If you’re wrangling marketing and sales data, you know the pain: duplicate contacts, leads that disappear, and reports you can’t trust. You’re here because you want useful advice for syncing your systems, not another sales pitch. This guide is for marketers, sales ops, and anyone stuck in the data trenches—especially if you’re considering or already using Akountify to tie your tools together.
Let’s skip the buzzwords and get straight to what actually works.
Why bother syncing marketing and sales data, anyway?
You probably already know the answer: because working with disconnected data is a mess. But it’s easy to underestimate how bad things can get:
- Leads get lost. Marketing hands off a hot lead, and sales never sees it—or sees it too late.
- Reporting gets ugly. Metrics don’t line up. You spend hours in spreadsheets trying to figure out what’s real.
- Customer experience suffers. Prospects get hit with the same pitch twice, or worse, nobody follows up at all.
Syncing isn’t about having the fanciest dashboard. It’s about not wasting your time and making sure your team can actually do their job.
Step 1: Map your data—before you touch any integrations
Jumping straight into integrations is tempting, but resist the urge. The biggest messes happen when teams don’t agree on what’s being synced.
Here’s what to do:
- List your systems. What’s your marketing source (HubSpot, Mailchimp…)? What’s your sales CRM?
- Identify key objects. Contacts, leads, deals, opportunities—call them what your tools call them.
- Map the fields. For each object, write down the fields that matter: name, email, status, source, etc.
- Decide what’s the “source of truth.” For each field, which system should win if there’s a conflict?
Skip: Syncing every field just because you can. More isn’t always better; it’s just more stuff to break.
Pro tip: If you can’t explain your data flow to a new hire in under two minutes, it’s too complicated.
Step 2: Clean up your existing data
You wouldn’t build a house on a swamp. Don’t sync messy data.
- Deduplicate contacts. Pick a rule (usually email address) and merge duplicates before syncing.
- Standardize values. “California” vs. “CA”, “VP” vs. “Vice President”… pick one.
- Archive junk. Old leads that will never convert? Get rid of them now.
Akountify can help spot duplicates, but it’s not magic. Garbage in, garbage out.
Step 3: Set up Akountify integrations—start small
Once your data’s mapped and cleaned up, then you can fire up Akountify. The setup isn’t hard, but the decisions matter.
How to avoid headaches:
- Integrate one pair at a time. Don’t connect everything in one go. Start with your main marketing and sales platforms.
- Choose sync direction. Do you want two-way sync, or just push marketing data to sales? Two-way sounds nice, but it can create loops and overwrite good data if you’re not careful.
- Test with a small segment. Sync a test batch (maybe just your team’s records). See what happens before rolling out to your whole database.
What works: Focused, incremental rollouts.
What doesn’t: One-and-done “big bang” syncs. They almost always break something.
Step 4: Set rules for conflict resolution and data updates
Conflicts will happen. Someone on the sales team updates a contact’s phone number, but marketing has it different. Who wins?
With Akountify, you can:
- Set master systems for specific fields.
- Configure rules like “most recent update wins” or “CRM always overwrites.”
Best practices:
- Default to the system closest to the customer. Usually, your sales CRM is more up-to-date for things like phone or status.
- Be explicit in your rules. Don’t assume Akountify will “figure it out”—tell it exactly what you want.
- Document these choices. Otherwise, you’ll forget why things are set up this way, and so will everyone else.
Step 5: Monitor, audit, and tweak (yes, regularly)
Integrations aren’t “set and forget.” Even the best sync setups will need attention as your processes change.
- Schedule regular audits. Every month or quarter, check for duplicates, sync errors, and weird data.
- Watch for silent failures. Sometimes, integrations break quietly—API limits, password changes, or updates to connected apps.
- Solicit feedback from end users. If sales or marketing says “the data looks weird,” believe them and investigate.
Ignore: Vanity dashboards showing “number of records synced.” Focus on useful data and actual problems.
A few honest truths about syncing with Akountify
Let’s get real about what Akountify can and can’t do:
- It’s a solid tool for reducing manual busywork. If you’re hand-copying data between platforms, Akountify will save your sanity.
- It won’t fix broken processes. If your marketing team and sales team can’t agree on what a qualified lead is, no tool can fix that.
- It’s not a silver bullet. Syncing data is always about trade-offs: simplicity vs. completeness, automation vs. control.
- Documentation matters. The more you write down why things are the way they are, the fewer headaches you’ll give your future self.
Common mistakes (and how to avoid them)
Trying to sync everything, everywhere.
Be ruthless about what needs syncing. More data = more complexity.
Ignoring user permissions.
If someone shouldn’t see or edit certain data, double-check your permissions before syncing.
Not planning for changes.
When your marketing or sales process changes (and it will), revisit your sync setup.
Forgetting about integrations downstream.
If you connect other tools—like reporting platforms or support systems—think about how synced data will flow there, too.
Wrapping up: Keep it simple, and keep iterating
Data sync isn’t glamorous work, but it’s the foundation for everything else. The goal isn’t perfection; it’s “good enough” so your team can trust the numbers and move faster.
Start small. Document what you do. Don’t be afraid to say “no” to syncing things you don’t need. And remember: the best data integration is the one your team barely notices—because it just works.
Now go fix your sync. And if it all blows up? At least you’ll know where to look first.