This year, in 2023, HubSpot's platform has undergone significant updates, enhancing its efficiency and effectiveness. Anticipate further improvements throughout the year, necessitating awareness of all available features. Continue reading for a recap of the most crucial changes and updates from this year, along with insights on maximizing their benefits as we progress into 2023.
For those unfamiliar with my blogs, I'm Ainhoa, Insynth's Head of Platform Consulting and their in-house HubSpot expert. Since April 2021, I've been compiling monthly updates to ensure you stay informed about HubSpot's developments. This post provides a summary of the essential updates from the past few months.
If you haven't followed my blogs previously and wish to explore every new feature introduced to the platform in 2023, you can access my monthly blog posts for the current year below!
Sending marketing emails through HubSpot is clearly one of the most popular features the platform offers and, yet it presented some limitations. Up until now, users have had to rely on analysing email performance metrics either within the Marketing Email tool's analyse space or in an Excel sheet… Marketing email analytics is now a new data source in the custom report builder, which grants users access to key email performance metrics when building custom reports.
With the custom report builder's new data source, "Marketing email analytics," users are able to tie marketing email successes and failures directly to their CRM data, breaking down their analysis in countless different ways. The data source for Marketing email will continue to house the rich email property data, such as subject line, campaign name, and sender details. When entering the builder's editor, users will find an extensive list of new default measures in the left-hand sidebar, along with a number of fields unique to Marketing email analytics.
HubSpot's newly launched Customer Journey Analytics is a game-changer for marketers aiming to optimize every aspect of the buyer's journey. This innovative reporting tool empowers you to measure the journey between any two points, providing invaluable insights into the duration, common drop-off points, and most effective pathways for reaching your objectives. Customer Journey Analytics simplifies the process by consolidating your HubSpot data, allowing you to pinpoint areas of success and opportunities for optimization in campaigns and digital assets.
Available to Marketing Hub Enterprise customers, Customer Journey Analytics enables you to re-evaluate lifecycle stages, assess contacts' engagement with your brand, monitor the average time spent at each stage of the customer journey, and examine specific forms, landing pages, or sales rep sequences. Harnessing the power of Customer Journey Analytics, you can streamline the buyer experience and ultimately boost your marketing success.
Workflow branching is an essential feature for implementing sophisticated logic in automation processes. However, with the variety of branch actions and filter options available, it can become challenging to manage large branches and identify the ideal branch configuration. HubSpot’s update offers optimization recommendations for your workflow branches, ensuring they remain organized and efficient without altering the logic or behaviour of your workflow.
To use this feature, simply click on the “clean up” button, which appears when optimization opportunities are detected within your workflow. You can review and accept the proposed improvements for a simplified representation of your branching logic that remains operationally effective. This update is available for users of Professional or Enterprise HubSpot plans.
Allowing users to integrate their goals with workflows for operational efficiency, this update enables businesses to set up workflows triggered by goal conditions, improving team motivation, cross-team communication, and data-driven decision-making. Users can easily configure triggers and actions, such as sending emails or assigning tasks, and set up operational details before publishing the workflows.
With the new "Goals-based Workflows" feature on HubSpot, users can now connect their goals and workflows seamlessly. This integration addresses the need for a unified approach to goal management and workflow automation. By leveraging goal data, users can set up robust notifications, foster collaboration between teams, and make informed business decisions based on goal progress.
Responding to customer inquiries can be a time-consuming task for HubSpot Inbox users. However, with the integration of the Content Assistant into the Conversations Inbox, this process becomes significantly more efficient. This tool generates prompt responses for various channels, enabling agents to swiftly address multiple inquiries and dedicate their attention to ensuring a high-quality customer experience.
By automating the most time-consuming aspects of addressing incoming messages, the Content Assistant frees up valuable time for HubSpot users to focus on delivering exceptional, personalised customer experiences. The Content Assistant is available to all HubSpot users, regardless of their hub or tier. By leveraging this tool, Inbox users can streamline their workflow, maximize productivity, and provide timely, well-crafted responses to customers.
