HubSpot Implementation: How OMR Mastered the Move

1. What is HubSpot?
2. Good things take time
3. Looking for the needle in the tool haystack
4. Software is as individual as our requirements for it
5. HubSpot? Bought! And now?
6. HubSpot implementation or: 120 days of moving
7. Get everyone on board with HubSpot
8. The universal genius does not exist among the tools either
9. “You are never done”

How do companies manage the switch to a new software? While the app on the smartphone is quickly installed and set up, the implementation of business tools often takes significantly more time and resources. This is, among other things, a study by the Digital Adoption Platform Userlane has shown.

In 2022, OMR nevertheless took on the challenge and introduced HubSpot company-wide for its CRM tasks (Customer Relationship Management). In this article you will learn the reasons for the move and receive tips that will definitely make software implementation in your company easier.

What is HubSpot?

HubSpot is an all-in-one platform for marketing, sales, customer service, content management and automations. The different software solutions, so-called “hubs”, are suitable for different tasks and can be freely combined according to needs. Thus, HubSpot offers products and solutions for comprehensive customer management for companies of all sizes.

With the HubSpot Marketing Hub used by OMR, companies can create extensive inbound marketing campaigns. This allows potential leads to be addressed via blogs, social media and advertisements and then converted using landing pages, email marketing and automations.

Good things take time

Sometimes it's quickly clear within a company that a new tool is needed. In other cases, many small pain points are needed that ultimately grow into a big pain. The need for new software for work at OMR was established at the beginning of 2022 after the tool used up to that point, ActiveCampaign, could no longer meet all CRM needs.

“We felt the biggest pain point in January 2022”, says Bozhidara Koleva, Senior Online Marketing Manager at OMR. She was part of the decision-making process for the new tool, which, however, was only set to start a few months later: “It was important to us to start making decisions after the OMR Festival, rather than changing quickly beforehand.” Because: The preparation of the OMR Festival ties up many resources. At the same time, you have to be able to fully focus on a software changeover. Doing both at the same time would therefore not have been possible and would have led to compromises on one or the other side.

Tips: When switching to a new software, you should definitely plan enough time and resources.

The team that went in search of a new tool after the OMR Festival was broadly based: Apart from Bozhidara and Isabelle Gardt, Managing Director and Head of Marketing at OMR, it was mainly made up of colleagues whose daily business is email marketing. Also involved was our Growth Manager Jens Bohse, who has an overview of how OMR is technically structured and which existing tools the new software must be able to combine with.

Bozhidara's tip is not to let the task force grow too big: At OMR, five to six colleagues were actively involved in decision-making. They collected requirements from the respective teams and took these into account as well.

Looking for the needle in the tool haystack

From the start of the tool search to the final decision for HubSpot, about two months passed at OMR. During this time, the colleagues first created a requirement catalogue in coordination with the other units. Important questions that your team should ask in advance are for example:

• What features of the current tool are good and should also be part of the new software?
• What features are you currently missing?
• What functions do you actually not need at all?
• What other tools do you use that should be integrated into the new software?

After all questions had been clarified at OMR, the search really started: First, the colleagues wrote down all possible tools for our CRM game. These included, for example, softwares that they knew from previous jobs. But a LinkedIn call from Isabelle also brought in many suggestions. However, it quickly became clear: Just because a tool works well for a company, doesn't mean it can be used well everywhere.

Isabelle Gardt, managing director and head of marketing at OMR, also relied on tips from her LinkedIn community for the tool search

Software is as individual as our requirements for it

After some research, Bozhidara and the other colleagues reduced the long list of possible CRM Tools to a narrower selection of five providers. The requirement catalog created in advance helped a lot with this. But budget issues should also be addressed right at the beginning. This quickly defines which tools are even an option and with which you do not necessarily have to deal more closely.

At OMR, the new tool was intended particularly for good email marketing. However, the requirements for the software went further, because the colleagues wanted to expand and optimize our CRM in general. Therefore, it was crucial to switch to a CRM platform that can represent data structured and keep pace with the growth of OMR in the long term. In addition, the most important criteria were also:

• Easy creation and sending of newsletters
• Simple website builder for landing pages
• Easy set-up of Marketing Automations

With the vendors from the narrower selection, the team entered into exchanges and showed demos to get a first impression. “But it was very broad,” says Bozhidara. “It's important to familiarize yourself with the tool as well. Especially because in the end a lot of different people should be working with it. It has to be intuitive.” Not all tool providers provide such test accesses. However, it is always worth asking for it to get a feel for the software yourself.

