Why HubSpot and Salesforce Integration Will Increase ROI

Technology tends to break more barriers to communication than it builds.

One of the most significant barriers to your revenue stream is misaligned goals and poor communication between your sales and marketing team. According to some estimates, $1 trillion is lost in potential revenue each year by B2B companies because of misalignment between sales and marketing teams.

Not only do misaligned goals between different departments lead to waste and friction within your sales funnel, but identifying the cause of these problems is made more difficult by the lack of communication between both teams.

However, by integrating Salesforce and HubSpot, you can gain a holistic look at your sales funnel to align organizational goals that help capture better leads and nurture them to conversion.

While the benefits of the HubSpot and Salesforce integration may seem evident on their face, it’s important to discuss how these platforms work together and what limitations exist between their integration to unlock the full benefits of their partnership.

How Do HubSpot and Salesforce Work Together?

The HubSpot and Salesforce integration works by syncing contacts, leads, accounts, tasks, and opportunities with contacts, companies, activities, and deals between the two systems.

The out-of-the-box integration enables leads and contacts created in Salesforce to be created in and synced to HubSpot as contacts. Likewise, all contacts in HubSpot from the marketing team immediately sync to Salesforce to become new leads.

HubSpot and Salesforce also integrate additional objects, such as syncing Opportunities in Salesforce to Deals in HubSpot and syncing Events in HubSpot to Tasks in Salesforce.

In addition, integrating HubSpot into your existing Salesforce platform gives your sales team access to several new leads from:

• Email marketing signups
• Lead form submissions
• Engaged web visitors
• E-commerce visitors

Let’s envision how this would work with an illustration. Imagine a customer who finds one of your blog posts online, reads it and decides to come back to your website a week later to read another.

Automation can be configured in HubSpot to mark the potential customer as a Sales Qualified Lead and trigger an email to a salesperson where they can access all previous customer contact info (provided via HubSpot) in Salesforce.

Next, they reach out to the lead using the information uncovered from HubSpot and use your content to help nurture the lead, which translates to an eventual sale after a bit of back and forth.

However, it should be noted that some limitations hamper HubSpot and Salesforce integration, and syncing data between the two platforms can be complicated.

How Often do Salesforce and HubSpot Sync?

Salesforce and HubSpot sync data every 10-15 minutes. With that said, the synced information will be determined by what user and permission settings you allow to transfer data between the two platforms.

For this reason, it pays to hire a consultant or use an API that can help facilitate this data exchange so that you can get the data that your business requires to be successful.

Are There Any Limitations to this Integration?

While the Salesforce and HubSpot integration is relatively streamlined, a lot of confusion can result from the different terminology employed and varying parameters used for tracking on each platform.

For example, a campaign on HubSpot is not necessarily the same thing as a campaign on Salesforce.

While campaigns in HubSpot track specific actions taken by inbound leads that lead to successful conversions, campaigns on Salesforce only consist of a list of contacts gathered from outbound campaigns without any underlying characteristics.

Additionally, campaigns in Salesforce will not be mirrored directly in HubSpot campaigns as HubSpot campaigns require the lead to take a specific action or receive a marketing asset to be included in a campaign.

Another limitation is that picklists in Salesforce need to be manually added to HubSpot using property mapping. The same is true of integrating dropdown properties in HubSpot to picklists in Salesforce. Properties created in HubSpot and fields created in Salesforce are not automatically created in the other platform, despite the integration.

Even the contacts themselves differ between the two platforms, as Salesforce separates contact records from leads.

Most importantly, data synced between the two platforms mostly cannot be manipulated on the opposite platform. For example, Salesforce tasks can be synced to HubSpot but edits made in one system after creation are not reflected in the other without the use of custom API.

That said, integrating the two platforms does not give one platform complete control or knowledge of the other, merely a window into what the other is tracking. Fortunately, what Salesforce and HubSpot provide together is enough to improve communication between sales and marketing, leading to more conversions and increasing your ROI.

5 Reasons HubSpot and Salesforce Integration Increases Your ROI

1.   Greater Alignment Between Sales and Marketing

Remember that $1 trillion in the beginning that B2B companies lost because they didn’t correctly align goals and communication between their sales and marketing team?

Many businesses have noticed this as one LinkedIn Survey of business leaders found that 85% of respondents said that marketing and sales alignment provided the most significant opportunity for critical business growth.

One hand feeds from the other as well-nurtured inbound leads translate to tremendous growth for sales teams. On the other hand, critical outbound data informs marketing teams of better strategies to attract and nurture leads.

Additionally, your customers learn to trust your sales team, and expectations or promises set by your sales and marketing team can often be at odds. So again, this is an opportunity to create greater cohesion so that both teams appropriately manage expectations and stay on the same page.

By reducing friction and improving communication between sales and marketing, you can coordinate better-aligned campaigns that earn more inbound leads and lead to more sales.

2.   Improve Lead Follow Up

With greater facilitation of data between sales and marketing, your company can follow up on more qualified leads quicker for better conversion rate success.

For example, once HubSpot qualifies a contact as a qualified lead, your sales team will be notified immediately for follow-up so that you don’t waste a second before competitors step in.

Prevent lost leads to competitors who can respond faster than you by syncing data between HubSpot and Salesforce to improve your lead handoff.

3.   Holistic Sales Funnel View

Beyond lead follow-up, a 360-degree view of your sales funnel from outbound to inbound contact can provide necessary clues to help plug up holes in your sales funnel and fine-tune your marketing strategy.

By accessing data from first customer contacts in HubSpot and feeding this data to sales teams, you can focus your ad and sales campaigns on channels that earn you the most revenue.

Likewise, giving your marketing team access to lists of possible leads from outbound campaigns can provide valuable insight on touchpoints that lose qualified leads and require fixing.

Using this information, your sales and marketing team can work together to leverage content, and various strategies to not only capture more leads but capture qualified leads that are more likely to lead to sales.

4.   Acquire Access to Additional Features

Integrating Salesforce and HubSpot also provides access to additional features the other platform may be lacking.

For example, your sales team will acquire access to features such as HubSpot Intelligence which can inform them of the best contact points to reach out to qualified leads for that all-important first impression.

Greater intelligence leads to more conversions for your sales and marketing teams, resulting in a higher ROI.

5.   Waste Less Time on Data Transfer

Finally, integrating Salesforce with HubSpot can cut down on time manually transferring data between each platform.

By integrating Salesforce and HubSpot with the help of a trained consultant, you can fine-tune your integration so that each team can get the most out of each platform and focus more time on growth and less time on time-wasting tasks.

One of your biggest opportunities to increase ROI is aligning goals and tasks between marketing and sales teams. You’ve already invested in Salesforce to automate sales tasks and HubSpot to automate marketing efforts, so why not integrate the two?

Of course, to get the most out of the HubSpot and Salesforce integration, you should hire an experienced consultant with thorough knowledge of both platforms.

Therefore, you can get the most streamlined bidirectional data sync possible to focus more on the tasks that bring in revenue and less on tasks that cost you revenue.