Want to know how to effectively achieve a Salesforce integration with HubSpot? This article is for you. We'll explain how to connect these platforms. You'll also discover the benefits of integration. Plus, we offer practical tips for a smooth process and how to tailor it to your business needs.

Key Takeaways

Integrating Salesforce with HubSpot enhances collaboration between sales and marketing teams. This can lead to improved customer relationship management and revenue growth.
The integration ensures the sales team receives timely and relevant lead intelligence. This enables them to improve productivity and close rates.
Key benefits of integration include real-time data sharing, automated tasks, and higher conversion rates. This is the result of streamlined workflows across the platforms that enhance productivity.
Successful integration requires customised data flow strategies, thorough planning, and ongoing maintenance. This helps organisations to address potential challenges such as data mapping and duplication.
If you want to integrate your Salesforce and HubSpot, reach out here

A Salesforce and HubSpot Integration for Sales and Marketing Alignment

We meet many organisations that depend on specialised platforms to handle their needs. Salesforce is often a preferred choice for sales teams because of its powerful CRM lead tracking and deal closure facilities. Similarly, marketers sometimes prefer HubSpot to design and nurture campaigns. But when these cloud solutions are used in isolation, there’s a risk of losing data between systems.

Sales teams might be deprived of insights from marketing initiatives. Whereas marketers may not see how they influence sales activities. This has the potential to disrupt seamless customer experiences and hamper performance.

To address this gap, you can integrate Salesforce with HubSpot.

What Happens When You Integrate Salesforce and HubSpot?

Integrating Salesforce with HubSpot has numerous advantages:

Sales and marketing have better collaboration.
Data is harmonised. This facilitates unified and pinpointed strategies across both departments.
Communication and transparency increase, helping to create collaboration opportunities and revenue growth.

How Does This Integration Actually Work?

So, how do Salesforce and HubSpot truly connect to deliver these benefits? It's all about seamless, bidirectional data flow. This ensures your teams have the insights they need, when they need them.

Here's how it happens:

Consistent Customer Data: Customer data is consistently synced between HubSpot and Salesforce. This guarantees up-to-date information across both platforms, giving everyone a unified view.
Real-Time Insights: Customer information is exchanged in near real-time. This allows managers to make faster decisions about customer needs.
Bidirectional Data Sync: Bidirectional data means data is always current and accessible.
Sales Team Visibility: Sales can see recent marketing activities. This helps them tailor their interactions with customers and get them over the line.
Marketing Team Empowerment: Marketing get immediate access to fresh sales insights. This allows them to fine-tune campaigns, knowing the information is accurate and up-to-date.

How is this achieved? It depends on your organisational setup. Integrating Salesforce and HubSpot can happen through API integration or custom development. Custom integrations can be built specifically for your organisation. This offers the advantage of tailoring and automating your unique business workflows.

Establishing Integrated Workflows

Integrated frameworks manage communication and data movement between HubSpot and Salesforce. This framework connects the two platforms, allows data sharing and synchronises workflows. These frameworks help your organisation to:

Automate mundane responsibilities. This might include entering data manually or classifying leads. With automation in place, teams have more time to dedicate to strategy.
Reduce human error. With data synced, productivity rises, and mistakes in inputting data are reduced.
Contacts are always up-to-date. With contact sync as a default feature of the integration, contacts always hold current information.

How Might Your HubSpot and Salesforce Integration Take Shape?

Integrating Salesforce and HubSpot is not a universal solution. It requires customisation to align with your unique business processes and data needs. This tailored approach is essential to fully leverage the benefits of both systems. To ensure proper data flow, you need to configure the integration settings, including field mappings, sync rules, and selective sync options.

Selective Sync

Selective sync can be used to control which records are shared between HubSpot and Salesforce. This allows you to limit data flow and protect sensitive information. Adjusting sync settings ensures only relevant data is synchronised. Alternatively, the HubSpot inclusion list can help you specify which contacts are eligible for syncing. This uses an active list to determine which HubSpot records are sent to Salesforce.

Mapping fields

It is essential to understand the compatibility between Salesforce fields and HubSpot properties. Salesforce fields, like picklists, text, date/time, and formula fields, must be mapped to the appropriate HubSpot properties to avoid errors. This might involve creating new fields or properties in either system.

Sync rules

Salesforce differentiates between contacts and leads. The integration must manage this appropriately. Based on your business logic, HubSpot leads can map to Salesforce leads or contacts. If Salesforce is your primary data source, you can ensure HubSpot marketing data flows into your Salesforce records. You can create Salesforce tasks based on email interactions and form submissions. This ensures that sales teams have visibility into all relevant marketing touchpoints. Similarly, Salesforce updates, such as deal status changes, can trigger automated marketing actions in HubSpot.

