How to set up an event in HubSpot, step by step

I’ve built event processes inside HubSpot portals for years, first as an implementation consultant and now as someone who builds event software for the platform. So I’ve seen the whole spectrum: teams running 3 webinars a year off cloned templates, and teams running 50+ events who’ve quietly hired someone just to manage the admin.

Here’s a quick sit-rep before I get into the detail. HubSpot handles event management natively on Marketing Hub Professional: the marketing events object tracks registrations and attendance, and landing pages, forms, emails, and workflows cover everything else. One webinar takes 12+ assets to build. Under about 10 events a year that’s manageable with templates. Past that, most teams add dedicated event software.

This guide walks you through the full build, in order. Data model first, then setup, then assets, then automation, then reporting, then the decision about whether to keep building at all. Work through it in sequence. Each step makes the next one easier, and skipping ahead is how portals end up in a mess.

This post assumes you’ve decided to build it yourself. If you’re still weighing that up, the guide to HubSpot event management sets out the 5 routes and what each one costs.

Before you start: know what you’re working with

More than most people think, is the answer. On Marketing Hub Pro you already have landing pages, forms, marketing emails, workflows, lists, and campaigns. That’s most of an event stack.

You also have the marketing events object. It’s a dedicated record type for events that tracks who registered, who attended, who cancelled, and (for webinars) how long they stayed.

One catch though. The marketing events object was designed to be fed by integrations. Connect Zoom or Teams and registrations flow in on their own. Run an in-person event off a HubSpot form and you’re wiring it up yourself, or importing a spreadsheet afterwards.

Keep that catch in mind. It shapes several of the steps below.

Step 1: decide where your event data will live

Start here, before you build a single page. Everything else in this guide hangs off this decision, and it’s tricky to change later.

Which HubSpot object should event data live in?

You’ve got 3 options, and I have a firm view on them.

The custom object route is for Enterprise portals. I’ve built it for clients. Budget serious hours.

If you’re on Pro, pick marketing events and keep your naming ruthlessly consistent. Decide the naming convention now, write it down, and don’t deviate. Future you, staring at a report filter in step 5, will be grateful.

Once you’ve settled this, and only then, move on.

Step 2: set up the marketing events object

With the data model decided, wire up the object itself.

If you’re running webinars, connect your webinar platform first. The Zoom integration is the most mature: it creates the marketing event, syncs registrants both ways, and writes attendance duration back to the contact after the event. That last part matters because ”attended for 4 minutes” and ”attended for 55 minutes” are very different sales signals.

For in-person events, create the marketing event manually and use form submissions plus a workflow to set registration status. It’s clunkier than the webinar route, but it keeps everything in one place, which pays off when you get to reporting. I’ve written up the exact wiring in how to auto-register contacts to a marketing event from a form, including the export-and-import dance it replaces.

Do this step properly and registrations now land somewhere sensible on their own. That frees you up to build the things your audience actually sees.

Step 3: build the event assets

Here’s what one ordinary webinar takes. Treat this as your build checklist:

• A landing page
• A registration form
• A thank-you page
• A confirmation email
• An add-to-calendar file for that email
• Two reminder emails (day before, hour before)
• Follow-up for attendees
• A different one for no-shows
• An active list of registrants
• Two or three workflows to send all of the above
• A campaign to group everything for reporting

That’s 12+ assets. Build the first set carefully, because these become your templates. The landing page deserves the most care, and most of them fail the same 2 or 3 ways; I’ve covered those in how to build an event landing page in HubSpot. Your first event is a day or two of work. Once you’ve got templates to clone, call it half a day per event.

Half a day sounds fine until you multiply it. At 30 events a year that’s 3 weeks of someone’s time spent cloning and renaming assets. And cloning is where mistakes live: the reminder email that still says the old date, the workflow enrolling people from last month’s list. Every marketing team I’ve worked with has sent at least one of those.

You now have the kit for one event. The next step is making sure you barely touch it again.

Step 4: build the 4 workflows that run the automation

Build these 4 workflows before your first event goes out. They need to start working immediately, and having them in place means step 6 mostly runs itself. (The full email sequence, timing and all, is in how to automate event registration and follow-up in HubSpot if you want to go deeper.)

Confirmation on registration. Triggered by form submission or marketing event registration. Include the add-to-calendar link. HubSpot doesn’t generate ICS files natively, so you’ll need to create one and host it, or use a free ICS generator. A calendar entry does more for attendance than any reminder email.

Reminders. Day before and hour before. The hour-before email should be one line and a join link. Nobody reads more than that 60 minutes out.

