HubSpot data model: your CRM in perfect order

Imagine opening your CRM and finding everything in perfect order: contacts are up to date, properties are clearly organized and data accurately reflects the state of your business.
Marketing campaigns run like a Swiss watch, and reliable reports, without doubts or inconsistent data.


Now think about your current CRM: how much time do you spend searching for information, correcting errors, or trying to understand incomplete relationships between data? Believe it or not, a messy CRM may "work," but it's holding you back.


Having a solid data model not only organizes your CRM, it's the foundation for getting the most out of HubSpot and transforming the way your team works. In this article, we'll explore how a well-structured data model can be the difference between operating reactively or leading with strategy.

 

What is a data model?

The data model in HubSpot is the structure that defines how your company organizes, stores and connects information within the platform. Contacts, companies, businesses, tickets, custom objects, each object and its relationship are part of an ecosystem designed to reflect the state of your business.

Why does it matter?

A robust data model is essential for several reasons:

• Avoiding internal confusion, a clear structure allows teams to work with reliable information aligned with business objectives.
  
  
• Improved operational efficiency, accurate automations and advanced segmentations depend on clean data.
  
  

• Drive personalization, well-managed data allows you to create unique experiences for each customer.

   

• Strengthen reporting, data quality directly impacts analytical capabilities and strategic decision making.
  
  
  

Visualize the evolution of the data model at HubSpot with these examples

1. Basic service model: Illustrates how a service case might relate contacts, companies and tickets to specific activities. A service case generally seeks to measure response times, collect customer feedback, and improve the customer experience through strategies such as Voice of Customer (VoC). This model, although basic, is fundamental to understanding the essential relationships between objects in HubSpot.
   
   
   

   
   
   
   
   
   

2. Intermediate Model: Business Integration and Prospecting
   
   By adding business (Deals), capabilities for more detailed revenue and opportunity tracking and sales automation are extended. This model reflects a typical alignment between sales and service teams, integrating elements such as deals, quotes and line items. It is important to highlight the role of the lead object, representing the beginning of the sales cycle, in the context of sales it refers to prospecting.
   
   
   

    

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

3. Advanced model: Customized ecosystems
   
   
   At this level, a complex ecosystem that includes custom objects is presented. This type of customization is ideal for industries with unique workflows; with custom objects, the possibilities in HubSpot expand significantly. An advanced example could be time management in a company's projects.

   
   
   
   

Don't have Enterprise for Custom Object? All is not lost

With the recent addition of Object Library, HubSpot offers a fast and efficient way to define your data model without the need for an Enterprise subscription.


This tool allows you to enable and disable objects, and for Professional account users to apply specific templates to configure properties, associations and pipelines relevant to your industry.

These are exactly custom objects, with the difference that the approach to properties, associations and business logic is defined by HubSpot precisely in popular industry cases.

Featured use cases

For real estate companies, such as agencies and property management companies, that work with real estate listings.

Para organizaciones sanitarias que trabajan con servicios sanitarios y pacientes.

For schools, colleges, universities and other educational organizations.

Key elements of a well-structured data model

1. Well-defined objects and properties
   

In HubSpot, data is organized through objects, which are main categories such as contacts, companies, businesses or tickets. Each record in an object represents a unique instance (for example, a specific customer in the "Contacts" object). Properties are the fields within each record that store key information, such as name, email or lifecycle stage.

Standard objects also contain their specialized superpowers

But what happens when your business needs go beyond standard objects? This is where custom objects come into play, giving you the flexibility to tailor your CRM to unique workflows. Note, not every entity requires a custom object. The key is to carefully analyze what that entity represents and how it interacts with the other elements of the system.

When to use standard objects and when to use a custom object?

Consider the case of an educational institution that wants to include "Teachers" in its CRM. While it might seem logical to create a custom object, in reality, teachers are entities that you probably want to communicate with directly, which makes the "Contacts" object a better choice. You can differentiate teachers from other contacts by using custom properties such as "Role: Teacher" or "Department."


On the other hand, consider the case of "Babies." Although they are also people, direct communication with them is not required, and their characteristics are likely to be unique (age, weight, associated parents, etc.). Here, a custom object would be more appropriate.

Initialization of a custom object

When creating a custom object, one of the most important decisions is to correctly select the Primary Display Property. This property will be the first thing you and your team will see when interacting with each record, as well as the main criteria for searching and associating it with other objects.

For example, if your object is “Contracts,” the Primary Display Property could be “Contract ID,” and the secondary properties might be “Client Name” and “Start Date.” Obvious, right?

Now, pause for a moment and think: what happens when you need to associate that contract with a project or any other object? What will your team see when searching for it? Exactly—a simple ID, with no reference to the client or the contract’s content. Imagine the confusion and wasted time trying to guess which contract pertains to which client.

This is where the importance of making thoughtful decisions about these properties comes into play. Although it may seem obvious in theory, in practice, it is crucial to prioritize a more human and practical approach.

2. Object relationships and association tags
   
   

HubSpot allows you to connect data between objects through associations, which reflect how elements interact in your business. Associations include a key feature: cardinality, which determines whether an object can be linked to one or more records in another object.

