FAQs

FAQs

Do I really need a separate CRM, or can the marketing hub be my whole system? For a very early business the marketing hub alone can carry you, and many platforms include a light CRM. But the moment you have a real sales motion with deals and a pipeline, you want the marketing hub and the CRM working as a defined pair, with a clean handoff between them. The decision that matters is not one tool or two, it is whether the seam between capture and close is configured deliberately.

How many contact properties should I create at the start? Fewer than you think. Start with the handful your funnel decisions and segments genuinely depend on, lifecycle stage, lead source, a persona or industry field, and one or two business-specific ones. Add a property only when a real decision or segment needs it. A lean model that is fully populated beats a rich one that is half empty and untrusted.

What actually defines an MQL? Whatever you and your sales team agree it is, written down before you build the scoring. The durable definition combines fit (the right kind of company and person) with intent (behaviour that signals they are seriously evaluating). There is no universal threshold to copy; the value is in the agreement, because an MQL definition sales does not believe in is worse than none.

Should I import my existing contact list straight in? Carefully, and never blast it on day one. Import into your clean data model, mapping old fields to your new properties, and treat an old list as cold until contacts re-engage. Sending to a stale list to "warm it up" is the fastest way to damage the sender reputation you just set up, so re-permission or sunset the dead weight rather than mailing all of it.

How do I keep the database from rotting over time? Constrain fields at entry so bad data cannot get in, suppress bounces automatically, set a sunset rule for long-dormant contacts, and review your properties periodically to retire the ones nobody uses. Data quality is not a cleanup project you run once; it is a set of configuration choices that prevent the mess from accumulating in the first place.

Can I configure all of this myself, or do I need a specialist? The core setup is learnable, and a focused founder can get a clean foundation in place. Where outside help earns its keep is the seam work: the CRM integration, the lead-scoring model, and the attribution wiring, because those are the pieces that are painful to retrofit and easy to get subtly wrong. If you bring help in for one thing, bring it in for the connections between systems, not the email templates.