Last year, HubSpot started working on their inbound calling features. Sales and service reps were looking for HubSpot not to be simply the place that they go to when they are taking a call, they wanted it to be the place where they take the call. Bouncing back and forth between their calling software and HubSpot was simply not sustainable, and it was causing confusion and friction within teams. HubSpot listened to this comments, and everything changed!
From this month, all paid HubSpot users will enjoy the new HubSpot feature that allows sales and service reps to answer incoming calls, manage missed calls, and listen to voicemails, all within HubSpot. This means that users will not need to work on multiple systems at the same time, and they will be able to manage, review, and take all calls without leaving the platform. Please note you will need a sales or service seat and a HubSpot phone number in order to receive inbound calls. This is only available for US, Canada, and UK phone numbers!
I know what you might be thinking… Connecting your calendar with HubSpot is hardly an update! That is right. HubSpot users have been connecting their calendars and running fully synced agendas for a while, but this update goes a step further. With this update, users will have a view of their calendar availability when scheduling a meeting in the CRM. So, not going back and forth between platforms, users will have all the information they need to complete their bookings in one place.
As you can see on the picture, this new module contains the same details as before, but with the addition of a large calendar to the right. A user can now fill out the meeting details on the left, or they can easily define the date and time of the meeting by selecting an available spot in their calendar. Users that do not want to see the new calendar view, can click the collapse button at the top right of the scheduling module to see the previous smaller window.
HubSpot's recent addition of Images for Line Items offers a more visually appealing and informative experience for both sales reps and customers. This feature allows users to add images to their products within the HubSpot CRM, making it easier to showcase products and their details when presenting quotes and proposals.
By using images alongside product descriptions, sales teams can provide a comprehensive understanding of their offerings, leading to a more engaging and effective sales process for customers. Now, when creating or updating products in the CRM, users can upload images directly to the 'Image' property field. These images will then appear on the line items within quotes, offering a polished and professional appearance for customers as they review their potential purchases.
Sales representatives on the move now have the ability to enhance their email capabilities using the HubSpot mobile app. This update streamlines communication by allowing users to easily send and respond to emails from within the app, ultimately increasing productivity and responsiveness. By automatically logging and tracking email communications in the HubSpot CRM, sales reps can focus on what truly matters - making connections and closing deals!
With the introduction of this new feature, users can now send and reply to emails directly from the HubSpot mobile app, extending communication capabilities even to non-CRM contacts. This update is available to all HubSpot mobile app customers on iOS and Android platforms. To explore these enhanced features, download the latest version of the HubSpot mobile app from the App Store or Google Play Store.
Sales pipelines are probably one of the main reasons users decide to start using HubSpot. The latest update allows you to create coloured deal tags for a more visually accessible and prioritized board view. Super admins can create up to ten deal tags based on various conditions, making it easy for sales reps to rapidly scan the board and identify essential deals. This enhancement significantly streamlines the deal tracking process, reducing time spent on digesting information!
Sales reps can filter the view to display deals with specific tags, further simplifying their workflow. This update caters to businesses of different sizes, with Sales Starter users having access to deal tags for all pipelines, while Sales Professional and Sales Enterprise users can apply them to specific pipelines. However, it's essential to note that only super admins can create and edit deal tags, and coloured tags are currently only available for the deals object and on the board view.
Gone are the days when HubSpot accounts were limited to just one knowledge base. Service Hub Enterprise accounts now provide the unparalleled ability to host multiple knowledge bases within a single HubSpot account, each featuring unique branding and content tailored to each audience. This not only empowers companies to efficiently support their various brands, but it also delivers a superior customer experience.
This significant update ensures that businesses can seamlessly cater to different audiences, products, and customer needs without sacrificing organization or content relevance. By offering customized knowledge bases for individual customer segments, HubSpot users can prevent the frustration and confusion that may arise from having answers scattered across a single, overwhelming repository.
Did you know that you can host private content through HubSpot? It is a quite unexplored feature that HubSpot has been offering since they first launched their Customer Portal and Knowledge Base features. Private content on HubSpot refers to webpages, blogs, and knowledge base articles that can only be accessed by invited contacts who have registered with a secure password. Password-protected content won't be included in search engine indexes but won't be encrypted either.
