Working session with Aaron Grossman reviewing the ABM campaign launch results and refining HubSpot pipeline structure, BANT qualification fields, engagement automations, and database cleanup strategy.
Attendees: Aaron Grossman (Aviary) · Mark Hope (Asymmetric)
The call had two main threads: (1) reviewing the freshly-launched Orbit ABM campaign for Tier 1 accounts, and (2) working through the HubSpot deal pipeline structure, BANT fields, and automation triggers Aaron had drafted. The session was hands-on — Mark shared his screen and made several HubSpot changes live.
The 6-email, 30-day sequence launched the day before this call for 104 Tier 1 accounts. Each account has a personalized research report, strategy report, and individual email sequence loaded in [1].
Email cadence: Days 0 · 4 · 9 · 15 · 21 · 30
Rationale: persistent without being aggressive for a cold audience. The team discussed potentially extending beyond 6 emails depending on results.
Email 1 results:
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Open rate | 13% |
| Click rate | 11% |
| Bounce rate | 2% |
| Unsubscribe rate | 2% |
The 2% unsubscribe on a first cold email was flagged as a strong signal. The bounce rate was frustrating given pre-send hygiene was run immediately beforehand.
Aaron will receive an Orbit login to view open/click data and export lists directly. Mark is also building a HubSpot dashboard so Aaron can monitor campaign performance without needing to log into Orbit separately.
The existing pipeline stages were replaced with a cleaner structure. The Pre-Qualified stage was removed — the act of creating a deal already implies pre-qualification.
New deal stages:
1. Qualified
2. Proposal
3. Contract Negotiation
4. Closed Won
5. Closed Lost
The standard HubSpot lifecycle stages (Lead → MQL → SQL) are retained for tracking contacts from non-ABM sources (website forms, conferences, webinars) before they become active deals.
Custom properties for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline will be added to deal records. These can be checkboxes with accompanying detail fields. A potential automation: auto-promote a contact to Sales Qualified once all four BANT criteria are confirmed.
Rather than automating deal stage movement (which Aaron noted is easy to do manually), the priority automation is a warm lead flag:
Mark enriched ~50% of Tier 1 contacts with LinkedIn profile URLs via Hunter. Aaron will use these for manual connection requests. LinkedIn automation was explicitly ruled out — their API is restrictive and platforms like Apollo that attempt it get flagged.
The HubSpot company database has 10,000+ records (a mix of Aaron's Apollo imports and data from a prior consultant). Strategy to make it workable:
FI Type field to Type and expand values to include target customers, partners, technology partners, etc.⚠️ Warning noted: Bulk edits in HubSpot are difficult to reverse. Aaron committed to proceeding carefully.
FI Type field to Type; add expanded type values; reclassify companiesAaron asked whether HubSpot could auto-create tasks from unstructured notes (e.g., typing "follow up in two weeks" in an activity note). It cannot natively. Mark described a potential agent-based workaround: an AI agent that scans yesterday's activity for a consistent keyword (e.g., "create follow-up") and generates tasks via the HubSpot API. Aaron planned to experiment with this before the next call.
Mark noted he manages the Aviary HubSpot instance entirely through the API via Claude — he doesn't use the HubSpot UI directly.
Aaron confirmed that manually dragging deals between pipeline stages in HubSpot is not a burden — he was primarily interested in automations that surface warm leads and reduce the chance of missing engaged prospects, not in automating the pipeline progression itself.