Jan 22, 20208:23 AM - last edited on Mar 3, 20205:09 PM by lalexander
Top Contributor
How are you using HubSpot integrated with Salesforce?
We use Salesforce as our source of truth, but many processes live within HubSpot. We have workflows that convert leads to MQLs when they meet qualifying criteria; update country when it is unknown; and many others. We also built a copy-cat HubSpot Intelligence in Salesforce when the original was sunset by HubSpot. We use it for reporting.
How are you using HubSpot integrated with Salesforce?
Just last month my organization finally synced up salesforce and hubspot, so im very interested to learn from this group's best practices.
Sales and BD use Salesforce exclusively, HubSpot was introduced to the organization a few years ago for marketing automation, blog, email campaigns, blogging. We now are qualifying web leads through progressive profiling and pushing "MQLs" to sales for follow up.
Big change making the handshake between sales and marketing. Its been painful but necessary.
How are you using HubSpot integrated with Salesforce?
@LROADY when you say progressive profiling are you referring to a combination of scores, or the use of progressive fields in forms? If it's the latter I built a python script to mass update all of our (+40 active) forms from one template. Happy to share if that's something you might find useful
How are you using HubSpot integrated with Salesforce?
@DanielaFonseca yes, and much more with the API 🙂 I started a new post on the topic of API and scripts so I wouldn't derail this (highly interesting) post on Salesforce.
How are you using HubSpot integrated with Salesforce?
We use Salesforce as our source of truth, but many processes live within HubSpot. We have workflows that convert leads to MQLs when they meet qualifying criteria; update country when it is unknown; and many others. We also built a copy-cat HubSpot Intelligence in Salesforce when the original was sunset by HubSpot. We use it for reporting.
We have a similar situation - our main CRM is Salesforce. Our marketing (website, automation, most activities) in Hubspot. Currently we've set up 1-1 account-company level sync including mapping the various Salesforce 'stage' bits from multiple objects (lead, account, opp, custom objects) to correspoond a hubspot native lifecycle on company level. The lifecycle definition comes from Salesforce based on actions there, but the lifecycles, timestamps and stage counters are processed in Hubspot.
We also map all associated contacts 'lifecycle' to the companys lifecycle, and then segment active vs inactive contacts within the lifecycle span to do our marketing. This allows us to try out interesting things like automated lost deal, churned client re-engagement as well as re-process both net-new hubspot contacts generated (and qualified to MQL) as well as existing contacts-within-companies that have been reset to lead stage. We port our data to a warehouse and build reports in Tableua
The lifecycle stage topic is something we struggle with a bit. When we brought in HubSpot in 2015, we adopted the HubSpot terminology for lifecycle stages, specifically lead --> MQL --> opportunity --> customer, or lead --> opportunity --> customer.
The part we struggle with is new contacts (or Salesforce leads) in the database not associated to a company. How do you handle having leads/contacts with no company in the database? Do you target them at all, or just wait for them to be associated to a company?
Very curious about the segmentation you're describing. How do you define active/inactive?
salesforce + hubspot both awesome and a nightmare 😄
> The part we struggle with is new contacts (or Salesforce leads) in the database not associated to a company. How do you handle having leads/contacts with no company in the database? Do you target them at all, or just wait for them to be associated to a company?
This. We just went through this excercise and are still building the random person to known account automation.
So first of all, our account structure is very regionalised (Hubspot Global, Hubspot EMEA, Hubspot APAC etc) which means the standard create company and associate based on email domain doesnt work. I disabled that setting -- Companies are only created through the sync whenever someone creates an Account.
The ideal flow would be for our sales reps to create accounts before hand (they get marked as Leads in HS) and add as many contacts as possible (e.g via Clearbit) so they sync up to company & contact in hubspot.
For now, whenever an unassociated contact reaches our MQL threshold, we send them to salesforce as a new lead object. Then we convert them to a new or existing account -- I built some automation on hubspot side to make sure we only progress Lead stage accounts to Marketing qualified, the rest just get added to the correct accounts.
Trouble is, we still have +40K unassociated contacts on Hubspot side and I haven't yet figured out a decent way to map those without manual work. One potential solution i've been vetting is called Leandata.com -- specifically their lead to account mapping + routing solution. This tool is a salesforce native plugin (and uses your first party data only). With it, we should be able to use rules for lead to account mapping, rather than just the domain.
