HubSpot campaigns explained: what they are and how to use them
Understand & analyze HubSpot campaigns in 5 minutes.
If there’s one thing marketers tend to agree on, it’s that managing campaign assets can get messy fast.
Every tool (email, socials, CMS, etc.) might do its job well in isolation, but when you try to stitch performance together across all of them, a lot can go wrong.
The pain grows when you need to prove ROI for a specific initiative.
- Which ad drove the most conversions?
- Did the landing page do the heavy lifting, or was it the follow-up email?
Without a way to connect those dots, the picture is incomplete.
HubSpot Campaigns, luckily, give you a central space to group all your related assets and tie them back to a shared goal.
What is a marketing campaign?
At its simplest, a marketing campaign is a coordinated set of assets designed to achieve one outcome.
You might want to grow your blog subscriber list, so you create a landing page with a form, run ads on LinkedIn and Google, post about it on Facebook, and send an email to your list.
Each of those pieces is separate, but they all contribute to the same objective.
The challenge is knowing which assets carried the most weight.
Did the LinkedIn ad bring in most of the new subscribers, or was it the email?
What are HubSpot campaigns?
HubSpot Campaigns offer a fix to the issue we mentioned above. It lets you group all those moving parts under a single umbrella.
Rather than looking at an email in one report, a landing page in another, and an ad in a third, you link them all to the same campaign.
A typical HubSpot Campaign might include a landing page, a form or CTA, a few emails, some ads, and a series of social posts.
You can also pull in related workflows or follow-up communications. Once connected, HubSpot lets you report on them in one place.
As of mid-2025, HubSpot has expanded this even further.
Campaigns can now include sales touchpoints like calls, meetings, and logged emails, giving you a fuller picture of how marketing and sales efforts work together.
You can also link ads directly from the Ads tool, rather than manually associating them later.
If you’re also running Salesforce, here’s a deeper look at how to use campaigns in HubSpot and Salesforce together
When to use HubSpot campaigns?
Campaigns are versatile and can be created for almost any focused marketing effort.
If you’re hosting a webinar, you can connect every invite, registration form, reminder email, and follow-up message into one campaign
That way, you can track the journey from initial sign-up through attendance and any post-event conversions.
The same is true for an ebook or lead magnet.
You can tie together the landing page, paid ads, nurture emails, and blog promotions. Instead of chasing numbers across separate reports, you’ll see the full impact in one place.
They’re also useful for tradeshows and company events.
Pre-show promotions, on-site lead capture forms, and post-event nurture emails can all be tracked as part of one story.
Product launches are another good fit. You can connect announcements, nurture sequences, and upsell efforts, then see how they influence revenue.
Even ongoing efforts like newsletters and social activity can benefit, giving you a consistent view of engagement over time.
How to analyze campaign performance
To analyze a campaign, go to Marketing > Campaigns in HubSpot and select the one you want to review.
Once inside, you’ll see four main tabs: Performance, Attribution, Assets, and Tasks.
Performance gives you a consolidated view of traffic, conversions, and influenced contacts. It shows which assets generated first interactions and which influenced existing contacts.
Attribution breaks things down further, showing how new contacts were created and which assets or sources played the biggest role.
If you’re on Marketing Hub Enterprise, you’ll also see attribution tied directly to deals and revenue.
The Assets tab is more tactical.
It lists every email, landing page, or post linked to the campaign and gives you quick access to their individual performance data.
And if you’re using HubSpot’s task management feature, the Tasks tab shows pending work connected to the campaign, so you can keep execution aligned with reporting.
As of 2024, HubSpot also added an Activity tab to track changes within a campaign, showing who updated what and when. This gives teams better visibility into campaign history.
Comparing campaigns in HubSpot
HubSpot added campaign comparison back in April 2022, and it has since been expanded. From the Campaigns dashboard, you can select two campaigns and click Compare Campaigns to see them side by side.
This is especially handy if you’re running different lead magnets and want to see which one resonates most, or if you’re evaluating webinars against e-books to understand which drives better ROI.
Even comparing similar campaigns across different timeframes can highlight what your audience is responding to and where to double down.
Recent updates have also made exporting campaign comparison data easier, including improved exports of influenced contacts.
For more detail, see HubSpot’s official guide to campaigns.
Why HubSpot campaigns matter
Reporting without Campaigns is a grind. You’re pulling numbers from five different places, patching them together, and hoping the picture is close enough to reality. Everyone knows it’s not.
HubSpot Campaigns fix that. They tie your work together in one place so you can see what’s driving results and what doesn’t.
For a deeper dive into proving impact, check out our guide to marketing campaign ROI analysis.
And if your HubSpot setup still feels like it’s fighting you, we’ll take it off your plate.
RevBlack’s RevOps consultants live in HubSpot and Salesforce every day. We set up, integrate, and scale systems for high-growth teams who can’t afford to get it wrong. If that’s you, reach out and we’ll scope whether we’re the right partner.