Branching follow-up. One branch for attended, one for no-shows. Send the no-shows the recording with a soft next step. Attendees get something with more intent behind it. A link to book time with sales, say, or early access to whatever you announced. If you send both groups the same ”thanks for coming” email, you’ve wasted the one segmentation signal the event gave you.

Sales notification. If a contact who’s an open deal or a target account attends, their owner should get a task the same day. This is a 10-minute workflow and it’s the one sales will actually thank you for.

Once these 4 exist, an event can run start to finish without you babysitting the comms. Which matters, because on event day you’ll have better things to do.

Step 5: set up reporting before the first event goes live

Do this before launch, not after. Retrofitting reporting onto 6 months of inconsistently named events is a punishment I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Group every event’s assets under a campaign. That gets you influenced contacts and, if your deal associations are clean, influenced revenue per event.

Cross-event reporting in native HubSpot is hard work. Registrations live in form submissions, attendance lives on the marketing event, revenue lives on deals, and the joins between them depend entirely on how disciplined your naming has been since step 1. Asking ”what did our event programme contribute to pipeline this quarter?” means assembling 3 or 4 reports and a fair amount of squinting.

It’s doable. But if a clean answer to that question is something your leadership expects quarterly, factor the reporting time into the true cost of running events natively.

Step 6: run the event and capture attendance

If steps 2 and 4 are done, the run-up takes care of itself: confirmations, calendar files, and reminders all fire on their own.

For webinars, attendance flows back automatically through the integration, including how long each person stayed.

In-person is the weak point. There’s no native check-in, so most teams export a list, tick names off on a clipboard or a spreadsheet, and import the result the next day. If that’s you, do the import within 24 hours while the follow-up emails still feel timely. It’s exactly the kind of job that gets done badly at 6pm after an event, which is why it needs to be someone’s actual job rather than an afterthought.

Get attendance in, and the branching follow-up from step 4 does the rest.

Step 7: do the maths, then decide whether to keep building

After a few events you’ll have real numbers, and my rough rule from client work is this: under 10 events a year, native HubSpot with disciplined templates is fine; past 10, the cloning tax compounds and dedicated event software for HubSpot pays for itself.

So the decision comes down to:

• Under 10 events a year: stay native, keep your templates disciplined, accept the admin.
• 10 or more: an event app earns its subscription.
• Either way: event data stays in your CRM from the first registration.

Past 10, the gaps start costing real money too: no ticketing or payments, no capacity limits or waitlists, no QR check-in, manual attendance for anything in-person, and reporting that eats a day per quarter. I’ve written more about why running events in HubSpot gets harder the more you do.

There are a few event apps in the marketplace, hapily and SimpleEvents among them. EventEngine creates the landing page, registration flow, comms, Zoom sync, and QR check-in from a single event record inside HubSpot. The 12-asset build from step 3 becomes one form.

Whichever route you take, keep the event data in your CRM from the first registration. I push this on every consulting client. A spreadsheet of attendees turning up 3 weeks after the event helps nobody, and by then sales has moved on anyway.

Start at step 1 and work down. If you find yourself cloning the step 3 checklist for the 15th time this year, you already know what to do!

FAQs

Can HubSpot manage events natively?

Yes. Marketing Hub Professional includes landing pages, forms, marketing emails, workflows, lists, campaigns, and the marketing events object, which together cover registration, comms, attendance tracking, and per-event reporting. What it doesn’t have: ticketing, payments, capacity limits, waitlists, or check-in for in-person events.

What is the marketing events object in HubSpot?

A dedicated record type for events. It tracks who registered, who attended, who cancelled, and for webinars, how long each person stayed. It was built to be fed by integrations like Zoom or Teams. For in-person events you wire it up yourself with forms and workflows, or import attendance afterwards.

How many assets does one webinar in HubSpot take?

12 or more: a landing page, registration form, thank-you page, confirmation email, add-to-calendar file, 2 reminder emails, separate follow-ups for attendees and no-shows, a registrant list, 2-3 workflows, and a campaign. With templates in place, budget half a day per event.

Does HubSpot have event check-in?

No. There’s no native check-in for in-person events. Most teams export a registrant list, mark attendance by hand, and import the result afterwards. Do that import within 24 hours so the branching follow-up emails still feel timely. If you want QR check-in, that comes from an event app.

When should you buy event software for HubSpot instead of building natively?

At around 10 events a year. Under that, native HubSpot with disciplined templates is fine. Past 10, the cloning tax compounds and dedicated event software for HubSpot pays for itself, mainly by closing the gaps: ticketing, capacity limits, waitlists, QR check-in, and cross-event reporting.