HubSpot TakeAway

Definitions:

• Activity: actions that are taken on records in the CRM. Examples include notes, emails, tasks, scheduled meetings, and calls.
• Activity feed: a feed that shows engagements with your one-to-one emails.
• Company: the object used for any organization saved in your CRM.
• Contact: the object used for any person saved in your CRM.
• CRM object: a type of a relationship or process that your business has, such as contacts, companies, deals, and tickets.
• Deal: the object used to store information about ongoing transactions throughout the stages of your sales process.
• HubSpot score: a number that shows qualification of contacts based on criteria set in HubSpot’s lead scoring tool.
• Pipeline: a way to monitor CRM objects in different stages. Deal pipelines can be used to predict revenue and identify roadblocks in your selling process. Ticket pipelines can be used to manage your support ticket statuses and identify trends.
• Property: a field created to store data for an object. Each object has its own set of properties and all the records of that object will have those same properties. HubSpot creates and uses some default properties for each object that cannot be deleted.
• Record: an instance of an object (e.g., "Tom Smith" is a contact record). These records can be associated with records of other object types, and can be used in HubSpot tools, such as workflows.
• Task: a to-do reminder that is assigned to a user and associated with a record.
• Calling: a tool that allows you to make a call to a contact directly from their record in the CRM.
• Conversation Intelligence (CI): a tool that allows you to automatically transcribe and analyze calls made through the calling tool, using HubSpot's integration with Zoom, or using a connected third-party calling provider that supports CI.
• Document: a piece of content uploaded to HubSpot’s document tool, which can then be shared with your contacts via email.
• Forecast: a tool that helps your team predict future sales revenue.
• Meetings: a tool that allows you to create a scheduling page that you share via a meeting link so your prospects or contacts can book a meeting with you.
• Personal email: the email address you typically use to send emails to your contacts. You can connect your personal email to HubSpot to send one-to-one emails from the CRM, log email replies, send sequences emails, and install the HubSpot Sales extension or add-in to access the sales tools in your inbox.
• Playbook: an interactive content card that you can access from your records to reference when speaking with prospects and customers.
• Products: the goods or services that you sell. You can create and manage products in the product library.
• Quotes: shareable webpages that includes pricing information for a product or service.
• Sales email extension or add-in: an extension or add-in that allows you to access the sales tools directly from your inbox in Gmail, Office 365, and Outlook desktop. You can also track email opens and log emails to the CRM.
• Sales (one-to-one) email: an email sent directly to a contact from the CRM or from your mail client while using the sales email add-in or extension. To send emails to a list of contacts, learn about marketing emails.
• Sales template: saved email content that can be used when sending an email from the CRM, from your email inbox using the sales extension or add-in, or from a sequence. If you want to create templates for your website content, learn about website templates.
• Snippet: a short, reusable text block that can be used on contact, company, deal and ticket records; in email templates; in chat conversations; and when logging an activity or note.
• Sequence: an automation tool that sends a series of timed one-to-one emails and task reminders to help nurture your leads over time.

Navigation:

Activity Feed:

With the HubSpot Sales Chrome extension or the HubSpot Sales for Windows tray app, real-time notifications are triggered when a lead revisits your site, a tracked email is opened or clicked, a shared document is viewed, or a meeting is booked. These notifications will appear in real-time, and can be reviewed and managed from your activity feed in HubSpot.

Use your Activity Feed:

You can view all of your recent activity in your activity feed on desktop and in the HubSpot mobile app. Activities are grouped by contact and are unique to the account you are signed into when viewing the feed.

In the activity feed, you can view the following activity types:

• All activity types: view all recent activity.
• Email opens: view all recent email opens. Learn more about why you may also see multiple opens for the same email.
• Email clicks: view all recent email clicks.
• Sent emails: view all recent sent emails.
• Lead visits: view all recent lead revisit notifications.
• Prospect visits: view all recent visits from your prospects.
• Document views: view all recent views on your sales documents.
• Meetings: view all recent meetings booked with a HubSpot meetings link.
• Forms: view all recent form submissions from contacts that you own.