These integrations must be properly configured and maintained for ongoing success.

Navigating the Real Challenges: Where Integrations Falter

Connecting Salesforce and HubSpot often seems straightforward. Yet, we frequently see organisations struggle with unexpected hurdles. Many in-house projects falter, leading to wasted time and resources. Here are common pitfalls we're often called in to help solve:

Field Mapping

A primary hurdle is field mapping. Salesforce and HubSpot fields rarely match perfectly. Naming conventions also differ significantly. Incorrect mapping leads to inconsistent, unreliable data. This is a common early misstep that causes cascading problems.

Underestimated Change Management

Many underestimate change management. Your teams already use both platforms, so integrating them seems simple. However, new workflows arise. Data flows differently. Without clear communication and user adaptation strategies, adoption suffers. This causes significant resistance and slows progress.

Data Integrity and Account Complexity

Integrating multiple accounts adds significant complexity. Linking several Salesforce or HubSpot instances is not standard. This often leads to data conflicts or duplication. Merging systems frequently results in overlapping datasets. Without an effective data cleansing strategy, duplicate records abound. This creates a messy, untrustworthy data environment.

Security and Access Control Oversight

Overlooked permission settings and access controls cause big problems. Improper setup can lead to security gaps or integration failures. Organisations also often neglect to consult their IT or network security teams. This is crucial for OAuth connections or CRM Analytics integration. This oversight can create serious security risks and compliance issues down the line.

Lack of Strategic Planning and Rigorous Execution

Many projects falter from the start due to flawed planning. Lacking clear strategies for data streams leads to disarray. Integrations often become reactive fixes. Insufficient deployment steps and rigorous testing also lead to post-launch issues. Problems get missed early. Users struggle to adapt. Without thorough validation, the integrated system can fail unexpectedly.

These are common scenarios where in-house or less experienced integration projects struggle. Such complexities highlight a critical point: a basic, off-the-shelf integration often isn't enough. This leads us to a common question...

Is There an App for Everything? Not Quite

The good news is that the HubSpot Salesforce integration is available as an app in the HubSpot App Marketplace. You can install the integration directly from the marketplace by searching for the app, selecting it, and following the guided steps.

But while the app provides the connection, it isn't designed to handle strategic planning, complex customisations, unique business setups or ongoing support. This is precisely why a Salesforce Partner like us becomes invaluable.

Strategic Data Flow & Advanced Automation: The app offers a default setup. But every business has unique processes and specific goals. It won't understand your unique sales stages or marketing funnels. We define a customised data flow strategy that truly aligns with your operations. We design and implement advanced logic and complex workflows. This maximises efficiency for your teams.
Complex Field Mapping & Customisations: The app allows basic field mapping. However, many organisations have unique or custom fields. They need careful consideration. We ensure accurate and intelligent mapping. We also create any necessary new fields or properties. This prevents data inconsistencies and ensures data integrity.
Managing Change, User Adoption & Data Integrity: Integrating new systems impacts your teams. The app won't guide users through new workflows or help them adapt. We provide comprehensive change management support, ensuring smooth user adoption. Merging systems also often brings the risk of data duplication. While the app syncs data, it doesn't automatically cleanse your databases. We develop and implement robust data cleansing strategies. This identifies and removes duplicate records, preserving data integrity.
Ongoing Optimisation & Support: Integration is not a "set it and forget it" process. As your business evolves, so will your integration needs. The app won't provide proactive monitoring, performance tuning, or troubleshooting. We offer sustained support, regular reviews, and fine-tuning. This ensures your integrated configuration continues to deliver value efficiently over time.

Choosing a Partner for Salesforce & HubSpot Integration

Integrating Salesforce with HubSpot offers significant advantages, yet the process can be intricate and daunting. This is where we shine. As a certified Salesforce Partner with knowledge in both platforms, we are equipped to craft bespoke integration solutions that cater specifically to your requirements.

Our comprehensive services, going beyond what the standard app provides, include:

Initial strategic planning and consultation
Implementation procedures tailored to your business
Custom solutions to ensure all of your business needs are met
Rigorous testing phases to ensure seamless operation
Sustained support, training and managed services to ensure you have what you need to thrive

We deliver strategies that bolster your organisation's growth and operational productivity. This includes an opportunity to rework existing processes that benefit both parts of your organisation, ensuring seamless collaboration with shared data. Whether you need data mapping, custom fields, synchronisation rules, or optimised workflows, we're ready to help. Reach out today and fill in this form for a free consultation on integrating Salesforce into HubSpot.