Hubspot Forensics Pt. 1

Anytime I inherit a Hubspot instance (or any Marketing Automation) I first want to understand the automations and processes that are already running.

Sometimes I have the benefit of another technical teammate who can show me the ropes — or an old powerpoint somewhere – that shows where the bodies are buried, etc. Often I am finding them on my own in what was recently described to me as “a cleanup job”; creating a forensic review in order to prioritize the plan of attack.

 

For the first few stacks, I’m going to cover the steps I take, with photos in Hubspot to quickly review and revise a Hubspot organization.

The Field Audit: I review reporting and operational fields, sorting by most used in-platform. Some fields to check, your organization may label these differently, but has its own set of operational and reporting fields.

1. Operational Fields: Lead Status, Lead Source, Date Stamping fields etc are where I look to understand demand generation tracking

2. Form fields - which fields are being used on published forms

3. Reporting fields - which fields are being used to analyze performance in Hubspot, in Salesforce and other reporting tools

4. Reviewing timing

How:

Go to the cogwheel - Settings:Properties

Click Manage Contact Properties for the Property you want to view - you can do the same with any of the Object properties eg, Companies and Deals.

Click on the number highlighted in the Used In column. This is an indicator of how frequently this field is being referred to or used in Hubspot and will show you all of the data endpoints in Lists, Forms, Workflows etc.

From here, keep this tab open and check each meaningful asset to gain an understanding of what the field is doing within the system.

If you need to do the same audit from the Record View, open the record and go to Actions:View All Properties

It can be helpful to select “hide blank properties” when you’re looking to confirm if fields have been successfully updated on the record. Alternatively, unselecting “hide blank properties” will give you a sectioned list view of every single field that has been completed for the record. A lot of data hides in this view, because the Record View is customizable, and does not automatically show you all fields, instead focusing on a timeline of activity.

If you dig in further, you can see more meta data, including time and source of update from Hubspot’s record of the activity. Hover over the field you want to review and click on Details.

This view will pop up with details on ALL changes ever made to the field, a history log/audit log for reviewing timing, investigating HOW an update occurred etc. This one I made on the extension that pops up in gmail and allows me to edit my contacts.

Here is what I’ll cover in the next stacks; if there is something missing you want to see let me know!

2. Automation reviewing: Now you’ve found the workflows doing the stuff - how do you assess current state and improvements?

3. Forms and form logic - you may need help from the team that owns your website. Many orgs use custom forms and script to pass form data to your MAT/CRM/CDP. I’ll cover how to direct technical web owners to get the right data from your site into your MAT.

4. Error Report:

   1. This is a newish feature from Hubspot, and I hate to love it. It’s a great way to track weirdness occurring between platforms and gives you great tips and action items to resolve them. It also seems to be a place where junior admins or users get caught up. We’ll talk about making peace with sync errors and embracing chaos.