American Air Filter Company (AAF) was considering a move to HubSpot when we were introduced to help evaluate their onboarding and migration requirements. A Kentucky-based 3,000-person company founded in 1921, AAF was operating in a mixed environment of Marketo for marketing automation and Salesforce for CRM. Our contact with AAF described the struggles they were dealing with, stressing the need to be more efficient with their small team of people.
They described Marketo as 'too clunky', stating frustrations around having to manually move and recreate their marketing assets. They were interested in HubSpot to make things easier on them. They were looking for a root form system and the ability to spin up new items 'on demand' from a template instead of from scratch. After going through a series of software demonstrations with their HubSpot sales rep, they really loved how intuitive HubSpot was to use. They knew HubSpot could solve their pains, but didn't have any HubSpot expertise in-house. They were concerned with their ability to move fast and master HubSpot and were looking to our agency to help them ensure a smooth transition.
As we dug in further, we uncovered a large number of existing assets that would need to be migrated along with over 40,000 contact records. Their timeline was fairly tight for such a large undertaking, with a little over 60 days until their Marketo license expired. Once the requirements were finalized and a statement of work was executed, we were ready to dig in.
Project Overview
Goal: Move from Marketo to HubSpot
Services: HubSpot Onboarding, Data Migration, Salesforce Integration, Team Training
HubSpot License: Marketing Enterprise
Timeline: 60 Days
The project consisted of four elements: onboarding, data migration, SFDC integration support, and team training. AAF needed support with onboarding HubSpot’s Marketing Enterprise platform, moving their contacts, recreating landing pages, forms, templates, and workflows from Marketo, and ensuring their Salesforce integrates. It was an ambitious workload and would require careful planning and timeline execution throughout the project.
HubSpot Onboarding
At Instrumental Group, we have a dedicated team for HubSpot Onboarding and offer a host of services to help new customers activate their new HubSpot license quickly. Our HubSpot Success Managers are Master Training Certified by HubSpot themselves, ensuring they have a well-rounded and complete understanding of the entire HubSpot Suite. We introduced the AAF team to their dedicated migration team and got to work on the following steps:
- Step 1: Global License Configuration: We completed all of the initial global configuration for their Enterprise Marketing HUB. We started with a workbook to ensure we had the proper branding elements, then jumped in to set up the CRM and Marketing Enterprise features to ensure their instance was ready for migration.
- Step 2: Theme Migration: We equipped their new Enterprise Marketing HUB with landing pages and email templates. The templates came from our library, already set up to be responsive to viewing devices, and included best-practice layouts we've tested for effectiveness. We styled the templates to meet their brand guidelines, enabling fast activation for all of our requirements for the project.
Here's a short video with more about our onboarding process
Data Migration
Moving AAF's 40,000+ contact records and engagement history was the next step in the migration. This 'hard data migration' included prepping HubSpot for the intake of new data.
- Step 1: HubSpot Field Mapping: We started with an audit of the existing SFDC environment to identify all required fields for migration. Then we configured HubSpot to match, ensuring the ability to migrate successfully.
- Step 2: Data Migration: We exported all of their contact data directly from Marketo by leveraging their API. Once exported, we reformatted the data fields to directly match HubSpot's CRM import tool.
- Step 3: Validation and Testing: We'll review migrated data together, ensuring accuracy. We'll re-run the migration if there are any errors once the migration is approved.
- Step 4: Delta Migration for Net-new Data: We'll run a final migration to pick up all net new data and move into HubSpot for go-live before marking the project complete.
Here's a short video with more about data migration
Marketo Asset Recreation
They had a large list of marketing assets in Marketo. After taking inventory, we set out to recreate all of the following assets inside of HubSpot.
- Subscription template and suppression lists
- GDPR & email compliance management
- 14 specialized forms
- 2 website content templates
- 8 landing pages, leveraging our previously installed HubSpot Theme
- A master nurturing workflow with personalization and branching logic to be cloned by their team
👉 Check out our HubSpot Themes 🎨
SFDC Integration
To help AAF integrate HubSpot into their existing Salesforce instance, we went through a discovery process to understand their sales process, current implementation of Salesforce, and overall objectives for the integration. Based on what we learned, we worked together to develop and execute an integration strategy that included the necessary field mappings inside of HubSpot, syncing rules via the native integration's Selective Sync, and ensured their data was standardized and flowing properly between platforms. The integration allowed the AAF marketing team to pass valuable leads with all the proper sales intelligence over to their sales team, which operated exclusively in Salesforce. The multi-directional sync also allowed their marketing team to access valuable attribution data when deals moved to closed-won.
Team Training
Our training methodology also aligns closely with HubSpot. We've adopted their preferred method of Change Management, ADKAR. We customize training curriculums to build awareness, create desire, develop knowledge, foster ability, and reinforce change and adoption. For this project, we dedicated a series of team training calls that focused on every element of HubSpot's Enterprise Marketing HUB.
- We started with a kickoff and goal-setting call, where we identified their most impactful areas of need so we could focus the subsequent training meetings directly on their top priorities.
- Our second meeting focused on the technical setup we had completed to help save time. We reviewed data import capabilities along with a complete platform tour that helped them understand every feature available to them within the Marketing HUB.
- Our third meeting focused on their biggest priority: email marketing and automation. We worked through smart lists for segmentation, workflows for automated email drip nurturing, and campaign setup for attribution tracking.
- Our final training meeting focused on the complex features only present with the Enterprise version, including calculated properties, revenue tracking, cross-platform analytics, and advanced landing pages with A/B testing.
Success In Accuracy & New Capabilities
Moving away from your existing software ecosystem is difficult. There will always be a significant list of risks and concerns. At Instrumental Group, we specialize in migration work like the American Air Filter Company was considering. We saw our job as their partner to be multi-fold. We helped them assess their existing environment, inventory critical assets, form a plan of attack, execute alongside their team as if we were on their team, and teach everyone how to operate in their new environment.
When the project was finished, their team verified complete accuracy in contacts, assets, and data sync. With HubSpot, their team was set up for success with a full understanding of HubSpot's Marketing HUB. They were ready to move forward confidently, working in the best marketing automation software on the market!
