again, for whatever reason.

[00:05:34] Harris Kenny: But that’s. I don’t think appropriate in this case. And then if you’re an agency, we have the selector for which smart lead client account you want to do. Now let’s go back to smart lead and see what this looks like on the smart lead side. When a lead, and this is, you know, this has been triggered in this case, the blocking has been triggered by this opt out, right?

[00:05:58] Harris Kenny: So this isn’t outbound sync specific. What I’m about to show you next is, but just remember the first part of this video, everything here, this is just really kind of a one on one on how this part of smart lead works and hopefully that’s helpful for you. Hopefully you get a sense of how unsubscribed links work in smartly now after watching this, whether or not you’re going to this next part of the video or this final part.

[00:06:18] Harris Kenny: So when you go to that lead, you can see it’s been blocked because of the unsubscribed click. And then with outbound sync, we are also in this case, choosing to add it to the global block list so that we will never email this contact ever again across any campaign, as long as that client is selected.

Conclusion and Next Steps

[00:06:36] Harris Kenny: So let me know what you think.

[00:06:36] Harris Kenny: I hope this is helpful. What I’d like to do is I’d like to do a follow up video showing how to do this through those. Replies of the email, you know, the prospect saying no, thanks. Opt out unsubscribe just by writing back instead of clicking something for a few reasons. But I think the main one being deliverability, and I think that’s pretty standard practice these days is to give that text based opt out, but a lot of companies will do links and this is how that works.