Track HubSpot Chat conversations as conversions in Google Analytics

Curious about how many of your website chat sessions are actually being driven by the marketing campaigns you have running?

Whether you are putting budget behind Google Ads, scaling campaigns on Meta Ads, or investing in long-term content and SEO, having visibility into how many chat conversations each channel is producing can completely transform the way you do your marketing.

The good news is that there is a surprisingly straightforward way to set this up, and you do not need any developer experience to get it working.

Throughout this guide, we will walk you through how to use Converly to fire a conversion event into Google Analytics every time someone opens a chat through HubSpot Chat on your site. Once it is running, you will be able to pinpoint which campaigns, ads, and keywords are responsible for the chat conversations starting on your website.

4 simple steps for tracking HubSpot Chat conversations as conversions in Google Analytics

Here is how you can have conversion tracking for HubSpot Chat conversations live in Google Analytics in just 4 quick steps:

Step 1: Build your Conversion Flow in Converly

Converly is a tool built to make sending conversion events to analytics tools and ad platforms (such as Google Analytics) effortless.

Pictured above is the Converly workflow builder, which makes setting up conversion tracking super simple. If you have ever used Zapier or HubSpot Workflows, the interface will feel familiar within seconds.

The whole process boils down to picking a trigger (in this case, a visitor starting a chat through your HubSpot Chat widget) and selecting a destination for the conversion event (Google Analytics, for example). And that really is the entire setup.

Step 2: Install Converly on your website

Once your Conversion Flow is built out, Converly provides a small code snippet for you to add to your website.

How you go about installing it depends on which website builder you happen to be using, but in most cases it is a matter of pasting the snippet into your site settings under a section commonly labelled Scripts, Header, or Custom Code. Alternatively, WordPress users have the option of using a plugin like Insert Header and Footer Code, and Google Tag Manager users can drop it in there too.

Once the snippet is live, Converly handles the rest in the background. It listens for new HubSpot Chat conversations and quietly pushes the conversion data into Google Analytics (along with any other destinations you have included in your flow).

Step 3: Test it's working

With everything wired together, the next thing on the list is making sure your chat conversations are being recorded the way they should be.

The quickest way to confirm this is to open an incognito browser window, browse to a page on your site that loads the HubSpot Chat widget, and kick off a test chat.

After that, head into Google Analytics, open the Real-Time dashboard, and look at the Recent Events section. If you spot the chat_started event sitting there, you can be confident the setup is firing and tracking correctly.

Step 4: Mark the event as a 'Key Event' (Optional, but recommended)

For the last step, we recommend marking the chat_started event as a Key Event inside GA4. This tells Google Analytics to count it as a conversion, which opens up a whole bunch of additional reporting features (such as showing it in your acquisition reports or using it as a conversion point inside funnel and path analysis).

To do this, head into the Admin area of your GA4 property and click Events under the Data Display menu. Open the Recent Events tab, find your chat_started event (or whatever name you assigned to it), and click the star icon next to it to flag it as a Key Event.

Why Converly is the best way to trigger conversions in Google Analytics

There are a handful of ways to track HubSpot Chat conversations as conversions in Google Analytics. Some teams hook the HubSpot Conversations API into Google Tag Manager and configure event triggers there, while others write custom JavaScript that hooks into HubSpot Chat events directly.

So why is Converly typically the best fit? Here are a few reasons:

1. No code or complicated setup

The other methods for tracking HubSpot Chat conversations as conversions usually mean configuring custom event tags in Google Tag Manager that listen to HubSpot's chat events, or hand-writing JavaScript that hooks straight into the HubSpot Chat widget. For anyone who is not a developer, that quickly becomes a lot to take on.

Converly removes that complexity altogether. The workflow builder is visual, intuitive, and feels much like the tools you probably reach for every week, like Zapier or HubSpot Workflows.

You just select your trigger (a new HubSpot Chat conversation) and decide what should happen next (such as firing a conversion event into Google Analytics). That genuinely is the whole job. No code, no Tag Manager headaches, no stress.

