Ainhoa Rodriguez-Muguruza
A new year, a new HubSpot update! At HubSpot, there has certainly not been time to rest. We have started 2023 with one of the most interesting and exciting set of updates, concerning marketing, sales, service, website, and operations. 2023 opens a wide range of opportunities for the built environment and it is important to ensure that your company has the right tech stack to deliver these goals. Are you ready?
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 April 2021, 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 2022 here! If you want to learn about every new feature the platform has brought to light last year, you can find my monthly blog posts below for 2022!
- HubSpot: What is New in January
- HubSpot: What is New in February
- HubSpot: What is New in March
- HubSpot: What is New in April
- HubSpot: What is New in May
- HubSpot: What is New in June
- HubSpot: What is New in July
- HubSpot: What is New in August
- HubSpot: What is New in September
- HubSpot: What is New in October
- HubSpot: What is New in November
- HubSpot: What is New in December
Marketing Hub
#1 [BETA] Optimised Integrations with META for Improved Attribution
Already in 2023, there is no denying that digital marketing is the way into the future. Ensuring that your database and your marketing strategy are supported by strongly managed social media channels is essential, particularly if a little bit (or a lot!) of your budget is being invested into social media advertising, etc. The most popular social media channels currently use are those linked to META technologies and, with that in mind, HubSpot has launched a very interesting update!
The Conversion API has been designed to create and optimise the connection between your marketing data on HubSpot and the different platforms linked to META. This update focuses on Facebook CAPI and its optimisation for forms. You can now send any HubSpot form fill event data back to Meta as a conversion. This is a fantastic opportunity to get a better understanding of your social media outreach and its performance.
This is a BETA, and your portal would need to opt into it if you wanted to use it (we can help with that!).
#2 [BETA] Ads and Automation Available for Starter Users
Ad management has been a clear revelation this year for most HubSpot users. If you are not familiar with this feature, it simply allows you to connect your Ads with your database, to guarantee that reporting is spot on! After connecting your Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and LinkedIn Ads accounts to HubSpot, your ad performance data, such as impressions and clicks, will sync with HubSpot and you will be able to analyse ad campaign data from each of your connected ad accounts.
This was already a really popular and well utilised feature but, until now, was only available to Professional or below. And that has now changed! Marketing Hub Starter users can now create simple workflows in ad campaign creation and management. Starter users can now benefit from the powerful automation tool within HubSpot, sending a follow-up email after getting an ad interaction from a particular lead, all from their Ad Campaign Creation and Management dashboard.
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
#1 Customise Your Goals and Forecast to Your Fiscal Year
Well, this is a big one, and I know of a few of our clients that are really happy to see this update! From last year, HubSpot users with Professional and Enterprise subscriptions were able to set their fiscal year to segment your data based on their company calendar. Regardless of whether it matches the normal year timeframe, they could change it on their company settings to better adapt to their activity.
This feature has gotten even better! Users can now also track goals and forecasts according to their account's fiscal year, even if, again, it doesn't align with the default January to December time frame. This update also extends to CRM records, since users can use their fiscal year date to filter CRM records. They can also use their fiscal year to filter reports that were created using the custom report builder and that use a date picker property.
#2 Required Associations Now Available
Association labels were an important update last year, when not only we could associate Contacts, Companies, Deals, and Tickets, but we could also reflect in what degree these were associated with each other. So, for example, if you were to associate three contacts to the same deal, one of them could be associated as an architect, the other one as a contractor, and the last one as the end-user itself!
This leads to an improved and more streamlined way of understanding associations and the valuable data that knowing how a particular contact connects with a particular deal might have (you could even add people as introducers or influencers!). With that in mind, HubSpot has enabled admins to set associations as visible or required when a record is created, making sure that whoever is creating that record includes as much information as possible.
Service Hub
[BETA] #1 Pipeline Specific “Create Record” Forms
Users in Professional and Enterprise portals can benefit from several pipelines, either for sales or for service. This is only recommended when there are service and sales lines that are inherently distinct and that could not be managed using the same pipeline. For example, you could use the same pipeline to manage the sales for product A type 1 and for product A type 2, but you might want different was for one-off sales and recurring contracts.
