You’re preparing for a big client meeting. Your sales pitch is ready, the CRM dashboard is open, and it hits you. Half the leads on the display screen are duplicates, a chunk of them are outdated, and a few? They’re no longer relevant prospects. At that moment, you start to scramble and sort through outdated prospects and duplicate contacts right before the client. It’s a frustrating task; you know it’s too late to fix it.
That’s the reality of allowing HubSpot CRM data to slip into disarray. It’s a critical business issue. Without clean data, your marketing and sales strategies lose their edge, leading to poor decision-making and missed opportunities. When you clean up HubSpot CRM data, you ensure that your strategies are grounded in accurate, up-to-date information, giving your team the tools they need to succeed.
Just like e-commerce retailers risk losing 30% of their search visibility due to messy product data, a disorganized HubSpot CRM results in missed opportunities, flawed decisions, and resource waste. When data is unorganized and filled with duplicates or outdated information, it becomes harder to focus on the prospects that matter, ultimately affecting overall business performance.
Therefore, cleaning up HubSpot CRM data regularly is important to ensure that your business runs smoothly, allowing you to make informed decisions and maintain effective customer engagement.
Let’s explore the practical steps to clean up HubSpot CRM data and ensure that messy leads and outdated information do not hinder your success.
10 Essential Steps to Effectively Clean Up HubSpot CRM Data and Boost Efficiency
Step 1: Assess the Current State of Your HubSpot CRM Data
The first step to clean up HubSpot CRM data is assessing what you have. Before you explore automation tools or deletion, it’s critical to understand the current condition of your CRM. Duplicates, incomplete records, and outdated contacts are common issues that build up over time.
Start by identifying:
- Duplicate records: Use HubSpot’s duplicate management tool, which utilizes AI to detect and merge duplicate contacts or companies. This tool is particularly effective for spotting records created with different email addresses or typos.
- Incomplete records: HubSpot’s data quality command center helps surface records missing crucial information, such as a contact’s phone number or company details. This enables you to identify gaps that could impact communication later.
One client, after realizing that over 10% of his contacts are duplicates, uses HubSpot’s duplicate management tool to merge records. This streamlines outreach while simultaneously reducing costs associated with the marketing contact tier.
Step 2: Remove Unengaged and Unsubscribed Contacts
Not every contact in your CRM is worth keeping. Unengaged contacts clutter your database and also harm email deliverability rates. The solution? Remove or archive them.
Start by creating lists of unengaged contacts. In HubSpot, you can filter contacts based on:
- Contacts who haven’t opened recent emails
- Those who haven’t clicked on any links over a defined period
- Unsubscribed contacts
It’s crucial to clean up HubSpot CRM data by removing unsubscribed contacts from your active lists to stay compliant with GDPR and other data privacy regulations. Alternatively, HubSpot allows you to set these contacts as non-marketing, so they don’t count against your billable contact limit.
A B2B SaaS company takes action to clean up HubSpot CRM data by removing over 5,000 unengaged contacts, which results in a 15% improvement in email open rates and better deliverability metrics.
Step 3: Standardize Data Entry for Long-term Cleanliness
Effective data maintenance requires solid systems. Consistent data entry practices ensure accuracy and uniformity across all records, keeping your database reliable.
In HubSpot, it’s possible to enforce mandatory fields during contact creation, requiring team members to input fields like “lead status” or “industry.” This ensures consistency and eliminates errors from manual data entry. Consider creating guidelines for data entry that all team members must follow.
- Use HubSpot’s custom properties to standardize fields that matter most to your business.
- Set certain fields as required for new entries, ensuring no critical data points are missed.
A mid-sized digital agency works to clean up HubSpot CRM data by creating mandatory fields for their HubSpot forms. This process leads to better segmentation by industry and clearer insights into the lead pipeline, which allows the sales team to customize their outreach more effectively.
Step 4: Merge Duplicate Records
Duplicate contacts and companies wreak havoc on your CRM. They inflate the contact numbers and confuse your sales and marketing teams.
HubSpot’s duplicate management tool automates the process of identifying duplicates. It uses machine learning to flag identical records based on similar contact information. Once flagged, manually review and merge the records to effectively clean up HubSpot CRM data.
When running campaigns, sending two emails to different records of the same contact damages credibility. Avoid this by running regular checks for duplicates.
One SaaS provider finds that merging 8% of their duplicate records increases email engagement by reducing confusion caused by double outreach to the same contact.
Step 5: Automate Your Data Cleaning Processes
HubSpot’s workflows offer a hands-off way to manage data hygiene. You can set up workflows that trigger actions when specific conditions are met, such as:
- Automatically update a contact’s lifecycle stage based on their activity
- Trigger alerts when certain required fields are missing
Using automation reduces the likelihood of human error and ensures that your CRM data stays clean without constant manual intervention. You can also use workflows to monitor unengaged contacts and take action when necessary.