2. More accurate conversion numbers

Converly fires conversions into Google Analytics through the Measurement Protocol, meaning the data is sent straight to Google's servers instead of through a tag running inside the visitor's browser.

That sidesteps the things that typically break tag-based tracking. Things like ad blockers and the privacy controls baked into Safari, iOS, and other modern browsers.

And the difference is bigger than most people expect. In fact, a recent study covering more than 7 million conversions found that tag-based tracking was missing roughly 30% of conversions. The breakdown was about 5% lost to ad blockers and 25% lost to browser privacy features.

But because Converly delivers conversions directly to Google Analytics' servers, all of those conversions make it through.

3. Supports multiple tools and platforms

Converly works with over 50 different form builders, scheduling platforms, and chat widgets. It can also send conversion events to a long list of destinations, including Google Analytics, Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and many more.

In practice, that means whenever you bring a new tool into your stack (like HubSpot Forms or HubSpot Meetings) or branch out and start advertising on a new platform, setting up conversion tracking is only a few clicks away.

4. Makes it easy to add conditional logic

Converly also makes it straightforward to set up smart rules that fire different conversion events depending on what people do across your site.

To give you an example, picture a marketing team at a B2B software company. They could create a conversion called Sales Chat Started whenever a visitor opens a chat from the pricing page (a strong buying signal), and a separate conversion called Support Chat Started whenever a visitor opens a chat from the help docs.

Tracking these two conversions independently gives a much clearer view of which campaigns are bringing in genuine sales leads (I.e. chats started on your website versus those started on your help docs).

5. Great support provided for free

If you have ever tried to reach out to Google or Meta for help with conversion tracking, you already know just how tough it is to get a real answer.

Converly works very differently.

Our team has more than 20 years of hands-on experience across advertising and analytics, and we genuinely take responsibility for getting you up and running. Whether you would prefer to sort it out by email or hop on a quick video call, we offer free support to make sure your tracking is configured correctly and running smoothly.

3 useful reports you can run when you track HubSpot Chat conversations as conversions in Google Analytics

After 15+ years leading marketing teams, I have looked at a huge number of Google Analytics reports trying to understand where our visitors and leads were truly coming from.

Out of all the reports I have built over the years, the three below have consistently been the most useful. And once your HubSpot Chat conversations are being tracked as conversions in Google Analytics, you will be able to run them too.

1. Conversions by Channel

This report breaks down how many chat conversations are coming in from each marketing channel, whether that is Organic Search, Paid Search, Paid Social, Organic Social, or anywhere else.

It is a great way to understand which channels are genuinely producing new sales conversations for your business, and to spot the ones with room to generate more.

2. Conversions by Meta Ads Network

If you are running ads through Meta, those ads are likely showing across several different networks, like Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

Because each of those networks can perform very differently, it pays to know which ones are actually producing new sales conversations. This report makes that crystal clear, helping you steer more budget toward the networks that are delivering and pull back on those that are not.

3. Conversions by Google Ads Campaign

If Google Ads is part of your mix, you probably have several campaigns running at once. Some might be focused on different services you offer, others might be split between branded and generic keywords, and a few might be aimed at specific geographic regions.

Knowing which of those campaigns are actually producing new sales conversations is critical when it comes to deciding where to put your budget. This report shows it all, giving you conversions broken out by campaign so you can confidently scale up the winners and pull back on the ones that are not delivering.

Wrap up

With Converly, sending conversion events to Google Analytics every time someone opens a chat through HubSpot Chat is quick and easy. No code to write, no complicated tools to configure, and no headaches along the way.

And if you decide to start advertising on Google Ads, Meta Ads, or any other platform down the road, you can plug them into your existing Conversion Flow in just a few clicks. The same chat conversation data will start flowing into those platforms automatically.

Want to give it a try? Converly comes with a 14-day free trial, and most people are fully set up within 10 minutes. Give it a go and see just how simple conversion tracking can really be.