Getting your HubSpot account up and running is naturally the first step in your journey toward achieving HubSpot nirvana. Luckily, the setup process is straightforward as can be. Let’s walk through the steps you need to take in order to set up your account, in addition to managing other users and teams that will need to access the account.
You have a couple of options when it comes to creating your HubSpot account. Most people opt to sign up for HubSpot with their name and email address. Your other option is to sign up through your Google login or Apple ID.
Once you’ve created your account, you’ll be automatically signed in to HubSpot. If you’re on a personal device or would like your work device to remember your login information, don’t forget to hit “Don’t ask me again on this computer” when logging in!
Unless you’re running things on your own, you’ll likely want to invite additional users to your account so you can collaborate in HubSpot together. To add users to your HubSpot account:
From here, you have two options for how you add users to your HubSpot account. You can either manually enter the email addresses of new users into the ‘Add email address(es)’ field, or you can import users from a CSV file. Keep in mind that only 100 users can be added to your account in a single CSV import, so if you’re adding a lot of users, you may have to do so through multiple CSV imports.
Within HubSpot, Teams is how you organize your users into groups that differ in terms of access privileges, reporting capabilities, administrative powers, and more. Once you’ve got all your users created in HubSpot, you’ll want to start creating teams to organize them. To do this:
After you’ve created a team, you’ll want to give it a name! You can do so in the right panel that you’ll see after you’ve created your first team. To add more people to a team, simply click on the ‘Additional team members’ dropdown menu, then select the users that you want to add.
Once you’ve followed the above steps, you’ll be able to adjust the ‘Team name’ field and can also add or remove users as needed.
PRO TIP: There are tons of permission sets that you can — and should — assign to individual users. From super admins to service reps, make sure you assign the right permissions to the right users so people can access what they need, when they need it.
If you’ve worked with a CRM platform in the past, you likely can’t imagine life without it. If this is your first foray into the world of CRMs, you’re in for a treat. Ultimately, the success of your business is largely dependent on the relationships you form with your customers.
HubSpot is an industry-leading CRM platform that helps you organize those relationships, connect in a meaningful way with your users, and ensure that all customer-related activity is consistently being tracked and monitored.
Ready to get your HubSpot CRM filled with all of your customer data? Let’s dive in.
Before you can launch an email nurture campaign or newsletter, you first need to get contacts and their companies into your database. Luckily, the steps you must take to import both company and contact data are very similar.
Here’s how to start an import of company and contact data into your HubSpot CRM:
From here, you’ll have a few different options based on the data you want to import to HubSpot.
You can import one file that either just has contacts or has both contacts and companies. You can also import multiple files and — if your files are set up correctly — associate records between the two files.
If you need help importing into HubSpot, check out this HubSpot Knowledge Base article that provides a thorough step-by-step process.
Once you’ve imported your data, HubSpot makes it easy to control how you view that data to quickly find exactly what you’re looking for.
This is done by filtering records and saving views.
HubSpot allows you to quickly filter your data with four filters:
These are located above the table of records. You can click those four drop-downs to filter.
You can also click ‘All filters’ to add custom filters.
If you want to save your view according to the filters you’ve made, you can click ‘Save view’.
Once you name your view, you can access it at any time by clicking ‘All views’ and selecting it from the list.
Another way you’ll want to organize your contacts is by segmenting them into lists. We’ll discuss that, however, in the Marketing Hub section below, as these lists will be used in your marketing efforts.
If you’re a super admin in an Enterprise HubSpot account, you can create custom objects!
This is a powerful feature that you can use to customize HubSpot to fit a need that isn’t met by the standard objects in HubSpot. Just make sure that there’s not a better option within one of HubSpot’s standard objects before doing this.
If you’re ready to create a custom object, let’s dive in.
Read more in our blog that breaks down custom objects for you.
You can also learn more about custom objects in the HubSpot Knowledge Base.
If your company has multiple brands you’d like to manage in one HubSpot account, you can do that, too!
You can use business units to customize the branding and associate certain forms, pages, and other assets with their corresponding brands to keep things organized.
Here’s how to create a business unit:
Once you create a business unit, you can create a brand kit so you can start marketing and managing each of your brands in the same HubSpot account.
The combined power of HubSpot CRM and HubSpot Marketing Hub makes it incredibly easy to manage your inbound marketing efforts.
The CRM gives you all the data and insights you need to deliver the right message to the right people, at the right time.
(Almost) everything we discuss in this section lives under the ‘Marketing’ dropdown in your HubSpot account.
Let’s dive in.
There are two types of lists in HubSpot:
Active lists will update automatically based on the criteria you select. When a contact meets the criteria, they’ll be added to the list. When they no longer meet the criteria, they’ll be removed from the list.
