Every successful organization depends on data; controlling that data has never been more critical in the digital age. Maintaining clean and reliable data is crucial when using customer relationship management (CRM) software like HubSpot to make wise decisions and foster business expansion. However, preserving data integrity can take time and effort, given the volume of information from various sources. Five methods for maintaining clean, correct HubSpot data will be discussed in this post. We will guide you to keep your HubSpot database in good health. This includes creating custom properties and conducting regular data audits. Therefore, let’s jump in and get going!
1. Set Up Custom Properties
Setting up custom properties is one of the best ways to ensure the data in HubSpot is accurate and tidy. You may create and add custom property fields to your HubSpot database to record particular details about your contacts, businesses, deals, or any other item in your CRM.
You can ensure that your team is gathering the relevant data at the appropriate location and that your system’s entire data set is standardized and organized by adding custom properties. This not only makes it simpler to locate and utilize the data you require, but it also helps avoid duplicate or incomplete records, improves reporting, and increases the accuracy of the analysis.
Follow these steps to create custom properties in HubSpot:
Identify The Data You Want To Capture
The first step is to decide exactly what details you wish to record about your contacts, businesses, deals, or other objects. Job title, industry, lead source, and other relevant information for your company’s operations could be mentioned here.
Create Custom Properties
To collect specific data, simply create custom properties in HubSpot after deciding which information you need. Go to the object (such as contacts, businesses, or deals) where you wish to add the custom property, choose the “Properties” tab, and then click “Create property.”
Give your custom property a name that accurately reflects the data it will store by being straightforward and descriptive. Along with selecting any other pertinent settings or options, you should select the appropriate data type (such as text, number, or date).
Add Custom Properties To Forms
Add your properties to the forms you use to collect contact, business, or deal information once you’ve finished creating them. By doing this, you can be confident that the data is gathered consistently, precisely, and centrally.
Simply drag and drop the property from the “Properties” tab onto the form builder to add a custom property to a form.
Educate Your Team
Be careful to instruct your staff on how to utilize the unique characteristics you have developed. This includes describing each custom property’s significance, how to complete it properly, and where to find it within the HubSpot platform.
You can retain accurate and up-to-date data in HubSpot and improve business decisions based on the insights that data give by setting up custom properties and ensuring your team knows how to use them effectively.
2. Implement Data Entry Guidelines
Implementing data entry criteria is one of the most important tactics. You can make sure that your team is gathering consistent, correct data that can be utilized for reporting and analysis by creating explicit standards for how to enter data into your HubSpot database. The actions you can take to put into effect efficient data entry criteria in HubSpot are broken down as follows:
Identify The Key Data Fields That Require Guidelines
Determining which data fields are most important for your company is the first step in adopting data entry rules. This could include any field particularly crucial for your sales, marketing, or customer service teams, such as company name, job title, phone number, etc.
Define Clear Guidelines For Each Data Field
You must specify precise instructions for how to enter data into each field after identifying the important data fields. This should include information about the data format (for example, “First Name” and “Last Name” instead of “Full Name”), whether or not specific fields are necessary, and any particular criteria or constraints for each field (for example, “Job Title” must be a specific title from a pre-defined list).
Keep your instructions clear and straightforward to follow, and whenever you can, include examples or templates to help others understand what you’re looking for.
Communicate The Guidelines To Your Team
It’s crucial to make your staff aware of your data entry guidelines after you’ve defined them. This can entail drafting a detailed paper or wiki page outlining the rules or holding training sessions or workshops to assist your staff in comprehending the rules and why they’re crucial.
Remember to highlight the advantages of adhering to the rules, including enhanced data accuracy, quicker data entry, and greater reporting and analytical possibilities.
Monitor Data Entry And Provide Feedback
After distributing the instructions to your team, it’s crucial to monitor data entry to ensure everyone is adhering to the rules appropriately. Setting up routine data quality audits or inspections, or using HubSpot’s data validation capabilities to highlight any data that doesn’t adhere to your standards, are some examples of how to do this.
If you do discover mistakes or discrepancies in the data, let your team know and take the chance to emphasize how important it is to adhere to the rules. You may also think about giving your team additional instruction or resources to assist them in honing their data entry abilities.
Continuously Refine And Update The Guidelines
It’s critical to improve and update your data entry guidelines as required regularly. This can entail including new areas, changing current policies in light of criticism or fresh data, or incorporating best practices from other sources.
Ensure that your team is informed of any updates by communicating them and offering any necessary training or resources.
Regularly Clean And Deduplicate Data
In any database, including HubSpot, accumulating duplicate or outdated data can be a common issue. This could eventually lead to data quality problems that could harm your company. While outdated data can result in missed opportunities or even lost clients, duplicates can cause confusion and inefficiencies.
It’s crucial to routinely clean and deduplicate your data in HubSpot to avoid these problems and keep a precise and clean database. You can do this by following the steps listed below:
Identify Duplicate And Outdated Data
Finding duplicate or out-of-date records is the initial step in data cleaning. For this, HubSpot offers a number of tools, like the “Duplicate contacts” and “Inactive contacts” reports.
Once you have identified the problematic records, you need to decide which ones to keep and discard. You might have to decide between duplicate records to see which one is the most current or correct. You might need to completely erase the record if it contains outdated information or update it with the most recent data.
Use HubSpot’s Deduplication Tools
Once you’ve located the duplicate records, you can combine them into a single, accurate record using HubSpot’s deduplication tools. The deduplication tools from HubSpot may combine duplicate contacts, businesses, and deals depending on a range of factors, such as firm name or email address.
To ensure you maintain the most correct and recent information, it is crucial to carefully verify each record’s contents before merging them.
