Essential HubSpot CRM hacks that every manager needs to know

What's HubSpot? Marketing, sales and customer service all in one? 

HubSpot CRM platform is an integrated solution that helps businesses grow. It includes powerful tools to help you with your individual needs or combine them into a single source of truth.

Cat Media has been using this fantastic software for some time now, so we thought it would be great if we could share our favourite hacks & tips.

CRM managers can be a wild bunch, juggling multiple tasks and responsibilities. That's why we've compiled this list of essential HubSpot CRM hacks every CRM manager needs to know.

From automating lead scoring to speeding up the onboarding process for new employees, these tips will help you manage your day-to-day and ensure you're able to handle any situation that comes your way.

• Configure Contacts Records with what matters most to your business

When setting up your HubSpot contact feed, ensure that the information you are interested in is at or near the top. You can use default settings to see something different if they want. You can also customise it with specific fields, which would be more vital than others. For example, their email address and phone number, among many other things.

• Enable notifications for conversions and when leads revisit your website.

HubSpot can send conversion and lead-revisit notifications directly in your Inbox or on your dashboard. If you use Slack or Microsoft Teams, it's easy to integrate with HubSpot so that you get notified of all of your leads in real-time. Notifications allow sales opportunities to fall through the cracks and help avoid missing out on new business deals.

• Keep things tidy with clear and strict naming guidelines

Naming conventions are essential for keeping your assets in order, but they should also make sense. For example: thank you pages could have "TP" at the end of their filenames while landing pages might use "LP."

You need a system that everyone on staff follows, so it's easy to find what you're looking for when working across different campaigns or projects within HubSpot. A common practice among professionals today has become agreeing upon one set of standard terms before beginning work; this ensures clarity between colleagues and consistency across all relevant material.

• Use segmentation lists for each stage of your buyer's journey

One way to improve your outreach efforts is by using segmentation lists. Create a list for each step in the customer lifecycle and then create different lead nurture pathways based on which life-stage people are at; this will make it easier to manage potential leads and engage with them more effectively.

Segmentation lists will help you identify the people who have been visiting your site to determine which pages they've browsed and when a sales conversation might be most timely. You can also use this information as an opportunity to follow up contact later that day, ensuring every potential customer gets their message.

• Define your lead lifecycle stages to make marketing and sales more streamlined

Defining lead qualification stages will help you manage and engage with your potential clients more efficiently. Don't bundle all of them under one lifecycle stage; instead, define different categories to better target marketing or sales campaigns so that no leads get lost in translation.

You can set lifecycle stages based on what form a contact fills out to segment your database and qualify potential leads. For instance, if the contact is interested in your product or service. They should be assigned as Sale Qualified Lead because they are a possible opportunity for sales.

If they download gated content and fill out an additional form field with yes/no answers, then you can set it to the lead stage. You can easily set up this by adding hidden input fields in your smart form that will update automatically.

Utilising this kind of approach ensures that your resource is utilised in the best way possible and may help you see who's likely to make a purchase.

• Setting up your lead scoring to better qualify leads

You need to prioritise your sales team's engagement with leads. Not all of them will be at the same level in their buyer journey, so you should tailor it for each one of them individually based on where they are and how much time there is left before purchase consideration becomes necessary!

Marketing generates leads, but salespeople can focus on the ones worth more to your business. Lead scoring rates contacts by their behaviour or website interactions and assigns them a score - those with higher values might be less likely in general for friction than others because they would have been better informed about what's going on already.

You can create scoring criteria using the HubSpot score property. For example, a lead that downloads your content is more likely to be interested than someone subscribing only for blog articles; you should increase or decrease the score depending on this type of action.

• Use Progressive profiling to make your forms smarter

Websites are full of lengthy forms, and this can make them a real pain for visitors to fill out, so keep your form length in line with what you're offering and how valuable it is. For instance, if someone has accepted an offer like a free trial or access code, they will probably give more personal information than if you are offering a top of the funnel eBook; you shouldn't be asking for too much information.

