Integrating HubSpot and Salesforce for the first time can feel like introducing two friends who have completely different personalities.
In theory, they should get along great. In practice, there might be some unexpected friction if you don't know how the personalities might clash. After implementing this integration many times for our clients, we know the common pitfalls that aren't covered in the standard documentation.
Before you connect these two platforms, take a few minutes to review these lessons that could save you hours of troubleshooting and potential data disasters.
"Email Opt Out": The Field Will Dump Your Data and Ruin Your Day
Let's start with the most dangerous default setting. "Email Opt Out" (hasoptedoutofemail) is one of the default connections that will map and sync immediately as soon as you start the integration. This innocuous field carries massive implications for your marketing operations.
Here's the problem: HubSpot will assume that Salesforce data is correct and will fully unsubscribe anyone with that "Email Opt Out" checkbox ticked. There are no take-backs or wiggle room on this. Once someone is unsubscribed through this mechanism, you cannot resubscribe them without explicit consent.
We've seen companies lose access to their marketing contacts overnight because of outdated opt-out data in Salesforce. Before you integrate, make doubly sure that data is fresh and correct in Salesforce or put it in another field away from HubSpot's prying eyes.
Best practice: Create a backup of your subscription statuses in HubSpot before integration and audit your Salesforce "Email Opt Out" field thoroughly. Consider creating a staging integration with a small sample of contacts first to verify behavior.
Start Small
The temptation to sync everything at once is strong. Resist it. Integrate the bare minimum at first and get a feel for how the integration works before overcommitting. There's significant risk of data loss if you overcommit and you could potentially override good current data with bad old data.
Ask yourself, which system should be the source of truth for these data points:
- Contact information: Which system do your teams update most frequently?
- Company data: Is this maintained better in Salesforce or HubSpot?
- Deal tracking: Where do your sales reps spend most of their time?
Whichever system has the most activity with the most people is generally going to be the best source of data for that particular entity. An architect and a bricklayer are both talented but shouldn't be doing each other's job.
Start with contacts only then gradually add companies and deals as you understand the data flow. Consider creating separate integration users in both systems with limited permissions to prevent accidental data loss.
Cross-Check Often
Making simple calculated properties in both systems will save you countless headaches. As a bare minimum, sync over record IDs then make properties that check if blank. Create fields called "Exists in HubSpot?" (yes/no) in Salesforce and "Exists in Salesforce?" in HubSpot. These will give you a good idea of what's passing in and out of each system.
These simple flags can help you quickly see if something's wrong.
For example, if HubSpot's showing 300 contacts with Salesforce accounts and Salesforce is showing 300 contacts with HubSpot accounts, you're groovy. But if those numbers don't match up, you know something's broken in your sync. If you want to learn more about the differences between Salesforce and Hubspot in terms of reporting, check out the video below:
We recommend creating a monthly integration health check report that compares object counts between systems. This practice has helped us catch sync issues before they become major problems for our clients.
Use HubSpot Workflows to Pass in IDs
Salesforce doesn't make automatic associations like HubSpot does. On deal creation, you're going to have to pass in the record ID of the contact into the deal so Salesforce knows what to connect it to.
Primary Contact is the best place for this. You need to be cognizant of the importance of this field and its mapping because it means that Opportunities can pass into Salesforce and end up connected to the correct person.
You may need to bake in a delay for Salesforce to catch up on new contacts. It takes a moment for the IDs to pass back through into HubSpot.
You can use a similar technique for assigning HubSpot Deals to Salesforce campaigns.
One effective approach we've implemented:
- Create a workflow triggered when a contact is created in HubSpot
- Add a delay of five minutes to allow for the initial sync
- Then update the contact with their Salesforce ID in a custom HubSpot property
- Use this ID for all future automation between systems
To learn more about the differences between automation tools in both systems, I made a video about it below:
Watch Your Naming Conventions in Salesforce
If you’ve anything set up that standardizes the names of Opportunities in Salesforce, you’re going to have a bad time. For the love of Pete, export and backup all your Opportunity data before connecting these two systems.
Let’s say you have a naming convention that is [Company Name] – [Amount] – [Campaign]. So “Local Vendor – $50 – New Business Prospect” is our Deal Name. If Company Name, Amount and Campaign aren’t filled in correctly or are in the wrong spots, it’ll only take the dashes between and a lot of your opportunities are going to be renamed to ” – – “. This is something to do with the order of operations between Salesforce and HubSpot.
To fix this, create a backup name field somewhere in HubSpot and don’t sync that. If disaster strikes, the original name is safe. We typically create a hidden custom property called “Original Deal Name” that preserves this information before the sync begins.
New HubSpot Records Slip Under “Required” Fields
One of the strangest quirks of this integration is that records created in HubSpot can bypass required field validations in Salesforce. Because of this, you can break a lot of standardized rules within Salesforce. This will throw errors at you if you adjust any records that have been made via HubSpot within Salesforce.
These records have snuck past security and are in the club without having their IDs checked. Just insist on the bare minimum required (Last name for Contacts, Amount and Date for Opportunities) in your HubSpot properties to minimize validation issues.
To prevent this, create parallel validation rules in HubSpot that mirror your Salesforce requirements. While this creates some redundancy, it ensures data quality across both platforms.
Conclusion
Integrating HubSpot and Salesforce offers tremendous benefits for sales and marketing alignment but requires careful planning and ongoing maintenance. Start small, be methodical and always have a backup plan for your data.
By taking these precautions, you’ll avoid the most common pitfalls we’ve encountered across dozens of implementations. Your sales and marketing teams will thank you when they have clean reliable data flowing between systems instead of the alternative: endless tickets asking why their leads disappeared or deals got renamed to ” – – “.
And one final thought: if the integration is not solving the bigger obstacles you’re facing in your CRM, you might consider a different track: migrating from Salesforce to HubSpot completely.
Have questions about your specific integration scenario or migration? Drop us a line – we’ve probably seen it before and can help you navigate the potential landmines.
