Why doesn't the regex extract signatures from Outlook emails?

[Outlook](/apps/outlook/) formats plain text differently than Gmail. Try the pattern `(?s)\r\n\r\n(.+?)(?=\r\n\r\n|$)` to catch Windows line endings instead of Unix line breaks.

Can I extract multiple phone numbers from one signature?

The current setup grabs the first phone match only. Change the formatter to 'All Matches' and use Zapier's line item feature to loop through multiple numbers if needed.

What happens if HubSpot already has phone data for a contact?

Zapier overwrites existing values by default. Add a lookup step first to check if the phone field is empty before updating, or use HubSpot's 'only update empty properties' option.

How do I handle signatures with images or HTML formatting?

Switch your Gmail trigger to pull 'Body Html' instead of 'Body Plain' then add a formatter step to strip HTML tags before running signature extraction patterns.

Beginner~8 min setupCRM & EmailVerified April 2026

How to Parse Email Signatures and Update HubSpot Contacts with Zapier

Extract phone numbers, job titles, and company names from Gmail signatures and automatically update corresponding HubSpot contact properties.

Steps and UI details are based on platform versions at time of writing — check each platform for the latest interface.

ℹ

HubSpot Gmail extension exists as a native integration, but it requires manual setup per user and doesn't create contacts automatically. This guide uses an automation platform for full control. View native option →

Zapier

Also on:Make N8n

Best for

Sales teams processing 100+ emails daily who want to automatically enrich HubSpot contacts without manual data entry.

Not ideal for

Teams dealing with highly varied signature formats or needing real-time processing of every incoming email.

Sync type

polling

Use case type

import

Real-World Example

💡

A 12-person B2B software sales team uses this to capture contact details from prospect emails automatically. Before automation, reps manually copied phone numbers and titles from email signatures into HubSpot, missing 40% of the data. Now signature parsing runs every 5 minutes and populates missing contact fields without manual work.

What Will This Cost?

Drag the slider to your expected monthly volume.

Monthly workflow runs

/mo

505005K50K

Each platform counts differently — Zapier: 1 task per trigger. Make: 1 operation per module per record. n8n: 1 execution per run.

$30/mo if billed monthly

Pipedream

$29/mo

Basic plan

Prices shown for annual billing. Based on published pricing as of April 2026.

Estimated ROI

1000

min saved/mo

$583

labor value/mo

Free

no platform cost

Based on ~2 min manual effort per operation at $35/hr fully loaded labor cost.

Implementation

Before You Start

Make sure you have everything ready.

Gmail account with access to emails containing signatures

HubSpot account with existing contacts to update

HubSpot user permissions to modify contact properties

Sample emails with structured signatures for testing

Field Mapping

Map these fields between your apps.

Field	API Name	Description
Required
Email Address	`email`	Sender email used for contact lookup and matching in HubSpot

3 optional fields▸ show

Phone Number	`phone`	Primary business phone extracted from signature using regex pattern matching
Job Title	`jobtitle`	Professional title parsed from signature text, mapped to HubSpot's job title property
Company Name	`company`	Business name extracted from signature, updates the associated company field

Step-by-Step Setup

Dashboard > Create Zap > Gmail > New Email

Connect Gmail as Trigger

Set up Gmail as your trigger to monitor for new emails. Choose the specific Gmail account where you want to parse signatures.

1Click 'Create Zap' from your Zapier dashboard
2Select 'Gmail' from the app list
3Choose 'New Email' as your trigger event
4Click 'Sign in to Gmail' and authenticate your account

✓ What you should see: You should see a green 'Connected' badge next to Gmail with your email address displayed.

Zapier

click +

search apps

HubSpot

Connect Gmail as Trigger

HubSpot

module added

Gmail Trigger > Filter Options

Configure Gmail Trigger Settings

Filter for emails that likely contain signatures. Set up label filters to avoid processing automated emails without signatures.

1Select 'INBOX' from the Label dropdown
2Check 'Has attachment' to 'No' to avoid processing file emails
3Set 'From' field to exclude your own domain if parsing external contacts
4Click 'Continue' to proceed

✓ What you should see: The trigger configuration should show your selected filters with a sample count of matching emails.

⚠

Common mistake — Don't include sent emails in the trigger - you want incoming emails with external signatures, not your own outgoing messages

Gmail Trigger > Test

Test Gmail Trigger

Pull a recent email to use as test data. This email should contain a signature with phone, title, and company information.

1Click 'Test trigger' button
2Select a recent email from the list that contains a signature
3Click 'Continue with selected record'
4Verify the email body contains signature data in the preview

✓ What you should see: You should see email data including sender, subject, and body text with a visible signature block.