Static lists are lists of contacts who meet the criteria at the time you save the list. Any contact who meets the criteria after you create the list will not be added to a static list automatically. You can, however, manually add and remove contacts from static lists.
To create a list, you’ll need “Write” permissions for lists in Marketing Hub.
Here’s how to find Lists in HubSpot:
From there, you can follow the steps and start segmenting your contacts in HubSpot!
Check out our quick guide to uncover some best practices for segmenting your database.
PRO TIP: Create an active list if you’ll use that list to send marketing emails based on a contact record’s behavior or property values. You can also use active lists to segment contacts by lifecycle stage or by any property that changes over time. Use static lists for groups of contacts that won’t change over time (contact who attended an event, for example).
HubSpot makes it easy to create and send marketing emails to your contacts.
You can use either the drag-and-drop or classic email editor to create your email. For getting started, we recommend going with the drag-and-drop editor, as it's more intuitive and easy to use.
To start, here’s how to find the email editor in HubSpot:
In this view, you can see all the emails you’ve created, filter your emails to quickly find what you’re looking for, and even track the performance of your email marketing (click the ‘Analyze’ tab under the ‘Marketing Email’ header).
Click ‘Create email’ in the top right. From here, you can follow the steps outlined by HubSpot to create your first email. HubSpot already has some stock templates that you can use. Alternatively, you can create a custom email.
You can personalize your email with tokens, style it to match your brand, and select the list of contacts you want to send your email to.
You can use Marketing Hub to manage the following social media accounts:
You can also connect YouTube Reports, though you can’t post to YouTube from HubSpot.
Here’s how to connect your social media accounts:
Now you can select the account you want to add, follow the steps, and manage all of your social media in one place.
Get detailed instructions on connecting and managing your social media accounts in this HubSpot Knowledge Base article.
Just like with social media, you can manage and track your ads accounts in HubSpot.
When you connect your ads accounts to HubSpot, you’ll be able to create ad campaigns, track performance, and use HubSpot lists to create audiences to target with your ads.
Here’s how to connect your ads accounts:
From there, you can choose from Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, or Facebook Ads. Click the platform you want to connect, then follow the steps in the pop-up window.
Once connected, you’ll be able to configure your settings for each ad account.
HubSpot’s lead capture tools include calls-to-action (CTAs) and forms.
You can place CTAs on web pages, landing pages, blog posts, and emails. Forms can be used as their own standalone page, on a HubSpot web page or landing page, or embedded on an external web page.
No matter where your form is located, when a user submits their information, HubSpot will capture that data and store it in your HubSpot contact database.
To find where to create CTAs and forms:
From there, you’ll either click ‘Create CTA’ or ‘Create form’ in the top right and follow the steps.
You can style your CTA button to match your brand or even upload an image or graphic to use as a CTA.
You can easily create your form using the drag-and-drop form builder and configure what you want to happen after a user submits a form — including building a custom workflow to automate post-submission tasks.
Helpful HubSpot Knowledge Base articles:
You can use campaigns in HubSpot to track and report on the performance of related assets in a central location.
For example, if you run a marketing campaign and create emails, ads, CTAs, social posts, and landing pages as part of that campaign — you can see the overall performance of all your assets in HubSpot’s campaign tool.
To create a campaign:
Fill out the information in the right-hand sidebar panel and click ‘Create’.
From here, you can add assets by clicking ‘Add assets’ in the top right.
Used to Salesforce? Learn about the difference between HubSpot and Salesforce campaigns.
Helpful HubSpot Knowledge Base articles:
HubSpot gives you one central place to track all the marketing analytics that matter.
You can install the HubSpot tracking code on your site to monitor your traffic and get all the web analytics you need. You can use HubSpot tracking URLs feature to track the performance of specific campaigns.
Use tracking URLs to get better insights into which channels are generating the most traffic, conversions, and revenue for a specific campaign. This is helpful for determining what channels to invest in down the road.
To find the HubSpot tracking code:
Copy the tracking code and add it to your site according to the instructions.
To create a tracking URL:
Once you’ve created your URL, you can hover over it and copy the tracking URL or short URL to use in your marketing campaign.
Helpful HubSpot Knowledge Base articles:
HubSpot makes tracking the conversations happening between you and your prospects super simple.
When your personal email (this just means your individual work email rather than a company email address) is connected to HubSpot, you’ll be able to log emails, send sequences, and track opens and clicks of the emails you send to prospects.
To connect your personal email to HubSpot:
After you follow the steps to get set up, you can start emailing and tracking your conversations with contacts in HubSpot.
Helpful HubSpot Knowledge Base article:
HubSpot Sales Hub is the ultimate inbound sales tool.
