HubSpot for Educators: A Comprehensive How-To Guide for Colleges and Universities

2025 has been a challenging year for higher education.

Changing demographics are leading to overall declines in nationwide enrollment. The turbulent political climate has been putting funding, accreditation, and long-standing institutional priorities (like Title IX protections and DEI initiatives) under a microscope. Meanwhile, AI and other emerging technologies are forcing schools to adapt faster than ever.

In the face of so much change, academic leaders are rethinking their approach to communication, outreach, and operational efficiency.

That’s where HubSpot comes in.

While it might not seem like the most obvious fit at first, HubSpot’s versatile suite of tools lets educational institutions optimize their outreach, streamline communication, and build stronger relationships with students, instructors, and donors alike.

In this guide, we’ll show you how HubSpot can help refine your communication strategy, personalize student outreach, and simplify the complex workflows that drive recruitment, enrollment, and retention. Whether you’re an academic administrator exploring your first CRM, or a higher ed marketer ready to take your inbound strategy to the next level, you’ll find practical, step-by-step onboarding advice to help your team hit the ground running.

So let’s get started!

Why Use HubSpot for Education?

HubSpot is a powerful tool for sales teams and corporate marketers. But more and more colleges and universities have found it brings a unique set of benefits that can easily be tailored to the complex, multi-audience world of higher ed.

After just 12 months, HubSpot users in the education industry reported a 215% increase in website traffic, a 310% boost in inbound leads, and 73% more prospects converted.

Here’s why:

1. Streamlined Communication: For starters, HubSpot gives your institution a single source of truth for communication. Faculty, admissions, and marketing teams can all collaborate within one platform, reducing silos and ensuring students hear a consistent message—whether they’re prospects, applicants, or enrolled. With shared contact records, email templates, and internal notifications, no one misses a beat.
2. Improved Student Recruitment: As enrollment gets more competitive by the year, HubSpot’s marketing automation tools let you create smarter, more targeted campaigns. From email drips that nurture leads based on interest area, to higher-converting custom landing pages, HubSpot magnifies the efforts of your admissions team, moving more prospective students through the funnel.
3. Data-Driven Decision-Making: HubSpot’s built-in reporting and real-time dashboards let you track what’s working—and what isn’t—across every touchpoint. Enrollment marketing no longer has to rely on guesswork. Instead, you’ll have clear visibility into lead sources, campaign performance, and admissions trends, empowering your team to act faster and plan smarter.

In other words, HubSpot for education isn’t just about managing contacts—it’s about helping your institution grow smarter, faster, and more efficiently.

Key Features of HubSpot for Educators

HubSpot is built around five powerful hubs that work together to create a unified, flexible platform—perfect for the many moving parts of a college or university. Here’s a quick overview of what each hub brings to the table in an academic context:

• Marketing Hub – Run targeted, multi-channel campaigns to attract prospective students and engage alumni or donors.
• Sales Hub – Track conversations with prospective students, simplify follow-up, and manage relationships with corporate partners or sponsors.
• Service Hub – Create a ticketing system for student services, academic advising, or IT support that keeps requests from falling through the cracks.
• CMS Hub – Build and manage SEO-friendly landing pages, blogs, and microsites without relying on a dev team.
• Operations Hub – Sync your data across departments and systems so every team has clean, connected information.

With HubSpot’s landing page builder, your team can quickly spin up program-specific pages, event registrations, or scholarship promos that are designed to convert prospective students. No need to wait on a web developer or juggle multiple platforms.

Likewise, email marketing tools make it easy to engage different audiences with tailored messaging—whether you’re reaching out to high school seniors, graduate applicants, transfer students, or alumni. And with automated workflows, your admissions team can nurture leads from initial inquiry to enrollment with a sequence of precisely timed emails, task assignments, and follow-ups.

At the heart of it all is the HubSpot CRM, which ensures every prospective student, parent, donor, or partner gets tracked and nurtured appropriately. Whether someone attends a virtual open house or downloads a program brochure, their engagement gets logged—and their next step is always clear to your team. No more dropped leads. No more fragmented communication. Just a clear, connected view of every relationship from first touch to long-term engagement.

How to Set up HubSpot for Education

Getting started with HubSpot might feel daunting, but once you’ve defined your goals and mapped out your admissions funnel, the platform becomes a powerful engine for growth.

Here’s how to lay the groundwork for a successful setup.

1. Define Your Campaign Goals

Before you start building anything, clarify what success looks like. Are you trying to increase undergraduate applications? Promote an open day? Boost attendance at financial aid webinars?

In HubSpot, go to Marketing > Campaigns > Create Campaign.

Name your campaign (for instance, “Fall 2025 Undergrad Recruitment”), and associate any relevant assets—emails, landing pages, forms, social posts, etc.—to keep everything tied together. This will let you monitor performance in one centralized dashboard.

2. Build CRM Pipelines for Admissions

Admissions teams need visibility into where each prospective student stands.

