The Importance of a Data Waterfall for Enriched Fields in HubSpot

HubSpot users who work with enriched data fields, whether for lead qualification, customer segmentation, or campaign targeting, often benefit from implementing a data waterfall setup. This approach not only improves data quality but also ensures that critical fields remain accurate and consistent across systems.

What is a Data Waterfall in HubSpot?

A data waterfall is a structured system of primary and secondary fields within HubSpot, designed to capture and organize enriched data in a way that optimizes workflows and reporting. In this setup, enriched data flows from secondary fields to a primary field, only when specific criteria are met. This approach ensures that changes to enriched data are methodically controlled, and updates are accurately reflected in the customer relationship management (CRM) platform.

By creating a data waterfall, HubSpot users can:

1. Safeguard Production Fields: Preserve the integrity of critical fields used in active campaigns and reporting.
2. Optimize Data Updates: Ensure smooth updates by verifying and validating enriched data before it impacts primary fields.
3. Enhance Data Accuracy: Use enriched data effectively without overwriting or compromising primary field data.

Why Use Secondary Fields for Enriched Data?

Using secondary fields for enriched data, rather than directly modifying primary fields, is a best practice that minimizes risk and maintains data accuracy. Here’s why this approach is so effective:

1. Maintaining Data Integrity in Production Fields

• Avoid Overwrites: Production fields—those used actively in workflows, reporting, or customer communications—should remain stable. Storing enriched data in secondary fields avoids the risk of overwriting primary data with potentially inconsistent or incomplete information from enrichment sources.
• Protects Historical Data: Keeping original data intact while populating new information in secondary fields preserves historical data, which can be critical for tracking customer changes over time and for accurate reporting.

2. Better Data Validation

• Control Data Quality: Enriched data often comes from third-party providers, and while valuable, it may not always be complete or formatted correctly. By storing this data in secondary fields, teams can implement validation processes to check the accuracy before updating primary fields.
• Minimize Errors: This approach allows teams to run validation workflows that identify and correct discrepancies, ensuring only high-quality, reliable data is transferred to production fields.

3. Optimized Workflow Automation

• Create Trigger-Based Updates: When secondary fields are used for enrichment data, HubSpot workflows can trigger updates to primary fields only when certain conditions are met. For example, a workflow can be configured to update a primary contact field if the enriched data meets a specific threshold, such as lead score or engagement level.
• Enhanced Flexibility: This flexibility allows HubSpot users to better control when and how enriched data affects key metrics and reports, reducing the risk of inaccurate data flowing into automated processes.

Benefits of a Data Waterfall for Enriched Data

Implementing a data waterfall provides numerous operational and strategic advantages. Here are some of the primary benefits:

Improved Data Consistency Across Systems

Enriched data may come from various sources, each with unique data standards and quality levels. A data waterfall allows you to standardize this information before it affects primary fields, ensuring consistency across systems. With HubSpot's API integrations, secondary fields can also sync clean data with other platforms, like Salesforce or custom databases, keeping everything in alignment.

Enhanced Reporting and Insights

Accurate reporting is foundational to decision-making. By using a data waterfall, you maintain the clarity and consistency of primary fields, which are often the source of key reports and insights. Secondary fields can act as staging areas for enriched data, allowing the marketing and sales teams to analyze and validate new data before it’s reflected in customer-facing or high-impact reports.

Reduced Risk in Customer-Facing Interactions

Primary fields are often used in personalized customer interactions, such as email marketing campaigns or sales outreach. When enriched data is temporarily stored in secondary fields, it reduces the risk of inaccuracies or unverified data affecting these interactions. Teams can be confident that customer-facing communications are accurate and reflect only validated information.

Improved Team Collaboration

A data waterfall provides a clear process for handling enriched data, which improves collaboration across marketing, sales, and data teams. With clear guidelines on when enriched data moves from secondary to primary fields, everyone involved has a shared understanding of the data lifecycle and can better coordinate efforts.

Setting Up a Data Waterfall for Enriched Data in HubSpot

Implementing a data waterfall in HubSpot involves a few key steps:

1. Create Secondary Fields for Enrichment: Set up fields specifically for enriched data. These fields will serve as staging areas, capturing new information from enrichment sources without affecting primary fields.

2. Build Validation and Verification Workflows: Set up workflows to validate enriched data in secondary fields. Use conditional logic to check for completeness, accuracy, or consistency with other records.

3. Automate Controlled Updates to Primary Fields: Once data is validated, create workflows that move enriched data from secondary to primary fields based on defined triggers (e.g., data quality checks or lead scoring thresholds).

4. Monitor and Maintain Data Quality: Regularly audit both primary and secondary fields to ensure that the waterfall process is functioning smoothly and that data remains consistent.

5. Document Processes and Train Teams: Document the data waterfall process and train team members on the importance of using secondary fields. Provide guidelines on when and how data should move from secondary to primary fields to ensure ongoing data quality.

Conclusion

Setting up a data waterfall in HubSpot for enriched data is a strategic approach to managing and maintaining data integrity. By using secondary fields to store and validate enriched information, companies can preserve the quality and accuracy of primary fields that are critical for reporting, customer interactions, and decision-making. This approach not only supports operational efficiency but also enhances data reliability, empowering teams to make informed decisions and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Adopting a data waterfall setup is a proactive way for organizations to leverage enriched data effectively, without compromising their core data structures, workflows, or reporting accuracy.