Integrating CRM and HubSpot #nightmare!
In this series of articles we look to challenge preconceptions about Marketing Automation. Does it actually save time and money? Is it over expensive for what it does and do Marketing Automation tools live up to the hype. Next up, how easy is it to swap your existing CRM for HubSpot?
Whatever state your current Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is in this is the system that got your company where it is today. The current system, no doubt has its fair share of gremlins however, the people using the system will want to keep the features that make their lives easier. Any time your commercial teams spend learning to use a new system is time they are not on the phone moving the business forwards. So, HubSpot integration must be considered carefully.
Out of the box systems integration? No chance!
It’s worth mentioning, right out of the gate, that if you’ve signed up expecting HubSpot to seamlessly integrate with any existing systems and just work then be prepared to come back to earth with a bump. Integrating systems takes time and is expensive and you certainly don’t want to be paying a monthly HubSpot subscription while you figure out how to integrate systems. If you’ve been sold the dream that HubSpot will quickly and dramatically change your business and subsequently require comprehensive systems integration you’re in for a shock.
Treat CRM, marketing automation and after-sale care independently
In my experience, the smart choice is to treat CRM, automation and after-sale care independently. These three different HubSpot functions will have different users groups across the business so winning people over can be done in bitesize chunks. If you’re commercial teams are bought-in to HubSpot CRM and your commercial managers have the reporting they need to run a sales team - that’s a natural first step. If provisioning the product or service requires a hand-off to a different system then a common sense solution will be required a) invest in API (Application Programming Interface) b) optimise a manual process.
HubSpot is great for importing contacts. The system was recently updated to allow .xls files to be imported in addition to .csv to make this even quicker and simpler. Imports use a contact's email address as the unique identifier and update contacts accordingly so providing you're importing well organised spreadsheets then imports will be simple. HubSpot is the best and smartest system I have used for adding and importing new contacts. The only pause-for-thought is that if you want to import sales team activity then this will likely need to be a text field. A good rule of thumb is to meet each of these caveats as an opportunity to improve data integrity and optimise processes.
Similarly, company records are automatically created using the domain of each email address and then individual contacts are grouped together with company details. Companies can then be individually assigned to a member of the commercial team. Unfortunately, we still come unstuck when it comes to integrating the deals pipeline.
HubSpot is inherently a contacts system. Most of the features are designed to engage and convert contacts which is exactly what you would expect from a marketing system. Email address works as a great natural unique reference because in the main, contacts only have one email address. If your commercial process revolves around a project rather than a contact then integration becomes much more complex. The deals section on HubSpot does not have a unique reference so you need to go all in e.g you can import your first set of records but then every member of the team needs to use the HubSpot deals system.
Crucially, when a deal is won, the contacts associated with that deal need to be manually switched to customers and manually associated with that deal otherwise the entire system falls over. You will not be able to demonstrate the end-to-end reporting you signed up to unless contacts are reliably switched to customers. If you can rely on your commercial team then great but, I would strongly advise manually sanity checking this process to ensure your reporting is reliable.
If any sister systems needs to be updated it will be a duplication of manual work and a natural turn off for the people using the system. Alternatively, you’ll need to build a complicated API to keep the deals section updated #nightmare
Summary
Importing and updating contacts en masse into HubSpot is remarkably simple - great work HubSpot. In theory the company records should take care of themselves. However, running the deals section without an API is likely to require duplication of work and manual labour. I know first-hand how much of a blocker this is when it comes to getting people bought into a new system and your big plan to revolutionise marketing comes tumbling down. Understanding how the deals section will be run is a great starting point when considering HubSpot for your marketing automation so, start there and work backwards.
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I have managed every role of the modern marketing team with an entrepreneurial outlook and approachable digital thought leadership. Harnessing the power of data to grow businesses with Marketing Automation, Business Intelligence, Presence Marketing and Content Marketing.