Tips for Creating Clean Contact Records in Hubspot
Clean data is incredibly important for our business and ultimately increases overall productivity. Having clean data in our CRM allows marketing to capture the correct audience for events and campaigns, and allows sales to keep track of conversations, nuances within the customer relationships, home in on decision-makers, and more… which often is the difference between landing the sale and walking away empty-handed. Dirty data can jeopardize the customer experience and negatively impact strategic decisions!
So now we know WHY clean data matters, but how do we create clean data?
If you are logging your emails with the Outlook plugin, Hubspot will automatically create contacts as you communicate via email. You can use the Hubspot Outlook plugin to check out the activity and information saved on your contact in Hubspot by clicking the “Open in CRM” button in the Sales Tool.
Even if you are using the plugin, it is still a good idea to open key contacts and verify their information, prioritizing the following properties:
- First name
- Last name
- Email
- State/Region
- Contact owner
- Industry type or Vertical (selected from the drop-down menu)
- Company name
- Job title
- Phone number
When creating a contact from scratch or updating your contact’s information, keep the following tips in mind:
- Fill out as much information as you can right away! Every property that you fill out accurately helps us market to the correct people and helps you sell more effectively. If you do this in the moment, you can be sure to capture vital information that might slip your mind later.
- Standardize the way that you input data! Avoiding acronyms or abbreviations helps prevent duplicate records and allows all the records for each company to group together! Adding data in a consistent way also helps you more easily find what you are looking for.
- Ex. Inputting “North Coast Eye Care” for the company name instead of “NCEC”, or “John Smith” instead of “J S”
- Standards are as follows:
- Company – Type out all words and avoid any abbreviations.
- Ex. “San Francisco Unified School District”, not “SFUSD”
- Phone Numbers – Include area codes and extensions so that you don’t have to hunt that info down when you want to call the contact.
- Ex. “555-345-1234 Ext 43”, not “3451234”
- Location – Type the whole state and prioritize recording the state name instead of a broader region.
- Ex. "California" instead of "West"
- Remember, spelling matters! Double-check your spelling to avoid duplicate records being created.
- Ex. “esmith@unitedshools.org” will automatically enter as a separate contact from “esmith@unitedschools.org”