It’s magical how we end up learning new things while doing something completely different. That’s exactly what happened when I was scraping data from LinkedIn Sales Navigator to upload it into HubSpot.
 
As I went through the process step by step, I noticed something interesting—the filters in the lead section and the account section of Sales Navigator were missing something important. I had actually mentioned this in one of my LinkedIn posts before, but seeing it firsthand in action was a whole different experience.
 
If you use HubSpot, you know that marketing contacts = $$$. You pay for every marketing contact in your CRM, whether you're actively using them in campaigns or not. As per my understanding, you mark a contact as 'marketing contact' if you have included them in any of the marketing workflows or email marketing campaigns. If the contacts are not in any of the campaigns or workflows, they can stay as non-marketing contacts.
 
We learned this the hard way.
 

The Surprise in Our HubSpot Contacts

We were using LinkedIn Sales Navigator to generate leads and, naturally, wanted to add them to HubSpot. Sounds simple, right? But when I checked our contacts list, I noticed something odd. A huge number of contacts were marked as marketing contacts, even though we weren’t including them in any workflows or email campaigns.
 
That’s when we started investigating. I had to know why so many contacts are getting marked as 'marketing contacts'. I had to know the source of these contacts, and are we manually marketing them or are they automatically getting marked? What's the secret sauce I am missing. The current HubSpot backend manager didn’t set this up. It was setup way before he arrived.
 
So, I decided to look for the answers.
 

Where Were These Marketing Contacts Coming From?

I dug into every possible way contacts were entering our CRM, and it turned out that we were automatically marking contacts as marketing from multiple sources, including:
 
1. Blog Comments – Visitors who left a comment on our blog were getting added as marketing contacts.
2. Other Lead Sources – Various integrations and tools were adding contacts to HubSpot without us realizing they were being categorized as marketing contacts.
 
And guess what? We were paying for all of them.
 

The Fix That Saved Us Money

We cleaned up our data management process:
 
• Stopped marking blog commentators as marketing contacts: because, let’s be honest, someone dropping a comment doesn’t always mean they’re a lead.
• Checked all lead sources: we reviewed every integration and import process to ensure contacts were being categorized correctly.
• Set up regular audits: these things often go unnoticed, especially as sales reps and CRM managers change. Running a routine check ensures you’re not unknowingly racking up extra costs.
 

The Takeaway: Small Fixes, Big Savings

HubSpot (or any CRM) is a powerful tool, but mismanaging data can cost you real money. If you’re a HubSpot user, do yourself a favour:
 
  • Check how your contacts are categorized.
  • Review all lead sources.
  • Run regular audits.
Sales and marketing teams change, settings get overlooked, and before you know it, you’re paying for contacts that aren’t even part of your campaigns.
 
A simple cleanup helped us save money.