A company selling enterprise software creates a workflow that automatically updates lead statuses based on whether contacts download a whitepaper or attend a webinar. This simple automation helps clean up HubSpot CRM data by keeping the potential customers’ statuses current, allowing the sales team to focus on more qualified leads. The company achieves ongoing data accuracy and improved lead prioritization through consistent automation of these processes.
Step 6: Archive Unused Data and Properties
Outdated data and unused properties add clutter. HubSpot allows archiving of unused properties, which helps clean up HubSpot CRM data and makes it easier to manage. Archiving no longer has relevant properties, which keeps them from appearing when creating contacts or companies. This keeps the CRM organized, maintaining its cleanliness and efficiency. Regularly archiving unused fields promotes data accuracy and improves usability.
To do this:
- Go to HubSpot settings and review properties that are no longer in use.
- Archive outdated or irrelevant ones, reducing the noise in your CRM.
Archiving unused fields reduces confusion and helps streamline data entry. It also guarantees that the reporting and automation tools function correctly.
After auditing his CRM properties, a client discovers that half of the custom properties are outdated. He archives these, which reduces the CRM’s complexity and enables his team to focus on the most relevant data points.
Step 7: Create a Data Hygiene Dashboard
Monitoring data health regularly is just as important as cleaning it. HubSpot allows you to create a custom data hygiene dashboard that provides a bird’ s-eye view of your CRM’s health.
The dashboard tracks:
- Duplicate records
- Incomplete records (missing important fields)
- Unengaged contacts
- Properties that need updating
A monthly dashboard review helps catch issues early and keeps the CRM in top shape.
A financial services firm sets up a data hygiene dashboard that gives their CRM manager real-time visibility into data quality. This proactive approach leads to faster resolutions of data issues and helps maintain a cleaner CRM for their sales and marketing teams.
Step 8: Set a Regular Data Cleanup Schedule
CRM data hygiene isn’t a one-time task. It requires regular maintenance. Data is cleaned monthly, quarterly, or annually depending on business needs.
Create a cleanup schedule that aligns with your sales cycle:
- Monthly: Review and merge duplicate contacts
- Quarterly: Archive unused properties and remove unengaged contacts
- Annually: Conduct a full audit of your CRM to ensure all data is relevant and accurate
Assign team members to own these tasks, whether it’s the CRM admin or sales ops team.
A SaaS provider with a large sales team includes data cleaning in its quarterly business review. This approach helps them avoid data bloat and clean up HubSpot CRM data, keeping it actionable.
Step 9: Utilize Third-Party Integrations for Enhanced Data Cleaning
Third-party integrations take your efforts to clean up HubSpot CRM data to the next level. Tools like Insycle and Leadspace offer advanced data management capabilities, such as bulk cleaning and flexible matching criteria for duplicate records. These solutions seamlessly integrate with HubSpot, enhancing the platform’s ability to maintain proper data hygiene.
A marketing agency implements Insycle to clean up HubSpot CRM data by handling bulk data-cleaning tasks. This allows them to process thousands of records simultaneously, which would otherwise be tedious and time-consuming, significantly improving overall data management efficiency.
Step 10: Monitor Data Consistency with HubSpot’s Subscription Management and Compliance Tools
HubSpot’s subscription management tool helps you stay compliant with email marketing regulations and prevents accidental emails to unsubscribed contacts. Regularly review your subscription lists to confirm that unengaged or unsubscribed contacts are properly managed. This safeguards your brand’s reputation and keeps your email marketing efforts compliant with GDPR and other regulations.
A Clean CRM is the Backbone of Smarter Business Growth
Maintaining clean HubSpot CRM data is about building a system that boosts efficiency and enables smarter decisions. When your CRM is organized, your sales and marketing teams focus on what truly matters: engaging with the right prospects and driving growth. A well-maintained CRM removes the roadblocks caused by duplicate entries and outdated information, enabling smoother workflows and more effective customer interactions.
Instead of seeing data cleaning as tedious, treat it as essential maintenance that keeps your CRM running like a high-performance machine. With automation and smart tools, you can streamline the process and ensure long-term gains in productivity and insight.
Regularly cleaning up HubSpot CRM data becomes a strategic asset for your business. The more organized and accurate the information, the sharper your insights become, which leads to more substantial business outcomes. When you consistently clean up HubSpot CRM data, it’s an investment that pays off in better customer experiences, smarter strategies, and measurable growth. Make data cleaning a regular practice, and your HubSpot CRM will continue to be an invaluable tool for driving growth.
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