A weekly manual bridge moves admissions leads from HubSpot into Blackbaud with no native connector to lean on
No native or third-party connector linked HubSpot and Blackbaud's Enrollment Management module when this school's admissions team needed new web leads to reach its enrollment system every week. We built a manual data shuttle instead. A staff member reviews new HubSpot form submissions, dedupes and QAs the list, then exports it into Blackbaud on a fixed weekly schedule. The bridge runs one way, so any later edit on the Blackbaud side has to be typed back into HubSpot by hand.
Executive Summary
Context
The client is an independent all-girls Catholic secondary school running admissions marketing on HubSpot while Blackbaud stayed the system of record for enrollment. The two platforms had no connector, so new HubSpot leads had nowhere automatic to land.
What We Built
We built a weekly export-and-import cycle, keyed on email-address dedupe with a manual QA pass. It moves HubSpot form leads into Blackbaud's Enrollment Management module, and any later Blackbaud-side edit has to be re-entered into HubSpot by hand.
Tech Stack
- HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional
- Blackbaud Enrollment Management
Not a fit if no one on staff can own a weekly export-and-import cycle by hand, or if you're already planning to migrate off your enrollment system. This assumes the system of record stays in place and someone owns running the bridge every week, rather than the platforms syncing themselves.
The Challenge
The school ran its admissions and enrollment operations on Blackbaud's Enrollment Management module, and kept it in place as its system of record even as marketing activity moved to HubSpot. New contacts filled out HubSpot forms, but nothing carried them into Blackbaud automatically.
No native connector existed at the time, and a third-party option in development hadn't shipped yet. So a lead that converted on a HubSpot landing page had no path into the system admissions actually worked from. Any ad hoc copy-paste risked creating a duplicate record or losing a lead entirely.
Our Approach
We first looked for an automated path between HubSpot and Blackbaud and found none. No native integration existed, and the sync vendor working on one hadn't released it. Rather than wait, we designed a manual weekly data shuttle that the coordinator could run without engineering support.
Each week, that staff member pulls an active HubSpot list of new form submissions. They check it against HubSpot's native email-address dedupe, then remove any remaining duplicates by hand and export the list as a spreadsheet file. Only records that clear that QA pass get imported into Blackbaud's Enrollment Management module. The import runs in one direction only, so a later Blackbaud-side edit has to be typed back into HubSpot separately.
The trade is explicit: a working bridge the school could run immediately, at the cost of a standing weekly task and a data model that only agrees with itself right after each import.
Impact
New HubSpot leads reach the enrollment system every week
The weekly export pulls directly from an active HubSpot list of new form submissions, so no lead the admissions team tracks in HubSpot sits unseen by the enrollment system for more than a week. That schedule also gave the coordinator a fixed checkpoint instead of chasing leads as they arrived.
Duplicate contact records stay out of the enrollment system
Every record passes HubSpot's native email-address dedupe plus a manual check before export, so a contact who filled out more than one form didn't create two competing records in Blackbaud. The QA pass runs before export rather than after import, so a bad record never reaches the enrollment system at all.
One person can run the whole bridge without engineering support
The process runs entirely through a HubSpot list, a spreadsheet export, and Blackbaud's own import tool. So the coordinator could operate it without a developer or an API credential, and the bridge didn't depend on S2 staying involved. The only skill it required was catching a duplicate the dedupe missed.
Blackbaud stayed the enrollment system of record throughout
Keeping Blackbaud as the receiving system meant the school never had to retrain admissions staff on a new platform. So the migration risk sat on the marketing side, inside HubSpot, where it could be managed gradually.
An active HubSpot list surfaces every contact who has submitted a form since the last export, giving the coordinator one place to check rather than a raw activity feed. The list refreshes automatically, so the weekly pull starts from a current set.
HubSpot's native contact dedupe on email address catches most repeat submissions before the coordinator opens the list. A manual pass catches anything the automated match misses, such as a parent using a slightly different email. Nothing moves to export until both checks clear.
Once a batch clears QA, the coordinator exports it as an .xlsx or .csv file and imports it directly into Blackbaud's Enrollment Management module. The import only ever runs from HubSpot to Blackbaud; nothing pushes data back the other way.
The shuttle has no return path, so a change made inside Blackbaud, such as a corrected phone number or an updated grade, doesn't reach HubSpot on its own. Whoever needs that change reflected in HubSpot opens the record there and re-types it. That's a deliberate limit rather than an oversight.
A HubSpot list of new form submissions goes to the admissions coordinator once a week. The coordinator runs HubSpot's email-address dedupe plus a manual duplicate check, and only records that clear both are exported as a spreadsheet and imported into Blackbaud Enrollment Management. Nothing syncs back, so an edit made in Blackbaud is retyped into HubSpot by hand.
FAQ
At the time, no native or Zapier-style connector existed for this platform pair, and the closest third-party option was still in development. Waiting would have meant admissions staff working from a system that had no idea a new lead existed. So we designed a manual weekly process with its own dedupe key and QA gate instead.
No. The import only moves records one direction, from HubSpot into Blackbaud's Enrollment Management module. If something changes on the Blackbaud side after that, a person has to open the HubSpot record and enter the update manually, because no sync runs the other way.
