RE NXT and HubSpot Integration: RaiserSync

@Karen McCue
Hi Karen,

Gosh do I have a lot to say about this. To preface this, we are finishing up looking at marketing platforms (Luminate Online, Hubspot, Campaign Monitor, Feathr) and it is sounding like our MarCom team is really wanting to go with Hubspot. We have had several calls with them regarding features, pricing, integration, implementation, ect.

With that said, we are running into a host of issues with the way the data is going back and forth with RE.

Our primary issues right now are:

Managing duplicate records. Hubspot's “token” is email addresses as opposed to RE's is the REID. We are now speaking with a 3rd party integration service trying to figure out how we would manage duplicates without a ton of manual work, Hubspot recommended we go that route and didn't have any simple methods for us to fix our major concern without essentially using their platform as the system of record. Hubspot has a duplication remediation feature but if a record exists in Hubspot with an email already and we update their email in RE then sync, which we are CONSTANTLY doing, it is going to recreate that constituent's record in Hubspot with the same name but with the new email. The manual effort of researching each constituent's email one by one after we do a large import for example, would be awful. This would also add to our record count in Hubspot.

RE records that share the same email address. We have many constituents that share the same email address (ex. husband and wife, some of our students put down their parent's email as their own but their parent is also record with the same email address. In RE, they are separate constituents but using the same email). If we segment the husband via a list to send out an email, then want to send the wife a different email, the most recent email we send is going to overwrite the previous one. In this case, the wife's information would overwrite the husbands because their email address is the same. This then creates a whole mess when sending the data back into RE because one of them has been overwritten. Not to mention how this would affect salutations.

Unless you use Hubspot's giving pages, we won't be able to track conversions (we are still going to use RE Giving Pages). We would solicit someone for a gift, they might make a gift but the data in Hubspot is not going to show which email or solicitation effort was the one that lead to the gift because they are going to be sent to our RE giving pages.

Hubspot and most of the people we have talked to recommended importing our entire marketable database into Hubspot then segmenting within their platform. We currently have someone who does all of the segmenting in RE, if our MarCom team started segmenting in Hubspot, we have potential to duplicate actions unless the communication between both of the teams is impeccable, and I do not see that happening.

I'm sure there is more but that's a decent start. I would LOVE to hear about any other RE user's specifically in higher-ed that have made this work. I've tried about any many keywords both here in BB community as well as the Hubspot community and haven't been able to find much.

Omatic Software also has a state-of-the-tech, cloud-forward integration for HubSpot and RE NXT. For further information, email info@omaticsoftware.com or visit omaticsoftware.com.

We have been using Raisersync Standard (one way) for several months and it is working well. It is odd how you just turn it on and it syncs. You don't get to view/select fields or do any test records. It is all predetermined. You do have to use the System Record ID in Raisers Edge for it to work properly. We are getting ready to upgrade to the Plus version that is two way. I came here looking to see if anyone has the Raisersync Plus and any issues/complaints. I have worked with Camille at Yodelpop and she has been very helpful when we installed Raisersync Standard. Thanks!