⚠

Common mistake — Pick an email with a rich signature - avoid simple emails with just a name, as they won't provide enough data to parse

Zapier

▶ Turn on & test

executed

✓

HubSpot

✓

Gmail

🔔 notification

received

Zap Steps > + > Formatter > Text > Extract Pattern

Add Formatter for Signature Extraction

Use Zapier's Formatter tool to extract the signature portion from the email body. Signatures typically appear after the main message content.

1Click the '+' button to add a new step
2Select 'Formatter by Zapier' from the apps list
3Choose 'Text' as the formatter type
4Select 'Extract Pattern' as the transform option

✓ What you should see: The Formatter step should be added with Text/Extract Pattern selected as the transformation type.

⚠

Common mistake — Map fields using the variable picker — don't type field names manually. Hand-typed variable names often have invisible spacing errors that produce blank output.

Message template

📬 New entry: {{1.name}}
Email: {{1.email}}
Details: {{1.description}}

Formatter > Extract Pattern Configuration

Configure Signature Pattern Extraction

Set up regex patterns to identify and extract signature blocks. Most signatures start after line breaks and contain contact information.

1In 'Input' field, map the Gmail 'Body Plain' data
2Set 'Pattern' to: (?s)\n\n(.+?)(?:\n\n|$)
3Choose 'First Match' for extraction method
4Click 'Continue' to test the pattern

✓ What you should see: The formatter should extract text that looks like a signature block, starting after double line breaks.

⚠

Common mistake — Test with multiple email formats - some signatures use single line breaks or special characters that might break the pattern

Zap Steps > + > Formatter > Text > Extract Pattern

Add Phone Number Extraction

Create another formatter step specifically to extract phone numbers from the signature text using regex patterns.

1Add another 'Formatter by Zapier' step
2Select 'Text' then 'Extract Pattern'
3Map the previous formatter output as input
4Set pattern to: ($?\d{3}$?[-\.\s]?\d{3}[-\.\s]?\d{4})

✓ What you should see: The formatter should pull out phone numbers in various formats like (555) 123-4567 or 555.123.4567.

⚠

Common mistake — This pattern catches US phone formats - modify the regex if you're processing international numbers

Zap Steps > + > Formatter > Text > Extract Pattern

Add Title Extraction

Extract job titles from signature text. Titles often appear on separate lines or after the person's name.

1Add another 'Formatter by Zapier' step
2Select 'Text' then 'Extract Pattern'
3Map the signature text from step 5 as input
4Set pattern to: (?i)(CEO|CTO|Manager|Director|VP|President|Specialist|Analyst|Coordinator)[^\n]*

✓ What you should see: The formatter should extract job titles like 'Marketing Manager' or 'VP of Sales'.

⚠

Common mistake — Expand the title pattern to include industry-specific roles relevant to your contacts - the default pattern covers common corporate titles

Zap Steps > + > Formatter > Text > Extract Pattern

Add Company Name Extraction

Extract company names from signatures. Company names typically appear near contact info or in email domains.

1Add another 'Formatter by Zapier' step
2Select 'Text' then 'Extract Pattern'
3Map the signature text as input
4Set pattern to capture text before 'Inc|LLC|Corp|Ltd': ([A-Z][A-Za-z\s]+)\s+(Inc|LLC|Corp|Ltd)

✓ What you should see: The formatter should extract company names like 'Acme Solutions Inc' or 'Tech Innovations LLC'.

⚠

Common mistake — Many companies don't use legal suffixes in signatures - consider adding a fallback pattern to extract lines that contain typical company indicator words

Zap Steps > + > HubSpot > Update Contact

Connect HubSpot

Add HubSpot as your action app to update contact properties. You'll need HubSpot admin access to modify contact records.

1Click the '+' button to add a new action step
2Select 'HubSpot' from the app list
3Choose 'Update Contact' as the action event
4Click 'Sign in to HubSpot' and authenticate

✓ What you should see: HubSpot should show as connected with your portal name displayed.

⚠

Common mistake — Use 'Update Contact' not 'Create Contact' - you're enhancing existing contacts, not making duplicates

HubSpot Update Contact > Contact Lookup

Configure Contact Lookup

Set up how Zapier finds the right contact to update. Use the sender's email address to match existing HubSpot records.

1In 'Email' field, map the Gmail 'From Email' data
2Leave other lookup fields empty to search by email only
3Set 'Create Contact if not found' to 'No'
4Click 'Continue' to proceed to field mapping

✓ What you should see: The lookup configuration should show Gmail sender email mapped to HubSpot email field.

