Lists, Lead Scoring & Workflows

brettski
Participant

Importing lists from ActiveCampaign to HubSpot

SOLVE

Greetings,

 

We are joining HubSpot from ActiveCampaign which we've used for the last five years or so. We've successfully transferred over all our contacts though we are not sure on how to setup our email lists in HubSpot based on current list subscriptions in ActiveCampaign. Generally speaking, how do we import the lists? 

 

Thank you!

1 Accepted solution
jolle
Solution
Recognized Expert | Partner
Recognized Expert | Partner

Importing lists from ActiveCampaign to HubSpot

SOLVE

Hey @brettski, awesome question! 

 

If you're looking for help with the actual import process (taking your CSV export from ActiveCampaign and importing it into HubSpot), here's HubSpot's Knowledge Base article on formatting and importing lists. It's totally fine to re-import your contacts to get them on a specific list — HubSpot deduplicates contacts by their email address, so you won't create a duplicate contact if you import them multiple times.

 

If you're looking for help with segmenting your lists, that ultimately comes down to how you want to function! I have some thoughts for you:

  • If you're happy with the current list setup in ActiveCampaign, you can recreate that in HubSpot. You would just export the list from ActiveCampaign and import it into HubSpot, either as a static list (to keep the list exactly as it appeared in ActiveCampaign) or as an active list (if you can set the criteria that the ActiveCampaign list meets and want future contacts who meet those criteria to automatically be added ot the list)
  • If you have any unsubscribed contacts in ActiveCampaign, you definitely need to honor that in HubSpot. Here is the HubSpot Knowledge Base article on importing an opt-out list to ensure that those folks never accidentally receive marketing emails from you
  • If you're not happy with your current list setup in ActiveCampaign, now is the perfect time to change it in HubSpot! You know your needs better than we do, but you'll typically want:
    • Current clients list (with any additional needed segments)
    • Former clients list (with any additional needed segments)
    • Active/engaged prospect list (with any additional needed segments)
    • Inactive/unengaged prospect list (with any additional needed segments)
    • Any other specific lists that you need to house specific audiences (i.e., trade show list, employee-provided list)
    • For ActiveCampaign migrations, I also recommend creating activity-based lists to carry over into HubSpot (i.e., list of contacts who have submitted each form, list of contacts who opened/clicked an email within the last few months, list of contacts with deals if you're using the ActiveCampaign CRM, etc.)

If you haven't scrubbed your database for email deliverability or ensured that all contact data is complete, standardized, and accurate, now is a good time to do that as well. These best practices also pertain to your contact properties, so make sure you're using dropdown values wherever you can!

 

Congrats again on the move to HubSpot! Let me know if you have any other questions about getting situated!

Jacob Olle

Marketing Operations Manager

HubSpot Certified Trainer

Create Your Own Free Signature

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7 Replies 7
jolle
Solution
Recognized Expert | Partner
Recognized Expert | Partner

Importing lists from ActiveCampaign to HubSpot

SOLVE

Hey @brettski, awesome question! 

 

If you're looking for help with the actual import process (taking your CSV export from ActiveCampaign and importing it into HubSpot), here's HubSpot's Knowledge Base article on formatting and importing lists. It's totally fine to re-import your contacts to get them on a specific list — HubSpot deduplicates contacts by their email address, so you won't create a duplicate contact if you import them multiple times.

 

If you're looking for help with segmenting your lists, that ultimately comes down to how you want to function! I have some thoughts for you:

