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Between badge scanners that dump half-baked data, business cards that never make it into the CRM, and reps scribbling notes that live nowhere permanent, event lead capture is one of the easiest places for momentum to die.
This post breaks down exactly how the integration works under the hood, including:
- How contacts are created or updated
- What data is stored permanently vs. updated over time
- How App Events work and why they matter
- Which fields sync to contacts
- How to use this data to power workflows, follow-up, and reporting
1. How hapily Creates or Updates Contacts in HubSpot
When an event rep captures a lead inside the hapily mobile app, the integration checks whether the email address already exists on a HubSpot contact.
If a contact with the same email exists:
- We update that contact with any new or changed information.
- We associate the contact to the Event record using the association label “Event Lead”.
If a contact does not exist:
- We create a brand new contact in HubSpot.
- We associate the new contact to the Event record with the “Event Lead” association label.
In both cases, you get a clean, consistent CRM where every event attendee is tied to the proper event and you avoid duplicate contacts.
2. How Lead Capture App Events Work (and Where They Appear)
Every time a lead is captured in the hapily mobile app, it triggers a HubSpot App Event. This event acts as a permanent record of that interaction — a snapshot of what happened in the moment, tied directly to both the contact and the event itself.
There’s one important nuance to understand:
An App Event is created only the first time a contact is synced into HubSpot through mobile lead capture. If that same person is scanned again at a future event, hapily will update their contact properties with the latest information, but it will not create a duplicate App Event.
This design is intentional. It prevents timeline noise while still preserving a clean, historical marker that shows when and where the relationship started.
When an App Event is created, it captures the context your team collected on the show floor, including:
App Event data fields:
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First Name — The attendee’s given name
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Last Name — The attendee’s surname
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Job Title — Their professional role
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Company Name — The organization they represent
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Notes — Free-form context captured by your team
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Next Steps — The follow-up actions discussed or committed to
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Lead Type — Your internal classification (hot lead, partner, vendor, etc.)
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Product Interest — The products or services they expressed interest in
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Captured By — Which team member logged the interaction
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Method — How the lead was captured (badge scan or manual entry)
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Date — The timestamp of the capture
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Event ID — The unique identifier of the event
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Event Name — The human-readable event name
This App Event appears in two critical places:
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On the Contact timeline, and
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On the Event record timeline
That means sales and marketing can immediately see not just who the lead is, but where they came from, who spoke with them, and what was discussed without digging through notes, spreadsheets, or post-event recaps.
The result is shared context that sticks, even after the event buzz fades.
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3. Which Contact Properties hapily Updates
In addition to logging App Events on the timeline, hapily also updates contact properties in HubSpot so your team always has the most recent event interaction front and center on the contact record.
This is the data your reps look at first — the stuff that answers “What just happened?” without needing to scroll through timelines or dig into history.
When a lead is captured, hapily updates a combination of standard HubSpot properties and hapily-specific fields.
Standard HubSpot contact properties
These update as part of the sync to ensure the contact record stays accurate:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Job Title
- Company Name
- Email (only when a brand-new contact is created)
Custom hapily contact properties
These properties are designed specifically for event follow-up and always reflect the most recent lead capture:
- Latest Event Lead Type — The most recent lead classification (hot
lead, partner, vendor, etc.) - Latest Event Lead User — Who captured the lead
- Latest Event Lead Notes — Notes from the latest interaction
- Latest Event Lead Interest — The most recent product interests
- Latest Event Lead Next Steps — The latest agreed-upon follow-up actions
Because these fields continuously update, they give sales and marketing an at-a-glance view of the latest event context — without losing the historical record stored in App Events.
Additional custom fields
If you’ve added your own custom fields to the lead capture form in hapily, those properties are also updated during the sync. This makes it easy to tailor lead capture to your process while still keeping everything centralized on the contact record.
Together, this approach balances two things teams care deeply about:
current context for fast follow-up, and clean historical data for long-term reporting.
4. How to Turn Lead Capture Data into Leads, Deals, Tasks, and Note
Capturing great event data is only half the equation. The real value comes from what happens next — and that’s where HubSpot workflows do the heavy lifting.
The most effective way to operationalize mobile lead capture data is to build workflows that trigger off the Lead Capture App Event. This ensures your automation runs the moment an interaction is logged, not hours or days later.
A typical setup looks like this:
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Create a workflow that triggers when the Lead Capture App Event occurs
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Use the event data — such as first name, notes, lead type, and product interest — inside your workflow actions
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If you’ve added custom fields to the lead capture form, those property values can be used as well, since they update at the time of sync
From there, workflows give you the flexibility to automatically:
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Create Lead Object records
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Open Deals
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Create Tasks for sales follow-up
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Add Notes to capture context
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Store structured information in Custom Objects
This is where long-term value is created. While contact properties reflect the most recent interaction, workflows allow you to preserve important event data in objects that don’t get overwritten and remain fully reportable over time.
In short, workflows turn real-world conversations into structured CRM action — without relying on reps to remember what to do after the event ends.
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5. How Data Is Handled During Lead Capture (and What Gets Preserved)
When a lead is captured with hapily, the priority is getting enriched data into HubSpot without creating duplicates or overwriting good information.
A rep scans a badge or enters a lead, hapily enriches the information, and the contact is then created or updated in HubSpot using email to ensure proper matching.
If the contact already exists, no duplicate is created. And if HubSpot already has a value for a field, hapily leaves it untouched — new data is only added when fields are empty.
Alongside the contact update, hapily logs a Lead Capture App Event for that specific interaction. This event records who captured the lead, where it happened, and the context from the conversation.
That creates a clear split in how data behaves:
Contact properties
- Reflect the most complete and current profile for the person
- Fill in missing information without overwriting existing data
App Events
- Capture the moment an interaction happened
- Remain unchanged over time
This separation keeps contact records clean while still preserving the context of each event interaction so teams can trust what they’re seeing without worrying about data loss or duplication.
6. Why App Events Don’t Store Custom Contact Properties
HubSpot App Events are intentionally standardized. They’re designed to work the same way across every portal where hapily is installed, which means they must be pre-defined for installation across all HubSpot accounts.
Because of that:
- App Events can’t be dynamically customized per customer
- They must use a standard, fixed set of event fields
- They can’t automatically include new or custom contact properties
That limitation is what keeps App Events reliable and consistent across different HubSpot portals.
To store data that’s specific to your process or needs to live long-term, hapily recommends using HubSpot objects built for flexibility, including:
- Lead Objects
- Deals
- Tasks
- Notes
- Custom CRM objects
In short, App Events capture the moment while HubSpot objects are where teams store and build on that data over time.
Built for Clean Event Data in HubSpot
Event lead capture should move at the pace of the conversation and leave you with data you don’t have to question later.
hapily makes that possible by enriching leads up front, matching them correctly in HubSpot, and attaching every interaction to the event it came from.
Contacts stay clean. Context stays intact. And follow-up can happen immediately, not after someone fixes the data.
It’s the difference between leads that stall after the event and leads that move forward right away because the data is already where it needs to be.
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