Get More Value Out of Your CRM Integration

Deciding to integrate your HubSpot portal with your CRM platform is exciting. But just because you’re amped to reap the benefits of your HubSpot CRM integration doesn’t mean you should speed through any part of the process. An integration can be a complex project with a fluctuating timeline, but correctly doing everything is worth the wait.

If you do decide to rush, your integration may not be built to meet your company’s specific needs. When it’s not tailored to your organization’s processes, you can’t fully unlock its value. Taking these seven steps will ensure you get the most out of your HubSpot CRM integration.

Involve the Right Team Members

An integration, whether out-of-the-box or custom, involves multiple teams across different departments. Right off the bat, you should include the appropriate team members before, during, and after your integration. When you involve key stakeholders, everyone will be on the same page throughout the process. Here’s a look at who might need to be included on your project:

• Project Manager. Someone needs to take control of the communication and training of team members, right? Be sure to appoint a project manager who can handle the scheduling of meetings, discussions, and documentation involved with your integration partner.
• CRM Admin. Your CRM admin can provide valuable information on any CRM changes that need to be made to make your integration work properly.
• Marketing Members. Because your marketing team uses HubSpot Marketing Hub and will benefit from the integration, they should be involved throughout. They can provide insight into what they need from sales to create more effective campaigns.
• Sales Representatives. Similarly, your sales department uses your CRM system daily and can provide details on what they’ll need from marketing in an integration to perform their jobs more efficiently.

Ready Your Data Before Integrating

Your integration project is an opportunity to take a long, hard look at the current state of your data and strengthen it. After all, clean data is the best data! To ensure yours is streamlined for optimal functionality, ready it by:

• Merging or deleting duplicate records
• Updating or eliminating invalid email addresses
• Implementing specific fields to segment your database (i.e., by relationship type or status to make sure only files that belong in your HS marketing database import)

Test Before Going Live

You wouldn’t launch your website without testing it, and the same goes for your integration. User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is a necessary step to make sure your integration meets the expectations and goals of all departments while giving everyone a chance to monitor its functionality. During UAT, a limited amount of your data is live and syncing in both directions, so you can pinpoint potential bugs or additional field mappings you may need to round out your integration. It also provides you the chance to create documentation to deliver to your team after you’re officially and fully live.

Provide Training and Insight

For many people, a HubSpot CRM integration is unfamiliar to them. No matter if someone was involved from the start or was roped in later, they need the correct training and documentation to learn how your integration works. You should also include why and how the integration will benefit your organization.

Your team can conduct training to your entire company by holding meetings, providing resources, and remaining open to questions and concerns. When you partner with a certified integration partner, like Lynton, you’ll also have the opportunity to purchase support packages for additional phone calls and emails to answer any questions. You’ll also enjoy proactive monitoring from these support packages.

Nail Down Your Processes

A HubSpot CRM integration syncs data from both systems, so what happens in one will happen in the other. This helps keep your sales and marketing aware of what the other is doing, but to truly benefit from it, the two teams need to get together to solidify their processes. For starters, you’ll need to determine how leads get passed off.

Your sales team may directly reach out to bottom-of-the-funnel form submissions, while marketing generates top-of-the-funnel leads and communicates with them through content until they’re ready for sales. You may use different avenues to nurture leads. Whatever method you choose, make sure both departments are aware and work out the kinks so marketing doesn’t work a lead that sales should and vice versa.

Assign Each Contact a Lead Score

After the historical sync of your integration’s data, your systems will be filled with all your contacts from both platforms. Because of the potential volume of data, you may not know which of these synced contacts is an MQL, SQL, or something in between. Not knowing this crucial information can make nurturing your prospects and customers correctly almost impossible. Here are some helpful tips:

• Identify lead scoring ranking factors (i.e., number of visits to site, downloads, type of page visited, etc.)
• Prioritize lead scoring ranking factors
• Sync HubSpot lead scores with your CRM

Create or Edit Lead Nurture Campaigns

The most fun part of a HubSpot CRM integration? The great marketing and sales campaigns you can create once your integration is launched! With the detailed contact information from your CRM synced with the marketing activity data from your HubSpot portal, your campaigns will be more engaging than ever. The integration will allow them to be more contextual and personalized, which has been proven to increase email open rates and click-through rates.

Even if you already have some lead nurture campaigns in place, you may benefit from going back and editing them once you have access to new data. If you’re entirely new to these campaigns, here’s some guidance to get started:

• Build email templates specific to your lead nurturing efforts
• Create lead nurturing workflows triggered by specific contact actions
• Write unique content for each lead nurturing email
• Get Expert Help

Taking these seven measures can help you during your integration project. However, to truly get the most bang for your buck, partnering with an integration expert is the way to go. With Lynton as your partner, your integration will be built for you so you can get the value you need out of it. Reach out to learn more.