If someone at your organisation spends half their week exporting and re-keying member data, you’ve got a Human API.
This is the order I work in when a membership organisation asks me to connect its systems to HubSpot. 8 steps. The first 3 cost nothing but a few hours and some honesty about how things run (the honesty’s usually the expensive bit).
You don’t need to finish all 8 before anything gets better. One working flow is enough to start taking hours back.
1. Every system, spreadsheets included
I start with a list of every tool that holds anything about a member: the membership database, the website, payments, direct debits, events, email, accounts, maybe a learning platform.
Then the spreadsheets go on it too. They’re the systems that were never bought, and each one usually exists because two other systems couldn’t agree.
Next to each one goes who uses it and what they export from it, which is the column I care about most, because it’s where the Human API shows up.
2. Follow one member through it
Pick someone who joined last year and trace them. Where did their record start? Which systems did it get copied into, and who copied it? Where does it disagree?
Organisations that are sure they’ve got one record per member often find 2 or 3, with different email addresses and more than one renewal date. I think it’s the quickest way to see how things really run, and it rarely takes more than an afternoon.
3. Who owns what
For each piece of member data, one system holds the master copy and everything else reads from it: contact details, membership status and tier, payments, invoices, events and email engagement.
I set out how that usually falls in The Human API. Getting the agreement is harder than filling in the table, and if membership and finance both think they own the renewal date, I’d sort that out in a meeting before anyone writes code.
4. The first flow to fix
Start with the flow that costs the most hours each month and that members notice when it goes wrong. It’s rarely the hardest one.
At membership organisations that’s nearly always renewals or event attendance. A direct debit that fails without anyone noticing loses a member. Event attendance is the best sign of who’s engaged, and it’s usually sitting in Eventbrite or Zoom where HubSpot can’t see it.
Just one, to begin with.
5. How it gets connected
The system on the other end mostly decides this.
If it has an app in the HubSpot Marketplace that syncs the fields you agreed in step 3, I’ll use it, though I always check what it actually moves first, because plenty of them only sync contacts. For a simple one-way flow with a small number of records, a connector tool (for example, Zapier) does the job. And for a custom-built database, an Access database, a WordPress plugin with no integration, or anywhere the data needs reshaping on the way in, it’s custom code on HubSpot’s API, which is most of what I build.
There’s one structural decision to make here too. A membership can live as properties on the contact record, or as its own record using a custom object.
Properties are simpler. A custom object earns its place when one person holds more than one membership, or when memberships belong to an organisation and several people share them. Custom objects need HubSpot Enterprise, so that choice has a price tag.
6. Cleaning up before anything moves
An integration copies whatever it’s given, duplicates included, and does it faster than any person could.
So before the first sync, decide how records match. Email address is the usual key, which works right up until a member registers for an event with their personal address.
That usually means merging the duplicates found in step 2 and filling the gaps in the fields that matter (I won’t pretend it’s exciting). Members who lapsed years ago can go to an archive.
7. A month of running both
I test with a handful of records first. Then the flow goes live, with the old process still running alongside it for one full cycle: a month of renewals, or one event from registration to follow-up.
At the end I compare the two, and once they match, the spreadsheet can be retired.
8. Ask how long it used to take
Before the flow goes live, I ask whoever was doing the exports roughly how long they took each week. A rough number is fine. In my experience people know it to the half hour, because they’ve resented every minute of it.
A month later I ask again. The gap between those two numbers will do more to get the next flow approved than anything I can say about how the integration works.
It usually tells you which flow comes next, too. It’s often the one they mention while you’re asking about the first.
Where I come in
You can do steps 1 to 3 yourselves, and I’d encourage it. You know how the organisation runs better than I do.
I tend to get the call at step 5, when the system on the other end has no integration worth using, or the data needs reshaping before HubSpot can do anything with it. If you’ve got that far, or you’re stuck before it, book a call and talk me through what you’re running.
