A glossary for HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM is the foundation for managing relationships, tracking interactions, and growing your business efficiently. To get the most out of it, you need to understand the key terms that shape how HubSpot works. Here’s a clear, jargon-free glossary of the most important CRM concepts.

A

🔹 Activity – Any interaction recorded in HubSpot, including emails, calls, meetings, notes, and tasks. Helps track engagement with contacts.

🔹 Automation – Features that streamline repetitive tasks, such as sending follow-up emails or updating contact records.

C

🔹 Campaign – A campaign is a way to group and track related marketing assets—like emails, landing pages, social posts, and ads—all tied to a common goal. Campaigns help you measure performance and see how different marketing activities contribute to your success.

🔹 Contacts – The people stored in your CRM, including leads, customers, and partners. Each contact has a profile with details like name, email, and past interactions.

🔹 Companies – Businesses that are linked to contacts in HubSpot. If you work in B2B sales, company records help you track interactions with entire organisations.

🔹 Custom Properties – Custom fields you create to store additional data beyond the default properties, such as “Customer Tier” or “Preferred Contact Method.”

🔹 Conversations Inbox – A shared inbox where teams can manage customer emails, live chats, and form submissions in one place.

🔹 CRM (Customer Relationship Management) – HubSpot’s system for tracking leads, customers, and all interactions with them. Keeps your sales, marketing, and service teams aligned.

D

🔹 Dashboard – A personalised view of reports and key metrics that gives you a snapshot of CRM performance.

🔹 Deals – Sales opportunities tracked in the CRM, representing potential revenue. Deals move through different stages in the pipeline.

🔹 Deal Pipeline – A visual representation of your sales process, showing where deals are in their journey from prospect to closed customer.

🔹 Default Properties – The built-in fields that store key information about contacts, companies, and deals (e.g., First Name, Email, Deal Stage).

E

🔹 Email Tracking – A feature that notifies you when a contact opens an email or clicks a link, helping with follow-ups.

🔹 Engagements – Any recorded interaction between your team and a contact, including emails, calls, meetings, and notes.

F

🔹 Filters – Criteria used to organise and find specific records in HubSpot, such as contacts from a certain company or deals over a certain value.

🔹 Forms – Online forms used to collect contact details and other information, typically on landing pages or websites.

L

🔹 Lists – Groups of contacts or companies based on shared criteria, such as “Leads from Last Month” or “Newsletter Subscribers.”

🔹 Lifecycle Stage – A way to categorise contacts based on their relationship with your business, such as Lead, Customer, or Evangelist.

🔹 Live Chat – A tool that allows real-time conversations with website visitors, helping with lead capture and customer support.

M

🔹 Marketing email - A bulk email sent to a list of contacts who have opted in to receive communications from your business. These emails are designed for promotions, newsletters, product updates, and more.

🔹 Meetings Tool – A feature that syncs with your calendar, allowing prospects to book time with you automatically.

🔹 Mobile App – HubSpot’s app for managing contacts, deals, and tasks on the go.

N

🔹 Notes – Internal comments stored on contact, company, or deal records to keep track of important details.

O

🔹 One-to-one (1:1) email – A personal, direct email sent from an individual sales rep, support agent, or team member to a single contact. Unlike marketing emails, these messages don’t require an opt-in.

P

🔹 Permissions – User settings that control what each team member can see and edit in the CRM.

🔹 Personalisation tokens - Allow you to automatically insert contact-specific details—like first name, company name, or job title—into an email.

🔹 Playbooks – Interactive guides for sales and service teams, providing structured talking points and questions.

🔹 Properties – Fields in HubSpot that store data about contacts, companies, and deals (e.g., Job Title, Industry, Last Contacted Date).

🔹 Prospects Tool – A feature that shows which companies have visited your website, even if they haven’t submitted a form.

🔹 Pipeline – The structured stages a deal moves through before it’s closed, such as “Negotiation” or “Proposal Sent.”

R

🔹 Records – The profiles of contacts, companies, and deals stored in the CRM, containing all relevant information and history.

🔹 Reporting – Custom and pre-built analytics that help track sales performance, pipeline health, and team activity.

S

🔹 Saved Views – Custom filters that allow users to quickly find contacts, deals, or companies based on specific criteria.

🔹 Sequences – Automated workflows that send emails and create follow-up tasks to nurture leads.

🔹 Signature is the block of text (usually including your name, job title, company, and contact details) that appears at the end of an email. HubSpot allows you to set up custom email signatures for both marketing and 1:1 emails.

🔹 Snippets – Short, reusable text blocks (like introductions or FAQs) that can be inserted into emails and chats.

🔹 Subscription type - Defines the kind of emails a contact agrees to receive. HubSpot uses these to manage email preferences and compliance. Common subscription types include:

• Marketing Emails (newsletters, promotions)
• Transactional Emails (order confirmations, receipts)
• Sales Emails (personal follow-ups, outreach)

Contacts can manage their subscription preferences to choose what types of emails they want to receive.

🔹 Super Admin – A user with full control over all settings and permissions in HubSpot.

T

🔹 Tasks – To-do items that remind users to follow up with contacts, complete admin work, or progress deals.

🔹 Teams – Groups of users in HubSpot with shared permissions and access levels, helping organise large sales and marketing teams.

🔹 Templates – Pre-built emails, reports, or quotes that users can customise and reuse.

🔹 Tickets – Used in HubSpot’s Service Hub, tickets track customer issues and support requests.

V

🔹 Views – Customised ways of displaying and filtering records in HubSpot, making it easier to organise contacts and deals.

🔹 Video Messaging – A feature that lets users send personalised video messages to prospects and customers.