To build a pipeline, go to Settings > Objects > Deals > Pipelines, and click Create Pipeline.

Label each stage based on your admissions process—something like:

• Inquiry Received
• Contacted
• Application Started
• Application Submitted
• Accepted
• Enrolled

You can customize each stage with required fields, automation triggers, or task assignments, so your team knows exactly what to do and when to do it.

3. Segment Your Email Lists Intelligently

Personalization starts with segmentation. Navigate to Contacts > Lists > Create List and build active lists that update automatically based on contact properties or behavior.

You might segment by:

• Demographics: High school juniors, transfer applicants, international students
• Interests: STEM program prospects, fine arts majors, undecided
• Behavior: Downloaded a course catalog, visited the admissions FAQ, opened the last 3 emails

This segmentation allows for dynamic, relevant messaging that resonates with each audience—no more generic blasts that get ignored.

Sharpen Your Skills with HubSpot Academy

HubSpot offers free, on-demand training through HubSpot Academy. We recommend starting with the HubSpot CRM, Email Marketing, and Marketing Software certifications. These courses are great for onboarding new team members and leveling up your internal capabilities—no outside consultant required.

Big Sea Case Study: Stetson University College of Law

Since 2015, Big Sea has partnered with the admissions department at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, FL, to develop strategies for attracting new and more qualified prospective students. Together we developed a series of applicant personas on HubSpot with a corresponding workflow for each.

Prospective students are segmented into their applicable persona workflows depending on the information they submit or their initial point of contact. This automates a series of touchpoints with the student geared toward their interests, identity, or geographical area. They might receive invitations to alumni events in their area or notifications about happenings in their intended area of legal specialization.

In addition, with HubSpot’s Marketing Hub, Stetson has raised the average LSAT score of their overall applicant pool, improving their competitiveness even as other schools have seen declining admissions applications. When Big Sea began working with Stetson in 2015, they were averaging about 1,650 applicants per year with an average LSAT score of 154. Last year they hit 2,350 applicants, and achieved an average applicant score of 158.

Read more about our work with Stetson Law

Unleashing the Power of HubSpot Integrations

HubSpot is powerful on its own, but when you integrate the tools your institution already uses, it can become your central command center for everything from student events to social engagement.

Here’s how.

• Event Management: Hosting a campus tour, virtual info session, or open house? Integrate Eventbrite directly into HubSpot to track RSVPs, automate confirmation emails, and log event participation data right into your CRM. You’ll know which students attended which sessions and can tailor follow-up communication accordingly.
• EdTech Tools: Whether you’re using online learning platforms like Canvas, student success software, or video conferencing software like Zoom or Google Meet, HubSpot plays nicely with them all. Syncing EdTech tools with your CRM lets your team see student activity, meeting logs, and engagement trends in one unified view—without digging through disconnected platforms.
• Social Media Management: With native integrations for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and the platform formerly known as Twitter, HubSpot makes it easy to plan out, schedule, and publish posts across multiple channels directly from one dashboard. You can track engagement, analyze post performance, and coordinate messaging with your broader campaign goals.

The more tools you connect, the more important clean, synced data becomes. Keep it all flowing with Operations Hub: you can use it to automate data formatting, remove duplicates, and create custom workflows that ensure your integrations play well together, so your student data is accurate, up-to-date, and actionable.

Empowering Higher Education with HubSpot

In a rapidly evolving higher ed landscape, HubSpot gives colleges and universities the tools they need to stay agile, efficient, and student-focused. Whether you’re looking to boost enrollment, refine your marketing efforts, or improve student engagement, now’s the time to put HubSpot’s automation, CRM, and integrations to work for you.

Need a hand getting started? Big Sea offers personalized HubSpot training and implementation support designed specifically for educational institutions. Get in touch to build a smarter strategy for the road ahead.

HubSpot FAQs for Educational Institutions

Is HubSpot Free for Students?

HubSpot offers free access to many of its tools for students through the HubSpot Education Partner Program (EPP). Students enrolled in participating institutions can get hands-on experience with HubSpot’s CRM, marketing, and sales software. This experience is ideal for those studying business, marketing, or communications.

How Can HubSpot Enhance Enrollment Efforts?

HubSpot enhances enrollment by streamlining outreach and making follow-up smarter. With marketing automation, admissions teams can nurture leads through personalized email workflows, while CRM pipelines help track each prospective student’s journey from inquiry to enrollment. At the same time, real-time dashboards and customizable reporting provide clear visibility into what’s working, so teams can optimize campaigns and allocate resources where they have the biggest impact.

Which Tools in HubSpot’s Education Partner Program Drive Lead Generation?

Tools like landing pages, lead capture forms, and email marketing are key to driving lead generation. Educators and administrators can build program-specific pages that collect inquiries, segment contacts by interest or behavior, and trigger automated follow-up. Combined with reporting dashboards and ad tracking, these tools help institutions attract, qualify, and convert prospective students more efficiently and at scale.