How to Keep Your HubSpot Contacts Clean and Organized

In any CRM, HubSpot included, the quality of your data is critical. Remember: "garbage in, garbage out." Bad data leads to bad decisions. When outdated, incomplete, or duplicated data fills your contact lists, it disrupts campaign performance, confuses sales teams, and clouds your insights. But with consistent attention to data hygiene, you can ensure your HubSpot contact list is an asset—not a liability.

In the following steps, you’ll find clear, actionable strategies to organize and optimize your contact data. From validating email addresses to removing duplicates, we’ll walk you through essential practices for maintaining a high-quality, reliable contact list.

 1. Start with Email Validation: Quality Over Quantity

Before diving deep into your HubSpot data, start by assessing the quality of your email list.

HubSpot tracks soft and hard bounces for contacts once an email is sent, which is excellent for identifying inactive or invalid contacts. However, if you’re working with an older or cold list that hasn’t received recent emails, you won’t have bounce data until after sending.

In those cases, email validation tools like ZeroBounce and NeverBounce can help by pre-verifying inbox activity before you hit send. This proactive step reduces hard bounces, protects your sender reputation, and supports compliance with data privacy regulations, ultimately keeping your campaigns effective from the start.

2. Analyze and Identify Key Data to Clean

Once you’ve tackled email validation, it’s time to look deeper into your data. Identify which records need to be removed, merged, or updated, which will create a more manageable workload and allow you to focus on the contacts that add the most value. Here are a few things to consider:

• Freemail and Disposable Emails: Some email addresses, like those using @gmail.com or temporary disposable emails, may not align with your target audience or deliver the ROI you expect. Use resources like banned email domain lists to spot and manage low-value contacts.
• Hard Bounce and Unsubscribed Contacts: Filter out contacts with hard bounces or those who have unsubscribed from all communications. In HubSpot, these contacts can be tagged automatically to help you avoid sending emails to non-engaged recipients.
  • Merge duplicate contacts: HubSpot's duplicate management tool is powerful, but it needs clear rules. When merging records, always consider:
  • Which record has the most complete information?
  • Which one shows recent activity?
  • What information needs to be preserved from each record?

This initial step of filtering and segmentation allows you to narrow down your list to only the contacts who are potentially interested and engaged, saving both time and resources.

3. Implement Standardized Processes to Avoid Future Data Issues

Setting up consistent data entry processes is vital to prevent recurring data quality issues. In HubSpot, you can use built-in features to help standardize data management and enforce quality standards from the start. Here’s how:

• Define Essential Fields for Each Contact: Identify which fields are essential for your business (like name, email, or job title) and make them easily visible. Place these must-have fields in the left sidebar of each object, so your team can quickly assess data quality.
• Leverage Required Fields and Filtered Views: HubSpot allows you to set required fields when creating new records, helping ensure all key information is captured consistently. You can also use filtered views to spot incomplete records, helping your team stay on top of data quality.
• Visualize Data Quality: Build a HubSpot dashboard with reports that track data quality metrics, such as records missing essential fields or the source of incomplete data. These reports give a clear snapshot of data quality issues, helping your team take action where needed.

By practising those, you’re setting up a preventive data management system that will keep your contact list accurate and clean over time, saving countless hours on future data cleanses.

4. Run Re-engagement Campaigns to Determine Contact Interest Levels

After cleaning up your contacts, it’s time to assess their interest level, especially if they’ve been dormant for a while. Running a re-engagement campaign is a powerful way to reconnect with cold leads and determine if they’re still interested in your services.

Here’s how you might approach this:

• One-to-One Sales Outreach: A personalized email from your sales team is a great way to re-engage contacts. A simple “Are you still interested in…” message can often prompt a response and help qualify the contact.
• Marketing Re-engagement Campaigns: Another option is a broader email campaign, outlining the valuable content you’ll be sending and inviting them to stay subscribed. This not only filters out unengaged contacts but also reaffirms permission to send marketing emails—important for legal compliance.

5. Engage Sales Teams to Maintain CRM Data Quality

• Lifecycle Stages and Lead Statuses: Educate sales reps on how to assign appropriate lifecycle stages (e.g., “Customer” or “Lead”) and lead statuses (e.g., “In Progress” or “Not Interested”). Clear definitions help sales understand and consistently categorize contacts.
• Customized Workflows for Notifications: Set up HubSpot workflows to notify the team if critical fields are missing. This enables quick action, preventing incomplete records from piling up.

Training your sales team on these CRM practices empowers them to play an active role in data quality, ensuring long-term, high-quality data.

Take the first step

Clean contact data isn't just about organization – it's about creating a foundation for marketing and sales success. Whether you're just starting your cleanup journey or looking to improve your current processes, having a structured approach makes all the difference.

Ready to transform your HubSpot contact database? Download the free audit checklist and start building a more reliable, efficient CRM system today.