Marketing Contacts vs. Non-Marketing Contacts in HubSpot Explained

Effective customer relationship management is critical to the success of any business. HubSpot provides a powerful platform for managing customer interactions, marketing campaigns, and sales processes, helping businesses drive growth and engagement. One of the most fundamental aspects of using HubSpot CRM effectively is understanding the difference between marketing contacts and non-marketing contacts.

Failing to correctly categorise contacts can lead to unnecessary marketing expenses, misaligned customer communication strategies, and inefficient use of CRM data. This guide explores the key differences between marketing and non-marketing contacts, how to manage them effectively in HubSpot, and the impact they have on a business’s marketing and sales strategies.

Understanding Marketing Contacts in HubSpot

Marketing contacts are the contacts that businesses actively engage with through marketing campaigns. These contacts are the target audience for emails, paid advertisements, social media campaigns, and other marketing activities within HubSpot.

Key Characteristics of Marketing Contacts

• They receive marketing emails and other automated communications from HubSpot.
• They are included in advertising audiences for retargeting and customer acquisition campaigns.
• They are generally highly engaged leads or existing customers who have opted in to receive promotional content.
• They contribute to a company’s HubSpot subscription costs, as pricing is based on the number of marketing contacts.

Cleaning and Standardising Contact Data

Before organising a contact list, it is essential to clean and standardise the data. Without proper data hygiene, businesses risk sending duplicate emails, contacting outdated leads, and maintaining inaccurate customer profiles.

Steps to Maintain Data Accuracy

• Remove Duplicates – Use HubSpot’s duplicate contact management feature to merge or delete redundant entries.
• Standardise Formatting – Ensure that all contact fields, such as names, phone numbers, and email addresses, follow a consistent format.
• Verify and Update Records – Regularly check contact details and update any outdated information to ensure relevance.
• Use Mandatory Fields – When capturing new contacts, set mandatory fields for key details to maintain completeness.
• Archive Irrelevant Contacts – Remove contacts who no longer engage or are no longer part of the target audience.

Cleaning contact lists should be a recurring process rather than a one-time task. Regular audits help prevent data deterioration, ensuring that businesses maintain high-quality information.

Why Businesses Need Marketing Contacts

Marketing contacts are at the core of any lead generation strategy. They allow businesses to:

• Nurture leads through personalised email sequences.
• Deliver targeted content that aligns with a contact’s stage in the buyer’s journey.
• Drive higher engagement and conversion rates by segmenting and targeting contacts effectively.

Understanding who should be classified as a marketing contact ensures that marketing efforts are directed at the right audience while keeping costs under control.

Understanding Non-Marketing Contacts in HubSpot

Non-marketing contacts are contacts stored in HubSpot but not actively engaged in marketing campaigns. Businesses often use them for sales, customer service, and operational purposes rather than direct marketing efforts.

Key Characteristics of Non-Marketing Contacts

• They do not receive marketing emails or automated promotional messages from HubSpot.
• They can still be included in sales workflows, customer service interactions, and manual communication efforts.
• They are not counted towards the business’s HubSpot marketing contact limit, making them cost-effective for businesses that want to store and manage contacts without actively marketing to them.
• They can be converted into marketing contacts at any time, if they become eligible for marketing outreach.

Why Businesses Use Non-Marketing Contacts

Non-marketing contacts play an essential role in customer relationship management and internal business operations. Businesses use non-marketing contacts for:

• Storing historical customer records without sending marketing materials.
• Keeping track of suppliers, partners, or internal team members.
• Managing contacts who have opted out of marketing communications but still require customer service or sales follow-ups.

By correctly classifying non-marketing contacts, businesses can maintain an organised CRM without incurring unnecessary marketing costs.

How HubSpot Handles Marketing vs. Non-Marketing Contacts

HubSpot gives users full control over how they categorise contacts. Businesses can adjust contact settings at any time, ensuring that marketing efforts remain aligned with audience engagement preferences.