  • If you're happy with the current list setup in ActiveCampaign, you can recreate that in HubSpot. You would just export the list from ActiveCampaign and import it into HubSpot, either as a static list (to keep the list exactly as it appeared in ActiveCampaign) or as an active list (if you can set the criteria that the ActiveCampaign list meets and want future contacts who meet those criteria to automatically be added ot the list)
  • If you have any unsubscribed contacts in ActiveCampaign, you definitely need to honor that in HubSpot. Here is the HubSpot Knowledge Base article on importing an opt-out list to ensure that those folks never accidentally receive marketing emails from you
  • If you're not happy with your current list setup in ActiveCampaign, now is the perfect time to change it in HubSpot! You know your needs better than we do, but you'll typically want:
    • Current clients list (with any additional needed segments)
    • Former clients list (with any additional needed segments)
    • Active/engaged prospect list (with any additional needed segments)
    • Inactive/unengaged prospect list (with any additional needed segments)
    • Any other specific lists that you need to house specific audiences (i.e., trade show list, employee-provided list)
    • For ActiveCampaign migrations, I also recommend creating activity-based lists to carry over into HubSpot (i.e., list of contacts who have submitted each form, list of contacts who opened/clicked an email within the last few months, list of contacts with deals if you're using the ActiveCampaign CRM, etc.)

If you haven't scrubbed your database for email deliverability or ensured that all contact data is complete, standardized, and accurate, now is a good time to do that as well. These best practices also pertain to your contact properties, so make sure you're using dropdown values wherever you can!

 

Congrats again on the move to HubSpot! Let me know if you have any other questions about getting situated!

Jacob Olle

Marketing Operations Manager

HubSpot Certified Trainer

Create Your Own Free Signature
brettski
Participant

Importing lists from ActiveCampaign to HubSpot

SOLVE

Not sure how I am missing this, but any type of import I see only adds contacts. I can't designate the input to (for example), add them them to a static list, Set a specific field to a value on the contact record, etc. I figured I could import a subset of contacts which are a specific condition, xyz list. I don't see how to get this cvs list of contacts into a list or marked in some special way. The import function of HubSpot only seems to want to add contacts to the contact database. What am I missing?

brettski
Participant

Importing lists from ActiveCampaign to HubSpot

SOLVE

I guess to set a field to a value in hubspot I would add that field to the list with the value I want to set. Then that field can be used whereever in HubSpot for workflows or whatever. Is that a suggested approach?

0 Upvotes
jolle
Recognized Expert | Partner
Recognized Expert | Partner

Importing lists from ActiveCampaign to HubSpot

SOLVE

That's typically the easiest approach to getting bulk data into HubSpot. Just like ActiveCampaign, you can always update values for individual contacts in HubSpot (or used lists/workflows to bulk update values), but importing the initial data within your spreadsheet is the way to go!

Jacob Olle

Marketing Operations Manager

HubSpot Certified Trainer

Create Your Own Free Signature
jolle
Recognized Expert | Partner
Recognized Expert | Partner

Importing lists from ActiveCampaign to HubSpot

SOLVE

@brettski the import tool in HubSpot will allow you to create static lists. You just need to check the "Create a list from this import" box on the final "Details" page:

 

Screen Shot 2022-09-30 at 2.56.03 PM.png

 

If you check that box, a static list will be created containing every contact in your import.

 

Otherwise, if you head to ContactsLists and click Create list in the top right corner, you'll be taken to the list builder where you can create an active or static list as needed. Here is HubSpot's Knowledge Base article on creating lists.

 

If you want to update a value on a particular list of contacts, you can either:

  1. Set that value in the actual spreadsheet file before importing the contacts into HubSpot
  2. Head into the list that you created in HubSpot and bulk edit contacts from there

Hope this provides some additional clarity!

Jacob Olle

Marketing Operations Manager

HubSpot Certified Trainer

Create Your Own Free Signature
0 Upvotes
brettski
Participant

Importing lists from ActiveCampaign to HubSpot

SOLVE

Hey, thanks for the follow up! Yep, glossed right over that checkbox, I'm not going to lie. 😊

 

0 Upvotes
jolle
Recognized Expert | Partner
Recognized Expert | Partner

Importing lists from ActiveCampaign to HubSpot

SOLVE

Happy to help! And no worries at all — it's definitely easy to miss, especially right after you've spent a bunch of mental energy figuring out all of the property mapping stuff. 

 

Happy HubSpotting!

Jacob Olle

Marketing Operations Manager

HubSpot Certified Trainer

Create Your Own Free Signature
0 Upvotes