ActiveCampaign to HubSpot Data Mapping: Contacts, Tags, and Fields

Your ActiveCampaign account may contain years of contact information collected through forms, campaigns, events, and sales conversations. Some details live in custom fields. Others are stored as tags or list memberships.

When it is time to move to HubSpot, exporting the contacts is only the first step. You also need to decide what that information means and how your team will use it in the new CRM.

A tag called Customer might identify an active customer, a past customer, or someone who purchased a single product. A list called “Webinar Leads” might contain everyone who registered for an event or only the people who attended. Those differences affect the audiences your team creates after migration.

This guide explains how to map ActiveCampaign contacts, tags, fields, and lists to HubSpot while preserving the information needed for reliable marketing and sales activity.

Why Data Mapping Matters When Moving from ActiveCampaign to HubSpot

Data mapping connects each piece of source information to a destination and a purpose.

A mapping document should explain which ActiveCampaign field or tag is being moved, where it will live in HubSpot, how its values will be transformed, and who has approved the decision.

This matters because the two platforms may organize the same information differently. ActiveCampaign teams often use a combination of tags, fields, and lists to identify audiences. In HubSpot, some of those requirements may be better represented through contact properties, segments, subscription types, or a combination of these.

Consider a contact with the tags Webinar Registered, Customer, and Do Not Email. Each tag has a different purpose. One describes an event, one describes a customer relationship, and one may indicate a communication restriction.Putting all three into a single text property would preserve the words, but it would not necessarily support the same segmentation and sending controls.

Before preparing the import, agree on how the information will be used. That makes it easier to build the right properties and verify that important audiences are still available after the move.

Map ActiveCampaign Contacts to HubSpot Contact Records

Begin your ActiveCampaign contact migration by reviewing the contacts that need to move and the information each record should retain.

A typical contact mapping includes names, email addresses, phone numbers, company information, owners, source data, and relevant custom fields. You may also need to retain an ActiveCampaign contact identifier so the source record can be traced during validation.

Email addresses are commonly used to match contacts, but they should not be the only part of the review. Check whether HubSpot already contains records for the same people and agree on how conflicting values will be handled.

For example, ActiveCampaign may contain an older phone number while the existing HubSpot record has a more recent one. Decide which system’s value should take priority before running an update import.

Contacts without an email address also need a decision. They may be relevant to sales or customer service even if they cannot receive marketing emails. Determine whether they should move, how they will be identified, and whether a manual review is required.

ActiveCampaign supports contact exports that can include custom fields and other selected information. Check the exported columns against your inventory rather than assuming one file contains every detail needed for the migration.

Map Custom Fields to HubSpot Properties

ActiveCampaign custom fields often hold information that teams use for personalization, qualification, and reporting.

Examples include product interest, customer type, renewal date, lead source, region, and the date someone registered for an event. Each field needs a destination property with a suitable definition and data type.

Start by checking whether an existing HubSpot property already serves the same purpose. If it does, compare how both fields are used before mapping them together. Similar names do not always mean the values have the same meaning.

If a new property is needed, define its name, object, data type, allowed values, and owner. Avoid creating a separate property for every historical field without checking whether it is still useful.

Review values before importing

Dropdown and checkbox fields need consistent values. If ActiveCampaign contains “North America,” “NA,” and “N. America,” decide whether those values mean the same thing and how they should appear in HubSpot.

For fields that can contain multiple values, confirm the required import format. HubSpot’s import guidance specifies how multiple checkbox values should be separated, so prepare and test those columns before loading the full file.

Dates and numbers also need review. Check the expected format and investigate values that are missing, invalid, or stored as text.

Decide how fields will stay current

A field may be populated today by an ActiveCampaign automation or an integration. Importing its current value does not recreate that update process.

For example, if a product platform updates a contact’s plan type whenever they upgrade, the HubSpot property needs an agreed source and update method. Otherwise, the value can become outdated soon after migration.

Document which system owns each important field and how future changes will reach HubSpot.

Convert ActiveCampaign Tags into HubSpot Properties and Lists

ActiveCampaign tags can describe many different things. A tag may identify a customer’s interest, record that they attended an event, trigger an automation, or mark a temporary campaign audience.

That flexibility is useful, but it can also leave an account with overlapping or outdated tags. Before moving them, review what each tag means and where it is used.

ActiveCampaign itself distinguishes between tags used for segmentation and custom fields used to store specific information. That distinction can help when deciding how to represent the data in HubSpot.

A contact can have several tags at once, so the destination should support the same combination where it remains useful.

You do not need to convert every tag into its own property. Group related interests into a suitable property where that supports your reporting and segmentation. Retire duplicate or obsolete tags once their use has been reviewed.

For tags that trigger automations, document the process as well as the value. If a tag currently starts a nurture journey, the migration needs to establish what will trigger the equivalent HubSpot workflow.

