Most sales and marketing teams want to be data-driven. They want to run ABM campaigns, apply modern lead scoring models, and automate many parts of the sales process. SalesOps and MarketingOps professionals are there to facilitate all that, but there’s one common challenge they’re facing: CRM data is messy and outdated.
With that struggle in mind, we thought it would be a good time to launch a new Connector for HubSpot at the same time that we’re launching Vainu Global, our global database of 60+ million companies, so that it’s easy for companies using HubSpot to get their CRM data cleaned, updated, and enriched.
Here's what two of our users have had to say:
“Vainu's Connector for HubSpot is by far the best and most powerful CRM connector I’ve seen. It was very easy to implement, and we had a 96% company match rate with the Vainu database right off the bat. After connecting our systems, I turned on Data Updates, and now our data will be kept up to date automatically. I recommend Vainu to all HubSpot main users who want to enrich and maintain their CRM data and make the entire experience painless.”
Alexander Ehrensvärd, Revenue Ops at Planhat
Nail Bedretdin, Growth Marketing & Analytics at Valve“We work with many enterprise-level HubSpot customers and, when implementing Vainu for one of our customers, Vainu's HubSpot Connector provided an initial match rate of 99.55 %. Vainu provides our customers with several proprietary data points and also help us to keep our customer’s portal updated and clean, not to mention the benefits for segmentation and targeting for marketing purposes. We have already identified more than 3,000 companies that require an update based on their domain redirect information.”
Company matching done right
If you want to connect a global company database with your HubSpot to, for example, keep your CRM data accurate and up to date, the first step would be to match the companies in your HubSpot with the same companies in that third-party database.
Historically, Vainu has used business ID/VAT numbers as the primary way to identify the companies in our database, which also means it was the primary way we matched companies in our database with the right companies in our customers’ databases.
This method works really well if most of the companies in your CRM have business IDs associated with their account, but that’s often not the case. This is especially true for businesses operating multinationally because those companies can have several different business units in individual countries, with each of these having a unique business ID, and it’s not very straightforward to link those local companies together.
Our new Connector does things differently, however. It uses the company’s website URL—domain—as the primary method of identifying companies. This means it works very well with HubSpot CRM because the domain is often the company property that a business will have for almost all of the company records they have in their CRM, which means that it’ll be easier to match the companies in HubSpot to our database.
Case in point, we’ve been achieving a match rate north of 99% for company matching with some of our pilot customers.
Our Connector looks for a company domain and matches that one with the same domain in our database. If you happen to have domains that don’t exist in our database, we can easily start an on-demand matching process that automatically processes all missing domains and adds them to our database if they appear to be valid company websites.
Data mapping done right
The second step to connecting your CRM with a company database is to choose the data points you would want Vainu to enrich and keep up to date. Vainu's Connector for HubSpot brings with it many valuable data points for sales and marketing professionals:
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Vainu Custom Industry is an AI model that analyzes companies’ websites and uses that information to predict which industry verticals the companies operate in. For many companies, industry data is not precise enough if it just provides a high-level industry such as software, retail, or human resources. With the Vainu Custom Industry model, most companies will get assigned 4-8 industry labels, which creates a lot of new opportunities for building campaigns, prospect lists, and audiences that target exact segments.
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Global web traffic ranking reveals the amount of traffic each site is getting. Companies targeting e-commerce sites or companies selling web-based technologies find this information highly useful when figuring out which companies to prioritize.
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Vainu Segments allow HubSpot users to build laser-sharp lists. You can choose companies based on keywords or phrases found on their website. A restaurant booking software provider might be interested in all companies mentioning “take away food” on the site, while a software company might be interested in targeting all “certified Microsoft partners”. Bringing that data over to HubSpot is now very easy; just create a list in Vainu and label all those companies in HubSpot with a Vainu segment that has that same name.
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Our technographic data is very extensive and includes a lot of regional providers on top of the global ones. You can pick the most important technology categories for you and choose to only update those data points. It makes technographic data a lot more useful for salespeople.
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One surprisingly important data point is domain redirect information. As you know, some websites are permanently redirecting to another domain. That can, for example, happen after an acquisition or merger. The domain redirect information helps CRM main users keep their CRM clean, and it also helps HubSpot users to assign contacts to the right company records even if they happen to use a different email address domain than the current company domain.
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Of course, the Vainu Connector also covers the other common firmographic data points, such as company locations, employee count range, company descriptions, and social media links.
Our data mapping module is not limited to company properties; you can also map deals, tasks, and notes. These options come in handy when sales leaders want to create campaigns and assign hundreds or thousands of companies to SDRs and BDRs at scale. You can use the Vainu Mass Export feature and create a task, note, or deal for every company that is a part of that campaign. For example, if you want to target “certified Microsoft partners”, you can add a note that explains the desired messaging, refers to relevant case studies, and provides additional tips for sales reps to use when they start reaching out to these companies. Vainu Mass Export does not create duplicate companies—it’ll only add the companies that you don’t already have in your CRM—but it does add that Vainu campaign note to all companies that are part of that list.
Data updates with increased flexibility
After matching the companies and mapping the data fields, the third and final step is to define your desired workflow for automated data updates. You can choose between automated updates and a one time update.
Sometimes our users will want to overwrite the data they already have in their CRM, while at other times they only want to add new data if that specific property is empty in their CRM, and some data fields should be left out from automated updates altogether. Vainu's Connector for HubSpot supports all these use cases, and users can set the rules for each data point separately.
The most common use cases
Based on the discussions with our pilot users these are the top 10 use cases for our Connector for HubSpot:
- SalesOps: automatically keep your CRM data updated
- SalesOps: better industry vertical data for campaigns, lists, and audiences
- SalesOps: easier way to assign companies to the right teams based on industry, company size, and location
- Sales Directors: faster way to create campaigns and assign thousands of prospects to sales reps at scale
- Sales Directors: streamline the way each segment is approached by using notes and tasks when assigning companies to sales reps
- Marketing directors: more options for building audiences for ABM campaigns on LinkedIn
- Marketing directors: better lead scoring models for incoming leads with the help of new updated company properties
- SDRs and BDRs: automate prospecting by creating hundreds or thousands of tasks with a click of a button
- Account Executives: automate prospecting by automatically assigning new opportunities that meet the criteria of your ideal customer profile
- Business Intelligence: run more advanced customer cohorts and portfolio analysis with the help of more granular industry, firmographic and technographic data
Try the Connector yourself
You can find the Vainu Connector for HubSpot on the HubSpot App Marketplace, and, if you found any of the listed use cases interesting, you might be happy to hear that you can try the Connector free of charge. You just need two things: A Vainu account (free trial available here) and HubSpot admin rights. If you have any questions, just drop us a line in the chat.
