As a sales or marketing professional, you understand the importance of having access to accurate and up-to-date customer data. With a relationship management system like Salesforce and marketing automation software like HubSpot, you can do just that.
But what about integrating the two platforms? Integrating your Salesforce and HubSpot accounts offers a wealth of benefits, but it can be tricky to navigate. In this blog, we'll break down everything you need to know about the Salesforce and HubSpot integration including: benefits, best practices, and potential challenges.
Why Integrate Salesforce and HubSpot?
Integrating Salesforce and HubSpot provides several advantages, such as:
- Visibility into customer interactions across sales and marketing
- Better tracking of customer journeys and lead data
- Enhanced lead nurturing and scoring processes
- A streamlined sales process, resulting in increased collaboration and faster deal closing
- Reporting and analytics on lead-to-revenue journey, including multi-touch attribution
Many sales teams struggle with syncing data between their CRM and Marketing Automation tools. Integrating Salesforce and HubSpot helps businesses overcome these challenges by providing a real-time flow of data between both platforms.
There are two approaches you can take with this integration. The first, being the out-of-the-box integration with very little customization. This initial setup will pass information back and forth freely, with standard sync rules. However, this is not a one-size fits all solution.
That is why we commonly recommend and implement a custom integration setup. This provides businesses with more control and nuance, including syncing custom fields, lead routing rules, and reporting. This is the method Concept's CRM team consults on most frequently. Of course, if you already have the integration setup, it is never too late to tweak and customize to fit changing business needs.
Benefits of the Integration
Integrating Salesforce and HubSpot streamlines your sales and marketing processes by synchronizing your customer data, ensuring both platforms reflect a source of truth. This allows you to do the following:
Syncing of Records and Activities
The integration syncs data seamlessly between Salesforce and HubSpot, meaning that any changes made in Salesforce reflect in HubSpot, giving you a complete view of the customer journey and the opportunities that arise from your efforts.
Bi-directional Syncing
The data syncing can be bi-directional, whereby updates made in HubSpot also show in Salesforce, and vice versa. You can also establish rules per field you are mapping, controlling the flow of updates.
Custom Field Mapping
The feature lets you map custom fields in Salesforce and HubSpot to match the fields on both platforms. In fact, upon instilling the integration and syncing, the custom fields in Salesforce are created automatically in HubSpot and the information is brought over. This does not apply to custom objects.
Marketing Automation Connector
HubSpot's Marketing Automation tools can be integrated with Salesforce, allowing for custom, automated workflows that nurture prospects and customers. This connection breaks down the walls of sales and marketing, passing marketing activity to the sales reps.
Sales Automation Connector
You can create automated sequences that can be triggered in Salesforce, such as follow-up emails, to keep your leads warm and engaged.
Segmented Targeting
Segmenting customers with greater accuracy can save you money on ad campaigns and email efforts, which means you get a better return on your time and money invested.
Seamless Lead Management
By creating campaigns, tracking lead activity, and automatically passing leads between tools, you’ll reduce manual data entry, shorten your sales cycle, and close more deals.
Improve Tracking Metrics
The integration of Salesforce and HubSpot provides your team with unparalleled visibility into your marketing and sales funnel. This insight can be used to optimize your existing processes and identify areas for growth.
Best Practices for Integrating HubSpot and Salesforce
Even if you've worked with both Salesforce and HubSpot before, integrating them creates a new set of considerations. Here are some best practices you can follow to make the process as smooth as possible:
Identify Which Data You Want to Transfer
This is arguably the most important step in the agreement process to transfer only the information you need to pass from one tool to another. At Concept, we commonly create a field mapping book to review and sometimes clean this information.
Allocate Clear Roles
Make sure everyone in your team knows their responsibilities towards the integration process. It is especially important to understand who will “own” Salesforce, HubSpot, and the integration respectively. In many organizations, these roles may overlap.
Clean Duplicate Data
In most cases, you will need to look at both systems to ensure you have scrubbed duplicate information to the best of your ability. Duplicates can become an issue, as the two systems will map records (contacts and leads, accounts, and companies) on a one-to-one basis. Having more than one source of truth in a record causes an issue in any data project.
Salesforce and HubSpot Integration Challenges and Potential Solutions
Salesforce and HubSpot integration can be a smooth process, providing you with a wealth of benefits, but the challenges to watch out for that can slow down adoption. Some challenges that you may come across are:
Sync Errors
Integrations can sometimes trigger technical issues such as sync errors, that can occur for a handful of reasons. These can be found in HubSpot on the integration dashboard, along with descriptions of the errors. Having knowledge of both systems will be key to resolving these.
Team Training and Platform Designations
Integrations still require extensive knowledge of both tools' capabilities, so you will need to train your team to use both Salesforce and HubSpot. You will also want to make it clear which teams are operating in which system, and what tools they will be leveraging.
API Limits
Salesforce has a limited number of API calls that it can run within 24 hours, which varies depending on your instance. These calls are shared with other integrations, so it is important to manage this usage. The amount allocated to HubSpot can be limited with the integration menu.
Salesforce and HubSpot Integration: Next Steps
The Salesforce and HubSpot integration enables you to improve your sales and marketing processes – streamlining lead tracking, nurturing, and revenue tracking.
By starting with a solid plan, clean data, and utilizing experienced professionals, you can achieve a seamless Salesforce and HubSpot integration providing you with actionable customer insights while increasing sales efficiency and boosting revenue.
Concept has a designated group of individuals who have a wealth of knowledge to speak to your CRM integration questions and concerns. As certified partners of Salesforce and HubSpot, and recently being awarded HubSpot's Onboarding accreditation, our team is ready and able to assist you with your Salesforce and HubSpot integration needs.