Enriching your CRM and keeping it up to date is key. Even when the CRM is not the primary source of truth, information is always pulled from it and pushed back to it.
Poor data can hurt your business because it compromises your data-driven decisions. When you leave properties empty in your CRM, the problem snowballs. Soon, you'll have outdated contacts, companies, and deals that are no longer relevant. To prevent this, you need strong data hygiene processes.
🧹 Keep your data clean, so your decisions stay sharp!
In this playbook, we’ll show you how to keep your CRM relevant and fresh by continuously updating people and companies using Captain Data’s LinkedIn and HubSpot Integrations.
Why having reliable properties matters
We cannot stress enough how properties are key to your CRM hygiene:
- Irrelevant properties blur your team’s visibility
- Duplicated properties - especially between different record types - add to the pollution
- Outdated properties prevent your team from getting all the information they could have
- Inaccurate properties lead to making the wrong decisions
- Missing properties do not help your team focus on what matters
What is also important is to have properties that you can use to identify records, properties that never change. In a CRM you always have record IDs associated with each record based on their type. You can see them easily when looking at the URL of the page you’re on 🔍 Check the page URL you’re on to spot your record IDs.
For example if I’m on a company page and this is the URL, the record ID is what is in bold: https://app.hubspot.com/contacts/12345/record/0-2/16776425902
In the same light, if we want to update records with LinkedIn, we will need a unique identifier. Indeed, companies can change their names, domains, handles, be bought and linked to the buyer’s main page… it’s even more relevant for contacts who change positions, companies, emails, etc. Even LinkedIn URLs change when the handle is modified or depending on what you’re using to get the LinkedIn information in the first place.
LinkedIn IDs, whether it’s the company’s LinkedIn ID or the contact’s LinkedIn ID are the one thing that will not change. That’s why to use the workflows below we highly recommend you to create them as custom properties. Please note also that whereas the LinkedIn company page is created by default by Hubspot, you do have to create the LinkedIn profile URL property.
Automating your Hubspot enrichment
Feel free to skip this step if you already have the LinkedIn IDs and URLs for the records you want to update in the future in your CRM.
If not, below is a list of workflows you can use depending on the data points you have:
🏛️Company:
- You have the LinkedIn URLs but not the LinkedIn IDs
-> Extract LinkedIn Company Profile - You don’t have any LinkedIn information but you have the company’s domain
-> Enrich a list of domains with LinkedIn - You’re starting from 0 and only have the company names
-> Enrich a list of company names with LinkedIn
🧑🚀 Contact:
- You have the LinkedIn URLs but not the LinkedIn IDs
-> Extract LinkedIn People Profile - You don’t have any LinkedIn information but you have their emails
-> Enrich Email with Outlook & LinkedIn (People & Company) - You only have their full name and company name
-> Enrich leads from full name & company name
The safest way to proceed here is to export your records, split them based on the different data points, and then launch the different Captain Data workflows. After a quick check, you can re-import them back into Hubspot.
Update companies
First, you have to establish the list of companies that you want to update. Keep in mind that you can split your accounts into different lists if you want to have different update schedules. For example, you could update all the companies in your CRM once a month and update your target accounts once a week.
To update Hubspot lists with Linkedin, we’ll use the Captain Data workflow named Enrich companies from a Hubspot list.
There are 2 things to keep in mind while launching the workflow:
The input is based on Hubspot’s ILS list ID, which can be found on the lists’ main page. It’s not a default property on this view, you will most likely need to edit the columns and add it.
Since the LinkedIn company ID is not a default Hubspot property, it can differ based on the companies. That’s why in the additional fields mapping section you need to add on the left side the internal name you have set for this property.
You can check your properties’ internal names by opening them as if you were to edit and clicking on the </> icon.
Once that’s set up you can add any additional data point you want in the Hubspot mapping and then launch your workflow!
Update contacts
The logic for the contact update is quite similar. The main difference is that Hubspot automatically creates the LinkedIn company page property whereas you will need to create a custom property for the LinkedIn profile.
We use this Captain Data workflow to Enrich contacts from a Hubspot list.
In terms of setup:
- the input is still your list’s ILS list ID
- In addition to the LinkedIn ID, you need to add a mapping for the LinkedIn profile URL property. Please make sure that you replace the fields on the left with the internal values in your CRM.
Just like you could do with the company update, you can add any extra Hubspot field mapping in step four and launch the workflow once or schedule it to repeat it each week, month, etc.
Our customers using Hubspot
These workflows are super useful for anybody using Hubspot as a CRM; it enables users to want to leverage their enrichment. Today, Captain Data is helping many customers with this, including Agicap, Anode, and Le Wagon.
For example, Agicap achieved remarkable results by integrating Captain Data with HubSpot. They automated 100% of their lead generation, producing up to 40,000 qualified leads per month. This automation allowed their sales team to grow from 2 to 60 members across 7 countries without being bogged down by manual tasks. The seamless integration with their internal systems through Captain Data's API and Slackbot ensured that leads were efficiently processed and utilized, enabling their salespeople to focus on converting leads into customers
But.. what are they truly saying? 🤔
“We can ask our salespeople who they want to target, and the Slackbot will churn out the leads for them. They become experts in certain areas, knowing that they want companies in X industry, with Y number of employees, and boom, here’s the list and information you need. Now it’s always the salesperson driving the lead gen, never the lead gen driving the salesperson.”
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Wrapping-up
Maintaining a clean and up-to-date CRM is essential for accurate decision-making and business efficiency. The outlined workflows guide you through updating companies and contacts systematically, ensuring your CRM remains a valuable and accurate source of information.
If you’re not using Hubspot, you can read our global playbook on CRM hygiene or go straight to it and request a demo with us!
