How do I clean my CRM data in HubSpot?

Hi HubSpot Marketing community,

Curious to start a thread about CRM database cleaning process you have implemented and would recommend including the various steps you follow and any other practicalities we should be mindful of (e.g export/imports in Excel, etc…)

Thanks,

Eugenie

Hi @SarahOps! I have a number of CRM cleasning actions I take to make sure the database is as high quality as it can be:

  • Set up workflows to copy crucial information from company to contacts e.g. lead status, industry, address, owner, divisional owner. This means CRM users only need to make changes at company level.
  • Ensure all contacts are connected to a company
  • Ensure all companies have associated contacts
  • Ensure all companies have an assigned owner
  • Automate lead status to change with deal stage

This is just some of the actions I take on a monthly basis - hope it helps!

Kind regards

Alex Elborn

Marketing Manager
01202 059 997
aelborn@intergage.co.uk
marketing-engineers.co.uk

Hi Alex, thanks for sharing. These will definately help me to get started. :slightly_smiling_face:

Eugenie

Hi @SarahOps and @Alex_Elborn,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community and for providing these great tips, @Alex_Elborn!

I would like to invite our community members to this conversation to start a brainstorming session.

Hi @danmoyle, @karstenkoehler, @NicoleSengers, @Josh, @Mike_Eastwood, @Jnix284, @Phil_Vallender - Do you have any CRM Data Management best practices you would like to share with @SarahOps?

Thank you!

Best,

Kristen

@SarahOps this is such a great topic, looking forward to seeing what everyone has to add to the conversation!

I think clean data is critical for success and accurate reporting, but scrubbing data can vary depending on your goal. Here are some of my top data checks, my actual check list is too long to share in full!

For marketing data:

  • workflows/lists to update contacts who have unsubscribed or bounced
  • disengaged contacts are identified and removed from lists
  • internal IPs are excluded from web traffic (more important for remote teams than most companies realize)

For contact data:

  • reviewing duplicates
  • checking critical properties for blanks
  • looking for anomolies where certain combinations of properties shouldn’t be possible

For company data:

  • reviewing duplicates and scrubbing for common misspellings
  • reviewing parent/child and associations
  • verifying industry, country, etc. for key reports

Hi Jennifer -

These are some of the areas that our team wants to “scrub” / review on a weekly basis. Do you automate this at all or build specific reports to identify missing company or contact data information? Or, do you get email alerts sent to you? Curious the best want to ensure that our team stays on data managemenent.

Hi @WhitneySmith86 there are some things you can automate, but if you want to stay on top of your data, I recommend looking into Ops Hub Pro. This will give you access to the Data Quality Center and make it a lot easier to manage your data.

This is a new tool since I wrote the initial reply, most of what I have listed above can be managed with the new data tools.

Hey @SarahOps,
In our company we are total 4 marketing manager, we all perform usually start by exporting the CRM data to Excel, clean up duplicates, fix formatting issues (like phone numbers or emails), and remove inactive or outdated contacts. Then we import the cleaned file back into HubSpot. We also use workflows and filters to keep the data clean going forward. Regular clean-ups (monthly or quarterly) really help. we use lead management software as well that really improved our performance.
Hope this helps!