Understand Caivan’s marketing workflow
The core HubSpot building blocks and how they fit together, from contact record to dashboard.
Purpose and outcome
Why it matters. Give every marketer a shared vocabulary so that requests like “make a list” or “check the report” mean the same thing to everyone.
Expected outcome. You can explain the difference between a contact, a view, a segment, a campaign and a dashboard, and you know which one you need for a task.
When to use it
- You are new to Caivan’s HubSpot account.
- A request uses a term you are not sure about.
- Before training someone else.
Prerequisites and access
- A HubSpot user login for Caivan’s account.
Suggested roles (not yet approved): Any team member
Key concepts
The journey in one line
Plan the campaign → prepare the audience → create the email → test and review → send or schedule → measure and improve. Every SOP in this hub supports one of those stages.
Key building blocks
| Term | What it is | What it is not |
|---|---|---|
| Contact record | One person in the database: a prospect, purchaser, realtor, trade partner, anyone. | Permission to email them. |
| Saved contact view | A filtered, saved table of contacts for browsing and checking data. | A recipient list for a marketing email. |
| Segment (also called a list) | A named group of existing contacts, used to send emails and to report. | A copy of contacts. Creating a segment never duplicates records. |
| Active segment | Membership refreshes automatically as contacts meet or stop meeting the filters. | A fixed snapshot. |
| Static segment | Membership only changes when someone adds or removes contacts. | Self-updating. |
| Campaign | A container that groups related assets (emails, posts, pages, forms) for planning and reporting. | A send. It does not email anyone. |
| Regular email | A one-time send or scheduled send to chosen segments. | Automated. |
| Automated email | An email designed to be sent by a workflow (for example a welcome series). | Sent until a workflow is built and turned on. |
| Report | A single chart or table answering one question. | A dashboard. |
| Dashboard | A page that collects several reports in one view. | Where reports are stored. Removing a report from a dashboard does not delete it. |
“Create a contact list” usually means “create a segment”
When someone asks for a Lakeview list, they almost always mean a segment that groups contacts who are already in HubSpot. Do not import or re-create contacts to build a list.
One contact can belong to many segments at once. A person interested in two communities can sit in both community audiences, and in a realtor segment too. That is why exclusions (SOP 06) matter.
Marketing contact status vs. subscription status
- Marketing contact status is a HubSpot billing and eligibility setting. Only marketing contacts can receive marketing emails.
- Subscription status records what the person agreed to receive (for example a community information subscription) and whether they unsubscribed.
- Both must allow a send. Being a marketing contact does not, on its own, give permission to email someone.
Caivan example
Marketing wants to invite Lakeview prospects to an event. The contacts already exist. You build an active segment “Lakeview | Prospects | Active”, create the campaign first, create a regular email associated with that campaign, send to the segment while excluding purchasers, then review results on the email dashboard.
Completion checklist
Common mistakes and troubleshooting
Someone asked me to “upload the list” — should I import?
Ask first. If the contacts are already in HubSpot, build a segment. Imports are an administrative process (see SOP 05).
A contact is in my segment but did not get the email.
Segment membership is only one check. See SOP 18 for marketing status, subscriptions and suppression.
Someone asked me to “upload the list” — should I import? Ask first. If the contacts are already in HubSpot, build a segment. Imports are an administrative process (see SOP 05).
A contact is in my segment but did not get the email. Segment membership is only one check. See SOP 18 for marketing status, subscriptions and suppression.
Sources and items needing confirmation
- From training· ~8:00–22:00Caivan | HubSpot Marketing Training, Sep 28, 2026 (recording transcript)
- Recommended practiceHubSpot Knowledge Base: Create segments
- Recommended practiceHubSpot Knowledge Base: Set contacts as marketing
- Recommended practiceHubSpot Knowledge Base: Create and send marketing emails
- Which subscription types Caivan uses and their exact names (see SOP 11).
Account configuration described in training reflects September 28, 2026 and may have changed.