As a HubSpot Consultant a common query I receive is about the different options for Sources in HubSpot and how each one is captured.
People often create their own custom properties without understanding what's already in HubSpot and how to use them, which could save you a job. So, knowing the difference between all the Sources and how they're captured before you decide to create your own is worth knowing.
Original Traffic Source: Tells you where the Contact came from such as
Email Marketing, Organic Social, or Offline Sources. Original Traffic Source is static so it won't update unless it's manually changed.
Original Traffic Source Drilldown 1 provides more context and could include
the name of the social media site, the import if the contact was created through an imported file or the name of a marketing campaign.
Original Traffic Source Drilldown 2 provides the most specific context such as
the exact name or ID of the piece of content where the contact originated such as a website URL, the name of an import file or the name of a marketing email.
Latest Traffic Source, Latest Traffic Source Drilldown 1 and 2 are very similar but are the most recent interaction with the Contact so this Property will be overwritten in time.
Record Source: was introduced to give better information on how the Contact record was created such as manually added or via a Form. For example, if the Original Source is Organic Social and the Record Source is Form, they first interacted with the website via Organic Social then went onto to submit a Form
The Company and Deal Source is set by the associated Contact’s Source
All of the above is captured automatically in HubSpot though so you don’t need to worry about capturing it or including it in an Import.
If you're importing data that you'd like to track, you can always create a custom property. This won't be automatically tracked in HubSpot so you'll need to include it in the import file.
You can also use a workflow to copy the source to a Deal when a Deal is created if it helps with building lists and reports.