A quick guide to HubSpot Custom Objects

The biggest announcement from Inbound 2020 has to be the launch of ‘custom objects’ for the HubSpot CRM. This development gives HubSpot users more power to customise the very heart of their CRM to store any type of data. Once again HubSpot is innovating to make the platform more extensible and more powerful for users.

Let me give a quick overview of custom objects and why they might be useful for you.

HubSpot is brilliant. As a HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner we would say that, but we also admit that it has its limitations. Chief among them is the ability to alter the structure of the database to reflect processes or data requirements unique to a particular business. We work with many customers who have a custom-coded CRM or use a system such as Salesforce that can be tailored more than HubSpot (at a cost!). Now HubSpot has responded. Within HubSpot there were previously only four standard objects in the CRM:

• Contact (the person)
• Company (the business AKA account)
• Deal (AKA opportunity)
• Ticket (such as a support ticket)

Use-Cases for Custom Objects

Now you can create up to 10 new ‘custom objects’ inside your database. These can be data objects (literally anything) that are relevant to your business. For example:

• Car (for a dealership)
• Hiring company (for recruiters)
• Equipment (for leasing firm)
• Contractor (for service companies) 
• Parent (for schools)

Below are two examples of business use-cases for custom objects that we are working on.

You sell through intermediaries.

If you sell a product or service to an intermediary who then sells on to the ‘end-client’ then custom objects will interest you. For example, you have a partner channel that accounts for a large proportion of your sales. With standard objects you can’t differentiate your intermediary from your end-client as they are both are the object of company. The current work around is to create the label of ‘company type’ and mark them as either ‘end-client’ or ‘intermediary’. But now you can create an object of intermediary and instead associate multiple companies and/or deals to that intermediary object. This gives you the ability to create properties specific to the intermediary such as commission rate, sales revenue, intermediary type, AOV by intermediary etc. It also gives you much more powerful reporting (see below).

You sell to physical locations.

Perhaps you sell a product or service to physical locations - for example you provide broadband (fibre) to residential or commercial customers. What matters to your business is the exact physical location, as well as who the actual customers are - for example, you may only serve certain locations. The work-around today would be to use the address field for a contact record and the address field for the company record. But this is messy - slight variations of address in either place would make it hard to search the database and you can’t run reports very easily using these fields. Now you can create a custom object for a physical location (perhaps using exact coordinates as the unique reference) and associate multiple companies and/or multiple contacts to that location.

There are infinite use cases.

Why would you use custom objects?

Organise your data better

Now you can store, segment and view data in a way that makes more sense to your business. If you work with intermediaries now you are able to clearly identify them inside your CRM, store data against them that is relevant to your business. 

With custom objects you get to specify the properties that are unique to them (and not other objects.) You can now have a CRM extension that can be used in any record to show relevant details of the intermediary.

[Here is an example using location as a custom object]

More powerful reporting

In HubSpot, you can create hundreds of reports. Previously you might pivot data from a contact against associated deals. Now, you can use custom objects to create reports that matter to your business (certain report options are being rolled out over time). 

So, in the case of the intermediary, you can run a report about the intermediary and deals. So in one report you can analyse all the deals associated with the intermediary, then you could then drill down, for example, to the original source of these deals or the average deal value by intermediary.

Use powerful workflows

You can create a workflow for your custom object records and enrol them to automate certain actions.

This now gives you the full power (certain triggers or actions are being rolled out over time) of workflows to manage your data for the object using sales automation and to trigger marketing automation activities based on your custom object.

So, for example, you might decide to send information to your ERP/finance system, based on likely commission payments that are due to your intermediary. This could be done every time a deal is signed-off by an intermediary.

[On the right is an example using contractor as a custom object]

How much does it cost?

The custom object features are free to use for HubSpot Enterprise customers. However, there is likely to be some development work needed to help tailor the objects to your business. There is also an additional custom object capacity pack which means you can use another 10 objects (this costs in the region of $500).

What next?

We are happy to help you make use of custom objects for your business. If you want to implement a custom object we can either advise your internal team or do the implementation for you quickly and at a fixed cost.

To start with, book in a free consultation on custom objects. Email me at [email protected] or use my meeting link here.