Perhaps the most important question to success with the HubSpot CRM. Our most successful CRM users start by getting their contacts into CRM. So, how should you go about importing your contacts? And, what else should you consider before importing?
This Learning Track will help you end-to-end, but here are some other things to think about:
- Every detail or attribute about a contact is stored as a Contact Property
- Contact Properties house details like First Name, Last Name, Phone Number, and Email Address
- Every contact you import should ideally have an email address (although it’s not a deal breaker)
- HubSpot contacts are unique based on email address, so we’ll always remove duplicate contacts based on address
- HubSpot has out-of-the-box Contact properties you can utilize to store contact details
- For custom data that you wish to store, you can create a custom property.
Good things to do before starting:
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Understand the difference between Contacts, Companies, and Deals in CRM
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Write down contact details or attributes that are important to your business
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For each of the below questions, create a custom property to house this data in CRM:
- How do you classify your contacts today?
- How do you indicate which contacts are leads?
- How do you know if you’ve connected with a contact?
- How might you search or segment your contacts in the future?
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Make sure your contacts have email addresses, HubSpot will auto-create companies for you! Read this post.
When importing contacts the first time, it’s OK not to have all of the relevant details in place. The good news is that you can come back later and add more data about a list of contacts you’ve already imported as long as they have email addresses. HubSpot will add the new details or attributes to your contacts.
There are two other common questions that come up with importing:
Can I import contacts from Facebook, LinkedIn, or another CRM? There is no direct integration but as long as you can get your contacts into a CSV, you can import to HubSpot.
Can I scan business cards into HubSpot CRM for my contacts? Not directly, however, I recommend using a tool called Zapier with Business Card Scanning tools to accomplish this.