If you’re managing contacts for email campaigns, you know the pain: stale lists, bad data, and the risk of sending to addresses that’ll bounce or tank your sender reputation. This guide is for anyone who uses Kickbox to clean up email lists and needs those validated contacts in HubSpot—without making a mess, losing data, or spamming the wrong people.
I’ll walk you through how to export validated contacts from Kickbox and sync them to HubSpot. You’ll get hard-won lessons, clear steps, and some honest advice on what to avoid.
Why bother syncing validated contacts?
Let’s be blunt: dirty lists cost you. Bad emails mean higher bounce rates, more spam complaints, and a CRM full of junk. If you’re using Kickbox to validate, good—you’re already ahead. But just running validation isn’t enough. If you dump that cleaned data straight into HubSpot without thinking, you can still end up with duplicates, missed fields, or—worse—overwriting good data.
The goal: keep your list clean, complete, and useful in HubSpot, with as little manual work as possible.
Step 1: Prep your contact list in Kickbox
Before you even think about exporting, get your house in order.
- Validate your list: In Kickbox, upload your email list and run the validation. Don’t just rely on a single pass—sometimes you’ll want to double-check especially old or questionable lists.
- Understand the results: Kickbox sorts emails into categories like ‘Deliverable’, ‘Risky’, ‘Undeliverable’, and ‘Unknown’. Only ‘Deliverable’ should go to HubSpot. ‘Risky’ is a judgment call—sometimes they’re fine, but don’t bet your sender reputation on it.
- Filter ruthlessly: Don’t just export everything. Filter out undeliverable and unknowns. If the list is old, consider only keeping the most recently-engaged contacts.
Pro tip: Download a CSV of just the ‘Deliverable’ contacts. Save a backup of your full results in case you need to revisit your filtering decisions.
Step 2: Map your fields—don’t skip this
HubSpot is picky about field names and data structure. If you just slam a generic CSV into it, expect headaches.
- Review field names: Make sure your CSV matches your HubSpot property names. If Kickbox adds columns (like ‘Result’ or ‘Reason’), decide if you want those in HubSpot. Usually, you don’t.
- Standard fields: At minimum, you’ll want ‘Email’, ‘First Name’, ‘Last Name’, and any other fields you actually use in HubSpot campaigns (e.g. company, phone).
- Custom fields: If you want to track the Kickbox validation result in HubSpot (so you know later who was risky, etc.), create a custom property in HubSpot before the import.
- Clean up data: Double-check for weird characters, trailing spaces, or accidental line breaks. HubSpot’s import tool isn’t magic—it’ll import garbage if you give it garbage.
What to skip: Don’t bother importing columns you’ll never look at. More fields = more clutter.
Step 3: Decide: manual import or integration?
You’ve got two main options for getting validated contacts into HubSpot:
Option 1: Manual CSV Import
- Pros: You control exactly what gets imported, and when.
- Cons: Tedious if you do this often; easy to mess up field mapping.
How to do it: 1. In HubSpot, go to Contacts → Import. 2. Upload your cleaned CSV. 3. Map each column to a HubSpot property. 4. Review sample records before confirming the import. 5. Set a static list or tag so you know these came from Kickbox.
Option 2: Use Kickbox’s HubSpot Integration
Kickbox offers a direct integration with HubSpot, which can save time. But read the fine print.
- Pros: Fast, less manual work, can automate recurring syncs.
- Cons: Less granular control, sometimes buggy with large lists or custom fields.
Heads up: The integration is fine for basic use, but if your HubSpot setup has a lot of custom fields, or you’re picky about which contacts go in, a manual import is safer.
Step 4: Sync settings and deduplication
This is where most people trip up.
- Avoid duplicates: HubSpot deduplicates by email address, but if your CSV has typos or aliases, you’ll still get duplicates. Clean your data first.
- Choose update vs. create: Decide if you want to update existing contacts, create new ones, or both. If you’re importing, HubSpot will update existing contacts with matching emails by default.
- Preserve existing data: Be careful not to overwrite useful data in HubSpot with blanks from your CSV. Always review field mapping for “do not update if blank” options.
Pro tip: Test with a small batch first. Import 10–20 records and check how they show up in HubSpot before importing the whole list.
Step 5: Tag and segment your imported contacts
Don’t just dump everyone into your main list.
- Create a static list: After import, add these contacts to a static list like “Kickbox Validated June 2024.” This makes it easy to find them later.
- Use properties for tracking: If you imported the Kickbox result, you can segment by deliverability status in HubSpot.
- Avoid blasting everyone: Just because they’re validated doesn’t mean they’re engaged. Use recent engagement data to segment further.
Step 6: Automate updates—if it’s actually worth it
A lot of “best practice” guides push automation everywhere. Here’s the honest truth: unless you’re validating and syncing huge lists regularly, manual exports are fine. Automation adds complexity, more things to break, and sometimes costs more money.
-
Use automation only if:
- You’re onboarding thousands of new contacts per week.
- You have a clear, mapped process for handling sync errors.
- You trust both tools to handle your custom fields.
-
Otherwise:
- Set a recurring calendar reminder to validate and import lists monthly or quarterly.
- Keep a checklist so you don’t skip steps.
What to watch out for (and skip)
- Don’t import “Risky” or “Unknown” unless you know what you’re doing. They’re called risky for a reason.
- Don’t rely solely on integrations if you care about custom data. Manual review is slower, but safer.
- Don’t overwrite your CRM with incomplete records. Always choose “update only if field is blank” if possible.
- Ignore: “Magic” cleaning tools that say they’ll sync everything perfectly. They usually can’t handle real-world edge cases.
Pro tips that actually save time
- Keep a changelog: Every time you import, note the date, number of records, and any filters or quirks. It’ll save you later if someone asks what happened to a contact.
- Download and save your import errors: HubSpot gives you a CSV of failed contacts. Don’t ignore these—fix and retry as needed.
- Spot check results: After every import, sample a few records in HubSpot to make sure data landed where you expect.
- Train your team: Make sure everyone knows which list is the “clean” one. Avoid accidental imports of old, dirty data.
Keep it simple (and improve as you go)
Don’t overthink it. Start with a small, clean batch. Map your fields. Import thoughtfully, not reflexively. Most headaches come from skipping review steps or trusting automation to “just work.” Once you’ve got a repeatable process, you can always automate later if the volume justifies it.
Tools like Kickbox and HubSpot are powerful—just don’t let them make your life more complicated than it needs to be.