What to Do BEFORE Your HubSpot Data Migration

Migrating your CRM data is like moving to a new house—exciting, full of potential but also a little nerve-wracking. After all, you want everything to arrive at your new HubSpot home intact and organized, right?

No matter the size or scope of your migration, laying the groundwork beforehand is key to success. Neglecting these best practices could turn your migration into a chaotic data dump, creating more problems than it solves.

Let’s walk through what you need to do before you hit that “migrate” button.

Step 1: Understand the Migration Within the Broader Scope

First things first—don’t treat your migration as an isolated task. It’s actually just one piece of a successful CRM implementation puzzle.

Your end goal isn’t just to move data; it’s to set up a CRM that supports your business processes, enhances your customer relationships and drives growth. So, before you start, make sure you have a clear understanding of how this migration fits into the bigger picture.

Ask yourself: what are your CRM goals, and how will this migration help achieve them?

By keeping the broader scope in mind, you can ensure that your migration aligns with your overall business strategy.

Step 2: Select Your Migration Method

Now, let’s talk about how you’re going to move that data. There are a few different methods to migrate data into HubSpot, each with its pros and cons.

1. API Integration: If you’ve got a developer on hand, connecting your old platform to HubSpot via API can be a quick and seamless option. The catch? You’ll need someone who knows how to write API code, and not all systems will play nicely together.
2. Native App: Some platforms have native apps in the HubSpot Marketplace, making data transfer easy and code-free. But beware—these apps may not handle custom fields, and sometimes you’ll need to pay extra for full functionality.
3. Manual Import: Good old CSV files are a popular choice for a reason. You control what data gets exported, and you can clean and prep that data before it enters HubSpot. No coding or extra fees, but be prepared to invest some time into this method.

Whichever method you choose, make sure you create a backup of your data before you start. You’ll thank yourself later.

Step 3: Be Mindful of Data Hygiene Best Practices

Imagine packing up your old house, only to realize that half the stuff you’ve brought to the new place is junk. That’s what happens when you migrate dirty data. Let’s make sure you’re only moving what’s necessary. What does that mean?

• System-generated data like Create Date or ID Number from your old CRM? Not helpful in HubSpot. These fields won’t match up with HubSpot’s new auto-generated values, so save yourself the headache and delete them before migration.
• Bad data from the old tools like fields that were never used, outdated information and unhelpful values? They won’t magically become useful once they’re in HubSpot. Remember: garbage in, garbage out. This is your chance to clean house.
• Think through custom properties because even though HubSpot comes with hundreds of standard fields, chances are you’ll need a few custom ones to capture your unique data points. Take the time now to identify what custom fields you need and which default fields you can tweak to better fit your data. This will save you from mapping errors later.

Step 4: Consider Account Needs

Your migration doesn’t just involve data; it also involves the people who’ll be using that data in HubSpot and the new processes you'll need to build there to support them. Make sure everything is set up for success.

Users

Are you importing data owned by deactivated users or users who only existed in your old platform? Reassign those records to active users and make sure your HubSpot team is ready to handle the incoming data.

Lead Scoring

If you’ve already set up lead scoring in HubSpot before migrating, remember that all contacts, companies and deals will be scored as soon as they enter your portal. Review your old fields—like Region or Service Type—and decide if they should influence your HubSpot scores.

Workflows

Any published workflows in HubSpot will automatically run when you migrate your data. Double-check the triggers and make sure they align with your new data setup. You don’t want contacts getting enrolled in workflows they shouldn’t be a part of.

Step 5: Complete the Migration Mapping Matrix

The Migration Mapping Matrix is your best friend during this process. It helps you map out which fields from your old CRM will correspond with HubSpot fields. Not all tabs will be relevant to every organization, so customize it to your needs. 

Users Tab 

Start by documenting and categorizing your HubSpot users. This step ensures that you have the right people with the right permissions ready to take over once the migration is complete.  Who are you buying a HubSpot seat for? What should their permissions include? What team should they be on?

You may already have this rocking and rolling in your portal, but we often find that companies lack user documentation, so feel free to use it as a gut check. This sort of documentation is helpful when onboarding or off-boarding employees too!

Contact, Company, Deal and Ticket Properties

These sections will help you map the properties from your old system to HubSpot’s fields—some important things to note:

• If you’re not migrating some of the information, feel free to remove those tabs!
• If you’re importing a CSV you won’t need the internal name in Column F, but this will be important if you’re using an API.
• Pay attention to the Property Type in Columns G and H. The types, and at the very least the values, have to match perfectly between your current CRM platform (or lack thereof) and HubSpot. More on this in a bit…
• Work through the properties you wish to migrate from your current CRM and match them up as you can with the default HubSpot properties. You’ll notice several instances where a field that can accommodate your incoming data already exists, it simply has a different name!
  • Don’t forget that some of these fields and values, despite being default HubSpot values, still need to be updated prior to migration. Deal and Ticket pipelines? They need to exist before you import. Same with Stage, HubSpot user fields, Deal Type, Ticket Category, etc.
• Got data that doesn’t exist in HubSpot yet? Add it! Make sure to note in Column I that it needs to be created in HubSpot prior to migration.

Pro tip: Use HubSpot Insights to automatically populate company information based on domain names. It’s a lifesaver when you’re missing key details like annual revenue or employee count.

Step 6: Make the Necessary Updates in HubSpot

You’ve done the hard work of preparing your data and mapping it out—now it’s time to make the necessary updates in HubSpot. This step includes creating any custom properties you identified earlier, updating default fields and making sure everything is ready for your new data to fit seamlessly into HubSpot.

HubSpot Feature Updates

As mentioned above, some default HubSpot fields and features may still require updates, as the out-of-the-box values may not meet the needs of your incoming data. Make sure to review (and update if necessary) the following items:

• Lifecycle Stage
• Deal Pipelines & Stages
• Ticket Pipelines & Statuses
• HubSpot Users (like we already talked about!)
• Lead Scoring
• Email Subscription Types, GDPR compliance language and Opt Out Preferences

Default HubSpot Field Updates

Like we mentioned earlier, as you complete the Migration Mapping Matrix you'll notice a lot of the data you are migrating will have an existing corresponding default field in HubSpot…but does that default field fit your incoming data?

While some default HubSpot fields are not editable, others are! For example, the Closed Lost Reason on the Deal Object can be updated to a dropdown select rather than the standard single-line text, which means your reporting and segmentation efforts won’t have to work so hard!

Other examples of editable default fields include State/Region, Country/Region, Military Status, Seniority and Closed Won Reason.

Custom HubSpot Fields

For data that doesn’t fit into default fields, now’s the time to create those custom properties you planned out earlier. Just remember to match the property types and values exactly—HubSpot is a stickler for consistency.

Marketing Contact Management

While not directly part of the migration, don’t forget to define your Marketing Contact Management strategy. Make sure you’ve purchased enough marketing contacts in HubSpot to match your email outreach plans before migration. And if you want to save on costs, decide who you’ll actually pay to email and assign marketing contact status accordingly.