Write Intent Activity to HubSpot Timelines
Use Case
- Show intent activity on the HubSpot contact and company records your sellers already work in
- Have website visits, ad engagement, and audience activations appear on the record timeline
- Keep an existing contact sync running alongside it
An activity export writes to the timeline on a record. It does not create or update records. If you also want contact records synced, that is a second export.
Prerequisites
- The Delivr.ai app installed in your HubSpot portal, connected from Integrations in the Delivr dashboard.
- An audience or a pixel source to draw activity from.
- App events approved for the connected app. This is a HubSpot-side approval and it is the most common reason a correctly configured export writes nothing.
Setup
Configuration lives on two screens. Neither one links to the other, so it is easy to complete one and assume you are done.
1. Choose which activity types to write
In the Delivr dashboard, open Integrations, then your HubSpot connection, and find the timeline activity settings.
These toggles control which activity types are written. They do not turn activity delivery on. A connection with every type enabled still writes nothing until you complete step 2.
2. Turn on activity delivery for the export
Create an export as usual. On the Destination step, select your HubSpot integration. A switch appears:
Deliver intent activity instead of records
Turn it on.
This switch is what routes the export down the timeline path. Left off, the export runs against HubSpot as a record sync and writes nothing to any timeline.
Finish the schedule and review steps and save.
Activity replaces records, it does not add to them
An export with the activity switch on delivers only activity. It stops syncing contact and company records, which is why the record-shaped options such as field mappings and list selection disappear from the form when you enable it.
If you want both, create two exports against the same HubSpot integration:
| Export | Activity switch | Delivers |
|---|---|---|
| Contact sync | off | Contact and company records |
| Activity | on | Timeline activity only |
What appears on the record
Activity is aggregated before it is written, so a timeline entry is not one row per raw event.
| Source | What is written |
|---|---|
| Audience | One activation entry per resolved person, naming the audience |
| Pixel | Page views grouped into browsing sessions |
| Pixel and DSP | Ad clicks collapsed per record, ad impressions summarized |
Entries are written to the contact when the person resolves to one, and to the company when only a company domain resolves.
Each entry is written with a stable identifier, so re-running an export does not duplicate activity already on the record. A re-run reports the entries HubSpot already held rather than writing them again.
Verifying it worked
- Open a contact in HubSpot that you expect to have activity, in the portal the app is installed in.
- Stay on the Activity tab in the middle column of the record.
- If the feed looks unchanged, open the activity filter and make sure integration activity from Delivr.ai is included. HubSpot hides third-party app events on some default views.
Entries carry the time of the export run, so they appear at the top of the feed.
If no activity appears
Work through these in order. The first two produce a successful export run that writes nothing, which is the confusing case.
The activity switch is off
The most common cause. The run completes, reports records processed, and writes no timeline entries. Open the export, check the Destination step, and confirm Deliver intent activity instead of records is on.
App events are not approved for the app
HubSpot requires approval before an app may write app events, and the export run fails when it is missing.
This approval has no receipt: there is no confirmation email, no status page, and the request form looks the same before and after submitting. The only reliable signal is whether writes succeed. If activity exports fail and the switch is on, contact [email protected] and we will confirm the approval state for your app.
The audience or source is empty
An export whose source resolves to nobody completes successfully with nothing written. Check the audience population before assuming the integration is at fault.
The record does not exist in HubSpot
Activity attaches to a contact or company that HubSpot can resolve from the email or company domain. A person who is not in your CRM has nowhere for the entry to land.
Related
- Export an Audience to S3, Email, or Slack for the record-shaped export model
- Authentication
Updated about 1 hour ago