Accessing your Activity Feed:

To access your activity feed on desktop:

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts> Activity Feed.
• Use the search bar to search for a specific activity
• Click the Activities dropdown menu to filter your feed by specific activity types.
• To view all of a contact's email opens and recent activities, click [X] open(s)/sent/+ other activity.
• To follow up with a contact, hover over the activity and click Call, Email, or Create task. Click the More dropdown menu and select Create note to log a note on the record, or Schedule to schedule a meeting with the contact.
• To mute new notifications for a specific email thread, hover over the email activity, click the More dropdown menu, then select Turn off thread notifications. To resume receiving notifications, click the More dropdown menu again and select Turn on thread notifications.

Companies:

There are different ways to create companies in HubSpot:

• HubSpot can also automatically create companies based on your contacts' email addresses and associate the records.
• Manually with the Create Company tool.

Manually create companies by:

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts> Companies.
• In the upper right, click Create company.
• In the right panel, enter the datain the company properties.
• Additional fields will appear once you've filled in the company's domain name. By default, these fields are based on the properties in the Aboutsection of a company record.
• Once you've filled in the company information, click Create company at the bottom. If you want to create another company, click Create and add another.

Accessing Companies:

Once you create a company record, you can access it from your company’s home. You can view the record when working with that organization and edit the record to keep the company information up to date.

Custom Company Properties Examples 

• Company Type *
• Lead Status
• Lifecycle Stage
• Company Growth Stage*
• NDA
• Fleet Size*
• Total Money Raised
• Year Founded

Contacts:

Creating a Contact:

There are different ways to create contacts in HubSpot:

• When a new visitor fills in and submits a HubSpot form, a contact record for their email address will be created in HubSpot automatically.
• You can create a contact manually or automatically through the conversations tool.
• When a user sends a tracked and logged email to a prospect, a contact is created automatically.
• Manually with the Create Contact tool.

Following the steps below will create a contact manually.

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts > Contacts.
• In the upper right, click Create contact.

• In the right panel, enter the properties of the contact.
• Additional fields will appear once you've filled in the contact's name and email. By default, these fields are based on the properties in the About section of a contact record.
• Click Create contact. If you are looking to create another contact after this one, click Create and add another instead.

** Although it is possible to add contacts to the CRM without an email address, it is not generally recommended because HubSpot uses the email address to deduplicate contacts and automatically associate contacts with companies.

Accessing Contacts:

Once you create a company record, you can access it from your companies home. You can view the record when working with that organization and edit the record to keep the company information up-to-date.

Deals:

Use deals in HubSpot to track potential revenue. Create a deal when a contact takes an action that could lead to revenue, such as booking a meeting with you to discuss your product or service.

When created, a deal record should be associated with the contacts and companies that are involved with the deal. This helps HubSpot with associating the relevant activities to the deal record.

Deal Creation:

When you're interacting with someone through their contact or company record via call or email, you may want to create a deal when there is an opportunity for potential revenue.

To create a deal from the contact or company record:

• In the right panel of the contact or company record, next to Deals, click + Add.
• To create a new deal:
  • Enter the details for your new deal in the Create a new deal By default, the deal will be associated to the contact or company record. Learn more about how you can pull in the timeline activity from the contact and company records.
  • Once you're done, click Create. A new deal will be created.
• If there are existing deals that you want to associate the contact to:
• Click the Add existing deal tab.
  • In the search box, enter terms to identify the existing deal.
  • Select the deals you want associated to the contact or company record.
  • Click Save.

The new or existing deal will be associated with the record. Learn more about the activities that will be associated to these different records.

Create a Deal from your Outlook:

Once you’ve installed the Office 365 add-in, or the Outlook desktop add-in, you can create deals for your contacts from within your inbox. Learn how to create deals using contact profiles in Office 365 and Outlook on desktop.

