Best practices to succeed in your HubSpot Integration

Like the State of Inbound rightfully reported, Sales and Marketing Alignment is challenging in companies of all sizes and sectors. "Closed-Loop Reporting" and "Smarketing" are no longer buzz words: these priorities must be tackled as soon as possible. Obviously, this starts with an integration between Marketing Automation and CRM tools. Less obviously: it often proves to be more challenging than a simple data migration.  In this week’s article, read about some of the best practices to help your company succeed in any HubSpot integration project. 

How to succeed in your HubSpot Integration

1. Picture your Customer Journey

The key around which the project revolves is Customer Journey Alignment.  Having a clear map of your Customer Journey allows you to clearly define the scope of your integration. Before even thinking in terms of solutions, you must know which steps a lead goes through:
Where in the funnel is he being sent to sales agents?
When do marketeers help nurturing him with tailored communications?  
Is there area for collaboration here?
Those questions, essential in any company, must be deeply explored, particularly when moving across multiple systems. 

2. Involve everyone

First, it is important that you involve the teams most concerned by this project: both sales and marketing need to be represented. Get feedback for every step to meet the needs of each department.  Furthermore, most CRMs are configured to the needs of every company. Thus, someone with strong knowledge of the setup, whether he's from the IT department or a key user from the back office, definitely has a seat at the table. 

3. Define your technical requirements

We know, this is not a subject marketeers prefer, but it is necessary. HubSpot has a built-in integration with Salesforce. For other platforms, you'll need to consider the options: Are APIs available? Do you have data from on an Excel or .CSV file? This is also where you analyze the scope of your project. How many contacts do you have? How many leads need to be converted?  Indeed, some irrelevant visitors are not worth pursuing if you want to avoid data pollution and ruin your overall experience. Define criterias to filter contacts beforehand.

4. Perform data mapping...

Each platform has its own sets of contact information or fields. Make sure you have a list of the ones for each solution, with each corresponding value. This is where it is particularly useful to involve people who know both systems, as you need to know specificities of your sector and solutions. 

5. ... But go beyond data migration

We've mentioned it before: HubSpot integrations are not simple data migration. They are often referred to in technical terms. But the mindset is to implement processes that allow different departments to work together. In order for it to be truly powerful, it needs to embrace tightly aligned customer journeys. Of course, a project of this size requires multiple testings and incremental scaling.

At the junction between Marketing, Sales, and IT, HubSpot Integrations are compelling ventures that involve every side of your company, leading to Customer Journey Alignment.

Take a look at our Salesforce-HubSpot integration webinar where we go into the details of what is necessary for an integration:

About Elixir Solutions:

Active since 2013, Elixir Solutions is specialized in CRM Implementations and Marketing Automation integrations.  
Our solution, ElixirSync, connects Marketing tools (HubSpot, Act-On, Showpad …) with SAP solutions (C4C, SAP ByD, among others), Oracle, Zoho, Bullhorn, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SFDC,... out of the box, and with mobile apps or custom CRM solutions as well.  

Follow our blog to get more tips on HubSpot Integrations, and get inspired by other companies' Customer Journey Alignment successe