In their object settings, admins can now define which properties are presented to a user as visible or required when a record is created for each of those pipelines. Admins can set conditional logic based on deal, ticket, or custom object pipeline and can configure the “Create Record” form so that depending on which pipeline a user selects, different properties appear as visible or required to users. It’s a gamechanger!
This is a BETA, and your portal would need to opt into it if you wanted to use it (we can help with that!).
#2 GDPR Notifications Once a Contact has been Deleted
GDPR is a topic that we cannot ever disregard. It is currently updating, and we need to ensure that we are compliant in every single way possible with GDPR regulations. A surprising number of people are not aware that, if you are a Super Admin or have Edit account defaults permissions enabled, you can turn on GDPR in your HubSpot account settings. This is a centralized place to automatically enable GDPR-compliant features throughout your HubSpot account.
Another useful feature of this tool is the GDPR delete functionality. GDPR delete functionality is available to all accounts and gives you the choice to either delete a contact and keep the option to restore within 90 days or delete the contact fully to comply with GDPR. As a recent update to this tool, when a user permanently deletes a contact, they can send proof to an email address of their choice for record keeping.
CMS Hub
#1 Session Theme No Longer Available on New HubSpot Portals
This is a sad update since this CMS theme was very popular one! The Session theme was released when CMS Hub was born in 2020. Session was one of their first default themes, until Growth became the new universal default in 2021. Existing HubSpot portals will continue to have access to the Session theme, but it will not receive any additional features or enhancements. HubSpot has guaranteed they will continue to fix any bugs that may appear in the future on the Session theme.
Session stopped being available on the 9th of January, and it will no longer be part of the set of default themes that content creators can use to build website pages without needing to modify the base theme. Session will no longer be updated with new features and will only receive updates as they relate to security, accessibility, and bug fixes. If you are unsure about how this might impact you or your website, do not hesitate to contact us.
#2 New Feature on the Slack to HubSpot Integration
Did you know you can sync your Slack to your HubSpot? Slack is a messaging app for business that connects people to the information that they need. It's meant for teams and workplaces can be used across multiple devices and platforms. Due to the popularity of this app, HubSpot quickly developed an integration between the platform and Slack, to ensure the data was constantly synchronised. If you use Slack and HubSpot, you should certainly consider integrating them.
With the HubSpot Slack integration, you can use slash commands to search for and share a HubSpot CRM contact or provide feedback to the HubSpot team about the Slack integration, all without leaving Slack. You can also convert messages into tasks and, just recently, into notes on HubSpot! You can attach converted Slack messages and notes and keep teammates updated about any records associated through the app.
Operations Hub
#1 Improved Dashboard Filters
Reporting on HubSpot is a huge gamechanger for those who had adopted the platform. The reporting available is compelling, intuitive, and user-friendly, allowing for users to report on not only the information that they have stored on HubSpot, but also the information that the platform is pulling through from integrations and connected software, such as invoicing tools, project management tools, inventory software, etc.
Once records are set up, you can gather them on dashboards. Until now, dashboards were quite interactive! Users could add, swap, and remove reports, and they could also use a few filters to make the experience a little bit more relevant but… it was not quite cutting it! So, from now, you can use advanced filters, similar to those that you can use on lists and on the contact/company database, to make sure you are reporting on exactly what you need.
#2 Custom Report Builder has Quick Actions Now Available
One last update for the Operations Hub (this month was not a chill one at HubSpot!). Reporting is getting a glow up, and not only when it comes to filters. When building reports in the custom report builder, only available for those with Professional or Enterprise portals, users will now have the ability to view information about a property before adding it to a report visualization. This will allow users make sure that they have chosen the right property without doubt.
When in the custom report editor, users will now see a new quick actions menu when engaging with the properties in the left-hand panel. This new menu not only them you to add fields more quickly to the report but will also automatically take them to the corresponding section of the editor following their selection. This is the perfect excuse for anyone to start exploring the report features!
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.