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Vista Group unifies multiple platforms into one HubSpot portal

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Vista Group unifies multiple platforms into one HubSpot portal
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Vista Group is a publicly listed, New Zealand-founded technology company and the global leader in cinema management software, with products installed in cinemas across more than 80 countries.

Its brands span the film industry end to end and include Vista for large cinema circuits, Veezi for independent exhibitors, Movio for moviegoer engagement and marketing, and Maccs for film distribution software, and Numero for film distribution and box office reporting.

A ten-person marketing team supports all five brands, running largely account-based and product-education campaigns. When Vista Group set out to bring its marketing operations under one roof, it needed a platform that could carry that breadth of brands and campaigns without asking every person who touched it to become a specialist first.

The problem
Multiple platforms and the search for a unified option 

Vista Group's marketing team supports a set of brands covering the film industry from cinema circuits to distribution and moviegoer analytics. Ten people run all of it. The tools they were running it with had grown up separately over time, which meant the effort of a campaign was spread across as many platforms as it was across brands.

Problem 1:

Vista Group ran email marketing, social media and landing pages in seperate platforms. Each tool did its job, but none of them shared a structure, so a single campaign meant moving between platforms, rebuilding the same assets in different tools and holding brand consistency together manually. The setup also leaned heavily on specialist knowledge. What Vista Group wanted was a single platform that consolidated the stack and that anyone in the team could pick up and use with confidence.

Problem 2:

Vista Group had a firm date to complete the platform transition and a team already running at capacity. Designing, building and testing a multi-brand environment inside that window called for expertise and hands the team did not have spare. Rather than stretch a lean team across a build with a hard end date, Vista Group brought in a specialist partner to get the foundations right the first time.

The solution
What we built: one portal shaped around how the team actually works
Engaging.io ran a structured HubSpot Marketing Hub Enterprise and Content Hub Enterprise onboarding built around Vista Group's real brand structure, rather than forcing every brand into one generic setup.

Vista and Veezi were configured as dedicated HubSpot Business Units, while the group's additional brands were consolidated onto shared infrastructure. Every brand received matching email and landing page templates, forms and subscription types, built as one coordinated set rather than assembled brand by brand. We chose this structure to match the level of setup to the level of activity: full autonomy for the brands that need it, shared infrastructure for the brands that are better served by it.

Alongside this, we configured the native Microsoft Dynamics 365 connector so marketing and CRM data would stay aligned through a connection the team could maintain themselves. Vista Group already had a sync between its marketing platform and Dynamics 365 and it kept the two systems in step, though it was highly technical to set up and maintain. Moving to the native connector removed that overhead. We chose it over custom middleware because Vista Group's sync requirements did not call for the cost and complexity of a bespoke build, and because a native connection is something an internal team can own long term.
The Strategic Plan
The Implementation
The process
  1. Before touching HubSpot, we audited Vista Group's existing marketing configuration across every brand: subscription types, forms, active lists, and how each brand's campaigns actually ran across the different platforms in use. That gave us a clear picture of what needed to move, what could safely be retired, and where the brands genuinely differed versus where they could share infrastructure.
  2. With Vista Group's digital  marketing lead joining partway through the project, this groundwork mattered more than usual, and it meant the design decisions that followed were based on what the systems were doing rather than on assumption
Map the existing landscape
The process
  1. Before touching HubSpot, we audited Vista Group's existing marketing configuration across every brand: subscription types, forms, active lists, and how each brand's campaigns actually ran across the different platforms in use. That gave us a clear picture of what needed to move, what could safely be retired, and where the brands genuinely differed versus where they could share infrastructure.
  2. With Vista Group's digital  marketing lead joining partway through the project, this groundwork mattered more than usual, and it meant the design decisions that followed were based on what the systems were doing rather than on assumption
Design a structure that matches how the team works
The process
  1. Rather than default to one flat HubSpot setup for every brand, or a separate portal for each, we configured Business Units so Vista Group's flagship brands could each operate independently with their own templates, permissions and reporting, while the group's additional brands ran on consolidated infrastructure.
  2. We built matching email and landing page templates for every brand at the same time, so no brand launched without the full set of assets it needed. This structure was chosen specifically to match team size to brand activity.
Connect the CRM
The process
  1. With the brand structure in place, we configured the native Microsoft Dynamics 365 connector, working through the field mapping to confirm what would sync automatically.
  2. Replacing a highly technical sync arrangement with the native connector gave Vista Group a connection their own team could understand and maintain.
  3. This step also surfaced the handful of field types, Dynamics lookups and multi-select option sets, that the native connector cannot map directly, which needed a workaround resolved before the contact sync could safely run.
Bring the data across and get the team confident
The process
  1. Once the structure and CRM connection were confirmed, Vista Group's contact data came across through the native Dynamics 365 sync, and we built out the active lists, dashboards and nurture workflows the team would need from day one.
  2. We closed with training sessions structured by role, so everyone learned the parts of the platform they would actually use. Sequencing training last was deliberate: there is no value in training a team on infrastructure that has not been fully built and tested. 
The Implementation