One great feature is the ability to schedule meetings and use meeting links so prospects can easily book meetings with you. But before you set that up, you need to sync your calendar. This will allow HubSpot to know your availability, so you don’t have to manually update it.
To sync your Google calendar:
Follow the same process for Outlook, but search for “Outlook Calendar” instead.
Helpful HubSpot Knowledge Base articles:
Once you have your calendar synced with HubSpot, you can set up meeting links.
Meeting links direct people to your scheduling page where prospects can easily book meetings with you. The meetings tool will use your Google or Outlook Calendar to know when you’re busy and will automatically remove conflicting time slots from your availability.
The first step here is to set up your scheduling page:
You can choose between one-on-one, group, or round robin scheduling. It’s important to note that group and round robin are not available on the free version of HubSpot.
Once you’ve set up your scheduling page, you can add a meeting link to your sales emails.
PRO TIP: You can add a “Book a Meeting” link in your email signature so you never forget.
To get your meeting link:
Click on the ‘Sales’ dropdown menu in HubSpot’s main navigation bar
Click on ‘Meetings’
Hover over your meeting name and click ‘Copy link’
Now you can paste that link into your emails and let prospects book meetings with you themselves! Say goodbye to that awkward scheduling back and forth.
Helpful HubSpot Knowledge Base articles:
Every business is different.
HubSpot makes it easy to add and customize deal stages to match your sales process.
To configure your deal stages:
From here, you can reorder your stages, delete stages, and customize your pipeline to ensure it’s suited to your exact needs.
Just like the Marketing Hub and Sales Hub, Service Hub helps you keep customers at the center.
Service Hub’s suite of tools makes it easy for you to deliver exceptional customer service and easy for your customers to get the information and support they need to be successful with your products and services.
Let’s dive in.
Customer satisfaction surveys help you measure customer sentiment by generating a customer satisfaction (CSAT) score.
To create a customer satisfaction survey:
From here, you can select whether your survey will be delivered via email, web page, or chat. You can customize the question and feedback portion of the survey to gather the feedback you need.
Helpful HubSpot Knowledge Base articles:
Are several customers asking the same question? That’s a perfect opportunity to create a knowledge base article.
A knowledge base is self-serve customer support. It’s a place customers can go to find answers to their questions and get what they need without having to interact with your service team.
To create a knowledge base:
From here, you can write your article and customize its settings to categorize it accordingly and even provide keywords to help customers quickly find it through search.
Helpful HubSpot Knowledge Base articles:
Live chat connects website visitors directly to a member of your team.
This is a great way for prospects or customers to quickly get answers to their questions or get the support they need.
To create a live chat:
Under ‘Live chat’, you can select ‘Live chat’ or, Service Hub Professional or Enterprise and have a knowledge base with at least three articles, you can select ‘Knowledge base + live chat’ to allow users to search the knowledge base directly in the live chat widget.
Now you can customize the live chat experience, decide where the live chat should appear on your website or knowledge base, and style the chat widget to match your brand.
Helpful HubSpot Knowledge Base articles:
The self-serve functionality of the knowledge base is great, but it would be impossible to answer every single potential customer question. That’s where support forms come in.
You can add a support form to your knowledge base to make it easy for customers to submit a question when they’re not finding what they need.
To add a support form:
It’s as easy as that! Now customers can quickly and easily reach out to you with their questions.
If you have Service Hub Professional or Enterprise, you can use a workflow to automatically create tickets based on form submissions.
Helpful HubSpot Knowledge Base articles:
HubSpot gives you powerful reporting capability so you can easily track and measure your company’s performance.
Before you get started building a dashboard, it’s important to know two things:
Once you define and understand these key factors, you can build a dashboard to give you exactly the information you need.
To create a dashboard:
From here, you can choose the type of dashboard you want to create, name it, and customize who has access to it.
Helpful HubSpot Knowledge Base articles:
Need help with onboarding and configuring HubSpot?
We highly recommend using a HubSpot partner agency! But how do you find the right one? You can start with the HubSpot Solutions Directory. It’s easy to search or filter to find agencies that match exactly what you’re looking for.
The most important thing to remember is that you want a partner who will help you set up HubSpot to optimize revenue generation and scale with you as you grow.
Optimizing for revenue generation requires a deeper knowledge than simply knowing how HubSpot works. A good partner will learn your unique needs and challenges and use their expertise to configure HubSpot in a way that makes sense for your business.
You can get a free one-on-one consultation with New Breed — HubSpot’s North American Partner of the Year — to learn how you can maximize the ROI of your HubSpot investment. We’ll review your goals, challenges, and opportunities and give you an actual strategy for how to achieve your goals with HubSpot.
Schedule your consultation below to get started!