With so many software solutions in the modern sales and marketing expert's tool belt, tackling another integration can seem pretty daunting. Of course, you know all about the benefits of HubSpot and the inbound methodology behind it, so you're keen to get going and start achieving outstanding results for your business. But, the Salesforce CRM is a huge part of what you currently do, and the two will have to work together. So, where do you even begin?
At BEE, we've helped many clients with this challenge. From the technical setup of the integration to data syncing and onboarding –– we're ready to make you a HubSpot aficionado in no time.
To help you understand the full extent of a Salesforce X HubSpot integration and what it takes to make it successful, we've got some key tips you'll want to note down.
1. Understand how your sales process works
Ultimately, any tool you implement into your business should support, enhance and improve the activities and processes you already have in place. But, if you don't know how a lead moves from point A to B in the buyer's journey, you won't be able to extract the correct information from HubSpot to feed into Salesforce.
Set criteria that help determine when a lead is qualified and ready to be added into your Salesforce database so that someone on your team can reach out at the right time.
The first step is to know exactly what information you need from a prospect to decide whether they're ready to take a sales call. Is it their job title, location, income bracket, or budget? What data do you need to ensure your buyer's journey addresses the prospects' pain points? Once you know all of this, the integration between HubSpot and Salesforce is far more simplified.
2. Get to grips with the lingo and naming conventions
Although the values of the fields that require populating in each platform are similar, they're likely to have different names. Yes, this can be frustrating –– Why can't there just be industry-standard nomenclature, right? To eliminate as much friction as possible, it's essential to note down the names of the different record types so that you can connect the relevant data between the two platforms. This will also help you understand what you can't do — for example, custom objects in Salesforce won't sync with HubSpot.
Have a good look at both platforms to see where the language mismatches so you can plan to address this and ensure your integration process is effective.
3. Use an inclusion list to define sync criteria
Making an active HubSpot list where you can select the criteria which qualify a contact to move to the Salesforce platform will ensure that only the right lead is popping up on your sales team's radar. This step helps keep your Salesforce tidy, ensuring only the most relevant leads are transferred over from HubSpot.
4. Practice good data hygiene
Cluttering up your Salesforce with low-value or irrelevant data will, ultimately, make using the platform unpleasant. If contacts have bounced, are no longer engaged or fit your buyer persona type, a good spring clean is in order. Keeping useful, impactful data will help your sales process flow and save you and your team a lot of time.
How do you know which contacts can be swept out? Emails that bounce are a typical sign of a poor quality contact record – either the contact's details are incorrect or no longer functional. Have a comb through for duplicate records in your system and contacts who are no longer engaging with you.
It's also crucial to be mindful of GDPR and how it may impact your interaction with leads in specific regions. Be sure that your GDPR settings are switched on in HubSpot, ensuring you contact only individuals who have explicitly permitted you to reach out to them.
5. Align your property mappings and property values
As expected, what appears in a dropdown menu in HubSpot won't be the same thing that appears in Salesforce.
To ensure that contact records sync with the correct picklist across platforms, property mapping must be created. Use HubSpot's integration menu to resolve sync issues and ensure that deleted or updated mapped properties sync correctly.
6. What's in a campaign?
Bandwagon, cause, drive, project, undertaking… these are just some synonyms for the word "campaign" –– and both Salesforce and HubSpot have taken advantage of the freedom to interpret the word in their own specific way.
For HubSpot, a campaign is a group or collection of assets used for a specific purpose to target a set of leads. You can generate leads to gain insight into a campaign's performance and see how contacts engaged with the campaign.
For Salesforce, however, a campaign is a list of contacts –– so, a bandwagon! A report will show you who connected with your content assets, helping you segment your audiences further.
7. Sales and marketing alignment – go beyond the software!
Tools like Salesforce and HubSpot were born out of a clear necessity for better alignment between sales and marketing teams. Marketing, who generate leads, need an overview of how sales' teams are handling the leads being passed over to them and what impact that is having on the business. On the other hand, sales require high-quality leads to fill their pipeline to ensure their days are productive and their efforts bring in results and make the business profitable.
For this reason, Salesforce and HubSpot cannot work in isolation –– they require an effective and well thought out integration. It's essential to recognise that your sales and marketing teams also need to work well together, and software cannot replace the effort you put into aligning these two business-critical departments. At its core, this means that your sales and marketing processes have to be well established, thoughtfully constructed, and the doors of communication between both teams must be open.
Conclusion
Whether you're looking for technical support on your Salesforce X HubSpot integration or you'd like to see what the BEE team can do to support and improve alignment between your sales and marketing teams, we'd like to invite you to visit our website to learn more about our services or book our Tech Integration Scoping Audit if you already know exactly which integration you want to create with HubSpot:
