Mastering HubSpot Cleanup: How to Streamline Your Account

If you're using HubSpot for marketing, sales, or customer service, keeping your account clean and organized is crucial for your digital asset management process (and just being able to find stuff). In this comprehensive article, we’ll provide you with practical tips for cleaning up and streamlining your HubSpot account. By following these steps, you'll be able to stay organized to work more efficiently and effectively.

The Importance of a Clean HubSpot Account

A clean and well-organized HubSpot account offers numerous benefits. Not only does it make it easier to locate resources and reduces clutter, but it also cuts costs by eliminating contacts that you can’t market to or that don’t belong in your account any longer.

Ultimately, a clean account leads to increased productivity, allowing your team to focus on more important tasks.

A well-maintained HubSpot account also ensures that your marketing, sales, and customer service efforts are based on accurate data. This allows you to make better decisions, target the right audience, and develop more effective strategies. As a result, you'll see improved performance and a higher return on investment (ROI) from your HubSpot account.

Now, let’s look at some best practices for cleaning up your HubSpot account.

Review and Delete Old, Unused Contacts

Maintaining a clean database is essential for ensuring optimal account performance and reducing subscription costs. In other words, this one will save your company money.

We developed a contact audit process to identify contacts that don’t belong in your portal any longer. Here’s how it works.

Start by identifying contacts who meet these criteria by making lists for the following:

• Contacts who haven't engaged with your business for a long time, either by opening an email or visiting your website
• Contacts who have unsubscribed from all communication
• Contacts who hard-bounced
• International contacts (if you don’t sell to international customers)
• Contacts who are unqualified to do business with your company or are associated with unqualified Deals.

Now create a “master” list that aggregates all of these contacts into a single list. This is done so the contact list is deduplicated and so you can export these contacts for safekeeping before you delete them from your HubSpot account.

Now you can remove these contacts from your database to save money on your HubSpot subscription and keep your account organized. Keep the lists, though, so you can repeat this process at least annually.

Finally, don’t forget to review possible duplicate contacts on a regular basis and merge them together if they match. This can be found in Contacts by clicking the Actions button, then “Manage duplicates.”

Review and Optimize Your Lists

Keeping your lists up-to-date and relevant is crucial for effective marketing and sales efforts. Periodically review your lists and remove any that are no longer in use or outdated. This will help you maintain an organized account and ensure your campaigns are targeted toward the right audience.

When optimizing your lists, consider segmenting them based on factors such as buyer personas, lifecycle stages, industry, and engagement level. This will allow you to create highly targeted and personalized campaigns, leading to better results and higher conversion rates.

Additionally, regularly update your lists to ensure that they accurately reflect your current audience, taking into account any changes in your market or ideal customer profile (ICP).

When reviewing your lists, consider establishing a naming convention that has meaning for anyone that might be reviewing them in the future. Then rename your lists with the naming convention in mind.

Organize Your Files and Documents in Folders

While file storage in your HubSpot portal is not currently limited, it’s a good idea to clear out files that you’re no longer using.

Organizing your files and documents in a logical folder structure is key to reducing time spent searching for materials. Create folders based on categories or projects and keep related files together. This will make it much easier for you and your team to find and access the resources you need.

When creating your folder structure, consider using a hierarchy that starts with broad categories and becomes more specific as you drill down. This will help you keep your files organized and make it easier to locate specific documents when needed. Additionally, consider implementing a naming convention for your folders and files, so everyone on your team knows where to find and store resources.

If you’ve downloaded or created themes that you no longer use, it’s a good idea to clear those out as well.

Review and Delete Old, Inactive Workflows

If you’re like most companies, you use workflow automation to accomplish several tasks. These go far beyond email automation. You might use workflows to copy property values, alert sales reps or customer service reps when certain triggers occur, or even use workflows to create sales receipts or invoices in Quickbooks.

Because of this, keeping the workflow area clean and organized is crucial. It also needs to be done with the utmost care, because removing an operational workflow can mean breaking a business process.

Outdated or unused workflows can cause confusion and make it difficult to manage your account effectively. Regularly review your workflows and remove any that are no longer relevant or being used.

Create folders that organize your workflows by purpose – for example, “Sales,” “Customer Service,” “Operations” and “Marketing.” Then, place all workflows into the appropriate folder, using subfolders if necessary for further organization.

You also should include a description of each workflow to specify the purpose of the workflow. The description can be found by clicking on the name of the workflow on the edit screen. This is a relatively new feature, but it is valuable to help you remember the purpose of workflows for years in the future.

When reviewing your workflows, take the opportunity to optimize them for better performance. This could involve improving the logic and triggers, removing unnecessary steps, or combining similar workflows into one.

Review Users and User Roles

Proper management of user roles and permissions is essential for maintaining account security and ensuring that your team members have the appropriate access levels. Review user information regularly and update access levels as needed.