I wish tho, that Hubspot would decouple the 'create companies and associate contacts' setting eventually 🙂 It's possible to associate contacts to companies through the API with a custom webhook, but then you'd still have to build the probability score somehow..
> Very curious about the segmentation you're describing. How do you define active/inactive?
Still testing that part - but essentially, you could say these criterias in a list builder:
- Associated Company's lifecycle: SQL AND
- last seen X day
or
- Associated Company's lifecycle: SQL AND
- Last marketing email click date less than X days ago
Something along those lines.
Btw do you use Salesforce campaigns for marketing purposes? We havent set those up but I know a lot of these new age martech tools purely rely on the use of salesforce campaigns. I just have trouble with the idea of __having to__ use a single contact tied to a data object for reporting total numbers, whereas I should be looking at account level stats (5 people in a campaign vs 5 accounts influenced by campaign")
We have the very same issue regarding regional accounts, so we can't automatically convert. Our parent company (we were acquired in 2018, but parent company doesn't use HubSpot) uses a tool in their own Salesforce instance called DemandTools that does a daily search of leads to convert, but country must be populated. We recently started collecting country information on forms, but this is only as good as the data people give us and never better than someone actually qualifying a lead.
We try to use lead status as a way to identify if a lead has been disqualified, and that's why they haven't been converted, but we have many leads. That is part of the reason we wouldn't go the route of creating as many contacts tied to accounts as possible -- we're constantly at the limit of contacts in our database. That, and the fact that a contact could enter the database with an email address different than what we have.
In regards to the segmentation, interesting to see the account-based approach. That's something we talk about often, but we just continue to target at a contact level, OR ask our sales reps for their top accounts + target contacts from there (admittedly not the best way).
We do use Salesforce campaigns, mainly because it is more accurate/easier for us to run a report in Salesforce, push those contacts to a campaign, and push the campaign as a list of contacts to HubSpot. The alternative is pulling a dynamic list in HubSpot, which we don't like doing as much because 1) we don't sync every account-related field over to HubSpot in fear of mass updates going wrong, and 2) I find report logic filtering much simpler in Salesforce. However, I am in the process of helping the team start to use the campaign attribution features for opportunities.
Two notes about your contact vs. account campaign issue:
1 - I saw recently that Salesforce is attempting to rollout an account campaign structure in the next Winter release.
2 - I use this awesome tool called Lookup Rollup Summary that really helps with rollups that aren't typically easy in Salesforce. It could potentially help you with this issue or others. For example, we use it for rolling up task/event information to leads and contacts.
We use Hubspot for lead generation and push RFQs to Salesforce as lead, while assigning them to the right account manager. If all goes right. Inside Sales then follows them up et cetera.
We also sync contact and company data between Salesforce and Hubspot two-ways with the goal of improving email segmentation among other things.
However, the vast majority of contacts we have is not currently synced, one reason being the existence of duplicates on both contacts and companies. So that is something we're working on improving. Gradually. In part the duplicates issue is a legacy issue, dating from the time when I guess the value of good data wasn't as universally accepted as it is today.
Do you send everyone over to Salesforce as a lead, then? Is the requirement that BDRs follow-up and convert to new or existing contacts?
We sync all leads and contacts to HubSpot, but I find that this really prevents us from using the Companies object in HubSpot well. From what I've seen in the past, a "Company" is created even for leads, although this isn't the case in Salesforce. That's a bit challenging, especially when it comes to explaining that to users.
Actually our process is as follows and is triggered when a contact submits a form on one of our Hubspot Landing pages (which actually isn't the right term I think, but that's another matter):
- a Hubspot contact who doesn't exist in Salesforce yet > Lead in Salesforce (i.e. not a contact in Salesfore) + task to follow it up for the account manager (BDR) new business
- a Hubspot contact contact who does already exist in Salesforce > Task for the account manager in Salesforce related to the existing contact
In case of a lead in Salesforce, our account manager decides if the lead is concrete enough to convert it into an opportunity, at which time he needs to double check if the contact and company don't already exist under a slightly different name. If so, he or she needs to assign the opportunity to that existing entity. If it really is a new contact/company, lead to opportunity conversion results in creating a new contact and account in Salesforce.
Currently, we only have this switched on for Request For Quotation forms, but in truth, sometimes leads randomly appear to be created for things like someone subscribing to a type of email that we send out. Why that happens hasn't been cleared up yet. The trigger should be the form type, but like I said, it doesn't seem to be water tight.
