HubSpot Custom Properties - Powerful Tool for tailoring your CRM ⭐

Personalize Your HubSpot CRM with Custom Properties

As you are getting started with the CRM, it's important to understand its main components: objects, records, and properties. CRM objects represent the different types of relationships and processes your business has – Contacts, Companies, Deals, Tickets, and custom objects you create. On these Objects you find default properties – first and last name, phone numbers, email addresses and many others. But you can also add Custom properties if you want to customize your CRM system to your business’ needs. 

What are Custom properties? 

Properties allow you to store and organize all different types of information that you collect (e.g. email contacts) in your HubSpot CRM. HubSpot has its own set of default properties, but when you need to gather any information specific to your business, you can create custom properties. 

There are several data types of custom fields:

• Text Input
• Single-line text
• Multi-line text
• Choosing options
• Single checkbox
• Multiple checkboxes
• Dropdown select
• Radio select
• Date picker
• Values
• Number
• Calculation
• Score
• Other
• File
• HubSpot user
  
  

💡Don't forget, you must have permission to edit property assigned when you want to create custom properties. 

💡 Advanced users may need to create Custom objects. This is also possible, but only for users with Enterprise-level accounts.

💭 Is there a limitation of custom properties you can create? Yes, there is a limitation to all HubSpot subscriptions:

• 1,000 custom properties
• 1,000 values per picklist property

When to create a custom property? 

Below you can see all default properties that are already created in HubSpot. 

• Contact properties
• Company properties
• Deal properties
• Ticket properties (only for Service Hub Professional and Service Hub Enterprise)
  
  

💡There are more places where to use Custom properties. With the right subscription, you can create your custom properties inside Feedback properties, Marketing event properties and Product properties as well.

Now, let's imagine a situation. You are a sales rep at a fictional landscaping company that sells landscaping services to small property management companies.

During the prospecting phase of your sales process, you'd like to measure the size of a prospective client by the number of properties they manage. And you would also like to segment prospective clients based on whether they manage residential properties, commercial properties, or both.

HubSpot CRM doesn't have a default property for this kind of information, so that's the right time for you to create your own custom property “Type of managed property”.

Top 5 custom properties to create

If you are not sure what custom properties to create, here are a few tips. To have your business organized, you need to organize essential information sometimes by creating your own custom properties.

These are the top 5 custom properties that will help you organize your business: 

• Business ID/company registration number
  Custom property that HubSpot users commonly create is a business ID. So if you don't already have it, rush into your CRM.
• Address/salutation
  Just imagine the awkward situation - you have an important customer, but you wrongly address him in a personal letter. Well, that is definitely not the start of a good business relationship. The “Address/salutation” property will help you avoid that. 
• Calculation property
  Calculation properties in HubSpot allow you to set up custom equations based on number properties. You can also automatically calculate the min, max, count, sum, or average value for properties on associated records.
• Score
  Score enables you to store a number based on custom scoring attributes (only available for contacts, companies, and deals). 
• HubSpot user
  This property stores a list of HubSpot users in your account. Only one HubSpot user can be selected as a value. This allows you to have a custom owner property, separate from the default/object owner property. You can create up to 30 custom HubSpot user properties. 
• File
  Did you know that you can store a file associated with a contact? In forms, they are used to allow visitors to upload files as part of their submission. The uploaded file's link will be available from the individual's contact or ticket record. If a file isn't uploaded using a form, the property will be a single-line text property. This property type is only available for contact and ticket properties.

Basic rules to benefit from custom properties

Overall the main benefit of custom properties is better organization. With the right custom properties, you can tailor your CRM to your business needs. But don't overdo it – your goal is to make your CRM more organized, not cluttered.

So, before you get into creating custom properties, keep in mind these 3 rules:

1. Work with HubSpot's default properties if you can. Before you create a custom property, be sure that HubSpot doesn't already have the same default property. 
2. Choose people that will manage and create custom properties. If everyone has the power to create new custom properties, you'll probably get everything but better organization. Solution? Choose a few people (or one) that will be in charge of any creation.
3. Introduce your custom properties to your colleagues before adding new ones. If your colleagues don't know what custom properties you have, they won't be able to work with them. So keep everyone updated. 

Step by step: Creating a custom property

• In your HubSpot account, click the settings icon in the main navigation bar
• In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Properties
• In the upper right, click on the button Create property
• A panel on the right will appear where you can set all Property details
• Firstly, you have to select the Object type (you can choose a contact, company, deal, product, ticket)
• Secondly, you have to select a Group to associate the property with (e.g. whether this property belongs to contact information or to email information)
• Lastly, enter the property name into the Label field (you can edit it later as well) 
• Describe the field in the Description field if you think teammates need a little hint to understand it
• When you are done, click Next and select the field Type (e.g. single checkbox when you have two options like „Yes“ or „No“ in your form).
• Then, If you check the option Show in forms, your new property will be showing in HubSpot forms.
• After that, just click Create at the bottom to save your new property.

Source: HubSpot

In a nutshell

Properties allow you to store and organize all different types of information that your company is collecting right in the HubSpot CRM. HubSpot has its own set of default properties, but you can easily customize the CRM system to your business needs by creating Custom properties. If you don't know what custom properties to create, you can start with a business ID/company registration number, address/salutation, and calculation property. Before creating any custom property, keep in mind 3 simple rules – work with HubSpot's default properties, choose wisely people that will manage custom properties, and introduce your custom properties to your colleagues.

If you have any other questions regarding custom properties or other HubSpot's features, don't hesitate to contact us. And don't forget to follow us on our social media.

Sources: HubSpot, HubSpot