INTEGRATION BEST PRACTICES Secrets for Making your HubSpot Marketing Data Shine by:
WHAT IS BUSINESS DATA INTEGRATION? Integrations are necessary pieces of business software, as without them you rely on manual exporting and importing of data between systems. Manual integration is painful, expensive and hard to execute unless you have an excel wizard on your team that loves manual data entry. A business data integration is a software application that gives you the ability to automatically transfer data back and forth between the systems that your business uses. Integrations deserve close attention to detail: if configured incorrectly, some integration products can cause data problems. This guide will help you understand the options you have to integrate HubSpot with your existing business systems and how these integrations work. PLANNING OUT YOUR INTEGRATION HubSpot provides inbound marketing software that helps you to generate new leads for your business. Therefore you should consider the systems that you will be integrating with HubSpot when planning out your integration. There are two major types of systems that most businesses connect to HubSpot: Top of the Funnel systems and Bottom of the Funnel systems. Let s dive in: 2. www.bedrockdata.com
TOP OF THE FUNNEL INTEGRATIONS: Lead Generation and Marketing Augmentation Generally speaking, Top of the Funnel (TOFU) applications either help you load more leads into HubSpot or help you take action on your leads within HubSpot. Lead Sources: Lead generation sources can be form applications like Unbounce, Wufoo and Wordpress, which help you create and customize forms. If you pay for leads, sources like Data.com or D&B Direct come to mind. When integrating lead generation systems, you may only need the data from your source to be copied into HubSpot. In this case, bi-directional integration is not necessary. Marketing Augmentation: Marketing augmentation systems cover a wide array of systems to help you further engage existing leads in HubSpot. Web meeting systems such as GoToWebinar, GoToTraining, WebEx, and Join.me allow you to interact with your leads via a webinar. Event systems such as Cvent and Eventbrite allow you to track physical event attendees. All email marketing systems fit into this category as well. MailChimp, Constant Contact and icontact all allow you to not only add, but also nurture the leads you have in HubSpot. 3. www.bedrockdata.com
In any of these cases, you will require a bi-directional or multidirectional integration to connect these systems. Here is an example of why bi-directional is so important: HubSpot initiated example: Contact converts on a HubSpot landing page to register for a webinar Data integration system syncs this contact as a registrant to WebEx Registrant attends the webinar, becomes an attendee Data integration system syncs attendee data back to HubSpot, updating lead information and triggering workflows Marketing Augmentation system initiated example: Contact signs up for a marketing newsletter through MailChimp Data integration system syncs this contact to HubSpot Contact unsubscribes from your marketing communications in MailChimp Data integration system syncs unsubscribe status back to HubSpot, removing them from further marketing communications TL;DR: Top of the Funnel Systems Lead sources usually require only a 1-way integration system. Marketing augmentation systems, such as webinar and email marketing software, almost always require multi-directional integration and should be able to update data also. 4. www.bedrockdata.com
BOTTOM OF THE FUNNEL INTEGRATIONS: Sales, Support, ecommerce and Finance Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) integrations connect contacts in HubSpot to various other systems during or after the sales process. These include CRM, ERP, ecommerce, support and finance systems. Look at the building blocks First, think about the system that you want to connect with HubSpot. What are the objects or things that this system provides? Let s take a few examples here: CRM Objects: Leads, Contacts, Opportunities, Accounts, Activities, Tasks, Campaigns, Custom Objects ERP Objects: Contacts, Employees, Customers, Inventory, Custom Objects Support Objects: Customer or Prospect (with associated Case information) Finance Objects: Subscriber or Customer, Invoices ecommerce Objects: Customers, Products Once you determine the objects you will be integrating, you can decide HOW you want to connect these systems. Using industry parlance: this is your data mapping. Don t worry, it s not hard to create a data mapping in an integration platform like Bedrock Data. 5. www.bedrockdata.com
Data Mapping: Think of a prospect named John Doe. John is a lead in your HubSpot system. He is also a contact in your CRM system, subscriber in your finance system and customer in your support system. Although John is in four different systems, he is still the same contact: John Doe. Take a moment to re-read that last sentence; it s quite powerful. When thinking about how to integration John Doe s data across all four systems, consider the fields that you need to sync to each of them. With a data driven integration like what you get on the Bedrock platform, an example data flow is provided here: CRM or ERP Initiated Example: Finance or ecommerce Initiated Example: 1. Contact converts on a HubSpot form, syncs to CRM or ERP, appended with HubSpot analytics data. 2. Contact is updated in HubSpot or put through a marketing campaign, corresponding record in CRM is automatically updated. 1. Contact buys products or subscribes to your service, customer is synced to HubSpot as a contact with Lifecycle Stage of Customer 2. Customer buys again or renews, corresponding contact in HubSpot is updated 3. Lead or Contact record is added to your CRM or ERP, record syncs to HubSpot as a Contact. 4. Lead or Contact record is edited in your CRM or ERP, update syncs to corresponding record in HubSpot. 3. Contact in HubSpot is marked as a customer or has another field change in some way, trigger an invoice send from your finance system. 6. www.bedrockdata.com
