Bulk update contacts in HubSpot – which to use: HubSpot CRM or Workflows? [HubSpot Hack]

If you’re not using the free HubSpot CRM today, then you should definitely consider turning it on. For those using the Marketing tools as well, the CRM can occasionally provide additional value to your day to day automation / administration needs. For instance, in the past (before the CRM was around) the only options you had to update details in your database were:

  1. Use a Workflow in the HubSpot Marketing tool
  2. Download a CSV, update the CSV, Upload the CSV with changes (blegh)

However, I recently discovered a little HubSpot Hack (feature) in the HubSpot CRM which allows users (with the right permissions) to bulk update the contact records from any query or view in Contacts section of the HubSpot CRM.

Here’s a quick GIF I made showing where to access this feature:

BulkEdit Contacts HubSpot CRM

The beauty of this feature is that it’s rediculously fast. There is almost no downtime between hitting “update” and the field change. I tested it today on over 16,000 records and it was finished in less than a minute (probably less than 30 seconds).

Note: The old way to update details in your database is still useful from time to time. For example, you might still want to update properties in your database when a change is made somewhere else. That’s where workflows come in. Or perhaps you need to update more than one piece of data on your records and you don’t want to wait for a workflow to complete the process, that’s where a CSV comes in.

Curious what I mean about “waiting for the workflow”? Here’s a fun fact, HubSpot will sometimes “throttle” your contact enrollments into workflows if there are too many contacts entering a workflow or lots of workflows being performed at once.

“Contacts will be enrolled in your workflow at a rate of 20 contacts per second. Workflow enrollment throttling is account-specific, not workflow-specific, so this throttling applies to workflow enrollments across all of your workflows in your account.”

You can read more about that in the HubSpot support article here.

Hopefully this little HubSpot Hack will save you some time in the future. 🙂

Have any tips, tricks, or “HubSpot Hacks” to share? Let me know by tweeting me, or leave a comment below.

About The Author — Mike Rizzo
mikedrizzo

Mike Rizzo, is the Community-led Founder of MO Pros and MarketingOps.com. With his extensive background in marketing Mike helped build, launch, manage and optimize Mavenlink's first-ever user community and Client Advisory Board programs. He is the founder of MO Pros - The Community for Marketing Operations Pros that is growing with an average of 110 new members every month. He is also the co-host of the podcast called Ops Cast by MO Pros. As the founder of MarketingOps.com, Mike is taking a community-led approach to building resources that are purpose-built for MO Pros.

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