⚠

Common mistake — Don't auto-create contacts - you want to enrich existing ones, not spam your CRM with every email sender

HubSpot Update Contact > Field Mapping

Map Extracted Data to HubSpot Fields

Connect your parsed signature data to the appropriate HubSpot contact properties. Map each extracted element to its corresponding field.

1Map the phone formatter output to 'Phone Number' field
2Map the title formatter output to 'Job Title' field
3Map the company formatter output to 'Company' field
4Leave other fields unmapped to avoid overwriting existing data

✓ What you should see: The field mapping should show your three formatters connected to Phone, Title, and Company fields in HubSpot.

⚠

Common mistake — Only map fields you extracted successfully - empty formatter results will overwrite existing HubSpot data with blank values

HubSpot fields

firstname

lastname

company

hs_lead_status

available as variables:

1.props.firstname

1.props.lastname

1.props.email

1.props.company

1.props.hs_lead_status

HubSpot Action > Test > Publish

Test and Activate

Run a complete test to verify the entire workflow extracts signature data and updates HubSpot correctly.

1Click 'Test step' on the HubSpot action
2Verify the test shows extracted phone, title, and company data
3Check that the HubSpot contact record was actually updated
4Click 'Publish Zap' to activate the automation

✓ What you should see: The test should show successful HubSpot contact update with your extracted signature data populated in the appropriate fields.

⚠

Common mistake — Check the actual HubSpot contact record in your CRM to confirm the test data appeared correctly - Zapier's test summary doesn't always show field updates accurately

Drop this into a Zapier Code step.

Copy this template(?s)\n\n(?!On\s|From:)(.+?)(?=\n\n|\nOn\s|\nFrom:|$)

▸ Show code

(?s)\n\n(?!On\s|From:)(.+?)(?=\n\n|\nOn\s|\nFrom:|$)

... expand to see full code

(?s)\n\n(?!On\s|From:)(.+?)(?=\n\n|\nOn\s|\nFrom:|$)

Scaling Beyond 300+ emails/day+ Records

If your volume exceeds 300+ emails/day records, apply these adjustments.

Batch Processing

Switch from individual email triggers to a scheduled digest that processes multiple emails at once. This reduces task consumption from 6 per email to 2 per batch.

Smart Filtering

Add Gmail label filters to only process emails from external domains or specific sender patterns. Internal emails rarely have useful signature data and waste tasks.

Going live

Production Checklist

Before you turn this on for real, confirm each item.

Test regex patterns with 10+ different signature formats from your actual email

Applies when: Always

Set up error notification to Slack when extraction patterns fail

Applies when: High volume

Enable 'Skip if any required field is empty' to avoid overwriting good data with blanks

Applies when: Always

Add a delay step before HubSpot update to handle API rate limiting

Applies when: High volume

Create a Google Sheet log of all processed emails for troubleshooting

Applies when: Always

Troubleshooting

Common errors and how to fix them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about this workflow.

Analysis

VerdictWhy Zapier for this workflow

Use Zapier for this if your team processes high-volume email and wants to enrich contact data without manual copying. The guided zap builder makes regex setup manageable for non-technical users, and the built-in formatters handle text extraction better than Make's modules. Skip Zapier if you're parsing complex signature layouts - N8n's JavaScript functions give you more control over custom extraction logic.

Cost

This workflow burns 6 tasks per email (1 trigger + 4 formatters + 1 HubSpot update). At 200 emails per month, that's 1,200 tasks monthly. The Professional plan at $49/month covers 2,000 tasks, giving you room for 330 emails. Make would cost $21/month for the same volume with their Pro plan. N8n cloud runs $50/month but includes unlimited operations.

Tradeoffs

Make handles conditional logic better - their router splits signature parsing paths based on email format detection. N8n's code nodes let you write custom parsing functions that adapt to different signature styles automatically. But Zapier's formatter tools work reliably out of the box, and the regex patterns handle 80% of standard business signatures without custom coding.

You'll hit formatting inconsistencies fast - some email clients strip line breaks that your regex depends on. Gmail's plain text conversion sometimes merges signature lines together, breaking extraction patterns. HubSpot's API occasionally returns contact not found errors for valid emails due to timing delays in their search indexing. Plan for 10-15% extraction failures and build manual fallback processes.

Ideas for what to build next

→
Add Company Domain Enrichment — Create a follow-up zap that extracts email domains and populates HubSpot company website fields when company names are found.
→
Build Signature Quality Scoring — Add a formatter that counts successfully extracted fields and creates a data quality score to prioritize follow-up on well-enriched contacts.
→
Create Extraction Failure Alerts — Set up a parallel path that sends Slack notifications when signature parsing fails, including the original email for manual review.