HubSpot has just launched one of the largest and most exciting updates to the platform in a long time: custom objects. The introduction of this feature for Enterprise customers, greatly improves HubSpot’s capabilities. Finally answering the prayers of many users who have long been bodging together custom fixes to achieve similar results.

Now, with the addition of custom objects, HubSpot allows businesses to store bespoke information about their customers and prospects in such a way that it allows:

Stakeholders to generate new reports
Marketers to create more targeted campaigns
Salespeople to glean more information needed to perform better

This custom data can be associated with any other default objects and help build out relationships and interactions, which more accurately represent modern businesses.

As one of the most eagerly anticipated updates in the HubSpot universe, we’ve no doubt that many users already have plans on how to implement custom objects. For those of you who are unsure if you could benefit too, let’s start at the beginning.

What is a custom object?

In HubSpot parlance, an object traditionally refers to either contact, companies, deals or tickets. The use of these objects provides a pretty thorough CRM experience for most users but many businesses simply don’t operate within these fixed categories. Having custom objects now enables you to develop your own category and fully integrate this into your CRM.

Why are custom objects important?

Organisations that rely on subscription or membership models have always struggled to fully leverage HubSpot CRM because these subscriptions never fit neatly into a bucket (...or rather, object).

Custom objects now answer this problem… and many more. With this update, you can now start accurately recreating relationships in the same way that you do within your business. You no longer need to bend to HubSpot's will. The knock-on effect of this is greatly improved reporting capabilities helping you to make more informed, data-driven decisions.

How can custom objects impact your business?

We’ve put our heads together and combed through some of the more interesting use cases which are possible as a result of this update.

Up-selling & cross-selling

Up-selling and cross-selling is an area all businesses strive to improve on but this has taken on added significance in these past few months. Businesses are looking to pivot and adapt to the changes brought about by COVID-19. As a result, opportunities to grow your contact base are increasingly difficult. Therefore making the most of the contacts you already have access to has become the priority.

HubSpot’s new custom object data now complements your ERP and provide not only sales, but also marketing, with data to better track your leased or sold assets. Giving sales and marketing easier access to this information can help them plan more effectively. This insight can help provide more precision to your campaigns and deliver targeted up-selling and cross-selling opportunities across your database in a way that was far more difficult previously.

What we’re saying is that - in the most ideal world - custom objects could fundamentally help your marketing and sales teams align more closely. This is an indisputable advantage in a time where marginal gains are so important.

Parent & Child Relationships

While HubSpot now manages parent-child relationships relatively well in the company object, custom objects can greatly improve visibility and flexibility - by allowing you to pinpoint and report on contacts or products sold within a child company with no impact on the parent company.

Speaking in real terms, if you sell into large organisations with many subdivisions that all have unique needs, you now have a means of tracking it more effectively. Think of the NHS, built up of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG), regional trusts, primary care providers, and many more that all have different requirements. Previously, managing these relationships, tracking sales opportunities and reporting on key business metrics was really hard to do inside HubSpot - as parent and child company relationships were only available within the company object. Now, creating custom objects allows businesses to associate a contact with a CCG, a trust and GP practice, for example.

When selling to a decision maker who has responsibility over different tiers of an organisation, having the ability to report on overall organisation penetration, managing individual sites within a group, or managing relationships with consultants who work with multiple businesses; custom objects gives you the ability to set up your CRM in a way that works for you.

Selling through vendors

HubSpot CRM has always helped you understand your customer. This has always been more complex for businesses which sell through vendors or intermediaries. Tracking their efficacy has never been straightforward.

Developing a custom object could help you accurately track each vendor or reseller’s activity. Using HubSpot as a single source of truth and carrying that data over into the contact, account or deal object could help you gain a more complete view of your operation.

With more accurate analytics, a clearer picture of the strengths and weaknesses of certain vendors is now available. Used correctly, this could influence how you support these vendors and, crucially, allow for more accurate forecasting.

These are just a few of the use cases that the Axon Garside team have long hoped for. What excites us most though is the unknown. As with all innovation, the full impact of this update won't be known immediately but we’re looking forward to how the wider HubSpot community go on to leverage this.