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Understand marketing contacts

Last updated: April 8, 2024

Available with any of the following subscriptions, except where noted:

Marketing Hub   Starter , Professional , Enterprise

When purchasing a Marketing Hub subscription, you select a contact tier to set a limit to the number of contacts you’ll engage with through HubSpot’s marketing tools each month (e.g., marketing emails, ads). The contacts included in this tier are called marketing contacts, which are the only contacts that affect the cost of your subscription. Any contacts you don’t plan on marketing to are called non-marketing contacts. Non-marketing contacts don’t count towards your contact tier, and you’re not charged for these contacts.

Below, learn more about how to use marketing contacts, update contacts’ marketing status, and navigate contact billing cycles.

Please note: the following information applies only to Marketing Hub Starter, Professional, and Enterprise accounts with marketing contacts. Older Marketing Hub accounts may not have marketing contacts. Learn how to check if your HubSpot account has access to marketing contacts or request marketing contacts for your account.

Check your access to marketing contacts

All new Marketing Hub accounts include marketing contacts. If you purchased your Marketing Hub subscription prior to the introduction of marketing contacts, you may not currently have access. To check whether your Marketing Hub subscription includes marketing contacts:

  • In your HubSpot account, click your account name in the top right corner, then click Account & Billing.
  • Under Products & Add-ons, check whether your Marketing Hub subscription shows Marketing Contacts.

marketing-contacts

  • If your subscription says Marketing Contacts, you can use marketing contacts.
  • If your subscription doesn’t say Marketing Contacts, you don’t have access to marketing contacts. If you’d like to gain access, reach out to HubSpot support (Starter), or your Customer Success Manager (Professional or Enterprise only).

Monitor your marketing contacts

The number of marketing contacts in your account affects your account's billing on a monthly basis. HubSpot sends you notifications when the count of marketing contacts approaches your contact tier limit, but you can also monitor your count of marketing contacts at any time. Below, learn more about what happens if you exceed or stay below your contact tier, and how you can keep track of your account’s marketing contacts.

Please note: if you have a Marketing Hub subscription, an in-app banner will appear when you've reached 98% of your Marketing Contacts tier limit. To remove this banner, you must turn off Modify billing and change name on contract permissions.

Learn more about marketing contacts billing.

Set contacts as marketing and non-marketing

To manage your contacts, you’ll need to be aware of when contacts are automatically set as marketing or non-marketing, and understand how and when you can manually update a contact’s status. Below are resources to help you understand and update marketing statuses.

Tools that only work with marketing contacts

The following marketing tools in your HubSpot account will only work for contacts set as marketing:

Please note: other types of emails can be sent to your non-marketing contacts, including sales one-to-one emails, sequences, chat transcript emails from conversations, registration emails, ticket kickback emails, transactional emails, and customer feedback surveys.

Marketing contact properties

There are a set of contact properties that tell a contact’s current status, when the status was updated, by which user or tool it was updated, and how the contact’s status will change upon the next update date. Learn how to check a contact's property value.

  • Marketing contact until next update: indicates if a contact will be considered a marketing or non-marketing contact upon the next update date.
    • When it is Yes, the contact is currently a marketing contact, but will be set as a non-marketing contact on the next update date.
    • When it is left blank, the contact’s current status will remain the same after the update date.
  • Marketing contact status: indicates if the contact is currently a marketing or non-marketing contact.
    • When it is Marketing contact, the contact is a marketing contact and does count towards your contact tier in this period.
    • When it is Non-marketing contact, the contact is a non-marketing contact and doesn’t count towards your contact tier in this period.
  • Marketing contact status source type: indicates the tool that set the latest value in the contact's marketing contact status.
  • Marketing contact status source name: indicates the ID of the specific user, activity, or tool that set the latest value in the contact's marketing contact status.

Learn more about HubSpot's default contact properties.

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