As of April 13, 2023, HubSpot is implementing session timeout for private content. This strategic update is designed to uplift your security posture, ensuring that private content remains protected from unauthorized access. When a user exceeds the pre-set inactivity period, they will automatically be logged out and returned to the login page—requiring them to re-enter their credentials for continued access. Session timeout is available for CMS Enterprise, Service Enterprise, and Service Pro users.
Users can now create up to ten distinct tags based on specific conditions, allowing support representatives to visually identify and prioritise tickets more efficiently. With the increasing scale of businesses, the board can quickly become overwhelming, making it challenging to determine which tickets require immediate attention.
By implementing color-coded tags, users can quickly scan the board and table views, instantly recognising the priority level of each ticket. This enhancement significantly improves productivity by eliminating the need to spend valuable time deciphering information and ensuring that critical tickets are addressed promptly.
If you are a Zendesk user that has debated for a while to implement HubSpot as a CRM (or if you are both a Zendesk and HubSpot user), you will be happy to read this! Improvements on their Data Sync capabilities has allowed HubSpot to sync tickets with other software, starting with Zendesk! Other data sync apps like Freshdesk, Front, NetSuite, and Dynamics are expected to incorporate this functionality later this year.
To set up ticket sync, users can install the Zendesk data sync app from the HubSpot App Marketplace. This process includes mapping different ticket stages to the HubSpot ticket pipeline, which the Zendesk app utilizes for ticket transitions. The sync begins automatically within five minutes of a Zendesk ticket being created or updated, and it also includes a historical backfill of data. This feature is available to all customers using Zendesk and HubSpot, requiring Operations Hub Starter.
HubSpot's introduces a feature that transforms the way meetings are scheduled within the CRM. Addressing the cumbersome process of arranging meetings on behalf of fellow sales representatives, the new meeting rotation functionality enables users to seamlessly book meetings directly from contact, company, deal, or ticket records. This innovation eliminates the need for third-party scheduling tools and intricate workarounds previously used to manage meeting sequences.
With this upgrade, users gain the ability to select meeting rotations from within the CRM interface, ensuring a smooth flow of meetings without the hassle of tracking schedules externally. The chosen rotation dictates the order in which sales representatives are assigned meetings, optimizing the distribution of meeting appointments. This dynamic system even accounts for availability, automatically suggesting the next available representative to receive a meeting booking.
The marketplace now features new standalone modules, allowing users to create powerful and engaging website experiences with ease. These modules serve as reusable building blocks, allowing users to go beyond the basics of a theme and add more functionality to their websites. With features like interactive displays, engaging designs, elegant formatting, and compelling offers, users can easily create captivating website experiences.
The marketplace offers a seamless browsing experience, where users can explore the inventory of themes and modules through dedicated tabs. Whether they are looking to incorporate flip animations, video playlists, stylized headers, or pricing calls-to-action, the new modules provide ample options for customisation. HubSpot's redesigned template marketplace empowers users to create engaging websites, regardless of their technical expertise.
We have lengthy spoken about the integrations that are available through the App Marketplace. You can basically sync every single software that you currently use with HubSpot. Sometimes, of course, this integration might need to be bespoke and custom coded, since a particular software that you use is very niche or was bespoke in the first place. Some syncs might involve programmed exports of HubSpot data, so they are safely stored elsewhere, and that is where the new API comes in!
The public exports API will allow customers to programmatically export CRM data for use in integrations, or to simply bring data into third party data storage services. A public exports endpoint will allow developers to leverage more flexible querying of their database for use within their integrations, without having to resort to limiting workarounds. You can learn more and view the API documentation here.
HubSpot's SEO tool is introducing three valuable new crawling recommendations under the 'Crawling & Indexing' category to help users optimize their website's search engine visibility. These recommendations include confirming the correct pages are blocked by your robots.txt file, fixing broken pages, and verifying that a page is working properly.
Uncovering these issues is crucial for maintaining a healthy website, as search engines might also be unable to crawl pages, impacting your website's SEO performance. To access these new recommendations, navigate to Marketing > Website > SEO in your HubSpot portal. You can either rescan an existing domain by clicking 'Rescan now' or scan a new domain by selecting 'Scan new URL'. Once the scan is complete, head to the 'Crawling & Indexing' category to view the fresh insights.
