Everything you need to know about migrating your existing data into HubSpot.
When you start your HubSpot journey, your dedicated HubGem Consultant will discuss the best approach to migrating any existing data into your HubSpot account.
You can migrate your data into HubSpot in a number of ways:
1) Import from a spreadsheet
This is the most common approach with our education and non-profit customers. If you can get your data into a spreadsheet and cleaned up to match the properties you have in your HubSpot account, then you can simply import this data directly into HubSpot.
How complex this is, really depends on the state of your existing data and how your data is currently structured. You will also need to consider which data you want to import - all contacts, just prospects, contact information only, or contact information with notes and multiple associated records.
For example, in a school, you may be moving from an MIS system such as iSAMS or SIMS that has the child as the main record, and just a few data points held on the parents (such as contact information).
In a college, you may want to import a range of contacts from prospective students to business contacts or alumni.
In a non-profit, you may want to import data on donations as well as contact information of your donors.
If you can get your data into a spreadsheet, it is often easiest to manipulate and clean the data in there. We will advise you on the best approach to importing your data from a spreadsheet, depending on the onboarding or support plan you are on, we may also do the imports for you.
2) Integrate your existing system
If you are handling large data sets (tens of thousands) and/or complex data models, it may be easier to build an integration between your existing system that holds your data, and HubSpot. Subject to the API capabilities of your existing software, we can support you with this.
There are three types of integrations we could explore:
An off-the-shelf integration
These are usually the easiest integrations as the connection between HubSpot and your other piece of software has already been built and tested. Firstly, we would check the HubSpot ecosystem to see if the integration exists in the marketplace, then we would advise on what is needed to effectively pull the data into HubSpot.
We are proud to have launched the world's first integration between HubSpot and iSAMS - perfect for the independent schools sector. Find out more about this exciting new development.
We are proud to have launched the world's first integration between HubSpot and iSAMS - perfect for the independent schools sector. Find out more about this exciting new development.
If this is a simple integration then we can perform or support with this as part of your onboarding, if it is complex and requires lots of our hands-on support, we would need to quote for an additional project.
Unfortunately, there are very few off-the-shelf integrations available in the education and non-profit space, we are always looking for ways to change this and would love to talk to software providers who are thinking of integrating with HubSpot in these sectors!
An integration involving a third-party platform
If there is not an off-the-shelf integration in the HubSpot ecosystem, you may be able to find a connection via third party integration platforms such as Zapier or Automate.io
We can support you with this if we agree it is the best approach for your organisation. Note that there are usually additional costs for the middleware.
A custom API integration
This could be one way or bi-directional data transfer, and would be a separate project involving our developer, what this type of project looks like very much depends on what you are trying to achieve, the API capabilities of the systems you want to integrate, and how well the fields in each system can be mapped.
Speak to us about your requirements.