The International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering was founded in 1980 by professionals who believe the pharmaceutical industry required an organization that would spearhead practical applications of science and technology for technical professionals. It is the world’s largest not-for-profit association serving its Members through forums to exchange ideas and practical experience.
Challenge
ISPE believed that two things were holding back their marketing program. The first was that they couldn’t follow up promptly with customers who abandoned their carts, and the second was they had trouble segmenting their lists for outreach across all of their members. ISPE had been using iMIS, a leading provider of AMS (Association Management System), for the last ten years and integrated the Higher Logic email marketing into their platform for five years, both expensive and time-consuming. ISPE decided that they needed a switch and sought after the best Marketing Automation that was in use. They identified Hubspot as the best software to use going forward. Still, they needed to find a Hubspot partner that would get iMIS integrated with Hubspot within a reasonable timeline and cost. So, they reached out to OBO.
ISPE purchased HubSpot Marketing Hub to send targeted, automated marketing emails to their contacts (members), such as promotions, abandoned cart reminders, and newsletters. ISPE’s member and transactional data were held solely in their association management software, IMIS. In order to scale, they needed their member data from IMIS to be migrated into HubSpot and build an integration to push new and updated member data into HubSpot daily and automatically.
Client’s Goal
ISPE wanted to deploy Hubspot to allow for more agile marketing campaigns, better list segmentation, and faster follow-up with members. They needed to import data from IMIS (the existing management and billing system) into Hubspot so the marketing team can send timely communication and create more effective campaigns.
Solution
OBO developed a two-step implementation solution to meet ISPE’s goals. First, OBO migrated all the data regarding iMIS contacts to HubSpot as contacts. Then, OBO created a script to sync iMIS contacts with HubSpot, so when a member’s contact gets updated on iMIS, it automatically gets updated on HubSpot. Next, OBO developed custom scripts to create and associate HubSpot Deals to Contacts dynamically. These deals are not sales opportunities in the traditional sense; instead, they represent purchases and abandoned cart orders to allow ISPE to better segment contacts. These scripts are executed daily, except for the abandoned cart scripts, which are updated hourly. These scripts live and run on a Linux virtual server that sits behind ISPE firewalls. Each script is run via cron jobs and writes to unique log files that get deleted after 14 days to save server space.
Business Process Mapping
Before starting the integration, OBO and ISPE determined ISPE’s current data model and business processes to make sure they align with the internal workings of HubSpot. OBO then provided best practices on moving forward with field mapping, workflows, and deal pipelines.
Finalized Field Mappings and Created Custom Contact & Company HubSpot Fields
OBO worked with ISPE to determine which fields needed to be created in HubSpot and integrated from the IMIS system. Once the fields were finalized, OBO created the custom contact and company fields within HubSpot.
Created Deal Pipeline and Custom Fields Along with Stages
OBO created the proper deal pipelines and stages in HubSpot based upon the IMIS data model and determined how they align with existing sales. Once the deal pipelines and deal stages were determined, OBO created the new deal pipelines and deal stages in HubSpot.
Mapped the IMIS Data Model and Field Types
ISPE worked with OBO to choose which fields from the IMIS database map should be integrated with HubSpot, the datatype of all the fields that were migrated over, and the age of the data they wanted to integrate.
Wrote API Calls for Contacts, Companies, and Existing Orders
OBO’s data integration team worked with ISPE’s technology team to create custom API calls to gather contacts, companies, and existing orders data from the IMIS database.
Upload Existing Contacts and Companies to HubSpot
OBO uploaded the Contacts and Companies returned from the API calls into HubSpot utilizing the agreed-upon field mappings.
Setup Linux Integration Server
OBO’s data integration team built its integrations on a Linux server provided by the ISPE team. The server has access to the IMIS data via created API calls to push data to HubSpot. OBO was responsible for the Integration script dependencies.
Parsed and Transformed API Data
OBO’s data integration team parsed and transformed data returned by the API calls from the IMIS database to prepare for HubSpot Integration.
Built Logging Functions
OBO created a logging script to log all of the IMIS data via created API calls into HubSpot. The log file was stored within the data integration server.
Unit Testing
OBO built unit testing to ensure that data is being parsed and processed into HubSpot properly before deployment and ensure that future development does not break current features.
Integration Testing
OBO began testing the integration script by starting with a sample batch of contacts, companies, and existing orders. Quality Assurance tested and validated that the proper contact, company, and order data were uploaded.
Imported Data to HubSpot using HubSpot API
OBO uploaded the IMIS data via the integration server to import new data from the IMIS API calls into HubSpot by aligning appropriate fields and ensuring data cleanliness.
The team at OBO has developed an effective integration between iMIS, our existing management, and billing system, and HubSpot to allow for more agile marketing campaigns, better list segmentation, and faster follow-up with members. They delivered a timely, successful migration of data and integration implementation, allowing data to flow from iMIS into HubSpot effectively. During implementation, OBO provided excellent, timely support in strategy development, implementation, and general project inquiries. Combining these efforts helped us improve marketing processes and gain more insight into opportunity and contact data within HubSpot. We would highly recommend obo. Agency to any company seeking data integration projects of any kind!
Results
HubSpot Integration
Because ISPE needed to pull new contacts into HubSpot for marketing campaigns and segment contacts based on campaign type, OBO built an automated integration from IMIS to HubSpot, which allowed ISPE to increase its outreach engagement with new and existing members.
Abandoned Cart Follow-Ups
ISPE needed to follow up with individuals that have abandoned carts promptly to increase conversion rates. Therefore, OBO built an integration that pulled timely abandoned cart data into HubSpot Deals, increasing ISPE’s event and membership conversion rate.
Advanced-Data Models
ISPE needed to pull specific data out of the IMIS system to deliver quality marketing campaigns. Accordingly, OBO used multiple IQA queries from the IMIS API to build integrations and pull specific cross object data for ISPE.
Centralized Reporting
OBO configured the IMIS system to track marketing data such as unsubscribes, website interactions and clicks to provide full life-cycle reporting. This helped ISPE see reports on marketing interactions on the IMIS system.
Conclusion
ISPE chose OBO to spearhead their data migration and integration efforts because we were referred to them by several clients that were satisfied with our services and approach. ISPE highly recommends us to companies that need data migration and integration services.