Blog creation is reaching new heights with the introduction of HubSpot's innovative drag-and-drop feature for the rich text area of your blog posts. Gone are the days of spending countless hours trying to add rich content to your blog, often needing assistance from a developer. Now, the process is streamlined, giving you the ability to access and comprehensively edit your blog posts in a quick and intuitive manner.
The drag-and-drop functionality is incredibly simple to use - just expand the left sidebar, locate the 'Add' tab, and discover a plethora of modules available for your blog post. With this feature, you can effortlessly drag and drop the desired modules into the blog post's rich text area, creating a seamless editing experience. This tool enables you to take full control over the layout, design, and content of your blog, without the need for external support.
In an effort to provide a more streamlined experience for content creators, it is now possible to hide specific modules and sections within themes and templates. By disabling default modules in a theme, or both default and custom modules and sections in a template, you can effectively curate the options available to content creators, thereby simplifying their choices and optimizing the user experience.
This can be achieved by updating the theme.json file for theme-level changes and the template annotations for template-level configurations. This feature enhances adaptability and functionality within the HubSpot CMS, allowing for a more efficient content creation process that caters to the unique needs and preferences of each user. For a detailed guide on implementing this feature, visit HubSpot's developer documentation on hiding modules and sections in themes and templates.
Previously, users had to navigate through various parts of HubSpot to gather information about each issue, but now they can conveniently access the Issue Details panel within the workflow. This panel displays actions and contact records associated with individual issues, allowing users to quickly assess their impact. For Enterprise users, the update goes even further by enabling customisable reminders for monitoring workflow issues.
Users can prioritise critical issues for immediate review, ignore trivial issues indefinitely, or schedule specific review dates or time intervals for different types of issues. This feature empowers users to proactively manage their workflows and address potential problems effectively. The update also introduces a more descriptive label, changing the "At-risk" tab to "Needs review" and the "Risks" tab to "Issues."
This is a BETA, and your portal would need to opt into it if you wanted to use it (we can help with that!).
This draggable version allows users to access various collaboration and productivity tools more conveniently. Unlike the previous static design, this upgrade offers a smaller, movable sidebar that can be placed anywhere on the screen, providing users with greater customisation options. By optimising the use of screen space, HubSpot aims to enhance user experience and efficiency.
The introduction of the collaboration sidebar in Dashboards marks a significant improvement over the previous static version. Users now have the flexibility to choose the placement of the sidebar on their screen, making it more intuitive and user-friendly. Additionally, the new draggable sidebar occupies less vertical space, allowing for a more efficient use of the available screen real estate.
This is a BETA, and your portal would need to opt into it if you wanted to use it (we can help with that!).
HubSpot has introduced a game-changing update that brings immense benefits to its users: the centralised audit log of security and login activity. This new tool empowers Super Admins by providing them with a comprehensive and real-time view of their users' login activity and security-related actions within the account. With the centralized audit log UI, HubSpot users can now effortlessly monitor and manage security measures.
This update holds significant relevance for HubSpot users, particularly for Admins who play a crucial role in both resolving issues faced by account users and providing data for security and compliance audits. By centralizing the audit log, Admins can quickly and easily access and export the account's activity history. This streamlines the process of troubleshooting, enhances security monitoring, and simplifies compliance reporting, saving valuable time and effort.
So, this is a tricky update but, if you are the user in charge of making lists, segmenting, filtering out contacts, etc. you know how important this update is. HubSpot is thrilled to introduce advanced filtering capabilities to several marketing tools, enabling users to leverage the power of "OR" filtering. Previously limited to "AND" filters only, this enhancement precise filtering, making it easier than ever to locate specific records and find the exact marketing assets users are looking for.
With this update, HubSpot users can now apply multiple sets of filters to identify marketing assets where "A" OR "B" conditions are true. This update expands the possibilities of filtering within Marketing Campaigns, Lists, Workflows, Forms, the new CTAs tool, and Feedback Survey responses. Users can now create more nuanced and detailed filters to narrow down their search, whether it's finding a particular type of form or identifying campaigns owned by specific individuals.
