How To Standardize State Fields in HubSpot, in Bulk and Automatically

The listed states of US-based contacts and companies in your CRM are critical for location-centric marketing campaigns, segmentation, and reporting.

Each individual state has many potential variations. For example—California State, California, Cali, State of California, CA, CA State, California St., and more. This makes trying to run a marketing campaign to or report on California contacts very difficult. You either have to account for all variations, accept that you only have a portion of the total California contacts in your campaign or report, or spend hours manually formatting the data.

Sound familiar? If so, you're not alone. Data quality, particularly for mailing addresses, is a common challenge for businesses of all sizes. And the impact of poor data quality is no joke.

Inaccurate addresses lead to undeliverable mail, wasting your precious marketing budget. Incomplete data means you're missing out on potential customers. And inconsistent formatting makes it difficult to segment your contacts for campaigns or generate accurate location-based reports.

Poor data quality ripples across your entire marketing strategy. Making data-driven decisions is hard when you can't trust your data.

The consequences are real. Ninety-five percent of business leaders say poor data quality negatively impacts their business. Another study mentions that businesses spend 10% to 30% of their revenue on fixing data issues.

The solution is to recognize the problem and take action to fix it. Data standardization, address validation, and regular database cleaning are critical to ensuring the success of your location-segmented marketing efforts.

The Business Impact of Inconsistent State Formatting

Inconsistent state formatting in your CRM can wreak havoc on your business operations. It's not just a minor annoyance; it's a major problem that can cost you time, money, and even customers.

Here are several ways inconsistent state data can impact your business:

• Inaccurate reporting and analysis: Inconsistent state formatting makes it hard to generate accurate location-based reports, often creating segments and categories for all of the individual variations for each state.
• Ineffective segmentation and targeting: Personalization is the name of the game in modern marketing. But how can you personalize your messaging if you can't properly segment your audience? Inconsistent state formatting makes it nearly impossible to target customers with the right message. You could miss out on major opportunities or, worse, send irrelevant content and turn off potential customers.
• Wasted marketing spend: Speaking of missed opportunities, inconsistent state data can also lead to wasted marketing dollars. If you're trying to run a location-based ad campaign, but your state data is inaccurate, you could show ads to the wrong people in the wrong places.
• Compliance risks: Depending on your industry, inconsistent state data could also put you at risk of compliance issues. For example, you might neglect to collect the sales tax required for a customer living in a particular state, resulting in penalties and fines. The same goes for state-specific regulations around marketing communications and data privacy. Compliance isn't just a nice-to-have—it's a must-have.
• Integration syncing issues: In some integrations, such as the HubSpot-Salesforce sync, inconsistent fields can lead to the sync breaking, causing confusion across your organization.

The impact of inconsistent state formatting goes beyond just data quality. It has real, tangible consequences for your business. From inaccurate reporting to wasted spend to compliance risks, the costs can add up quickly.

The good news is there are solutions. By standardizing your state fields and implementing regular data cleaning processes, you can ensure the state data in your CRM is accurate, consistent, and reliable. It takes some effort up front, but the payoff is well worth it.

Let's review how you can standardize state fields in HubSpot.

How to Standardize State Fields in HubSpot

So, you've realized your state data in HubSpot is inconsistent. You're ready to clean it up and get your CRM in tip-top shape. But how do you go about standardizing those pesky state fields?

Unfortunately, HubSpot doesn't offer an out-of-the-box solution for standardizing state fields across all your records. So you're left with two options: the manual approach or using HubSpot Workflows.

Neither is ideal.

Here's how the manual process looks:

• Step 1: Go to your "Contacts" menu and select either Contacts or Companies.
• Step 2: Check the boxes next to the contacts or companies you want to update.
• Step 3: Click the “Edit” button and then select the "State/Region" option in the dropdown menu. Next, type in the state name with your specified formatting to update the records' states in bulk.

Using this process, you have to go through your records one by one, identifying inconsistent state entries and updating them to your chosen standard format. It's tedious, time-consuming, and prone to human error. You’d have to sift through thousands of records, trying to spot every "Calif." or "Cali" in order to change them to "CA."

What About Workflows?

HubSpot Workflows offers powerful automation capabilities, but is limited in its ability to deal with state standardization. You'd need to create a separate workflow for each state variation you want to update. So, one workflow would change "California" to "CA," another would change "Calif." to "CA," and so on. It's a lot of work.

Plus, it's nearly impossible to account for every potential state name variation. Is it "New York," "NY," "New York State," "NY State," "N.Y.," or "N.Y. State?" The list goes on. You'd be playing a never-ending game of whack-a-mole, trying to catch every variation.

And here's the kicker—Workflows is only available on HubSpot's Professional and Enterprise plans. If you're on a Starter or Free plan, you're out of luck.

Even if you have access, the manual effort required to set up and maintain workflows is significant. Every time you spot a new state variation, you must create a new workflow. It's a constant uphill battle.

How Insycle Automates State Standardization in HubSpot

If you’re fighting a losing battle against inconsistent state formatting, fear not. Insycle is here to save you time, money, and frustration.

Insycle makes state standardization simple and automatic. No more manual updates, no more complex workflows. Just clean, consistent state data at your fingertips.In Insycle, you can select a pre-built state standardization template from Insycle's library. These templates automatically format and standardize states to either their abbreviated form (CA) or full name (California).

Set your filter criteria to narrow down the records you want to update. Then, choose your preferred state format. For this example, we standardized state data to use the abbreviated form, such as CA.

Then, simply select the records you want to update, or update all of the records that meet your criteria, and standardize US states in bulk, across your entire database.

But Insycle's state standardization superpowers don't stop there. You can schedule your state standardization templates to run on a set schedule, or even inject them into Workflows.

Pro Tip: Once you've standardized your existing state data, consider converting your state field in HubSpot from a text field to a picklist field. This way, you can limit the input options and ensure ongoing standardization. No more rogue state variations sneaking into your database.

With Insycle, state standardization in HubSpot is no longer a headache. It's a breeze. You can bulk-standardize existing data, automate ongoing standardization, and even prevent future inconsistencies with picklist fields.

Goodbye, manual record updates and tangling with Workflows. Hello, clean, consistent state data, and all the benefits that come with it: accurate reporting, effective segmentation, and a trustworthy database you can rely on.

Automate HubSpot State Standardization With Insycle

If you're struggling with state standardization in HubSpot, you're not alone. Inconsistent state data is a common problem that can have far-reaching consequences for your business. The impact of poor data quality is significant, with impacts ranging from inaccurate reporting to ineffective segmentation to compliance risks.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Insycle offers a simple, automated solution for state standardization in HubSpot. With Insycle, you can bulk-standardize existing state data, set up ongoing standardization using recipes, and even prevent future inconsistencies by converting state fields to picklists. No more manual updates, no more complex workflows. Just clean, consistent state data at your fingertips.

And that's just the beginning. Insycle is a complete HubSpot customer data management solution, helping with many use cases beyond state standardization. From deduplicating contacts to standardizing job titles to cleaning up phone numbers, Insycle is your secret weapon for HubSpot data quality.

So why wait? Take control of your HubSpot data today with Insycle and say goodbye to data headaches.