How to Set a Contact as Marketing or Non-Marketing

1. Navigate to Contacts in HubSpot CRM.
2. Select a contact or bulk select multiple contacts.
3. Click on Actions > Set as Marketing Contact or Set as Non-Marketing Contact.
4. Confirm changes to update the contact status.

Contacts can be changed from non-marketing to marketing at any time, but converting a marketing contact into a non-marketing contact only takes effect at the next subscription renewal. This means businesses need to be strategic about their contact classifications to avoid unnecessary marketing costs.

Marketing Contact Limits and HubSpot Pricing

HubSpot pricing is structured around the number of marketing contacts in a business’s account. The more marketing contacts a business has, the higher its monthly or annual subscription cost.

To optimise marketing spend, businesses should:

• Regularly review and deactivate inactive or unresponsive marketing contacts.
• Use engagement metrics to determine which contacts should remain in marketing campaigns.
• Convert marketing contacts into non-marketing contacts when they are no longer responsive to emails or other outreach efforts.

By strategically managing marketing and non-marketing contacts, businesses can ensure they are maximising their marketing budget while keeping their CRM database efficient.

Best Practices for Managing Contacts in HubSpot

To effectively manage marketing and non-marketing contacts in HubSpot, businesses should implement structured contact management processes.

1. Use Smart Segmentation

Organising contacts into segmented lists based on behaviour, demographics, or lifecycle stage can help businesses make informed decisions about who should be classified as a marketing contact. HubSpot offers dynamic list-building tools that automatically adjust based on contact engagement levels.

2. Automate Contact Classification

HubSpot allows users to set up workflow automation that automatically moves contacts between marketing and non-marketing classifications based on engagement patterns. This reduces manual workload and ensures contacts are classified efficiently.

3. Regularly Clean and Update the Contact Database

Maintaining a clean and up-to-date database ensures that businesses are only marketing to engaged and relevant audiences. Periodic contact audits help identify and remove inactive contacts, reducing unnecessary marketing costs.

4. Monitor Performance Metrics

Tracking email engagement rates, open rates, and click-through rates can help businesses identify which contacts should remain marketing contacts and which should be downgraded to non-marketing. HubSpot’s reporting dashboard provides insights into contact engagement, allowing for data-driven decisions.

5. Align Sales and Marketing Teams

Collaboration between sales and marketing teams ensures marketing contacts are nurtured correctly while non-marketing contacts are managed efficiently. Regular meetings and strategy adjustments help align contact classification with broader business goals.

The Business Impact of Managing Marketing and Non-Marketing Contacts

Effective contact classification in HubSpot has a direct impact on a business’s marketing budget, lead management efficiency, and customer engagement. Businesses that take the time to structure their CRM correctly benefit from:

• Reduced marketing costs by only targeting engaged and relevant contacts.
• Better email deliverability and engagement rates by avoiding sending emails to uninterested recipients.
• Improved compliance with data privacy regulations by ensuring only opted-in contacts receive marketing materials.
• More efficient sales and customer service processes, as teams can easily distinguish between leads, customers, and internal contacts.

By taking a strategic approach to contact classification, businesses can enhance their HubSpot CRM efficiency while ensuring their marketing efforts remain cost-effective and highly targeted.

Final Thoughts: Maximising HubSpot Contact Management

HubSpot’s marketing and non-marketing contact classifications allow businesses to optimise their marketing budgets, enhance engagement strategies, and manage their customer relationships effectively. Understanding the difference between these two types of contacts ensures businesses are making the most of their CRM investment, focusing their efforts on the right audiences while keeping costs in check.

By implementing best practices such as smart segmentation, automation, regular database audits, and performance tracking, businesses can create a streamlined CRM strategy that supports both marketing and operational efficiency.

Adopting a structured approach to managing HubSpot contacts enables businesses to drive better marketing outcomes, improve sales alignment, and maintain compliance with evolving customer engagement standards.

For businesses using HubSpot, contact management is not just about organisation—it’s a strategic function that directly influences growth, profitability, and customer relationships.