Clean Up Data Manually
You may need to tidy up data to ensure accuracy manually. This can entail modifying contact information, eliminating irrelevant or old information, or adding any missing data.
For this, HubSpot offers a number of options, including bulk editing and list segmentation. With the aid of these tools, it may be simpler to change or delete data from several records at once.
Schedule Regular Data Cleanup Tasks
It’s crucial to schedule routine data cleanup procedures if you want to keep your database accurate. This could entail performing monthly or quarterly data reviews and updates, as well as building automated procedures to clean up data regularly.
Your database may be kept current and correct in HubSpot if you routinely clean and deduplicate your data. This will help your sales, marketing, and customer service operations to be more successful.
Utilize Automation Tools
You can speed up data entry, reduce mistakes, and guarantee consistency throughout your database with the use of automation technologies. You may use HubSpot’s automation technologies in the following ways:
Use Workflows To Automate Data Entry
You may automate data input chores with HubSpot’s workflows feature by setting off particular actions based on established criteria. For instance, you can build up a workflow so that a new contact record is immediately created whenever a user fills out a form on your website.
You may eliminate the possibility of human error by automating data entry processes to make sure that information is recorded consistently and precisely.
Use Lead Scoring To Prioritize Leads
With the aid of a tool called lead scoring, you may rate each of your contacts according to how actively they interact with your company. You may prioritize your leads and concentrate your efforts on the contacts who are most likely to convert to customers by using lead scoring.
Using lead scoring in HubSpot, you can automate tasks like sending targeted marketing emails or allocating leads to your sales team according to their scores.
Use List Segmentation To Target Specific Groups
List segmentation lets you separate your contact information into more focused, smaller groups based on factors like region, industry, or job title. By using list segmentation, you may make sure that your marketing communications are pertinent and directed at the appropriate audience.
You can automate tasks like sending targeted emails or making unique reports based on selected segments using list segmentation in HubSpot.
Use Data Enrichment To Fill In Missing Information
A technology called data enrichment can assist you in adding missing data to your database, such as job titles, firm sizes, or industries. You can increase the efficacy of your sales and marketing activities by employing data enrichment to make sure that your database is accurate and full.
Utilise data enrichment tools in HubSpot, like Clearbit or ZoomInfo, to automatically fill in any information that is lacking for your contacts.
Conduct Regular Data Audits
Performing a data audit entails checking your database for precision and completeness, spotting mistakes or discrepancies, and taking action to fix or remove any problematic data. The following actions can be taken to carry out a data audit in HubSpot:
Define Your Data Audit Criteria
Specifying your audit criteria is the first stage in carrying out a data audit. For instance, check for duplication, outdated data, missing information, or improper formatting.
Following the definition of your criteria, you can create a report using HubSpot’s reporting tools that highlights any records that don’t adhere to your audit criteria.
Review And Clean Up Data
You must check and correct any inaccurate data after you’ve prepared your report. This can entail updating contact information, getting rid of duplicates, or adding missing data.
HubSpot offers features like bulk editing and list segmentation to effectively clean up your data.
Standardize Your Data Entry Practices
It’s critical to standardize your data entry procedures in order to avoid future errors and discrepancies. To make sure that all data is input consistently, you might want to create a set of data entry standards or use HubSpot’s custom properties function.
You may gradually increase the accuracy and completeness of your database by standardizing your data-entering procedures.
Schedule Regular Data Audits.
Planning routine data audits is crucial if you want to keep your database accurate. This could entail putting up automatic activities to audit your data on a regular basis or reviewing and updating the data on a monthly or quarterly basis.
You can guarantee that your database is correct and up-to-date by conducting routine data audits, which can enhance the efficiency of your operations in sales, marketing, and customer service.
Conclusion
Keeping your HubSpot data clean and correct is essential for your organization to succeed. You can ensure that your database is current, accurate, and useful for your business operations by implementing the techniques we’ve discussed.
At TRIOTECH SYSTEMS, we recognize the value of keeping HubSpot’s data clean and accurate. Because of this, we provide a variety of HubSpot consulting services to aid companies in streamlining their database administration procedures. To ensure that your database is optimized for your business needs, our team of skilled consultants can help you set up custom properties, implement data entry procedures, clean up and deduplicate data, use automation tools, and carry out frequent data audits.
With the help of our HubSpot consulting services, you can concentrate on growing your company while we handle the small stuff. If you need assistance in maintaining the cleanliness and accuracy of your HubSpot data, contact us right away.
FAQs
How Do I Know If My Data Needs Cleaning?
To determine if your data needs cleaning, you can look for common issues such as duplicates, outdated information, missing information, or inconsistent formatting. Additionally, you can use HubSpot’s reporting tools to generate a report that highlights any records that don’t meet your data quality criteria.
How Often Should I Conduct A Data Audit In HubSpot?
The frequency of your data audits will depend on your database and the frequency of data updates. However, conducting a data audit at least once a quarter or on a regular schedule that suits your business needs is generally recommended.
Can I Automate The Process Of Cleaning My HubSpot Data?
Yes, HubSpot offers a range of automation tools that can help you automatically clean and deduplicate your data. For example, you can use workflows to update contact records or use the duplicate management tool to automatically merge or delete duplicate records.
How Do I Ensure That My Team Follows Data Entry Guidelines?
To ensure that your team follows data entry guidelines, you can provide training and resources to help them understand the importance of clean and accurate data. Additionally, you can use HubSpot’s custom properties feature to enforce data entry guidelines and ensure that all data is entered consistently.
What Are The Benefits Of Maintaining Clean And Accurate Data In HubSpot?
Maintaining clean and accurate data in HubSpot can benefit your business, including improved marketing and sales effectiveness, better customer insights, and increased productivity. By ensuring that your database is up-to-date and accurate, you can make better business decisions and provide better customer experiences.