Rebuild Lists and Segmentation Rules

ActiveCampaign lists and segments need to be reviewed according to how audiences are maintained.

Some audiences are snapshots. For example, the people who attended a webinar last year should remain a fixed historical group. Other audiences need to change over time, such as customers whose renewal date falls within the next 90 days.

Before rebuilding an audience in HubSpot, document its purpose and membership rules. Identify which fields, tags, activity data, or subscription conditions determine whether a contact belongs.

A list called “Qualified Leads” may depend on several conditions: a particular product interest, a lead score above a threshold, and an assigned salesperson. If the score is imported only as a one-time value, the HubSpot audience may become outdated unless the scoring process is also rebuilt.

Compare the source and destination audiences using a defined snapshot date. Investigate differences caused by missing values, changed definitions, or data that has not been migrated.

Also review exclusions. If the source campaign excludes existing customers or unsubscribed contacts, ensure those rules are considered in the destination setup before any email is scheduled.

The goal is to preserve the audience’s intended use, whether that requires a fixed segment, an automatically updated segment, or an archived record of the original membership.

Preserve Subscription Status and Consent Data

Subscription preferences need their own migration plan.

A contact’s presence in ActiveCampaign does not establish that they have agreed to every type of marketing communication. They may be subscribed to one list, unsubscribed from another, or have withdrawn permission more broadly.

Review the source information available for each contact, including list subscription status, opt-outs, dates, sources, and supporting consent records where retained. Then decide how those preferences correspond to the subscription types used in HubSpot.

HubSpot supports importing opted-out contacts and managing subscription preferences through supported methods. Check the current process and its effect on the relevant subscription types before applying it to your data.

Do not assume that a normal contact import automatically configures every communication preference. Likewise, a property called “Unsubscribed” or a copied Do Not Email tag should not be assumed to apply the necessary sending restriction.

Where the source only shows an unsubscribe from one list, establish what that list represented before choosing how to apply the preference. An opt-out import that is broader than intended can affect other communications. A migration that is too narrow can also leave an important restriction unapplied.

Test a sample of subscribed, unsubscribed, and uncertain contacts. Confirm both the visible data and the actual subscription status in HubSpot before enabling marketing emails.

Retain supporting evidence and dates where available, and agree with the relevant business owner on how records with incomplete information will be handled.

Clean, Deduplicate, and Validate Contact Data

Data cleanup should start with a profile of the existing database.

Look for duplicate contacts, invalid email addresses, inconsistent names, outdated owners, blank fields, and conflicting values. Review how many contacts are active, unsubscribed, or no longer relevant to the business.

Define the cleanup rules before making changes. Two records with similar names may belong to different people, while one person may appear more than once with different email addresses. Cases that cannot be resolved confidently should go to manual review.

If HubSpot already contains contact data, decide whether the migration will create records, update existing records, or do both. Agree on which source takes priority for important fields.

Run a test import

Prepare a small file that includes different types of contacts: existing and new records, people with multiple interests, contacts without owners, and records with unusual field values.

Check the results against the mapping document. Confirm that properties contain the expected values and that updates have not overwritten information that should have been retained.

Test segments using the imported data. A property can import successfully while an audience rule still produces the wrong group because the destination values or logic differ from the source.

Validate the full migration

After the final load, compare the results against an approved source baseline.

Keep an exception list for records that need correction. Assign owners and recheck the affected records after the changes are made.

Common ActiveCampaign Data Mapping Mistakes

Moving every tag without reviewing its purpose

A large number of old tags can make the new account difficult to manage. Review which tags support current audiences, automation, reporting, or historical requirements before deciding where they belong.

Mapping fields based only on their names

Two fields called “Lead Status” may describe different stages of qualification. Compare their definitions and values before combining them.

Treating a tag as a subscription setting

A tag can tell your team that a contact should not receive email, but it should not be assumed to configure the corresponding HubSpot subscription restriction. Validate the actual preference and the process used to apply it.

Rebuilding list names without their rules

A destination segment with the same name as an ActiveCampaign list can still contain the wrong people. Recreate and test the membership criteria, including exclusions.

Importing current values without rebuilding updates

A contact’s score, plan type, or customer status may be correct on the day it is imported. If the automation or integration that maintains it is missing, the value can quickly become unreliable.

Checking only the total contact count

A matching count does not prove that interests, owners, subscription preferences, or segments are correct. Validate important properties and audiences as well as the number of records.

Conclusion

An ActiveCampaign to HubSpot migration works best when the data is mapped around how your teams need to use it.

Review contacts, custom fields, tags, lists, and subscription information before preparing the import. Agree on definitions, test the destination setup, and validate the results with the people responsible for marketing and sales.

OneMetric can help assess your ActiveCampaign data, design the HubSpot mapping, and plan the migration around the audiences and processes your business needs to retain.