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How a Political Advocacy Organization Fixed Critical Data Integrity Risks to Scale Operations Across 50+ States with HubSpot

Political Advocacy 11-50 Employees Sales Hub | Service Hub | Marketing Hub
How a Political Advocacy Organization Fixed Critical Data Integrity Risks to Scale Operations Across 50+ States with HubSpot
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Background

HubSpot serves as their central operations platform, processing thousands of form submissions daily from campaigns like voter registration drives, coalition sign-ups, and event RSVPs. The organization relies on real-time data synchronization with Airtable to power their field operations and contact management across 50+ state teams:
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Problem

Unlike traditional in-office EEG testing, Neurotech's model depends on building and maintaining relationships with hundreds of medical practices nationwide, each with its own ordering process, preferred EEG durations, and documentation requirements. Their revenue model requires consistent follow-up, accurate tracking of practice-specific needs, and reliable handoffs between sales and service teams.

  • Campaign Data Was Disappearing Into a Black Hole: Their field teams were reporting missing contact information from critical voter registration forms. When leadership investigated, they discovered the root cause: their integration between HubSpot and Airtable had quietly broken when a team member's account was deactivated. Multiple active workflows were still showing as "on" in HubSpot, but no data had synced for weeks. Critical information like state, county, and demographic identifiers were simply not making it to their field operations database.

 

  • 500,000+ Contact Records, No Clear Truth: Turning Point's CRM contained over 501,000 contacts, but data quality had deteriorated to the point where field coordinators couldn't trust basic contact counts. Custom properties duplicated HubSpot's standard fields, splitting information across multiple locations. Standard reports couldn't see the custom fields, so leadership dashboards showed incomplete pipeline numbers and inaccurate campaign performance. The audit revealed 61 completely unused custom properties and 76 potential duplicates requiring manual review. Campaign managers were cross-referencing multiple data sources just to get accurate submission counts, wasting hours every week.

 

  • Marketing Contact Limits Threatening Campaign Shutdowns: With 30 days until high-priority launches, Turning Point was approaching their 630,000 marketing contact limit. Hitting the threshold would halt all email sends during critical election periods. The problem: 136,867 "marketing contacts" had bounced emails, unknown statuses, or had unsubscribed, but HubSpot still counted them. The organization was paying for unusable capacity with no automated way to clean contacts at scale.
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Solution

Turning Point's issues stemmed from three years of rapid growth without proper data governance. The team needed a methodical approach that wouldn't disrupt active campaigns while rebuilding trust in their primary operations system.

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Data Flow Airtable-HubSpot
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Data Flow Airtable-HubSpot
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Part 1: Data Architecture Audit & Root Cause Analysis

  • Mapped every data flow between HubSpot and Airtable to identify where information was breaking down, revealing that Turning Point had been layering workarounds on top of an unstable foundation
  • Documented that 13 priority campaign forms required immediate reconnection, with multiple forms having identical names but connecting to different databases, creating confusion about which workflows were actually active
  • Traced the cascading failure to a deactivated user's account that had been the connection point for critical automations, explaining why workflows showed as "on" but weren't syncing
  • Identified that dropdown field mapping between platforms didn't account for minor variations (like extra spaces in state abbreviations), causing silent sync failures that were invisible to field teams
  • Mapped each form submission to its intended Airtable destination, documented all field-level requirements, and determined which campaigns required two-way sync versus one-way data flow

Part 2: Gradual Migration to Production-Grade Integration

  • Executed a phased migration from the limited integration (10 fields maximum) to HubSpot's native Airtable sync, which supports unlimited field mapping and more reliable error handling
  • Connected 13 high-priority forms to their correct Airtable destinations with all required fields properly mapped, ensuring state, county, and demographic data flowed to field operations
  • Standardized dropdown field options between platforms to eliminate value mismatch errors that had been causing submissions to fail silently
  • Created new contact properties where HubSpot forms required multi-select options that didn't exist in Airtable, and restructured the Get Involved form from 12 separate columns to a single multi-select property
  • Disabled form pre-population to prevent accidental data exposure when shared devices accessed campaign forms, and tested each sync with sample submissions before going live
High-priority Forms
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High-priority Forms
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Workflows Marketing Contacts
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Workflows Marketing Contacts
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Part 3: Automated Quality Controls & Data Cleanup

  • Merged 119,365 duplicate contact records based on email address matching while preserving all timeline activity and associated records, establishing merge rules that prioritized the most recently active record as the master
  • Built a workflow that automatically identifies contacts with bounced emails, unknown email statuses, or unsubscribed flags, immediately unmarking 136,867 contacts as "marketing contacts" and bringing Turning Point well under their subscription limit
  • Set the marketing contact cleanup workflow to run continuously, preventing future billing overages without requiring manual audits
  • Audited all 169 custom properties in the system, identifying 61 unused properties for deletion and 76 duplicate properties for consolidation
  • Created a migration plan to move data from custom fields to standard HubSpot properties, ensuring leadership dashboards would show complete and accurate campaign performance going forward
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Results

Before: Field teams receiving incomplete contact data, leadership unable to trust CRM reports, and the organization approaching marketing contact limits that would have halted campaign operations.
After: All 13 priority campaigns syncing reliably to Airtable, a clean contact database with accurate reporting, marketing contact usage reduced by 22%, and repeatable processes that prevent future data integrity issues.

  • Financial Impact

    • Avoided subscription cost increases: The marketing contact cleanup alone prevented Turning Point from needing to upgrade their HubSpot subscription or purchase additional contact capacity, avoiding approximately $5,000+ in annual subscription increases.
    • Prevented campaign shutdown costs: By addressing the marketing contact limit before hitting the threshold, the organization avoided the operational cost of emergency manual cleanup during election-critical periods when email sending would have been blocked entirely.
    • Reduced technical overhead: Consolidating to the native HubSpot-Airtable integration rather than continuing to patch the limited method eliminated the ongoing cost of maintaining custom workflows and troubleshooting silent failure modes.

     

  • Operational Impact

    • Faster data availability: The transition from limited to full native integration expanded sync capacity from 10 fields to unlimited, with forms now syncing within seconds of submission rather than being queued in unreliable workflows.
    • Reduced manual data hygiene work: The automated marketing contact cleanup workflow runs continuously, eliminating the need for monthly manual audits to identify bounced or unsubscribed contacts, freeing approximately 8–10 hours per month previously spent on manual data maintenance.
    • Accurate campaign performance tracking: Campaign managers can now view accurate submission counts and demographic breakdowns in real-time without needing to export and cross-reference Airtable data.

  • Strategic Impact

    • Real-time business visibility: Leadership now has confidence in HubSpot dashboards because standard reports reflect complete data consistently stored in the correct properties, not scattered across custom fields.
    • Improved forecasting confidence: With reliable data sync and automated quality controls, Turning Point's executive team has confidence that their CRM can scale through rapid campaign expansions without breaking.
    • Improved data-driven decision-making: The combination of a clean contact database, documented field mapping, and repeatable processes means the organization can launch new state-level initiatives without risking data integrity or operational failures.
Many organizations running high-volume campaigns face similar challenges: integrations that break under scale, duplicate data undermining trust in reporting, and manual processes that consume hours every week.
 
If your team is working around your HubSpot system rather than relying on it, we can help you build the operational foundation you need to scale confidently.
 
Book a free consultation to discuss your specific situation.

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