How much of Salesforce to Import, if I intend to keep Salesforce

[#1]

Hi 

I have completed my Salesforce integration, so I now have the buttons that enable me to import my data directly from Salesforce without the pain of data extraction, VLOOKUP etc. .

My question is... which tables should I look to import if I intend to keep Salesforce as part of my sales process? I am not replacing Salesforce with Hubspot. I am replacing Pardot with Hubspot.

So, Leads and Contacts only?

Presumably Opportunities will sync as Deals as and when they arise from a specific Hubspot campaign? Or, do I need to specifically choose Opportunities to make sure that they sync in the future?

Many thanks in anticipation of any more in-depth best practice advice or articles.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi, @tslatter. By default, any leads and contacts you import will continue to sync with HubSpot contacts. There are separate settings to enable account sync and opportunity sync, and it's up to you whether you want to enable those, prior to importing accounts and opportunities. 

If that's desired, though, please give those articles a careful review so you're aware what to expect. If you enable account sync, the contact-account association from Salesforce is preserved in HubSpot; if you enable opportunity sync, the account-opportunity association from Salesforce is in HubSpot, and the contact-opportunity association is there if you've added opportunity contact roles in Salesforce.

These object-only imports will bring over every lead and contact with a valid and unique email address, as well as every account and opportunity. You may only want a selective set of Salesforce records imported instead.

If that's the case, you may want to enable account/opportunity sync (if desired), then add the selective leads and contacts to a Salesforce campaign, then import just that Salesforce campaign in HubSpot. 

[#3]

Thanks so much for your response. I have already setup the connector, and it looks like many contacts have automatically come across anyway. So, just to clarify, I don't need to import them separately, it will just happen? Or do they only sync when they are updated in some way in Salesforce?

I may import them from Pardot though, to supplement any Salesforce info with the Pardot info that we have gathered over the last 3 years.

[#4]

I just answered my own question by reading the articles you linked. Thanks so much.

So, only things that are new or amended will sync. If I want them all in Hubspot anyway, I need to manually import them. 

Thanks for your response. Excited to get stuck into Hubspot.

[#5]

Syncs are triggered when changes to mapped properties happen. Alternately, HubSpot-side activities like form submissions or email sends/opens/clicks can also trigger syncs, if you have them configured that way. 

That's the behavior in a vacuum. How this works at the very beginning of your integration depends on what settings you've enabled. On the HubSpot side, the very first time a HubSpot contact is eligible to sync, it looks among your Salesforce contacts, then leads, to an exact match on email. Once it finds a matching record, it syncs to that record and doesn't worry about the rest. 

From the connector's settings page in HubSpot, you can also configure whether you want records from Salesforce to automatically add to HubSpot. If you have this setting enabled on leads, contacts, or both, then as new leads or contacts are created with valid and unique emails in Salesforce, they're automtically added as contacts in HubSpot. 

At the very beginning of the integration, with this update enabled, any update to an existing Salesforce lead or contact with a valid and unique email would get this to fire. Any email that looks new to the connector can be automatically added with that setting selected. It just takes an update of that old lead or contact. 

So, as you were making normal updates to your leads and contacts in Salesforce, they could have been brought over automatically. However, it's unclear just how much of your lead and contact universe already exists in HubSpot, versus having never been imported from Salesforce.

There's no such thing as a duplicate record in HubSpot, as email serves as the unique identifier. If your original goal was to import all your Salesforce leads and contacts into HubSpot, you can just create a one-column .csv of all of the unique emails on leads and contacts in Salesforce, then import that .csv in HubSpot. That will straighten everything out. [If you proceed this way, make sure the volume of records doesn't jeopardize your Salesforce API call usage.]

[#6]

Thanks very much for your detailed response.