Personalization Gets More Accessible in HubSpot Thanks to CRM Object Mapping

Personalization has been the talk of the marketing town in recent years, but many argue it still hasn’t reached its full potential.

Recent studies have found that consumers report more satisfaction when brands deliver a more personalized customer experience than competitors.

In fact, 52% of participants in one study reported being more inclined to change brands if a company doesn't offer personalized communication.

We have the ability to collect so much data - so why aren’t we using it to create better, more unique customer experiences? 

To help site owners provide this level of personalization to customers, HubSpot has rolled out CRM Object Data for all Marketing Hub professional & enterprise customers, and anyone using HubSpot’s CMS.

What is CRM Object Data?

CRM Object Data is a new HuBL tag developers can utilize to create a more personalized website experience for customers.

When enabled, this feature allows you to create custom pages for your audience by pulling existing data from your HubSpot CRM.

With this functionality, the sky’s the limit in terms of creating unique experiences on your website.

Any data you have on file in a customer’s contact record can now be used to power personalized experiences for your audience.

If you’re looking to create these custom profile pages, here are some features you should consider:

• Show purchase history - This can be items recently purchased or subscription level for service-based or Saas companies.

• Display who is assigned to their account - Depending on your industry, a customer’s point-of-contact might not be super clear. Having a designated person to email if there’s an issue (and having a consistent reminder of this in their profile page) is a great way to show your dedication to customer service.

• Contract/Subscription Renewal Dates - Sometimes, the renewal conversation can be a bit awkward to bring up, especially if the customer isn’t prepared. Having this as a reminder right in their portal can get them thinking about the decision early.

• Display their current “library” of downloaded assets. People download PDFs of gated content all the time - but find it difficult to get back to when they want to reference the material again. This feature can allow you to show them all the content they’ve already submitted, so they can access it more easily.

• Any other attribute relevant to your industry - Since there are so many options to create industry-specific contact properties in your HubSpot portal, you can configure this setting to display whatever information you believe is important to your customers. Are you frequently asked the same questions, or find yourself pulling the same account data for your customers? Consider using this Object Data feature to display it to them automatically.

Currently, it seems that this feature can only be used to display existing data from your CRM. Anything beyond that (i.e., recommendations based on previous purchases or related content based on download history) is not available with this tool. This type of functionality would require AI or custom configurations to make this possible. 

How to Set up CRM Object Mapping in HubSpot

Once you’ve determined what features you’d like to include, here’s how to get it set up in your portal.

1. First, you’ll want your development team to review the documentation for crm_object to eliminate the risk of error.

2. Create a module that allows you to pull CRM data into a CMS page. This article provides a four-step process for developers to follow.

3. Create a template that will use these custom modules. Alternatively, you can add the module to an existing template you’d like to use this feature on. (Note: any web pages viewing this data must be on a private page, only product objects can be featured on publically accessible pages).

4. Create a new page for your personalized profile experience. Because all pages using contact object data must be private, you’ll want to password protect it to restrict viewing rights. This can be done using HubSpot’s CMS Memberships feature, which can be turned on at the page level.

5. Enter the object data you want to include into the module via the page editor, test to confirm everything’s working correctly, and publish!

Personalization Is Here to Stay

Personalization is quickly becoming more than a “nice-to-have” for customers.

As these options become more accessible to smaller companies (via HubSpot and other tools), it will likely become an expectation among consumers to have a level of personalization incorporated into their experience.

Sometimes, small things can truly set brands apart from competitors.

Netflix, for example, changed the game offering personalized user profiles with watch history & recommendations.

Spotify offers weekly discover playlists and shows a user their stats at the end of every year showing users what they listened to most out of the year.

Even Grammarly, a writing browser extension, sends weekly reports on how many mistakes you tend to make, and what kind.

At face value, these appear to be small features, but they truly add so much more to the customer experience.

For me, these minor elements are what keep me using that brand versus its competitors.

When you’re in a competitive industry, your base product will always be more or less the same.

It’s the experience you offer to the customers in terms of support, community, or service that will make customers stay -- and that’s why HubSpot’s update is so valuable for marketers.

CRM Object Data provides the opportunity for businesses to enhance their customer experience using data they already have in their system.

This presents a quick win for businesses to show existing customers an added level of support and a certain exclusivity when they’re on the website.