Assign Ownership of Records:

HubSpot uses the Contact owner, Company owner, Deal owner, and Ticket owner properties to set the ownership of a contact, company, deal, or ticket. You can also assign additional owners using a custom HubSpot user field type property. Any HubSpot account users with access to contacts can be designated as owners.

There are several ways to assign owners to records in HubSpot:

• From the object's index page
• From the record
• Through an import
• Through a workflow
• Assign one owner to all contacts
• Rotate objects between multiple owners (Sales Hub Professional or Enterprise, Service Hub Professional or Enterprise)

Assign an owner from the object's index page

You can bulk assign records to an owner:

• Navigate to your records:
• Contacts: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts > Contacts.
• Companies: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts > Companies.
• Deals: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Sales > Deals.
• Tickets: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Service > Tickets.

• Select the checkboxes next to the records you want to assign.
• In the header row, click Assign.

• In the dialog box, click the Assign selected items to this owner dropdown menu and select an owner.
• Click Assign.

Alternatively, you can also assign a single record to an owner:

• Navigate to your records:
• Contacts: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts > Contacts.
• Companies: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts > Companies.
• Deals: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Sales > Deals.
• Tickets: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Service > Tickets.

• In the [Object] owner column, click the name of the current owner.

• In the dialog box, click the Assign selected items to this owner dropdown menu and select an owner.
• Click Assign.

Assign an owner from the record

• Navigate to your records:
• Contacts: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts > Contacts.
• Companies: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts > Companies.
• Deals: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Sales > Deals.
• Tickets: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Service > Tickets.

• Click the name of a record.
• In the left panel, click View all properties.
• Use the search bar at the top to find the [Object] owner property, then click the dropdown menu under the property and select an owner.
• At the bottom of the screen, click Save.

Associate Activities with Records:

Activities in a record's timeline can be associated to other records, including contact, company, deal, ticket, and custom object records. When an activity is associated to a record, the activity will appear in that record's timeline.

Automatic activity association

HubSpot will automatically associate certain activities in a record to the record's associated objects.  Whether an activity automatically associates depends on the type of activity and which object the activity originates in.

In the following table, a checkmark indicates that the activity will automatically associate to associated records of that object. For example, a note logged on a contact record will automatically associate to the contact record's associated company, but not to the contact record's associated tickets.

Object of origin	Associated object
	Contact	Company	Deal*	Ticket	Custom object
	Logged calls, emails, meetings, and notes
Contact	n/a	✓	✓
Company		n/a	✓
Deal		✓	n/a		✓
Ticket		✓		n/a	✓
Custom object
	Tasks
Contact	n/a	✓	✓
Company		n/a	✓
Deal		✓	n/a
Ticket		✓		n/a
Custom object
*This applies only to the five most recent associated open deals. Open deals are deals that are not in closed-won or closed-lost deal stages.

There are a few exceptions to the above:

• Emails sent and calls made from any object record will also be associated to the relevant contacts that were being emailed or called.
• Calls made using the HubSpot mobile app will only log to the contact record that you're calling from. The call will not be associated to any of the contact's associated records. 
• For 1:1 emails, an automatic association will apply only for contacts included in the first email in a thread. Any additional replies in an email thread will be associated only with the same contacts as the first email.
• If a contact record was previously associated to another company, the contact's past activities will not automatically be associated to the new associated company. The past activities will remain associated to the previous company record.
• Tasks created from sequences on contact records will not be automatically associated to any of the contact's associated records. Calls, emails, and meetings created as a result of a sequence will be automatically associated to the contact's associated company and deal records.

Associate an existing activity to another record

If your activities are not automatically associated to certain records, you can manually associate activities to other records.

• Navigate to your records:
• Contacts: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts > Contacts.
• Companies: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts > Companies.
• Deals: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Sales > Deals.
• Tickets: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Service > Tickets.
• Custom objects: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts > Contacts, then click the dropdown menu in the top left and select the name of the custom object.

• Click the name of the record with the activity to associate.
• Locate the activity you'd like to associate to a record. If the activity details are collapsed, click the right right arrow in the top left of the activity to expand it.