Engaging.io built Vista Group's HubSpot Marketing Hub Enterprise and Content Hub Enterprise environment around a two-tier Business Unit structure. Vista and Veezi each received a dedicated Business Unit with their own templates, permissions and reporting, while the group's additional brands shared a consolidated setup. Building neither five separate portals nor one flat structure let Vista Group's brands operate independently while the rest ran lean, matching how a ten-person team needed to work day to day.

Across the group, we built modular marketing email templates and modular landing page templates in Content Hub, one set per brand, alongside brand-specific subscription types and unsubscribe pages. Forms were configured for client embedding, with subscription preferences and inquiry-type logic built into the routing so the right notifications reach the right people without manual handoffs.

On the CRM side, we configured the native Microsoft Dynamics 365 connector rather than building custom middleware, since Vista Group's sync requirements did not justify the cost of a bespoke integration and the team wanted a connection they could maintain internally. The native connector handles most standard field types cleanly. Dynamics 365 lookup fields, which are relationships to another record, cannot be mapped directly into HubSpot, and multi-select option sets needed the same treatment. Where this mattered for business-critical properties, we worked with Vista Group's team to create duplicate, HubSpot-compatible properties that could sync where the native mapping could not reach. That was a targeted workaround kept to the fields that genuinely needed it.

Contact data moved across through the native Dynamics 365 sync rather than a manual import, which meant the CRM connection was doing real work from the moment it went live. We also built out active lists and segments, including a dedicated list for contacts not receiving marketing communications, two standard reporting dashboards, and automated nurture email workflows across multiple streams, left in draft for Vista Group's team to review, edit and launch on their own timeline.

Training closed out the engagement and was structured by role rather than delivered as a single generic session. The wider marketing team attended sessions covering marketing operations and how to use the templates, so the people building campaigns learned the parts of the platform they would use every week. A separate admin session covered permissions and platform administration for Vista Group's platform owner. The intent was for Vista Group's own team to run and extend the platform from launch onwards without ongoing hand-holding.

 

The Impact and Results
The result: one system, and a team confident to run it

With onboarding complete, Vista Group's ten-person marketing team runs email, landing pages, forms and subscription management for the whole group from a single HubSpot portal, with each brand's dedicated Business Unit or shared setup handling the parts that need to stay separate. The clearest change is speed. Building a landing page, a lead capture form or an email is now a task the team can complete in the flow of their week, and the output looks polished and on brand by default rather than by careful manual effort.

That speed comes with a shift in who can do the work. Team members who are not marketing operations specialists can now build their own emails and landing pages and bring them to the digital marketing lead for a final compliance check, rather than handing the whole task over. HubSpot's in-platform commenting and tagging supports the same shift, keeping feedback on the asset itself instead of moving it through screenshots, email threads and documents before it makes its way back into the platform.

The native Microsoft Dynamics 365 connection carries the same benefit through to the CRM. Vista Group's contact and company data continues to move between marketing and the CRM that sales and customer teams rely on every day, now through a connection that is straightforward to maintain rather than one that requires specialist technical attention. For a company managing long-term relationships with enterprise cinema chains and distributors, that reliability matters. HubSpot preview links also give the sales team clear visibility of what has been sent to their clients, so they can pick up those conversations proactively and speak to the marketing their clients have actually received.

Just as importantly, Vista Group completed the platform transition ahead of its deadline, with the expertise and additional capacity needed to hit that date without disruption. Training delivered across the wider team and at admin level means this is a system Vista Group operates independently from here. With the group's brands now running on shared, well-documented infrastructure, Vista Group is in a strong position to bring any future brand, product line or market into the fold without starting from scratch each time, and to do it without needing to grow the team that runs it.

It has definitely made it a lot faster for us to go from idea to execution. Spinning up a landing page or a lead capture form can be done really easily, they look really beautiful, and it's much more naturally on brand than it might have been in the past. It wouldn't be an overstretch to say it's been quite revolutionary for the team. Anyone can pick this up and go with it. They can get started and make an email or a landing page without me, and then just ask for my input to check they've hit all the i's and t's

M. Mills
Digital Marketing Manager

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