HubSpot? Bought! And now?

After countless demos, test use cases and sales calls, HubSpot was a bit ahead. “A decision had to be made at the end, that was the hardest part,” says Bozhidara. Because often it is only subtleties that speak for or against a tool. The feeling in the conversation with the provider where software is actually such a sober topic can be crucial.

The many features and usage possibilities of HubSpot – and a good gut feeling – ultimately led to the switch to the CRM platform. “The move was a mammoth task,” says Bozhidara. What already felt like a huge task up until then was also a hard piece of work after the decision for the HubSpot Marketing Hub.

In July 2022, the implementation phase started. From then on, Kathrin Blömer was also on board. She is Digital Marketing Manager at OMR and took care of picking up all around 80 colleagues who would work with HubSpot to the new tool. “The implementation took up 70-80% of my working time,” says Kathrin. The first step was the onboarding at HubSpot. “We opted for advanced onboarding and exchanged with an onboarding expert every week for three months, who showed us the entire system.”

HubSpot implementation or: 120 days of moving

The HubSpot implementation was also in the hands of a small team that had all processes in view. “Our team was diverse and it was also extremely important that each member brought different competencies,” Kathrin tells. Colleagues from email marketing, system integration, performance marketing and a colleague with a CRM, data and technology background were involved. “That was exactly what we needed, because the colleague had also previously worked with HubSpot and therefore knew it well.”

According to Kathrin, it is particularly important to have clear responsibilities. In addition, goals and a timing were defined at the beginning of the onboarding process as to when which steps should be completed. During these three months of the implementation phase, it was primarily a matter of moving all data to HubSpot, integrating existing tools and building email templates, forms, landing pages and automations. “We implemented, stumbled upon problems and tried to solve these problems with our onboarding expert,” Kathrin recalls. “It was really very, very intense.”

Get everyone on board with HubSpot

The intensive time was not to end after the onboarding, because the biggest step was still pending: All colleagues had to be brought on board. At the end of October 2022, Kathrin provided a large onboarding across all departments at OMR, which was also recorded. The content can be found in a detailed manual on top – this is especially helpful for new team members who will work with the tool in the future.

For the subsequent communication, Kathrin also opened her own Slack-channel, where all updates are shared. “It is valuable to create a channel where people can report problems and help each other”, she says. Because: If one person has a question or a problem, she is probably not alone with it. In a bi-weekly call, Kathrin also continues to clarify open questions and introduces individual functions to the colleagues.

The universal genius does not exist among the tools either

In the meantime, the HubSpot Marketing Hub has been fully in use for several months. We at OMR Reviews use the tool mainly for sending newsletters. OMR Education has Shopify integrated into HubSpot and also decided to use the HubSpot CRM. They send sales mailings, automate sales tasks, organize meetings and take care of participant management for further education.

At OMR Reviews we mainly use HubSpot for the creation and sending of our Newsletter

“We work with systems like Zapier and Segment. We have integrated these into HubSpot, which opens up so many possibilities for us,” says Kathrin. “Everything plays together, that's why integrations are so important.” The change has definitely paid off for Kathrin, even though even the extensive HubSpot is not a tool that can meet all needs. “We were able to structure our system extremely well and can now work much more efficiently. We have also been able to increase our opening rates by now. That was also a goal of ours.”

“You are never done”

HubSpot is running, the CRM is taking off again and the changeover was definitely successful. Nevertheless, Kathrin believes that you never actually finish implementing new software: “There are always new possibilities. One always discovers more and more what one can do with the tool.” But that, she says, is also what makes the whole thing so exciting.

Kathrin's most important learnings from the past months are:

• Define requirements
• Set clear goals and timetables
• Assemble a small, diverse task force with appropriate skills
• Assign responsibilities and tasks
• Keep everyone up to date (e.g. via Slack channel)
• Plan enough time for all steps and processes

And even if the move to a new tool, especially for larger companies, is a mammoth task, Kathrin can definitely say: “It was so much fun because you started from scratch. You have a clean tool that is tidy, more or less a blank sheet of paper.” Now everything is structured again with OMR in CRM and Kathrin and the other colleagues no longer invest the majority of their working time in the HubSpot implementation, but the changeover will certainly keep them – and all of us – busy for a while.