Our Hubspot and Salesforce implementations were set-up before I joined and ran independently for several years, that's why we're working with an inclusion list for the sync, which we are gradually trying to expand. I hear you on explaining the system set-up to our sales users. We sometimes need them to clean up data, but that's not something that gets them excited.
One of the main causes for inconsistencies is that in Hubspot an email address can only belong to one contact. In Salesforce, that email address can belong to several different contacts. Add to that the fact that many people sometimes use a Hotmail/Gmail account to interact and then at other times a work-related email address and it all gets more complicated. So, I feel we're taking baby steps, but at least we are making progress. Albeit slower than I'd like.
How are you using HubSpot integrated with Salesforce?
@Driek - When you said the trigger should be the form type, are you saying this happens in a workflow? I chatted with HubSpot support recently, and they told me we couldn't distinguish form types in a workflow. So, I had to add criteria for every single form name I wanted to trigger.
We have the issue with the email addresses, as well. I know HubSpot can collect multiple email addresses in the email field now (with one marked as primary), which in theory is helpful but in practice (considering the sync to SFDC is based on email address) is not so helpful.
If you don't target personal email addresses (like Gmail), I recommend selecting the "Block free email providers" checkbox on the email field on forms. Still, this doesn't clean up data through this point.
Another thing we do to is check "pre-populate" on the form settings, as well as "reset link." This helps to remind our contacts of the info they've put in in the past (given that they haven't cleared their cookie history), and it helps them when registering their colleagues for something like an event or webinar (this will create a new contact + not overwrite existing). We have a lot of issues with the overwriting of contact data through form submissions (especially with customer contact data), but don't want to lose the valuable data from tracking cookies.
1) Correct, a workflow wherein the enrollment trigger is a specific form submission on any page - or a specific page if necessary. We've also added a delay to give other workflows the time to process, for instance to determine the relevant BDR.
2) As for free email addresses - I'm aware of that option and we considered it, but since GDPR we already lost a lot of subscriptions. So we decided against that option of excluding free email domains to prevent further reducing our mailing recipients. Also, clearly a lot of people want work-related content in their private inbox these days. Right now our approach to duplicates is: manually work through and correct the list of duplicates that Hubspot and Salesforce supply us with. Not something that makes users fans of either system.
3) Your last point of pre-populating forms is a good one, not sure if we are using that correctly. And the issue of overwriting contact info when multiple people from one company sign up for one of our events... been there! We overcame that by adding a statement saying people need to use different email addresses. We've had instances where 4 people all signed up using the same info@ mail address.
How are you using HubSpot integrated with Salesforce?
Hi @DanielaFonseca ! Do you happen to have the "Automatically Create and associate Contacts with Companies" setting turned on under Settings > Contacts and Companies > Companies? This setting can be turned off if you don't want to always have companies created and associated with HubSpot records. This would allow you to handle the conversion and subsequent account association in SFDC. This association should then sync to HubSpot once it is established in SFDC . Amanda Danielson, -Hubspot Success Consultant
How are you using HubSpot integrated with Salesforce?
Hi @a_schumacher - nope, I don't have that setting on, but now that I think about it, it's possible the extra companies aren't in fact coming from new contacts (or leads) but rather duplicates from merges in Salesforce where the merge doesn't sync to HubSpot. Does that sound like a possibility?
How are you using HubSpot integrated with Salesforce?
@DanielaFonseca That could be a possibility. Account merges in SFDC don't result in the two HS companies merging as well. If both duplicate accounts exist in HubSpot as companies, our new(ish) "Identify duplicates" tool is useful for pinpointing potential duplicates in HubSpot and deleting the extra.
In general, when merging accounts in SFDC, I would recommend taking note of the account ID you merge into the primary, going into HubSpot and finding the company with that ID, and deleting it (I know it's a lot of steps 😞 )
However, there is an easier way that I can help you with- If you need help identifying companies in your HS portal that have been deleted in SF, feel free to shoot me a direct message with your HubID, and I have access to an endpoint that can make the Salesforce "isDeleted" field unhidden on company records in your portal. Having this field visible would allow you to filter by companies in your portal that have been deletd in SF and remove them. Happy to do that for you if you'd like! If there are other power users seeing this-- this is something you can ask HubSpot support for help with. -Amanda Danielson, HubSpot Success Consultant
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