INBOUND MARKETING HACKS: Amazing Things you can do After Integrating HubSpot Automated Sales Nurturing HubSpot s email marketing automation and lead nurturing capabilities combined with an integration that is updating data from other systems enables you to smartly nurture leads in HubSpot through your other systems. Take the following example: 1. You have a smart list and workflow setup in HubSpot to send drip emails to contacts in that list. 2. Integration enabled to update properties in HubSpot that trigger the smart list. 3. Reps changing this mapped field in CRM, ERP, Finance or other systems trigger the smart list and workflow, automating the nurturing process. Send Emails from CRM Lead Owners As leads and contacts are assigned to reps in your CRM or ERP system, you may have a need to send email through HubSpot that look like they re coming from the assigned reps. With a data driven integration like Bedrock Data, you can update records owners in HubSpot when they are assigned in your CRM with the owner data and then send emails from your sales reps right within HubSpot. Automated Emails for Renewing and Repeat Customers As leads and contacts are assigned to reps in your CRM or ERP system, you may have a need to send email through HubSpot that look like they re coming from the assigned reps. With a data driven integration like Bedrock Data, you can update records owners in HubSpot when they are assigned in your CRM with the owner data and then send emails from your sales reps right within HubSpot. For example, if your website has payment forms on it that let your clients purchase products online, this data will feed into your financial system. Through an integration, you can pull that customer data out of the financial system and sync it to your email system for automated emailing, as well as syncing it to your CRM to inform your sales team about that purchase or subscription. 7. www.bedrockdata.com
A Note About One-Way Integrations Systems like Zapier are great choices when your data is static and does not change. If you perceive that you will want updates (recent conversion events, and other HubSpot lead record data) you will want to use a bi-directional integration such as Bedrock Data, Scribe or Boomi. Data driven integration platforms like these will not just sync data in one direction and perform one sync at a time, they will keep your data updated in HubSpot as well, letting you do things like Automated Sales Nurturing and the other features mentioned above. HUBSPOT INTEGRATION CHOICES: How to Integrate HubSpot With... Salesforce.com and Force.com Platform HubSpot has a native integration with Salesforce.com. This is a bi-directional integration that syncs new HubSpot contacts to Salesforce.com leads and contacts, as well as syncing that data back to HubSpot. Features of this native integration include inclusion list support and syncing of Salesforce opportunity data back into HubSpot. You can also sync activities to Salesforce.com from HubSpot based on certain activities such as form submissions and email opens. HubSpot native integration (Free) Bedrock Data (from $149/month): Used to integrate custom Salesforce objects such as Person Accounts. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Microsoft Dynamics CRM integrations with HubSpot are handled by 3rd party integration platforms like Bedrock Data. Any Dynamics CRM integration with HubSpot should provide syncing with the lead and contact entities in CRM as a minimum, and should also pull in Account and Opportunity data as well so that you can do Automated Sales Nurturing, described above. Bonus features of any integration would include the Marketing Lists and Activities entities as well. Bedrock Data (from $149/month, self setup) Scribe/LyntonWeb (from $400/month, assisted setup required) 8. www.bedrockdata.com
NetSuite NetSuite is a huge system that can be customized in many ways. HubSpot users also using NetSuite should obviously focus their integration efforts on the contact object in NetSuite, as well as related Lead, Prospect and Customer records. NetSuite integrations will have to be handled by 3rd parties like Bedrock Data, as a native integrations with NetSuite are not supported. Bedrock Data (from $149/month, self setup) Boomi (from $1500+/month) SugarCRM SugarCRM is a great alternative to Salesforce.com at a fraction of the price (free if you can host it in-house). Sugar employs a traditional CRM model, where there are leads that convert into contacts, which are then associated with Accounts and Opportunities. Sugar integrations are covered by 3rd parties as well, and could also include campaign and activities in any integration that you might want to employ. Bedrock Data (from $149/month, self setup) Zapier (from $15/month, no updating of data, not bidirectional) Zoho CRM Zoho is another CRM that is a great alternative to Salesforce.com, and some of the other big players in the market today. Like SugarCRM and Salesforce.com, Zoho employs the traditional lead contact/account/opportunity model and also enables you to create custom objects, fields and layouts. It s fully functional for the most part and offers great value as a product. Integrations with Zoho should sync lead and contact data back and forth to and from HubSpot, but also should pull in opportunity data and account data at the minimum as well so that you can use this data to market with out of HubSpot. Bedrock Data (from $149/month, self setup) Zapier (from $15/month, no updating of data, not bidirectional) 9. www.bedrockdata.com
Financial System Integrations (Quickbooks, Freshbooks, Xero) Integrating financial systems into HubSpot would be something to consider if you see value in automatically emailing customers based on their purchasing and invoice histories. You can sync data from your financial system over into HubSpot on the contact records there, and then setup smart lists and workflows that will email customers when they buy products or renew their subscriptions. Bedrock Data (from $149/month, self or assisted setup options) EASILY INTEGRATE YOUR BUSINESS DATA You can use Bedrock to sync between your cloud business systems and keep a running backup of your critical business data. TRY BEDROCK FOR FREE 10. www.bedrockdata.com