HubSpot association labels let you define the exact relationship between any two CRM records. Instead of a contact being generically “associated” with a company, you can mark them as Decision Maker, Billing Contact, or End User. That extra layer of context saves your team time, reduces guesswork, and keeps your pipeline data accurate.
This guide explains what association labels are, how to set them up, and how teams across Southeast Asia are using them to keep their CRM organised.
In HubSpot, navigate to Settings > Objects > Associations. You’ll see all the object pairs you can create labels for: Contact-Company, Contact-Deal, Deal-Company, and more.
Click “Create association label” for the object pair you want. Enter a name for the label — keep it short and descriptive. HubSpot saves this as a custom label on that specific pairing.
Open any record and click the association section. Click the three-dot menu next to an existing association, then select “Edit label”. Pick from your saved labels.
Once labels are applied, you can filter lists, build workflows, and build reports based on relationship type — for example, “send this email only to contacts labelled Decision Maker on open deals”.
What Are HubSpot Association Labels?
In HubSpot, associations describe connections between records. A contact is associated with a company; a deal is associated with contacts. But until labels were introduced, those associations were generic. You could see that someone was connected to a deal, but not whether they were the one who signs the contract or the one who raised the ticket.
Association labels let you add a named relationship type to any association. They’re available in HubSpot Professional and Enterprise tiers. Once you create a label, your team can apply it to any record pair of that type.
For teams working with complex accounts — distributors, channel partners, multi-location businesses, or enterprise deals with multiple stakeholders — labels turn a flat contact list into a map of the actual relationship structure.
Why Association Labels Matter for SEA Teams
Many teams in Southeast Asia manage accounts that involve several stakeholders across different roles. A property developer deal might involve a project manager, a finance director, and an external consultant. A hotel group account might span a head-office contact and property-level contacts across multiple locations.
Without labels, your sales team has to read through notes or call history to figure out who to reach out to. With labels, they can filter the contact list on a deal to show only the primary decision maker and proceed directly.
This matters especially during handoffs. When a deal moves from an SDR to an account executive, or from sales to a customer success manager, labelled associations let the incoming team member read the relationship structure at a glance without reading every note.
Which Labels Should You Create?
The right set of labels depends on how your business is structured. A few common examples:
Contact-to-Company labels:
- Decision Maker
- Billing Contact
- Primary User
- Technical Contact
- Executive Sponsor
Contact-to-Deal labels:
- Deal Influencer
- Contract Signer
- Champion
- Budget Holder
Deal-to-Company labels:
- Parent Company
- Partner
- Reseller
Start with a small set that reflects how your team actually talks about relationships. Avoid creating too many labels up front — it becomes harder to apply them consistently. You can always add more as specific use cases emerge.
How to Apply Labels at Scale
For new records, labels are best applied at the point of association. When you associate a contact with a deal, HubSpot prompts you to add a label in the same step. Building this into your team’s process takes a few days to establish but quickly becomes habitual.
For existing records, the most practical approach is to start with your active pipeline. Have each rep work through their open deals and label the key contacts. Once you’ve covered active deals, you can decide whether to back-fill historical records.
HubSpot does not currently offer a bulk-labelling workflow through the standard UI. If you have a very large number of records to update, the most reliable path is to use the HubSpot API or work with a partner who can run a migration.
Using Labels in Reports and Workflows
Once labels are applied across your CRM, they become filterable properties. You can:
- Build a contact list of all Decision Makers on deals in a specific pipeline stage
- Trigger a workflow to assign a task when a contact is labelled as “Contract Signer” on a deal that moves to Proposal Sent
- Build a report showing how many deals have a labelled Decision Maker vs. those that don’t (a useful proxy for deal quality)
- Send targeted emails only to contacts with a specific label on deals above a certain value
The last use case is particularly useful for teams running multi-stakeholder deal cycles. Rather than emailing everyone on a deal, you can send a commercial summary to the Budget Holder and a technical brief to the Technical Contact, from a single workflow, without manual sorting.
Association Labels vs. Contact Roles
If you’ve used HubSpot for a while, you may have encountered the older “Contact Roles” feature on Deals. That was a more limited precursor to association labels and only applied to contacts on deals. Association labels work across all major object pairs and are far more flexible.
If you’re currently using Contact Roles, you don’t need to migrate immediately. Both can coexist. When you’re ready, you can recreate your role types as labels on the Contact-Deal pairing and phase out the older field.
Common Questions About HubSpot Association Labels
Can I use association labels on custom objects?
Yes. If you have custom objects set up in HubSpot, you can create association labels between custom objects and standard objects. The same settings panel handles both.
Can one contact have multiple labels on the same deal?
Yes. A contact can hold multiple labels on the same association. For example, a contact could be both the Decision Maker and the Contract Signer on a deal.
Are association labels visible in HubSpot’s mobile app?
Labels are visible when viewing associations on mobile, though the editing experience is more limited than on desktop. It’s worth doing initial setup and bulk labelling on desktop.
Does HubSpot provide any label templates to start from?
HubSpot doesn’t offer default label templates, but the settings panel makes it quick to create them. Your implementation partner can also pre-configure a standard label set before your team starts using the CRM.
Do I need Professional or Enterprise to use association labels?
Yes. Association labels are available on HubSpot Professional and Enterprise plans across the Marketing, Sales, Service, and Operations Hubs. They are not available on the Starter or Free tiers.
Getting Started
Association labels are one of those features that make a larger difference than they first appear. Once your team starts seeing labelled relationships on records, the mental overhead of tracking who does what on each account drops noticeably. The setup takes less than an hour. The benefit shows up every day your team is working through the pipeline.
If you’re setting up HubSpot for the first time or reorganising an existing portal, association labels are worth configuring early. They’re easier to adopt when the CRM is new than to retrofit after hundreds of records have been created without them.
This site is an independent informational resource produced by a HubSpot Platinum Partner. HubSpot is a trademark of HubSpot, Inc.
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