Question

How to link People profiles for partners and spouses

  • 7 February 2022
  • 7 replies
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Userlevel 2
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Hi there,

 

In our demo, we spoke with our rep about the need to link profiles for partners and spouses. He mentioned there is a workaround to achieve this through linking the two profiles. One would be the primary contact (indicated by a field) and the secondary contact would be linked to them. 

 

For context, we work in real estate there are two reasons we have to make this work.

 

First, more often than not, we work with a husband and wife when they buy or sell a home. The client is two people with two email addresses. Both are equally important. Both will have activity logged. Both need to be tied to the pipeline in one way or another.

 

Second, when we have email and mail marketing campaigns, we need to pull data in two distinct ways. For email, it is relatively straightforward with the individual profiles. But, when we do  mail campaigns, it is important to differentiate between a primary and secondary contact so that we do not send duplicate postcards to one house. The plan is to pull data from the primary contact, which will include their home address and formal mailing salutation. 

 

I came across this article for connecting fields but am not sure if it is the right thing. What is the best practice for this situation?

 

Best,
​​​​​​​Christina


7 replies

Userlevel 7
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Hi @cae787!

Based on what you’ve said, I think the best option may be to add both spouses to an opportunity for a couple of reasons -

  1. Emails/activities with either spouse will appear in the opportunity’s activity log.
  2. You’ll have one primary contact for each opportunity.

Connecting fields could work, but you wouldn’t have either of the functions above. I usually only recommend connect fields if you need visibility but not much else.

As for how to add multiple people to an opportunity, make sure you have that opportunity created first. Then open it and click the + button under the Related section.

 

Once you have multiple people in your opportunity, all their activities will show:

 

If you need to change the primary contact, you can do it here:

 

Let me know if that helps!

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Thank you!

 

This makes sense for our active clients when we are working with them on a deal.

 

In this scenario, would it be possible to simultaneously utilize connect fields and add both spouses tied to the opportunity? I ask because we need to come up with a plan for how to keep spouses linked when the deal is finished and they go from active clients to past clients (which is how we plan to categorize them as a contact type). 

 

C

Userlevel 7
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@cae787 You certainly can do that, but keep in mind that when you associate a contact with a deal, they remain associated even after the opportunity finishes or if you change their contact type. So you probably don’t have to use both methods to connect them to the deal.

BUT I do see some benefit of using connect fields to connect contacts to each other. That way, if you open up Ryan Reynolds’ profile, you will see he’s married to Blake Lively.

I’ll put some screenshots below to demonstrate what it looks like if:

  1. You associate both spouses to an opportunity, and
  2. You build a Connect Field to link one spouse to another (and vice versa)

 

From the deal/opportunity, you’ll see them both listed under the Related section (because you associated them both with that opportunity)

 

If you click into Ryan Reynolds, you can see who his spouse is in the Details section (because you have the Connect Field). And in the Related section, you can see the opportunities he has been added to.

 

And if you look at Blake Lively, you’ll see a very similar thing:

 

With this setup, you have visibility to both the spouse and the opportunity.

The downside is that you’ll actually have two fields on each contact records (see “Spouse of” and “Spouse to” in the screenshots). This is because a Connect Field is actually made up of two fields; one for Ryan Reynolds → Blake Lively and another for Blake Lively → Ryan Reynolds.

 

If you wanna try setting up the connect field, go to Settings > Customize > Manage Fields on Records > Create Field. Then under Type, select Connect Field. I’ll put a screenshot of the settings I used in the example above.

 

I hope that answer was helpful and not confusing :sweat_smile: Let me know either way!

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@Michelle from Copper this is SUPER helpful! Thank you!

 

I think using both connect fields from spouse to spouse and tying each profile to the deal is the way to go for how we will utilize the system.

 

My last question on setting ourselves up for success is about importing. Is there a way for us to establish the links between spouses via connect fields when we are preparing our spreadsheet for import? About 95% of our 600 contacts are married so if this can be done ahead of time, it would be a huge deal.

 

C

 

Userlevel 7
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@cae787 glad you found it helpful! As for your next question:

Is there a way for us to establish the links between spouses via connect fields when we are preparing our spreadsheet for import?

Unfortunately there’s no way to import connect fields.

New thought! There might be another way to handle those connections… some customers (especially in real estate) actually re-purpose the Companies record type into Families. This involves re-naming the term “Companies” to “Families” in the system (very easy to do), and then creating a Company/Family for each couple.

Here’s an example where The Emmersons includes Aaron and Catherine Emmerson, and they are looking for a 3 bedroom in Leslieville:

With this method, you could import your contacts directly into the same family. You just need to include a “Family” or “Company” column in your import sheet.

When I import this sheet, both Catherine Emmerson and Aaron Emmerson would be put into the company/family “The Emmersons”

 

I’m also going to put some more info on connect fields below. But I think the above solution might work well for your situation. Let me know your thoughts!

 

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In general, these are the limitations you should keep in mind for connect fields:

  1. They cannot be imported or exported
  2. They cannot be included in reports
  3. They cannot be used with workflow automations

I found a video I made for another user. It covers connect fields but uses a different example. I’ll put it here in case it might be helpful :slight_smile:

 

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Thank you!

 

I will look into this option!

 

Can you clarify on one thing? You mentioned that connect fields cannot be used in workflow automations. Can companies?

Userlevel 7
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@cae787 

You mentioned that connect fields cannot be used in workflow automations. Can companies?

Yes, you can either use a Company as the triggering record (e.g. If a new Company is added, do X) or as a trigger condition (e.g. If a Person is newly associated with Y Company, do X).

There’s some nuance to that depending on the exact workflow automation you’re hoping to set up. Let me know if you had something specific in mind or if that was more of a general question. :slight_smile:

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