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  • 1.  HubSpot and Raisers Edge

    Posted 02-10-2025 04:52 PM

    Hello esteemed AASP community 😊

     

    I need some real back of house insight please! We're thinking about adding HubSpot for content generation, email sending, and donor acquisition lead generation. We currently have Raisers Edge as our CRM and have no plans to fully convert anytime soon. Does anyone have any experience in using both tools, Raisers Edge and HubSpot, at the same time? Essentially HubSpot would replace Raisers Edge email system for the majority of our solicitations. In the demo of course it's all shiny bells and whistles and the fundraisers love and want them all (understandably). So, I'm looking, hoping, pleading 😝 for any insight or stories, positive or negative, you may want to share on any of these questions or anything related that you think would be of help:

    • Have you ever used HubSpot for new donor acquisition/lead generation? If yes, have you seen impactful results? (i.e. new donors)
    • What is the real lift on the operations side of using HubSpot, how much work is it to implement and keep/maintain what is essentially a second database for marketing purposes?
    • How hard is it to create/upload email lists and/or create and update workflows?
    • Have you found the HubSpot canned dashboards helpful?
    • Are there any repeat issues you've run into from an operations point of view?
    • Do you have an example of a specific action that was taken based on HubSpot analytics data and the impact of that action?
    • If you used their partner Yodelpop for implementation and onboarding, what was your experience with them?

     

    OK that's a lot of questions, thank you in advance for any insights you might share!

    Sarah

     

    Sarah Dow

    Director of Advancement Services

    Boston Public Library Fund

    www.bplfund.org

     

     



  • 2.  RE: HubSpot and Raisers Edge

    Posted 02-11-2025 06:52 AM

    I am interested in hearing more about this as well. We are currently looking at Hubspot, Brevo and Constant Contact. 



    ------------------------------
    Liz Fay
    Concord Hospital Trust
    efay@crhc.org
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: HubSpot and Raisers Edge

    Posted 02-11-2025 09:00 AM
    I've got some experience with Hubspot, here's a snapshot:

    1. Hubspot is very strongly for-profit coded, not only in its internal language, but in the community and resources built around it, like YouTube content. This translation issue can be a challenge not just at onboarding, but continuously.
    2. Hubspot has two different pipelines, a Customer Lifecycle and opportunity pipelines. Automations and workflows tie into both, and there's quite a lot of complexity to work through. 
    3. Events are tricky with Hubspot, because there is no 'Event' object in the way that we're used to in RE, no events table. You need to do some work with rollup reporting and naming conventions to be able to, eg, have a Gala pipeline and report on it in aggregate. You can't simply run a report on the Gala event, there is no such thing, it's the aggregate of a bunch of individual Deals.
    4. You really need to commit to working through these issues, otherwise you just end  up paying a lot for a glorified Mailchimp



    Thank you,
    Isaac Shalev
    Data Strategy Expert
    Sage70, Inc.
    (917) 859-0151
    isaac@sage70.com

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