6 HubSpot CRM Features You Probably Didn’t Know About

The HubSpot CRM can be most likened to an onion; tons of layers to peel back and discover, and almost endless uses in recipes (in this analogy, recipes = marketing / sales strategies). 

Every time I think I’ve mastered the CRM software and learned everything there is to know about how it can function, I find myself stumbling across something new while running a monthly report for a client or someone on my team introduces me to a new feature that was just unrolled.

With that in mind, over the past 3 years as a HubSpot user, I’ve encountered features and “hacks” that I find myself teaching to clients, mentioning at a HUG, and helping bring new team members up to speed on. While I am far from a HubSpot expert - I figured I’d put together just a few of my favorite hacks to help make streamlining your marketing even easier.

The 6 HubSpot Hacks You Don’t Want to Keep Living Without

Here’s the few I’m going to focus on today:

1. Sequence reporting
2. Global search
3. Copy company values to contact (+ deals)
4. Custom contact properties
5. Video CTAs
6. Tracking URL builder

Let’s walk-through how to find / use each of these features.

1. Sequence Reporting

One of the biggest gripes about using the HubSpot Sequences tool (an awesome way to automate personalized sales touchpoints) is that the reporting is quite sparse.

Natively, HubSpot gives you reporting on:

• Total enrolled
• Open rate
• Click rate
• Reply rate
• Meeting rate
• Unsubscribe rate
• Bounce rate

… And that’s it. If you wanted to see a list of the people who clicked in your sequence, you’d have to hand-investigate each contact record.

This is not a huge deal for sequences that have 5-10 contacts enrolled, but much more than that, and you’ve got quite the time consuming task on your hands.

The good news is (with the help of HubSpot support) I’ve figured out a workaround. Here’s how to do it:

1. On your main navigation bar, hover over “Contacts.” From there, drop to “Lists” and click.
2. In the top right corner, hit “Create List.” Select the option for “Active List.” Name your list something distinguishable such as “Clicked in Sequence ABC.”
3. Navigate to “Contact Properties.” Once there, in the search bar type in “Recent sales email.”
4. You’ll have the option to select: “Recent Sales email open date” “Recent sales email replied date” or “Recent sales email clicked date.” Select the one for the metrics you’d like to see.

From there, select “Is between” and place the dates that your sequence was running:

1. Hit “Update filter” button.
2. Then, select the “AND” option beneath the filter you just put in. 
3. Navigate to “List Membership.” Select the list of contacts that you enrolled in your sequence. 
4. Hit “Save” in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. 
5. Wait a few moments, and your list should be there!

Of course, because this isn’t a native HubSpot report - this isn’t an 100% perfect strategy. Because you’re not able to select “clicked in sequence” and instead are opting for “clicked in sales email” this will pull in any contact who clicked in any email that was logged as a sales activity and was a member of that list. That includes post-sequence sales correspondence. However, because you inputted the dates the sequence was running, you can say with reasonable accuracy it’s likely they clicked within the sequence. 

It’s not perfect, but it gives a way clearer (and easier) picture of who engaged with your sequence than hand-picking through each contact record. To double check you have everything set up appropriately, you can always opt to double check the contact records of those who show up in your list. Then you’ll know for sure.

2. Global Search

I’m sure there’s a handful of you who are reading this and thinking “What the heck, I came here for hacks. Of course I know about global search!” However, I promise there are just as many people who had no idea the CRM had this function. 

In the top right corner when selecting the magnifying glass (next to the icon that looks like a shop) you can search any word or term you’d like, and HubSpot will scan the entirety of your portal:

This is super handy, and very time saving! 

3. Copy Company Values to Contacts (+ Deals)

If you find yourself spending lots of time in the CRM copying information on the contact, company, and deals level to make sure they all match -- there’s an easier way to do it!

You can leverage the workflow tool (on the main navigation bar under “Automation”) to create internal workflows that are always working, even when you’re not!

This is perfect for when you know a contact is a member of a certain company, but the phone number, address, company size, etc. are unknown for this specific contact. All of the info you know about the company can be copied over to the contact.

The set-up looks like this in the workflow module:

Additionally, you can do the same sort of internal copy-to workflow from the company record to the deals record. Note: This does not work from contact record to deal record. If it is prudent that the deals record has information relevant to a specific contact, simply copy the info from contact to company first (see above) and then from company to deal.

Here is an example of triggering this particular workflow:

Again, this is just a super simple way to cut down on the hand-importing effort in the CRM.

4. Custom Contact Properties

Depending on your industry, you might have information about a contact (or company) that is crucial to track in your CRM for existing and prospective customers - but is not built natively into the HubSpot tool.

Luckily, you can create a custom contact property for basically anything under the sun and add it to the left-hand side of the contact record for easy access. From there, you can also make active lists and other reporting from these custom properties, in a similar way you would for the properties native to the HubSpot platform.

To navigate to this, pull up any contact record in your CRM. Then, click “View all properties”:

From there, you will see this screen:

Clicking the upper right button “Manage properties” will take you to this screen:

Where you can then use the orange button to “Create property.” The options in here are pretty limitless, as you can fill in just about anything you’d like. You can also choose what type of field you want for the property; for example: multi-checkbox, one line fill in, drop down, and more.

Remember: HubSpot can not “read” your custom properties in that way that your sales team can -- it will not automatically update like the properties for IP country or revenue would. It’s likely that you will need to import and / or mark these fields by hand as leads come in. This is easy to do initially with a .csv bulk contact upload, and then easy to maintain marking lead by lead when an inbound lead arises.

5. Video CTAs

In reality, any video you create in HubSpot could be considered a video CTA. This is because when you upload a video to HubSpot and embed it natively onto a page on your site, you have the option to put a button or a form on the end. 

If you’re seeing blog posts that are performing well traffic wise, but producing a low amount of conversions, it might be worth making a video, putting it in the spot of your traditional image or button CTA, and seeing how your conversions are affected.

Video CTAs can be dynamic, and speak to a different audience than static CTAs do. Try a few different types, and see if there’s any effect in your audience’s response.

6. Tracking URL Builder

If you’re on HubSpot, you likely have made an investment and shift to digital, inbound marketing practices. However, that doesn’t mean that you can necessarily abandon print and traditional media entirely. As you likely know, these avenues are limiting in your ability to track ROI.

One option is to use the “Tracking URL builder” in HubSpot to generate a URL, and grab data on its performance. You can stick this URL (or a QR code to it) in a print ad., or use it digitally somewhere you’d like to track. 

This tool can be found by selecting “Reports” on the main navigation bar, then dropping down to “Analytics tools.” Hidden at the very bottom of the page, you’ll find the button for “Tracking URL builder.” 

This tool is one of the simplest to use, but can be impactful in adding more data to your strategy.

Any HubSpot Software Tips to Share with the Class?

Or, do you have any questions about any of the tips above? I’d love to get a conversation started in the comments section about HubSpot tips and tricks, so we can share the knowledge and unlock some powerful marketing tools.

In the meantime, check out our guide to trade show marketing to explore more strategic ways to supercharge your marketing efforts: