The HubSpot admin role can mean different things at different companies. In some places, there’s a single person filling the position. In other organizations, there’s a team of HubSpot administrators helping manage the platform.
Additionally, as the platform has expanded into multiple areas of companies, the admin role has needed to become cross-functional as well.
I spoke with HubSpot’s Director of Global Services Strategy and Operations, Samantha Dillon to learn more about how the role has evolved and what’s required for HubSpot admins to be successful.
What is a HubSpot Admin?
“I would look at a HubSpot admin as someone who is responsible for understanding how to utilize the platform to meet their business goals and someone who is responsible for the day-to-day use of HubSpot and ensuring the data quality and integrity and processes are all built out in order to support the organization,” says Samantha.
The ideal HubSpot admin should have an understanding of how data and processes work, be operationally minded, and have the ability to map out how what’s being done in HubSpot relates to the pursuit of business goals. Some necessary skills for a successful HubSpot admin are organization, communication, and the ability to translate business requirements into data and technical requirements.
HubSpot Admin Responsibilities
Day-to-day tasks for a HubSpot Administrator can include:
- Permissioning and setting up user roles
- Reporting on the use of the platform
- Setting up reporting on the KPIs for the teams using the platform
- Setting up and managing workflows
- Mapping out business processes and then creating automation around them in HubSpot
- Creating and managing organization-specific training guides and documentation
“We see the admin(s) sitting in different organizational structures depending on the customers we work with,” Samantha says. “I’d say the variety really comes from how they’re using HubSpot as a platform. Some are using it just as a marketing tool and some are using it as an entire platform to fuel their marketing, sales, service and ops businesses.”
If a company is using just a single hub of HubSpot, the admin role can be an individual contributor devoted to just marketing operations, sales operations or service operations. But once a company starts using more than one hub then the role takes on some leadership aspects because the HubSpot admin will need to align the multiple functions across the organization so that their operations work together.
On top of needing to be able to handle day-to-day maintenance and management of the tool, a HubSpot admin working across different business functions will also need to understand how to train and enable multiple teams at scale.
“I think it requires more responsibility when the HubSpot admin is someone who is working across different teams, and I’d say it’s a bit of a different skillset in terms of a business strategic skillset of really how to scale the company using HubSpot and understanding the change management that needs to happen,” Samantha says.
The Evolution of HubSpot CRM and Its Impact on Admin
When HubSpot was first founded, it was just a marketing tool. Admins at that time were really only responsible for marketing operations. But, as the platform has expanded in the decade and a half since, the scope of the admin role has evolved too.
First when sales features were added, responsibilities like lead routing and the marketing-to-sales handoff were added to the HubSpot admin’s plate as marketing-and-sales alignment became a big focus. When the Services Hub was added in 2018, the role grew again to really address the entire flywheel. Instead of just being responsible for marketing operations, HubSpot admins needed to truly understand revenue operations.
“The evolution of the platform has made it much more pivotal to understand how the business works together across different functions, so across marketing, across sales, across servicing,” Samantha says.
HubSpot's Impact on Administrators
“It’s really become more of a leadership role and working with key leaders across each of those organizations to make sure that you’re using HubSpot to the best of the needs of each of those business units, which can be very different. It can be very siloed in nature, and so the HubSpot admin is collectively bringing together the customer lifecycle across those different functions.”
The evolution of the HubSpot platform has been in response to the transformation of the buying experience. In order to best serve your prospects and customers, your business’s marketing, sales and service functions need to be aligned, so the most successful HubSpot admins will be cross-functional even if your company only leverages one part of the HubSpot platform.
Your marketing efforts don’t just impact your marketing results. The leads closed by marketing need to be handed off to sales, closed into customers, and then successfully serviced. So, the person responsible for marketing operations needs to be aware of the impact their work is having on those later functions.
The Takeaway
The HubSpot admin role has evolved to be so much more than logging data and setting up user permissions. It can really be a force for company-wide alignment in order to create a cohesive buying experience.
But in order to maximize the success you see from the function, you need advocacy for it and revenue operations within your organization.
“I think what leads to the best success is definitely championship across your leadership team, and giving that person or that team the opportunity to really show what is happening within the tool and how the business is utilizing HubSpot to drive new demand and/or close new business,” Samantha says.
