Earlier this year, I presented a talk about my love-hate relationship with HubSpot at the Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference (HITMC22) in Foxborough, MA.
Based on conversations with other attendees, it’s clear I’m not the only frustrated HubSpot user.
I often tell people that HubSpot is customizable to a fault. It most likely can do what you want it to, but you need to know how to make it work for your business, goals, and objectives—and therein lies the problem.
Frustration primarily stems from not understanding how HubSpot’s tools and templates can be customized to fit your specific business.
For those who missed it, here are seven secrets from my years in the trenches as a HubSpot marketing super user.
1. Know your subscription, permissions, and access levels. Can’t find workflows in your navigation? See an empty contact list when your colleague shows 150 records? Unable to delete a contact record? These issues may be related to your HubSpot subscription, permission, or access level.
If you are experiencing issues, start by making sure you have access to complete the task at hand. Even better, try to get set up as a Super Admin.
Go to Settings > Account Set Up > Users and Teams to check your status.
2. Create new fields in the CRM to segment your marketing list. I don’t need to tell you that you should segment your marketing list for better results. The issue is that your CRM isn’t set up with the segmentation you need.
Here’s the thing, marketers: you don’t need to have someone in IT do this. In HubSpot, a Super Admin can do it for themselves! Ten years ago, if you had told this marketer she would be adding new fields to her CRM, she would have laughed in your face, but here we are.
3. Bulk update existing contact records. So you may be thinking, I can’t create a new field in the CRM because I can’t go in and update every record to fill in the field.
Simply go in and bulk update your records. Here’s the HubSpot Knowledge Base article that explains how to do it.
4. Deduplicate contact records. HubSpot uses email addresses to identify duplicate records and automatically removes them. But this only works if the person interacts with you using the same email address.
Identifying duplicates is critical for B2B marketers as you want to connect with your target audience via their professional email address. However, they may have completed a form on LinkedIn using their personal email address. You don’t want to count the same person twice.
Maintaining a clean database not only improves the accuracy of your marketing pipeline but can also save you money, as HubSpot charges you based on every marketing contact in your CRM (and marketing contacts are those to whom you send emails).
5. Embrace workflows—you can thank me later! What are you even doing in HubSpot if you’re not creating workflows? This is where the promise of automation can deliver the efficiencies that will save you time and busy work.
Here are a few tasks you can automate with a HubSpot workflow:
- Assign a new lead to the appropriate sales rep
- Send an email nurture series to warm up leads
- Assign follow-up tasks, such as reaching out via phone
- Move leads into a segmented marketing list based on the content they downloaded
The possibilities are endless!
6. Track lead conversions and deals. You may report on top lead sources, but how many of those leads convert into deals that result in a sale?
This is the data your leadership team really wants to know and it gives you the metrics to demonstrate marketing’s ROI. Plus, it will help you when it comes time to budget where to spend next year’s marketing dollars.
7. Everything is connected. Can’t figure out why your workflows aren’t enrolling the right contacts? Check your contact records. Unable to send users to a landing page after downloading a piece of content? Make sure your landing page has been published.
One of the biggest secrets to lowering your frustration with HubSpot is understanding how all the pieces fit together.
Marketing automation with HubSpot and beyond
In an ideal world, your marketing automation system should make your job easier—not have you pulling your hair out.
Clarity Quest is a HubSpot Agency Partner. But our health IT marketing agency has used Act-On, Constant Contact, Marketo, Mailchimp, Salesforce, and many other CRMs and marketing automation systems to help our clients meet their marketing and lead gen goals.
Contact us today to talk about all things HubSpot and marketing automation.