When updating user roles, consider implementing a role-based access control system. This involves assigning permissions based on predefined roles, such as "marketing manager" or "sales representative," rather than individual users. This makes it easier to manage permissions and ensures that each team member has the appropriate level of access based on their responsibilities.

While removing terminated employees should be on your employee offboarding SOP, some may slip through the cracks. Periodically review your user list and remove former employees. When setting up new employees, always use their work email addresses to prevent future unauthorized access.

Clean Up Email Templates

Maintaining an effective and streamlined email marketing strategy is crucial for driving results. Periodically review your email templates and remove any that are no longer needed or ineffective. This will help you focus on high-performing templates and ensure your email marketing efforts are on track.

When reviewing your email templates, pay close attention to their performance metrics, such as open and click-through rates. This will help you identify which templates drive results and which need improvement. Consider conducting A/B tests to optimize your templates, experimenting with different subject lines, images, and copy to see what resonates best with your audience.

Don’t limit your cleanup to the templates themselves. Also, review any email templates under Conversations > Templates and remove any unused one-to-one templates. These should also be organized in folders depending on the purpose of the email.

Implement Consistent Naming Conventions

Using consistent naming conventions for workflows, lists, emails, and reports is essential for keeping your account organized. Establish a clear naming system, such as using specific prefixes or suffixes, to make it easier to locate resources and avoid confusion in the future.

When creating your naming conventions, consider using descriptive terms that accurately reflect the purpose and content of each resource. This will make it easier for your team members to understand what each resource is for and help prevent duplicate or unnecessary items from being created.

Remove Unused Reports and Dashboards

It’s common for a team to create reports to find answers to business users’ questions, then not remove them. Regularly reviewing and optimizing your reports ensures that you're making data-driven decisions based on accurate, up-to-date information. Regularly evaluating and removing redundant or outdated reports will keep your dashboards clean.

Also, it can be helpful to consolidate reports. For example, if you have a report that shows a metric month-to-date and one that shows the same metric last month, you can consolidate the reports and simply use the date filter to gather information.

As with other HubSpot features, you’ll want to use naming conventions for your reports and dashboards and restrict access to dashboards if needed so only the appropriate people have access to sensitive reports.

Evaluate and Remove Unused Custom Properties

Over time, your HubSpot account may accumulate custom properties that are no longer used or relevant.

To evaluate your custom properties, start by reviewing the data in your account to identify properties that haven't been used or updated recently. Look for properties that have missing or inconsistent data or are no longer relevant to your current business processes and goals.

When determining which custom properties to remove, consider the following:

• Is the property still relevant to your business or data collection needs?
• Does the property provide valuable insights or contribute to your marketing, sales, or customer service efforts?
• Are there other properties in your account that capture similar information or serve a similar purpose?

By considering these factors, you can make informed decisions about which custom properties to keep and which to remove. When removing unused custom properties, be sure to communicate the changes to your team and update any workflows, forms, or reports that may be affected by the removal.

Remove Unused or Old Calls to Action

If you’ve used HubSpot extensively for over a couple of years, you probably have old calls to action that were used on your website and emails. If you’ve redesigned your website since adding calls to action, you probably have old CTAs that were used on the old website but not the new one.

It’s time to remove any that are not used on your website currently or in emails. Keep in mind that some CTAs may be seasonal or specific to a particular promotion, so consider their context when determining what to remove.

When deciding which CTAs to remove, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is the CTA currently in use?
• Is the CTA still relevant to your current marketing strategy and goals?
• Does the CTA provide value or contribute to the user experience on your website or in your marketing materials?
• Are there other CTAs that serve a similar purpose or target the same audience, making this one redundant?

When removing unused CTAs, ensure that your team is aware of the changes and update any website pages, emails, or other materials that may be affected by the removal.

Regular HubSpot Cleanup: Establishing a Routine

Establishing a routine for HubSpot cleanup helps you maintain an organized and efficient account. Schedule regular account maintenance on your calendar and incorporate cleanup tasks into your team's workflow to keep your account well organized and running smoothly.

When creating your cleanup routine, consider assigning specific tasks to different team members based on their roles and responsibilities. This will help distribute the workload and ensure that everyone is contributing to the maintenance of the account. Additionally, establish clear deadlines and expectations for completing cleanup tasks to keep your team accountable and ensure that your account remains organized.

By following these steps, you'll be able to keep your HubSpot account clean and organized. Regular account maintenance is crucial for optimizing performance and your own work efficiency, so be sure to establish a routine and incorporate these cleanup tasks into your team's workflow.

Remember that a well-maintained HubSpot account is an investment in your business's success. If you need assistance with any of the steps outlined in this guide, don't hesitate to reach out for help. Our team of HubSpot experts is here to support you and ensure that your account remains in top shape, so you can focus on growing your business and achieving your goals.