How to use campaigns in HubSpot and Salesforce
Align marketing asset performance with sales revenue results
There’s a little trap people fall into when they start using both HubSpot and Salesforce.
The word “campaign” shows up in each system, and on the surface it feels like they should mean the same thing. But they don’t. Not even close.
And if you try to force them to match, you’ll just end up frustrated, and your reporting will be a mess.
Each tool uses campaigns for a different purpose.
A Salesforce campaign tracks people and their path to revenue.
A HubSpot campaign tracks marketing assets and how they perform together.
Once you see them as complementary, not competing, it gets a whole lot easier to know when to use each one.
HubSpot Campaigns: Built for Marketers
When you build a campaign in HubSpot, you are creating a container for your assets: emails, landing pages, forms, and social posts!
It’s the marketer’s way of keeping everything tied to a specific goal in one place.
If you’re launching a new product, you can attach every touchpoint to a HubSpot campaign.
This allows you to measure the combined lift of your nurture emails, social posts, and ads. It provides visibility into open rates, click-throughs, and overall engagement.
Key Features:
- Hierarchies: While historically flat, HubSpot now supports parent-child campaigns (up to three levels). You can now roll up 12 individual webinar campaigns into one "2026 Webinars" parent campaign for a unified view.
- Templates: HubSpot offers templates (Welcome, Onboarding, Nurturing) that help teams build the necessary assets and workflows quickly while keeping everything under one reporting roof.
- Asset-Centric: It tells you how the content is doing, not necessarily where the person is in the sales cycle.
Salesforce Campaigns: Built for Sales & ROI
Salesforce campaigns focus on people. Leads and contacts are added as campaign members, and you track their journey all the way to closed-won revenue.
This is where Salesforce shines. You can see exactly how many attendees from a specific trade show became opportunities, how many progressed through the pipeline, and exactly how much revenue they generated.
Key Features:
- The Campaign Member Object: In Salesforce, the "Campaign Member" is its own object. This creates a bridge between the campaign and the person.
- Member Statuses: You can track specific states like "Invited," "Registered," or "Attended." This granularity is what makes high-level revenue attribution possible.
- Deep Hierarchies: Salesforce allows for complex nesting, making it the source of truth for high-level ROI roll-ups across different regions or departments.
Key differences to remember
Purpose:
- HubSpot → tracks how assets perform.
- Salesforce → tracks how people progress.
Structure
- HubSpot → 3-level hierarchy
- Salesforce → Unlimited/Deep hierarchy.
Data
- HubSpot → open rates, clicks, form fills, engagement.
- Salesforce → member statuses, pipeline influence, ROI.
It’s less about which one is “better” and more about which questions you’re trying to answer.
Why They Don’t "Sync" Perfectly
They don't sync natively because they are built on different foundations. HubSpot groups assets; Salesforce groups people. While the integration has improved, there are three main ways to bridge the gap:
1. Native Sync
The native integration now allows Salesforce campaign names and member statuses to flow into HubSpot. You can see these on the contact record and use them as triggers for lists or workflows.
Native sync now allows for a direct association between a HubSpot campaign and a Salesforce campaign.
This enables you to pull Salesforce cost data and member totals into your HubSpot reporting, but they remain distinct objects.
Associating them connects the data without forcing the two different structures to merge.
2. Workflows (The Best Practice)
This is where you have the most control. You use HubSpot workflows to update Salesforce Campaign Members.
Example: If someone fills out a HubSpot form (Asset), a workflow automatically adds them to the corresponding Salesforce Campaign (People) with the status "Responded."
3. Custom Objects (Enterprise Only)
For enterprise users, you can mirror Salesforce campaigns and campaign members as custom objects in HubSpot. This allows for incredibly deep reporting within HubSpot, but it requires extensive mapping to ensure data flows bidirectionally without creating duplicates.
Best Practices for Using Both
To keep your sanity (and your data) intact, follow these rules:
- Use HubSpot for Marketing Performance: Group your assets, see what content is resonating, and optimize based on engagement.
- Use Salesforce for Revenue Tracking: Use Campaign Members and Statuses to tie marketing efforts back to the bottom line and pipeline influence.
- Bridge with Workflows: Don't try to make the "Campaign" objects match. Instead, use HubSpot workflows to enroll contacts into Salesforce campaigns when they hit specific milestones.
A Retrospective
Think of it this way: HubSpot campaigns tell you what content worked. Salesforce campaigns tell you who responded and how much money they spent.
They are two different lenses on the same go-to-market motion.
The mistake is assuming they should be identical. The smarter move is to let each system do what it does best.
If you’ve been brute-forcing campaigns between HubSpot and Salesforce, you already know how messy it can get.
If you need hands-on help with your integration, send us a note, and we’ll help you scope a setup that makes it easier for you.