Association labels

Association labels in HubSpot are a strategic tool for adding clarity and context to relationships between objects within your CRM. Using them correctly allows you to specify the exact nature of the connections between records—for example, distinguishing roles, responsibilities, or types of interaction among contacts, companies, deals, tickets, and custom objects. To get the most value, begin by identifying the critical relationships in your data model and define how to differentiate relevant associations using clear and meaningful tags. When associating records, you can assign one or several default or custom labels that reflect the role each record plays within the relation. This enables you, for example, to tag a contact as a “Decision Maker” in a deal, or to precisely identify the link between two companies as “Headquarters” and “Branch.” When you associate records in HubSpot, such as a contact with a company or a deal with a ticket, you can label that association to specify the nature of the relationship. For example:

A contact can be the Manager in one company and a Former Employee in another.

A deal may have associated contacts labeled as Decision Maker or Billing Contact.

Two companies may be related as Headquarters and Regional Office.

Types of association labels

Understanding and properly applying the types of association labels is fundamental for building a robust data model tailored to the real processes of your business in HubSpot. There are different approaches to labeling relationships depending on the level of detail, usage context, and segmentation needs:

Single label: Defines a generic relationship applicable to both records, such as Collaborator or Partner.

Paired labels: Defines specific relationships with different terms for each record. For example: Parent and Child.

This is combined with cardinality, note how the parent can be associated with many children, but the child can only be associated with one parent.

How to use the association tags?

Association tags are a key tool for bringing clarity, flexibility and strategic value to the way relationships between objects are structured in HubSpot. To use them effectively and maximize their impact on data operations and analytics, you need to follow certain best practices that take CRM management and governance to a new level.

• Describe relationships between records:

  Labels clearly identify the function or position of a record in a specific association, improving organization and context.
  
  
• Filter records:
  
  You can use association tags to segment your records in tools such as lists, workflows and custom reports.
  
  

Workflow automations: Tags can trigger enrollments or actions within workflows. For very specific objects, for example, you might have a project with 5 associated contacts, but only 1 of them has the tag “Sponsor”—the workflow can behave differently for this individual.

Data standardization and cleansing

Data quality is the foundation of an efficient CRM. Without reliable data, automations can fail, reports become inaccurate, and strategic decisions are based on incorrect information.

Leverage HubSpot’s pre-existing properties

Before creating a custom property, check if HubSpot already provides a standard property that meets your needs. For example:

To track the source of a lead, use Source properties instead of duplicating efforts with a custom property.

To assign owners, avoid multiple owner-type properties and use the new Shared Users and Shared Teams features, which let you assign multiple owners or teams to a record.

This not only maintains consistency, but avoids confusion and facilitates future integrations.

Design custom properties with strategy

When custom properties need to be created, follow these practices:

• Define clear and consistent names: Nomenclature rules, use prefixes to facilitate searches and segmentation.
  
  
• Use appropriate Internal Names: This is key for future developments and integrations.
  
  
• Avoid redundancies: If you want to display information from a related object (such as the sector of a company in a contact), do not duplicate values. Instead, use HubSpot's sync type properties, which automatically synchronize values between objects.

Maintain data consistency

Inconsistent data is one of the biggest obstacles to automation and analysis. To avoid it:

• Set clear standards: Configure predefined drop-down lists (such as countries or currencies) to avoid misspellings or inconsistencies.
  
  
• Automate text formatting: Use workflows or Data Formatting tools to standardize capitalization, remove blanks and correct misentered data.

Group properties logically

Property grouping not only improves internal organization, but also simplifies the user experience, especially on mobile devices. By structuring properties into groups, it reduces confusion and facilitates quick access to key information.

Regularly clean your database

A healthy database requires continuous monitoring and maintenance:

Use data model limits: Identify underutilized, inactive or misconfigured properties.

Merge duplicate records: Merge duplicate contacts, companies or businesses without losing history and related associations.

Automate cleanup with workflows: Set up processes to alert on empty properties, standardize values and correct inconsistencies

Data Management Automation

Workflows are a powerful tool not only for commercial processes, but also for maintaining data quality.

Workflow Optimization

Reduce unnecessary steps: Evaluate whether two workflows can be combined into one more efficient process. This decreases the overload of activities on records and optimizes resources.

Tag- and association-based automation: Set up processes that trigger according to the relationships and tags assigned to objects.

Ongoing cleansing: Create workflows that alert you to inconsistencies or automatically assign standardized values.

Strategic benefits of a robust data model

Optimizing your data model in HubSpot isn’t just a technical exercise—it’s a strategy that can transform how your business operates. With a well-designed model, marketing and sales alignment is naturally strengthened. The marketing team can segment leads with greater precision and personalize campaigns that truly make an impact, while sales benefits from prioritizing key opportunities, understanding the full interaction history, and accelerating deal closures. Operational efficiency also reaches a new level: automations work flawlessly, reducing manual tasks and avoiding common errors. Thanks to a clear structure and standardized properties, CRM navigation becomes intuitive, saving time and effort for everyone, from executives to analysts. When it comes to decision-making, a solid data model eliminates guesswork and ensures your reports deliver accurate, relevant results. This enables leaders to spot trends, detect growth opportunities, and anticipate potential challenges with confidence based on facts, not assumptions.

Conclusion: a robust data model, your competitive edge

A CRM can function even with messy data, but it will never reach its full potential without a robust data model. When you dedicate time to designing, cleansing, and optimizing your data model, you’re not just organizing information—you’re creating the foundation for a more strategic, agile, and scalable operation. Think of your data model as the nervous system of your CRM: every property, association, and tag should serve a clear purpose and bring value to your business.

Are you ready to take the next step? If you want to dive deeper into optimizing your data model in HubSpot or need guidance specific to your business needs, don’t hesitate to contact ICX Consulting. We’re here to help you get the most out of your CRM and transform the way your team works.