$ man contact-object

Contact Object

The database record type in a CRM that stores individual people. Name, email, title, company association, lifecycle stage, custom properties.

Contacts are the atomic unit of outbound. Companies are targets. Deals are revenue. But contacts are the people you actually email, call, and pitch. Understanding the contact object — what properties it has, how it syncs, what triggers updates — is the foundation of CRM hygiene.

I sync enriched contacts from Clay to HubSpot contact objects. Each contact gets: email (primary key), first name, last name, job title, company association (linked to company object), persona tier, ICP score, enrichment date. I map Clay columns to HubSpot contact properties in the sync settings. I don't create duplicate contacts — Clay checks for existing emails before syncing. Contact objects are where all the enrichment and qualification data lives in the CRM. If the contact object is messy (duplicate emails, missing properties, stale data), the whole CRM breaks.