Using the HubSpot App to Scan Business Cards

The HubSpot app offers a convenient business card scanning feature that allows users to quickly capture contact details and integrate them into their CRM. In this blog, we'll walk you through the pros and cons of using this method, as well as the workaround that we prefer to use here at Peak.

How to Scan Business Cards with the HubSpot App

This isn’t complicated: download the app, log in, hit “Create” at the bottom, and choose “Scan Business Card”.

Benefits of Using the HubSpot Business Card Scanner

1. Efficiency: Scanning business cards saves time compared to manually entering contact details.
2. Integration: Automatically syncs new contacts with your HubSpot CRM, ensuring all your data is in one pla ce.
3. Accuracy: Reduces the risk of things like spelling errors associated with manual data entry.

Limitations of the HubSpot Business Card Scanner

While the business card scanner is convenient, it's seriously underpowered in some aspects:

1. Field Mapping: This is the #1 problem when it comes to scanning business cards- the app is extremely limited in terms of what it can capture. 
2. Limited Customization: The business card scanner offers limited customization options for mapping fields and organizing contact information according to specific business needs.

Peak’s Workaround to the Problem

When customers ask us about this, we tell them a couple of things. First, there is nothing we can do about solving the problem of limited data capture or field mapping- that’s on HubSpot. What we do recommend is for customers to create a list of all new contacts created via the app. To do this, you’ll want to:

1. Navigate to CRM -> Lists -> Create List -> Name the list something like “Business Cards Scanned via App”
2. Create a new Static list
3. Add a filter so that “Contact (Current Object)” is “Contact Properties” is “Record Source” is ANY of “Mobile iOS” OR “Mobile Android”
4. Save the list

Now, any contacts added via scanning will be added to this list. While it isn’t a perfect solution by any means, what it does do is allow you to fly through business cards, capturing the basic data that the app ingests and quickly create the contacts. Then, once you’re done scanning, you can go in on your computer and manually enter anything that you need to add to each contact. Since this is a static list and contacts will remain on it until they are removed, you could remove contacts from the list as you clean them up if you wanted to keep it pristine, but that’s really optional- there’s not a lot of harm in leaving them there. You’ll always be able to sort them by Date/Time added anyways.

Hope this helps, and for more tips, tricks, or HubSpot help, feel free to reach out to us anytime!