Time is one of your most valuable assets. Whether you’re running a marketing campaign, managing customer relationships, or driving sales, your CRM should help you save time—not slow you down. For businesses evaluating CRM platforms, HubSpot and Salesforce (SFDC) are two of the most popular options. But when it comes to efficiency and time saved, HubSpot stands out for its seamless, all-in-one approach.
In this blog post, we’ll compare HubSpot and Salesforce in terms of time-saving and efficiency, using a common marketing activity—sending a segmented email campaign—as an example. By the end, you’ll see how HubSpot’s unified platform not only simplifies your processes but also frees up hours of your team’s time, allowing them to focus on higher-impact tasks.
The Problem: Fragmented Workflows in Salesforce
Salesforce is a powerful CRM, but its sheer complexity can be overwhelming, especially when handling routine tasks like running a marketing campaign. While Salesforce excels at customization, this often leads to fragmented workflows that involve navigating between different tools, updating multiple systems, and ensuring that all components are in sync.
Let’s break down what it’s like to execute a typical marketing activity—say, sending a monthly email newsletter to segmented audiences—in Salesforce.
1. Updating the CRM Database
- First, you need to ensure that your customer database is up to date in Salesforce’s CRM. This typically requires manual data validation and cross-checking various systems to ensure all the latest customer interactions, leads, and updates are reflected. This step alone can take 20-30 minutes.
2. Creating and Segmenting Your Contact List
- In Salesforce, creating segmented lists for marketing emails requires navigating to the CRM side and manually building out your list based on your criteria—such as customer personas, lead status, or previous engagements. You also need to ensure that this data is pulled correctly into Salesforce Marketing Cloud or any other connected marketing tool. This step typically takes another 20-30 minutes.
3. Designing and Sending the Email
- Now, you switch to Salesforce Marketing Cloud (or another email platform). You build the email, ensuring that the tool is properly integrated with Salesforce to pull the correct lists, personalizations, and dynamic content. Then, you have to schedule or send the email. Switching between tools and ensuring the right data is used can take an additional 30 minutes or more.
In total, this process can take at least an hour just to send a single email campaign to one segment of your audience. And if you're sending multiple emails or working with several segments, this can easily add up to a full workday.
HubSpot’s All-in-One Solution: Efficiency at Its Core
HubSpot, on the other hand, takes a completely different approach. With its all-in-one platform, everything you need to execute a marketing campaign is integrated in one place—CRM, email marketing, list segmentation, automation, and reporting. No need to navigate between tools or worry about integrations not working correctly.
Let’s walk through the same marketing activity—sending a monthly email newsletter to segmented audiences—using HubSpot.
1. One Unified CRM and Marketing Platform
- HubSpot’s CRM is natively integrated with its marketing tools. This means your contact records, interactions, and data are always up-to-date without the need for manual syncing or cross-checking. You can skip the time-consuming task of validating and updating your database—everything is centralized and ready to go.
2. Simple List Segmentation
- Creating segmented contact lists in HubSpot is quick and intuitive. You can filter contacts based on a wide range of criteria—like lead status, lifecycle stage, or engagement history—directly within the same platform. The CRM and marketing tools share the same data, so there’s no need to manually sync information or switch between systems. List creation takes just minutes.
3. Building and Sending Emails in One Flow
- With HubSpot, there’s no need to toggle between your CRM and email marketing platform. You can create, personalize, and send your emails directly within the platform. HubSpot’s drag-and-drop email builder allows you to quickly design professional emails, while smart personalization tokens ensure that each email is tailored to the recipient. You can then schedule or send the email immediately, all within one streamlined process.
Total time? About 15-20 minutes to execute the entire process. That’s a fraction of the time it would take using Salesforce’s fragmented tools.
Real-World Comparison: The Time-Saving Impact of HubSpot
Let’s take a closer look at the time saved when using HubSpot for a typical marketing activity versus Salesforce.
Monthly Email Newsletter Scenario:
- Salesforce Process:
- Update CRM database: 20-30 minutes
- Segment and create lists: 20-30 minutes
- Create and send email: 30+ minutes
- Total time per email campaign: 1 hour, minimum
- HubSpot Process:
- One platform, no manual database updates
- List segmentation: 5-10 minutes
- Build and send email: 10-15 minutes
- Total time per email campaign: 20 minutes, maximum
Now, let’s multiply that by the number of campaigns and segments.
If you’re sending a monthly newsletter to 6 different audience segments, you could spend:
- Salesforce: 6 hours total (1 hour per email).
- HubSpot: 2 hours total (20 minutes per email).
If your sales team also requests two additional emails to be sent to targeted audiences, that adds another couple of hours to the process. So, in a month, your team could be spending 8-10 hours on just email execution in Salesforce—a full workday or more—whereas with HubSpot, it could take less than 3 hours.
Other Ways HubSpot Improves Efficiency Beyond Email
While the email example is one of the most tangible comparisons, HubSpot’s time-saving capabilities extend far beyond email marketing. Here are some other key areas where HubSpot streamlines workflows:
1. Automated Workflows
- HubSpot allows you to easily set up automated workflows to handle repetitive tasks, like lead nurturing, follow-ups, or internal notifications. These workflows reduce the need for manual effort, ensuring that tasks are completed faster and more consistently than they would be in Salesforce, where automation typically requires custom development or navigating multiple tools.
2. Unified Reporting
- HubSpot’s reporting tools allow you to build reports across your CRM, marketing, and sales activities within one platform. There’s no need to extract data from different tools and combine it manually, as is often the case with Salesforce. This cuts down the time spent generating insights and enables faster decision-making.
3. Sales and Marketing Alignment
- With HubSpot, your sales and marketing teams are operating from the same platform. This means shared access to data, easier collaboration, and more efficient workflows. Instead of waiting for data handoffs or navigating different systems (as in Salesforce), everyone has real-time access to the information they need.
Why Efficiency Matters for Your Business
Time savings aren’t just about getting more done in less time—they directly impact your bottom line. Here’s why:
- Increased Productivity: Your marketing and sales teams can focus on higher-value activities like strategizing, creating, and engaging with customers instead of being bogged down by administrative work.
- Cost Savings: Reducing the time spent on routine tasks can lead to lower labor costs and a more efficient allocation of resources.
- Faster Campaign Execution: With streamlined workflows, your business can respond faster to market changes, launch campaigns more quickly, and capitalize on new opportunities without delay.
- Better Customer Experience: Faster, more personalized communications lead to improved customer engagement, higher conversion rates, and stronger customer relationships.
Conclusion: HubSpot’s Efficiency Edge
While Salesforce is a powerful CRM, its complexity can often lead to fragmented workflows, tool overload, and wasted time. HubSpot, on the other hand, offers a seamless, all-in-one platform that centralizes your CRM, marketing, sales, and service tools in one place. This not only improves operational efficiency but also saves your team hours of work every week—time that can be better spent on growing your business.