• In the bottom right of the activity, click [x] associations.

• In the pop-up box, you can view all records associated with the activity on the Associations tab, or click the object tabs to view only records of that object that are associated with the activity.

• To associate additional records, click the tab of the object you want to associate, then enter the name of the record in the Search [object] field. Select the checkbox next to the record. This activity will appear in that record's timeline.
• To disassociate an activity, clear the checkbox next to the record's name.

Associate multiple activities to a new deal or ticket

• Navigate to your deals or tickets:
• Deals: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Sales > Deals.
• Tickets: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Service > Tickets.

• In the upper right, click Create deal or Create ticket.

• In the right panel, Associate deal/ticket with section, click the Company or Contact dropdown menus, then search and select the company or contact to associate with the new object.

• To associate activities on these records to the new object, select the Add timeline activity from [existing record] to this deal/ticket checkbox. Click the Last 30 days dropdown menu to select the time-frame where the record's past activities will be associated to the new object.

• Enter the other fields and click Create. The resulting object will include the activities from associated records based on the timeframe selected.

Basic Tips:

Delete Contacts:

Deleting contacts may seem counter-intuitive because you don’t want to miss any sales opportunities but take the time to determine how to establish contacts that are no longer valuable to you.

Here are some contacts you should consider removing from your HubSpot account.

• Contacts who have incorrect emails (hard bounces)
• Contacts who have not interacted with your content in a year
• Contacts who have not visited your website in a year

If you have a form you use internally or for purposes other than lead generation

HubSpot increases software fees every thousand customers, so managing your total customers can help reduce costs and keep your system clutter-free.

Merge Duplicate Contacts:

Before you delete contacts, you may want to consider merging duplicate contacts. For example, if John Smith at John Smith Inc fills out one of your forms with his work email address and then a couple of days later, at home, he fills it out with his personal email, this will create two contacts in HubSpot. John Smith is now in your system twice, taking up space, so you need to merge these two contact records.

When merging contacts, make sure to determine which contact will be the primary contact. The primary contact will be the one that stays in the system.

When you do this, the contacts’ timeline activity will show on the primary contact record. All data will be merged so you can be sure that when you look at John Smith’s contact record, you will see all accurate data about him, and you will be saving contact space in your HubSpot system.

Clear Unwanted or Unused Contact Properties

A common issue is contact properties that are wrong and need to wiped clear to a blank slate. Sometimes we create contact properties with one thought in mind, and before we know it, there is no organization or sense to be made of the record in question. If you come across this situation, you can quickly clear out contact properties for all contacts.

Create a workflow in your HubSpot portal and choose the action “Clear Contact Property” then select the proper contact property.

Be sure to enroll the contacts you want to clear this contact property for and activate your workflow. In just a couple of minutes, you have a clean slate for your contact property!

Assign Contacts to Personas and Roles

Whether your company uses them or not, you have probably created a buyer persona for your ideal buyer. In HubSpot, you can enter these personas and keep them on record so you can associate contacts to specific personas and buyer roles.

If you are a sales rep looking at a prospect, it is a great tool to know what persona that contact is most closely related too. You can manually associate these personas by importing your contacts with their associated persona into HubSpot.

Moving forward you should add a form field to your forms that will let you know what persona a contact belongs. For example, “What best describes you?” from options that you create, you can have HubSpot automatically bucket contacts into different personas.

Fix Data Formats:

One of the most common errors we will see in HubSpot CRM, and HubSpot marketing portals are inconsistent data formats. Data is always moving and changing; from contacts entering their information in forms, data uploads, or integration between systems, the data never stops moving.

When data formats are off, reporting becomes nearly impossible. If you want to pull data on specific data points, but those data are formatted differently, you will get incomplete and inaccurate datasets.

It is vital to have data formatting standards so you can keep good data hygiene and reduce time digging for what you are looking for in the future.

Below are some formatting issues you can start by cleaning:

• Proper Case for First and Last Names
• Phone Number Formatting
• Mailing Address Formatting
• Email Address Formatting