Progressive profiling helps you to provide a better experience for your customers. For example, if they have already provided information in one of the fields. Another field may serve them well and make their lives easier with more specific data at hand. In addition, this process allows us as marketers to get valuable insight into our existing leads since they fill out forms on websites like ours.

• Create bot chat flows for lead nurturing and engagement

How does it work? Bots are a fascinating feature as they can increase visitors' engagement on your website by identifying what you're looking for before someone from our team has even seen them. In addition, bots save us time, providing an opportunity to inform potential customers about their needs directly at just that moment in time - without any wasted steps or hassle on either side.

• Using smart content for a personalised experience

Smart content is a way to make your marketing messages more personalised for potential customers. It uses information about whom you're communicating with and their needs to tailor the communication accordingly. For example, suppose someone on a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) list has reached out but isn't quite ready to buy yet. In that case, we might show them bottom of funnel offers like testimonials -- this will get those leads closer towards making purchases faster.

• Create topic clusters using the HubSpot content strategy tool

As the internet has grown, so too have search engines. Nowadays, they are not just looking at keyword-rich pages to rank your website; instead, it's all about what you write and how often people read it that matters for ranking purposes!

The content strategy tool within HubSpot helps users create topic-based clusters from their blog or article to produce engaging material, resulting in more traffic over time because Google rewards regularity with increased rankings.

HubSpot's content strategy tool can help you build out topics clusters, manage them and see their performance.

• Make use of HubSpot's SEO tool to boost your company's visibility

HubSpot's SEO Tool will help you make your web pages stand out from the crowd. The tool provides recommendations for everything from page titles and meta descriptions to keywords topics and images alt text size - all with a goal in mind: better-ranking results on search engines, like Google or Bing.

• Use A/B to test your emails and landing pages to determine the most effective ones

With A/B testing, you can now get feedback on what content your audience responds to with A/B testing. So, for example, you send two slightly different emails with HubSpot and see which one gets more engagement.

It's a much easier way of figuring out whether or not particular messages resonate well for people in general rather than guessing alone. In addition, you are using actual data instead of mainly relying on gut instinct when creating future campaigns that will ensure all kinds of success (pun intended).

You can also use A/B testing on HubSpot landing pages, show two slightly different pages to your audience and see which one triggers the most engagement. Then, instead of guessing what resonates more with your persona, you get actual data that helps inform future content creation.

• Add personalisation tokens in your email communication

Personalisation tokens allow you to personalise your marketing and sales emails by using a variety of properties such as first name, company name and office location. Personalisation means no more typing out salutations or manually addressing each recipient. You can automate the process with workflow or sequences tools in HubSpot.

Personalisation tokens are a great way to improve email engagement as they will make your emails more personal, encouraging people's interactions with them.

• Your company's social and spokespeople accounts are a great way to increase engagement

There has been an exponential rise in opportunity within LinkedIn over recent years where influencers can become prominent figures by using their professional profile pages belonging to you or any other member of staff at the business they work.

The power of social media is undeniable. If you have employees with intelligent, well-spoken voices who can compellingly share their knowledge on platforms like LinkedIn, then it would be worth the investment for them to do so.

A business should get behind its team members by encouraging engagement from this professional space where authenticity resonates most strongly. On HubSpot, you can connect employees personal accounts using the social media tool.

• HubSpot analytic reporting for identifying optimisation and opportunities

HubSpot's reporting tools allow you to identify your best-performing pages, as well as what type of traffic they are receiving. With this information at hand, it will be easier for the site owner or manager to optimise web content to get more leads and conversions.

HubSpot gives users a more detailed understanding of where their customers are coming from, how they found out about them in the first place. Using these tracking numbers, we can precisely see why certain content was clicked many times while other articles only received a few visits at best - giving us valuable information so our message will resonate closer to home next time around.

