Ainhoa Rodriguez-Muguruza
Well, the clock is ticking and... 2023 is almost here! A new year comes with new opportunities and, even if it might seem daunting, when supported by specialised consultants, platforms like HubSpot can optimise your processes, making sure that we make of 2023 your year.
If you have not read my blogs before, my name is Ainhoa, and I am Insynth's Head of Platform Consulting, or, in other words, their in-house HubSpot expert. Since last April, I have been gathering the platform's updates monthly to make sure that you are not missing anything from HubSpot. You can find a round-up of 2021 here! And you can also check the January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August , September, October , and November updates.
Marketing Hub
BETA AI Powered Enhanced Conversions through Google Ads
With 2023, major changes will be made to cookies and the tracking available to companies. The information that can be gathered from customer behaviour will be more limited and, as a result, companies need to be smarter, and need to come up with ways to get their conversion data back to the ad networks in a secure, privacy first manner. And that is where Google Enhanced conversions comes in!
Google Enhanced Conversions is an ad conversion events feature provides accurate conversion measurement. It supplements existing conversion information by sending hashed first-party conversion data from your website to Google in a privacy-safe way. The feature will recover conversions that otherwise would not have been measured, improve bidding optimization, and provide you with first-party customer data. This is a BETA, and your portal would need to opt into it if you wanted to use it (we can help with that!).
BETA Approval for Marketing Emails
For agencies like Insynth, the process of handing over finished marketing elements to the client is crucial. Making sure that the requirements of the client are met is of undeniable importance and being able to have a fluid conversation during the process of building those marketing assets makes a huge difference. That is why HubSpot is improving their collaboration tools! These tools were introduced in November last year, and they allowed clients to add comments directly marketing assets that were being edited.
You could drop a comment anywhere on the page and you would also be able to view it within the sidebar. But not, these tools have gotten a little bit of a twist! You can now seek approval from any Super Admin on your portal, so they sign off emails. If there is anything that needs to be amended, the reviewer can add comments to the collaboration sidebar, making sure the conversation continues in an organic and helpful way. This is a BETA, and your portal would need to opt into it if you wanted to use it (we can help with that!).
Sales Hub
BETA In-Call Comments for Call Transcripts
If you are part of the number of HubSpot users that utilised the calling tools within the platform, this update is for you. Until now, users could add notes and comments to a call, but could not point out or comment about a particular part of the call. That is about to change. Users can now start an in-call comment thread directly on specific parts of a call transcript, allowing them to provide targeted and contextual feedback as they are listening to the call.
Sales and service managers can, as a result, leave specific, focused comments for reps directly on the transcript. Reps can easily identify the subject of the comment and respond to these in a thread, keeping conversations in one-place and ensuring all the relevant information is clear and concise. You can use the Show Comments and Hide Comments buttons in the top right of the recording review screen to show or hide comments, depending on what you want to focus on. This is a BETA, and your portal would need to opt into it if you wanted to use it (we can help with that!).
Mention Notifications on-The-Go!
Notifications for internal @mentions, until now restricted to the desktop browser experience, leading to unnecessary lag, fragmented communications, and frustrated customers and reps alike, are now available on HubSpot mobile! This is fantastic news for those sales and business development representatives that spend a big part of their day on the road and that might not open HubSpot on their desktops often.
If you were not aware that you could have HubSpot on your mobile, the HubSpot mobile app can be installed on iOS devices running iOS 14 or later or on Android devices running Android 8 and above. You can download the HubSpot app from either the App Store (iOS devices) or Google Play Store (Android devices).
Service Hub
WhatsApp Now Integrates with HubSpot
HubSpot Product Engineers confessed to us that this feature had been requested thousands of times. How is it possible that HubSpot integrates with text messages, Zoom, Teams, etc. but cannot integrate with WhatsApp? Truth is, despite having been popularised as a private chatting app, WhatsApp is the communication method of choice for over 2 billion people. So, HubSpot developed an in-house native integration for you to connect your WhatsApp Business Account.
Once connected you can manage and reply to any incoming messages in the inbox. Once your WhatsApp Account is connected, incoming messages to your WhatsApp phone number will start a thread in the inbox. If the phone number matches an existing contact in the CRM the thread will automatically be associated with that contact. If not you can either manually associate the thread or create a new contact. WhatsApp threads will appear on the CRM timeline!
New Index UX for Tickets and Deals
Equally important for those managing sales and support records, HubSpot is putting special attention into the UX of the index screen for both deals and tickets. Working with records is a fundamental part of the CRM on mobile, but it's been challenging for those with large numbers of records to find what they are looking for.
HubSpot has completely redesigned the index screens for deals and tickets on Android, supporting up to five pinned Saved Views; changing sort direction (asc/desc) and allowing for the use of Quick Filters. With this update, HubSpot has made these screens more powerful and have resolved an inherent limitation of the previous screen which improves the experience for users with more than 10,000 records.
CMS Hub
Pages API v3
A little bit of a technical update but developers will be over the moon about this one! HubSpot's public Pages APIs have been upgraded to follow our new v3 API standards. With the release of the Pages v3 API HubSpot aims to enhance the usability of their APIs so it easier developers to build on top of their CMS platform. These APIs also follow HubSpot's new design standards and should work just like the rest of their updated APIs.
The new version of the CMS Pages API provides explicit support for creating and managing A/B testing versions of pages, as well as managing multi-language content. The API is built to allow developers to create a functional application or integration quickly and easily, and use many standard HTTP features, like HTTP verbs, which can be understood by many HTTP clients. JSON will be returned in all responses, including errors.
Subtitle-Generating Tool Available for HubSpot Video
For the last couple of years, HubSpot has been working on improving their video-hosting capabilities and, until now, adding subtitles to videos was a clear challenge. A third-party software had to be used in most cases, and that caused for the video editing process to become tedious and unnecessarily long. Subtitles are necessary, they help for content to be accessible for everyone, and needed to be part of their video-tool roadmap.
So, from now on, users will be able to upload a .vtt file to accompany video content. This HubSpot video feature also allows users to choose from several different languages in order to make sure viewers are being served in the language they prefer. You just need to navigate to a video in the Files dashboard, confirm that “Advanced Features” are enabled, and open the “Subtitles” section in the Details panels, selecting the language that is needed. Voila!
Operations Hub
BETA Associations and Data Model Overview
HubSpot is making a great effort to get the Operations Hub up and running with leading data modelling strategies. An area that they have particularly focused on is data overview. Data modelling allows users you to clearly see which associations belong to which object. Available to all HubSpot users, this overview helps users build a stronger foundation for data quality as they scale and, most importantly, is all in one-place.
Data overview is essential when growing because it will simply help you gain a holistic view of your data. Even if the size of your database is reduced, you will be surprised with how easy it is to lose track of how your objects are connected and where your data is being stored, managed, and optimised (if it is being optimised at all!). Not being aware of these elements can be a heavy burden and hinder your growth.
Who Was the Last Person Joining My Lists?
One of my favourite features in HubSpot is their active lists. If you are not familiar with this feature, active lists automatically update their members based on a particular criterion. Records will join the list when they meet the criteria and leave the list when they no longer meet the criteria. A very common example is sending unique marketing emails based on each contact's behaviour and properties.
Because they update automatically, users could often see that a list had changed, that it had more or fewer contacts, but it was difficult to understand how it had changed. Who has been added to a particular list? You can now access this information through the property “7-day change”, through which you can learn who joined your list in the last 7 days! No more guessing, you can have all the information available.
About Insynth
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.