It is INBOUND time again and HubSpot have released multiple product updates and new functionality within the marketing, content, sales, service and operations hubs and we are excited to share these with you.
We don’t need to tell you that there are multiple challenges facing marketing, sales and customer success teams. The key focus of the updates is to build a platform that will allow the teams to reinvent growth with solutions that are easy to use, fast to adopt and unified with data. This is what all go-to-market leaders need in today's landscape, giving them a faster time to value that enables business growth.
Let’s look at some challenges:
In marketing, getting quality leads is tougher than ever. Traditional methods like search and social are no longer enough, and managing multiple channels is becoming overwhelming with 41% of marketers saying that they lack time for high-quality content. Marketers are juggling too many tools with an average of 5 tools for 5 types of content across 4 different channels. Personalisation is still crucial, but better data is needed.
"Only 65% of marketers have high-quality audience data, and 35% say their brand delivers a highly personalised experience."
Sales teams have reported that overall lead quality is down. Only 59% of sales reps consider their leads high-quality, and 54% say selling has become harder. 28% of sales teams are reporting lengthy processes as the main reason prospects back out. Sales teams are also feeling overwhelmed by the tools they require, with 45% saying they have too many in their tech stack.
Customer Success teams and service agents are reporting that customer expectations are at an all-time high, with 78% demanding more personalization. However the disconnected data is a major challenge as research shows that only 35% of service leaders have fully integrated customer data.
"75% of customer success leaders are reporting that there is an increase in ticket numbers, and service requests."
With all of this in mind, the importance of solutions that are easy to use, fast to adopt and unified with the right data cannot be underestimated.
The updates that were presented today at INBOUND fall into 3 categories:
- Marketing and Content Hub
- HubSpot Breeze AI
- Breeze Intelligence
Marketing and Content Hub
2024 is a moment of challenge and change for marketers, with AI serving as the catalyst and the solution. This brings a multitude of opportunities for marketers who lean into this to add value.
"To win in this new landscape, we need to evolve the marketing playbook to include Inbound and other tactics that will help marketers stay competitive and grow."
The full list of updates can be found on the HubSpot Spotlight page.
Some that excite us focus on creating and managing content and generating leads:
Content remix is expanding to include video, case studies and podcasts. Increasing the range of formats available allows us to provide content in multiple formats, meeting our personas where they are. Case studies can be created based on your CRM data and published as a webpage.
The podcasts functionality will allow for auto generating of podcast pages and transcripts, you will be able to quickly add these podcasts to your website with a new podcast player and track the impact by using podcast analytics.
Brand voice allows for multiple brand voices and aligns them with different channels as well as set up brand rules!
Another exciting update is that you are able to create and embed HubSpot content into any 3rd party website - previously only available to WordPress editors.
For the social teams - this is an exciting one for you. You can publish YouTube videos and monitor comments as well as track YouTube performance in HubSpot, contributing to lead generation and video strategy.
Speaking of lead generation, the lead scoring tool has a refresh to allow this to be more transparent. The new tool helps identify leads most likely to make a purchase based on past behaviour, campaign interaction and demographic data, with AI recommendations built in. Lead routing and insights will be enhanced through key improvements such as time decay and advanced weighting.
In our September product update article we discussed dynamic forms so have a look at this in action - a new improvement that will help you increase conversions.
Marketing Home is coming to HubSpot Pro and Enterprise - a single workspace to give you a view of your own and your team’s work. This will surface tasks that need attention in one place and reduce tab switching and screen-hopping to help with focus and productivity.
We are really excited by messaging insights - this is available from HubSpot starter and will give AI insights on your email campaigns!
For Marketing enterprise costumes - personalised subscriptions are here - reducing the “unsubscribe all” actions and allowing you to create personalised preference pages for different segments.
Breeze AI and Breeze Intelligence by HubSpot is set to become an essential feature in any CRM. Having experienced the power of Data Enrichment and the vast potential it offers—driven by ClearBit and AI—we're excited to see this functionality divided into two key components, designed to support teams across any organisation.
Breeze Agents - an AI tool all HubSpotters have come to love, with social and content agents (Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise), prospecting agent and customer success agent (Service Hub Pro and Enterprise). Breeze agents are designed to work for you allowing you to focus on more strategic work.
Breeze Copilot - a more accessible and revolutionised version of ChatSpot (but not to be confused with Microsoft Copilot). Breeze Copilot works with you as a virtual assistant everywhere you go In HubSpot. Breeze Copilot is now in app providing insights specific to the page you are on with new and improved prompts.
Breeze Intelligence - focusing largely on data enrichment, the Breeze Intelligence feature also offers buying intent triggers and boasts form shortening which will have a major impact on conversion opportunities. This launch will have a big impact, with data enrichment being the #1 data-related budget priority for HubSpot customers.
More details on all things HubSpot Data to roll-out in our upcoming blogs focussed on CRM and Database Hygiene. In the meantime you can keep an eye out for more information here.
Beyond Marketing and Content Hub, Breeze AI and Breeze Intelligence, there are a number of other releases and most of our favourites centre around CRM health and data.
"Everyone loves a clean and healthy CRM, however this journey can often be a long and complex process, requiring ongoing effort to establish and maintain. With a well-structured plan and a clear workflow in place, you can ensure data quality and create a clean, healthy CRM that drives efficiency and growth throughout your ecosystem. "
While keeping data in mind, we are looking forward to even more updates that include:
- Data Export Approvals (Smart CRM feature)
- Data Sets (coming to Operations Hub Professional accounts soon)
- AI-Assistant for Lists (Smart CRM feature)
For the more technical folk and specifically those customers who have extremely strict governance and security requirements, you can look forward to:
- Manual CRM Backups (Smart CRM feature)
- Customisable Deduplication, allowing you to set the data points detecting duplication of records (Operations Hub feature)
- Workflow updates for External Webhooks (Operations Hub feature)
- Improved Testing and QA Experiences (Operations Hub feature)
And the one we have all been waiting for (🥁drum roll please…) ➖
- New to You, will allow you to choose when your portal will be updated, ensuring that your current projects are not impacted by major CRM changes putting you in control of updates and versions. (Operations Hub feature)
We are excited by all the opportunities that these updates will provide the marketing, sales and customer success teams and I am sure that you will too!
If you are interested in hearing more about the insights from INBOUND, please sign up to the Advanced HubSpot User Group as the team attending the conference share their insights and demo some of the functionality available.
We will be hosting monthly webinars with the latest releases and use cases - sign up here for notifications for these sessions.