• Optimise your marketing to sales lead handoff

Marketing to sales handover is a challenge for many businesses. They do the hard work of generating qualified leads but then forget to transition or inform their Sales department that they have done so - luckily, this can all be automated with HubSpot.

Automating the process of moving marketing qualified leads automatically to sales will make it easier for your team. Lead management is a critical step in the sales process. With automatic workflow, you can be sure that Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) are automatically moved over to your Sales department once they meet specific criteria- this makes it easier for both departments without having to shout at each other.

• Take advantage of the simplicity of HubSpot Conversations

HubSpot Conversations are a great way to improve your customer experience, boost conversions, and make it easy for you or any team member to access all conversations to be sure not to miss anything. With the HubSpot Inbox, you'll be able to see all of your customer's conversations in one place. Perfect for staying on top and maintaining communication with them.

The Inbox is a convenient way for teams to keep track of their 1:1 interactions, including live chat messages, forms submissions and email. For example, you can connect a team email for your sales or service team so that you can review relevant conversations from within it as needed or share one shared email between all members who need access to it at once.

• Use the Gmail/Outlook Sales extension – HubSpot email integration

HubSpot's CRM integration with your Inbox lets you send emails directly from the email client (Gmail or Office 365). You can also use their Sales Hub extension/add-on that makes it even easier.

This will help you log and track email conversations with your contacts to your CRM; you can also attach documents, meeting links, create tasks and deals directly from the app extension. Pretty cool, right?

• Start using the meetings tool

It can be not easy to schedule meetings with prospects and clients in today's fast-paced world. HubSpot Meeting Tool helps you save time by going back and forth on email; they can automatically schedule time with you when they are available. It syncs your Google or Office 365 calendar so the visitors can see your availability. In addition, the tool will look after form submission, manage availability and send reminders. An excellent example of using the HubSpot meetings tool is to create different meeting links depending on your sales process (connect call or discovery call, a demo, etc.)

• Create automated email sequences using templates and tasks

HubSpot's Sequences allow you to send a series of targeted, timed emails that are perfect for nurturing leads. This is done in conjunction with calls and setting yourself tasks simultaneously! When contacts reply or book their next meeting, they'll automatically be unenrolled from your sequence.

HubSpot's sales sequences would help nurture prospects and give your team members more time to focus on closing deals. You can even create an automation workflow to enrol/unenroll contacts depending on marketing activities. For example, a contact filled out a webinar form, and then you want the sales team to start nurturing.

• Don't forget about snippets.

There are some creative ways you can use HubSpot's snippets. Drafting an email to a prospect or need to send quick responses via live chat? Use these handy little tools.

The snippets tool allows you to create reusable blocks of texts that can be pulled into emails or live chat windows. They help make the process frictionless for your customers while providing a better user experience on our end, too, by not having users type out their message over again when they have already been answered before.

• Design dashboards with your team in mind

With HubSpot, you can create default dashboard views for specific users and fixed dashboards for everyone on a team. With a custom-fit dashboard for each team member, you can manage their visibility in one place and have access to all the information needed.

• Create custom reports with the report builder tool 

Reporting in HubSpot gives you the power to create custom reports by using filters and segmenting data; depending on the data in your report, you have different chart types. For instance, if a member of the director's board needs specific information on their screen, you can easily make it happen with this beneficial tool.

You can create custom reports that will give you a better understanding of your data. Depending on your HubSpot Subscription, you'll have access to "cross-object" reports where you can analyse multiple data sets, funnels and pipelines. 

Whether you're just starting to explore the world of HubSpot CRM or have been using it for a while, there are plenty of tools and tricks that will help your business grow better. The hacks & tips we've shared today should get you started on your journey towards maximising this powerful software suite.

If you want to learn more about how Cat Media has used these incredible features in the past, feel free to reach out. We'd love to share our knowledge with you so that together we can make every penny invested into HubSpot worth its weight in gold.