In HubSpot, marketing status determines whether a contact is treated as a marketing contact. This matters because marketing contacts count toward your contact tier and billing, so being intentional with your marketing vs non-marketing contacts is key to both your strategy and your budget.
Automating marketing status helps you update contacts consistently based on how they enter your CRM, such as through a form submission. This can be especially useful for high-intent conversions, such as demo requests, newsletter signups, and content downloads.
Why automate marketing status?
Using automation to manage contact status provides a few key advantages:
- Speed to lead: New contacts are immediately ready for workflows and marketing campaigns, with no manual updates needed.
- Data integrity: Automation removes human error and ensures contacts from the same source are categorised consistently.
- Scalability: As your lead volume grows, you can maintain control over your contact tiers without adding more work for your team.
Before you begin
A few important notes before you start:
- HubSpot forms and non-HubSpot forms use different settings: If you’re working with a standard HubSpot form, you’ll manage this on the form itself. If you’re using a non-HubSpot form, you’ll manage it in your non-HubSpot form settings.
- Your permissions may affect what you can see: If an option isn’t showing up, check whether you have access to marketing contact settings.
Steps on how to automatically set marketing status on forms
If you want contacts who submit a HubSpot form to automatically become marketing contacts, you can manage that setting directly in the form editor:
- In your HubSpot account, go to Marketing > Forms.
- Open the form and click Edit
- Click the settings icon in the form editor.
- On the General tab, find Set new contacts as marketing contacts.
- Ensure this is on if you are going to set all submissions as marketing, or turn it off if you want them created as non-marketing contact instead.
It’s worth noting that while we can automate marketing contact status via forms, this does not account for legal and compliance requirements (e.g. POPIA). Marketing communications should only be sent to contacts who have provided explicit consent.
Once this setting is on:
- New contacts created through the form will be set as marketing contacts automatically.
- Existing non-marketing contacts who submit the form can also be updated to marketing contacts.
Note: When sending emails, it is not sufficient to only have marketing contact status, as you will also need to set subscriptions based on the form and explicit consent to meet POPIA and GDPR compliance.
When to use this setting
This setting is useful when you want a simple way to update marketing contact status for form submissions automatically.
You can use the default form setting when:
- Your privacy and consent processes are already built into the form
- The form captures the appropriate consent or legal basis
- You want all submissions from that form to follow the same rule
If consent needs to be checked before updating marketing status, use a workflow instead. This gives you more control over when you update marketing status and helps align your setup with legal and compliance requirements.
💡 Important: Marking a contact as a marketing contact does not confirm consent to receive marketing communications. If you operate under requirements such as POPIA or GDPR, make sure your form captures the appropriate consent or legal basis before sending marketing emails.
Need more control over when contacts become marketing contacts? Learn how to use workflows to manage marketing status more strategically.
If you don’t see the setting
If Set new contacts as marketing contacts doesn’t appear in the form editor, check the following:
- whether you’re editing a standard HubSpot form
- whether you have access to marketing contacts
- whether your account includes the right marketing contacts entitlement
Running into issues with marketing contact updates?
Explore common troubleshooting scenarios and how to fix them.