Menu
Let's Talk
Let's Talk

Enterprise HubSpot Services Built to Scale.

store-1

Retainer Services →

icon-4

HubSpot Onboarding →

WEBSITE GROWTH & CONVERSION

RETENTION & CUSTOMER MARKETING

IMPLEMENTATION & INTEGRATIONS

HUBSPOT SUPPORT & ENABLEMENT

About CC

A HubSpot Elite Solutions Partner built to help organizations unify strategy, systems, and execution. We design HubSpot systems that scale.

Our Case Studies

See how we've solved complex HubSpot challenges across migrations, integrations, CMS, automation, and optimization.

HubSpot Careers

Join a team building smarter HubSpot systems. We value strategic thinkers who move proactively, care about quality, and want to do meaningful work.

Resources, Tools & Insights From HubSpot Experts.

Free assessments, knowledge, and expert content for your HubSpot.

visibility

Audit Your AI
Search Visibility →

Round Blog Thumbnail (51)

Score Your HubSpot's
AI Readiness →

FREE TOOLS & ASSESSMENTS

LEARN & WATCH

HUBSPOT INSIGHTS

INDUSTRY & PLATFORM GUIDES

Healthcare Success Story

How AVMA Replaced a Legacy ESP's Preference Center With a Custom HubSpot Build for 44 Subscription Categories

Campaign Creators built a fully custom subscription preference center for the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) inside HubSpot Marketing Hub Enterprise, replacing an expiring legacy ESP contract. The build replicated AVMA's existing member and non-member experience, mapped 44 subscription categories into HubSpot, and moved every preference-center link from raw email addresses to a Contact Record ID lookup.
CC Blog Images (60)

0

Subscription categories migrated into HubSpot

0

Distinct audiences served: members, non-members, and an affiliated foundation

0

Custom-built preference pages launched

American-Veterinary-Medical-Association-AVMA

The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) represents more than 111,000 veterinarians as a national professional and trade association, founded in 1863. It communicates with three distinct groups: its members, a non-member audience, and the donors of the American Veterinary Medical Foundation, the 501(c)(3) charitable arm AVMA established in 1963 and which maintains its own communication list.

Members themselves span clinical practice, academia, industry, government, and public health, and their interests vary accordingly. That produces a subscription structure built around specific content types, not a single all-or-nothing preference. AVMA runs those communications on HubSpot Marketing Hub Enterprise, with Aptify continuing as its system of record for membership and dues, which means a member's email preferences and a member's record sit in two different systems by design.
Industry

IT Infastructure

Tools Used

  • HubSpot

  • Figma
Services

  • Website Design & Development

  • Platform Migration
 

The Challenge

AVMA ran its email communications through Delivera, a legacy email service provider with an expiring contract. Delivera's preference center let members and non-members manage what they received, organized into thematic categories with links to sample content, but the platform itself needed to be sunset as its contract wound down.

HubSpot's native subscription preference center could not reproduce that experience. It renders every subscription type as a single flat list, with no way to group categories under thematic headers, and it requires a visitor to re-enter their email address on every visit; it does not recognize them from a link.
CC Square Hero Image - 2026-09-14T191021.712

1. Category structure

The native preference center could not group subscription types under custom headers. AVMA needed member and non-member communications organized thematically, matching the structure recipients already knew from Delivera.

2. Repeat-visit identification

The default page could not recognize a returning visitor without asking them to re-enter their email address. That friction did not exist in AVMA's prior system and was not acceptable in the replacement.

3. Distinct audiences

Members and non-members needed different subscription options, and a separate affiliated foundation needed its own subscription list entirely. The native tool had no mechanism for serving three different audiences from one preference page.

4. Administrative flexibility

AVMA's marketing team needed to add new subscription categories as new communications launched. Doing that through the native tool would have meant a developer ticket for every new category.

5. Unplanned category growth

The category mapping from the legacy ESP was scoped at an initial 12 categories. That count grew to 44 during the build, adding mapping work the original scope had not accounted for.
"AVMA needed their preference center to work exactly like the system they were leaving, not like a stripped-down version of it. Once HubSpot confirmed the native tool couldn't group categories the way AVMA needed, building a custom page against the Subscriptions API was the only path that preserved the member experience while retiring the legacy platform."

— Nisha Wendelken, Account Executive, Campaign Creators
 

Why AVMA Chose Campaign Creators

AVMA needed a partner that could diagnose HubSpot's limitations, definitively, as a configuration problem or a platform constraint, and then build past that constraint while retiring the expiring legacy platform. That confirmation came directly from HubSpot: category grouping under custom headers is not possible in the native subscription center because subscription types render as a single dynamically-generated list.