This update addresses a critical challenge in report building. Users can now access data quality property insights directly within the property information modal for contact, company, deal, and ticket objects. This feature's significance lies in its ability to simplify the process of choosing the right properties for report creation. It provides users with valuable context by showing where the data is sourced and how much data is available.
This context is crucial for informed decision-making when creating reports and ensures that the data used is accurate and reliable. Users can easily access the property info modal by opening a custom report, hovering over a property, and selecting the three-dot menu. This enhanced visibility and context empower HubSpot users to make more informed decisions when building reports, ultimately leading to more accurate and valuable insights for their businesses.
Staying ahead of the curve is essential for success. And, yes, that might involve AI.
HubSpot understands this better than most.
That's why, in 2023, HubSpot has rolled out a slew of exciting AI product launches aimed at helping businesses supercharge their marketing and sales efforts. According to The HubSpot Blog's State of AI Report, over 85% of marketers and sales professionals agree that AI enhances content quality and prospecting efforts.
Powerful AI capabilities help you work smarter by automating tasks and revealing valuable insights across the HubSpot customer platform. Whether it's drafting content, streamlining workflows, or enhancing data analysis, HubSpot's AI tools empower you to stay ahead in today's fast-paced business landscape.
This AI-powered tool is now available across various platforms, including landing pages, social media, marketing emails, CTAs, and even SMS marketing.
The Content Assistant takes your content game to the next level by offering real-time suggestions, ensuring your content is not only engaging but also optimized for search engines.
Whether you're designing a website, creating marketing materials, or sharing posts on social media, the right images can make a significant impact.
With the power of AI, you can now create customised images that perfectly match your brand and message, saving you time and money on stock photo subscriptions.
Crafting compelling email subject lines just got easier with HubSpot's AI Email Subject Line Generator.
This tool analyses your email content and suggests subject lines that are not only attention-grabbing but also optimized for high open rates. Say goodbye to guesswork and hello to increased email marketing success.
Sharing your content on social media is a breeze with HubSpot's AI-powered Social Post Captions and Blog Post Summaries.
These features automatically generate catchy captions and concise summaries that captivate your audience and encourage them to engage with your content.
For sales professionals, HubSpot's AI Sales Forecasts and Predictive Deal Health Scores are game changers.
These tools leverage AI to provide accurate sales forecasts and assess the health of your deals, empowering you to make data-driven decisions and close more deals.
HubSpot's AI Chatbots are a lifeline.
These intelligent chatbots provide instant responses to customer inquiries, streamline communication, and enhance the overall customer experience.
Building a professional website has never been easier.
HubSpot's AI Website Builder simplifies the process by offering templates, layouts, and customization options powered by AI, enabling businesses to create stunning websites without the need for extensive technical expertise.
When crafting blog posts, you can now generate social media copy directly within the HubSpot blog editor. This feature saves time and ensures consistency in your messaging across different platforms.
The AI understands the context of your blog post and tailors social media copy accordingly, ensuring that your messaging remains coherent and on-brand across all channels. This consistency enhances your brand's professionalism and credibility.
HubSpot is a CRM designed to help businesses attract and retain customers through inbound marketing principles. Many construction companies have been left out of the inbound conversation, but that's changing fast! CRM, sales intelligence, and engagement tools are all a priority for 2023.
Are you doing everything you can to make sure your building product brand is successful?
HubSpot could be the solution to those questions and the key for your construction product business to make a difference. g those solutions. To know more about how to use HubSpot for your construction business, you can read our blog post on this topic here.
At Insynth we deliver a predictable flow of leads, customers, and specifications for building product brands through our inbound marketing approach, proven to reach a technically demanding audience.
We use the latest marketing techniques such as construction inbound marketing, to equip building product companies to grow sustainability in this era of digital transformation.
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major in construction marketing. We have a proven formula of bringing a variety of functionalities together including CRM Implementation, Web Design, Sales Automation, SEO, and Email Marketing to achieve your ultimate aim: Growing your business and gaining new specifiers and customers.
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