The engagement required:

  • A custom page built on the HubSpot Communication Preferences API, not the out-of-the-box subscription page
  • HubDB-backed subscription category data so AVMA staff could edit categories without developer involvement
  • Separate member, non-member, and affiliated-foundation subscription views
  • A link-identification approach that did not expose contact email addresses in the URL
  • Migration and mapping of the full legacy category list, including growth beyond the original scope

Campaign Creators is a HubSpot Elite Solutions Partner, with the platform-level access and API expertise required to build custom experiences the native product does not support.

How Campaign Creators Built It

Campaign Creators built the preference center on HubSpot's Communication Preferences API, so the pages write directly to the subscription fields HubSpot's own send logic reads. The sequence started with the identity and category structure, then the pages, then a post-launch verification pass.

segment

Two Pages, Two Audiences

Members, non-members, and the affiliated foundation's contacts each see only the subscription categories that apply to them. Campaign Creators built two custom pages on the Communication Preferences API, one covering the member and non-member experience and one dedicated to the foundation's distinct list. Neither audience is presented with categories belonging to the other.

property information

Contact Record ID in Place of Raw Email

Preference-center links previously carried a recipient's email address in the URL. Campaign Creators reworked every link to carry a HubSpot Contact Record ID, with a backend lookup against the Communication Preferences API resolving the contact and returning current subscription state on page load. The page identifies the right person without exposing an email address in a URL that can be shared, logged, or forwarded.

Automating Membership

44 Categories Modeled in HubDB

All 44 subscription and communication categories were migrated and mapped into HubSpot subscription types, with that category metadata modeled in HubDB tables driving both pages. Adding a new category now means editing a HubDB row, not filing a developer ticket, so the structure extends as AVMA's communication program

Cog Automation Gear Check_48px_teal_light

Preferences Enforced by HubSpot's Own Send Logic

A custom page that tracks preferences separately from the platform creates two records of the same decision. Changes a contact makes on these pages write back to HubSpot's native subscription fields through the Communication Preferences API, so what a contact chooses is what HubSpot enforces at send time. There is one source of truth for consent.

Round Blog Thumbnail (43)

A Post-Launch Retest Before Anything Carried Forward

A dedicated link and content retest ran in August 2026 across both live pages, checking redirect handling, leftover Delivera references, and placeholder links. A build replacing an ESP tends to carry fragments of the old platform into the new one, and the retest documented that these pages did not.
 

The Results

Replacing a preference center tied to an expiring legacy contract required matching the old system's structure while removing its weaknesses. Key outcomes included:

  • Both custom preference pages launched inside HubSpot Marketing Hub Enterprise, in two phases closing April and June 2026
  • AVMA's affiliated foundation (AVMF) now has its own dedicated subscription page, distinct from the primary member/non-member experience
  • Every preference-center and email-footer link resolves by Contact Record ID, removing raw email addresses from a class of link that is frequently logged, forwarded, and cached
  • A post-launch retest in August 2026 surfaced remaining redirect, legacy-reference, and placeholder-link issues for the team to resolve as part of hardening the new pages
  • The category and link-identification architecture built here directly informed a follow-on engagement to reconcile subscription data across duplicate contact records

The legacy ESP's preference-center experience has been replicated, and its identification method hardened, inside HubSpot.
CC Square Hero Image - 2026-09-14T190903.807

Impact: A Preference Center AVMA Can Extend Without a Developer

The HubDB-driven category structure means AVMA's own team administers what subscription options exist and how they are grouped, without waiting on a development ticket for every new communication type. The Contact Record ID link structure established in this build is now the standard AVMA uses for identifying a contact in a link without exposing their email address, and it was reused directly as the identification method for a subsequent engagement reconciling subscription preferences across duplicate contact records.

Solve Subscription Management and Legacy ESP Migration With Campaign Creators

Organizations migrating off a legacy email platform often discover that the receiving platform's native tools were never built for their specific subscription structure. Closing that gap means diagnosing a limitation as a configuration issue or a platform constraint, then building past it using the platform's own API.

Talk to a HubSpot expert to see how Campaign Creators can build a custom subscription preference system around your existing tools.
 

Make HubSpot Do What Your Business Needs

Migration, custom builds, integrations, or a portal that grew without a plan. As a HubSpot Elite Solutions Partner, Campaign Creators builds systems your team can run without a specialist behind every change.

Talk to a HubSpot Expert