Ainhoa Rodriguez-Muguruza
Just a few weeks away from finishing the year, HubSpot has stepped on the gas and revealed some of the most awaited platform updates. It is clear that HubSpot is setting the pace for 2022 full of news that will keep the industry of marketing evolving. Learn how HubSpot can help you stay ahead of your competitors, making sure you are always using the newest tools!
If you have not read my blogs before, my name is Ainhoa, and I am Insynth’s Inbound Marketing Specialist, or, in other words, their in-house HubSpot expert. Since last April, I have been monthly gathering the platforms updates so you can make sure that you are not missing anything from HubSpot. Time is of the essence, and we know you do not have much to spare, so let’s dive in!
- 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
Marketing Hub
#1 Collaboration Tools: Commenting Upgrades
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!
Available to all Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise users, you can now add comment threads directly into forms and campaigns (emails soon!) that are being edited. You can drop a comment anywhere on the page and you would also be able to view it within the sidebar. You can choose if you want to show or hide the comment bubbles, so you can better focus.
#2 Reporting on Multiple Business Units
Business units are a very recent HubSpot update, only live since last September. This feature targets groups that work across multiple brands, allowing them to fully customise their marketing activities based on the brand while managing all the assets and reporting from the very same account. No duplicated files, not mistaken processes, everything in one single place.
And, just to make sure that this feature was as compelling as possible, HubSpot has now enabled reports to be filtered through brand, so you can know exactly what is happening in each of your brand units. You will be able to set up a dashboard to quickly overview how many leads each of your brands is attracting or how many deals each of your sales reps are closing.
Sales Hub
#1 Deals with Shared Credit
In the past, I have mentioned that HubSpot is very good at paying attention to what their users feel that the platform is missing. They are not afraid of criticism and aim to solve some of the issues flagged by their community with each update. That was the case with shared credit within sales teams, an issue that prevented companies from properly incentivising their reps.
Only available for Sales Hub Enterprise users, you can now split the ownership of the deals with up to 5 users so they can share the credit of a deal that they have closed together. For that, you will need to have super admin permissions on your portal. You can either split the deal evenly or base it on percentages that you customise for each of your salespeople.
#2 Report based on Fiscal Year
Reports are one of my favourite features from HubSpot, especially those using custom date ranges! When it comes to reporting, there is no one-size-fits-all, and it is important that your CRM allows you to report on time periods that go beyond weeks, months, or years. That is where options like “rolling date range” reports come in! And, let me tell you, they are game-changers…
All HubSpot Professional users can now apply a “custom fiscal year” setting to their reports on the custom report builder! This is particularly useful to companies that do not necessarily report on a calendar year basis but on a fiscal year. With this feature, it is easier to customise your dashboards and to make sure that your reports reflect exactly the information that you need from your company.
Service Hub
#1 Customer Portal
With this update, I cannot hide my excitement… This is massive! HubSpot is allowing all HubSpot Service Hub Professional and Enterprise portals to create a customer portal. A customer portal is a login-only portal that customers can access to view, open, and reply to their support enquiries or complaints. There, they will have full control of their interactions with your brand.
In terms of providing support, this is particularly important. When speaking with our clients, we like to underline the essential role customer service can have in the likelihood of a deal to close. Being as transparent as possible with your customers’ queries and guaranteeing they are getting a promptly and relevant reply can truly make a difference and earn you a long-term customer.
#2 Report on Conversation Intelligence
If you are a HubSpot Sales Hub or Service Hub Enterprise user, it is likely that you are already enjoying some of the benefits of the feature of conversation intelligence (CI). This software uses artificial intelligence to automatically record, transcribe, and analyse hours of sales calls, with the goal of identifying keywords and conversation topics that create sales opportunities.
You can now get insight into what was talked about on sales calls and report on their contents at scale to easily find opportunities. For that, you will need to identify your “tracked terms” and set your HubSpot CI to start looking for those tracked terms. If a call mentions one of those terms, HubSpot will report about it! Pre-set CI reports can be found in the Report Library.
Operations Hub
#1 Chronological Display of Upcoming Activities
When our clients start using HubSpot, they are always impressed by one feature: the contact records. Having the possibility to have all the information about a client in one single screen regardless of the channel used to complete that interaction or the rep that was in charge of getting in touch with that particular lead makes a huge difference for those looking for an efficient CRM.
And, among some of our clients’ favourite features, it is the ability to set up “upcoming activities”, meaning, interactions that you have scheduled with a prospect in the future. From now, the timeline of activities in the upcoming section on CRM records will display chronologically and not in the order in which the interactions were scheduled, for easier reference.
#2 Another 8 HubSpot-Built Data Sync Integrations
Since HubSpot launched Operations Hub last April, they have developed 82 HubSpot built data sync integrations that are available for all HubSpot users on their Marketplace. This November, they have added 14 more integrations, connecting HubSpot with software like Emma, Jobadder, Pike13, ShipStation, Scoro, Contacts+, Act!Premium, Wave, Kustomer, Recurly, Zoho Inventory, Bitrix24, Membrain, and VTiger CRM.
Considering that HubSpot launched the Operations Hub with 25 integrations available, the growth of the platform seems undeniable. Data sync, the two-way, real-time syncing engine behind Operations Hub, makes it simple to communicate between software, making sure that all your tools are connected and fully synchronise and, consequently, avoiding any data mismatches.
CMS Hub
#1 Sandboxes
Have you ever heard the term “sandbox” before? In a nutshell, sandboxes are a part of your portal that users can access to edit and change elements of their site without impacting their website or their portal. Basically, it is like a simulation of your HubSpot portal. Sandbox accounts mimic the features, functionalities, and elements of their default portal, but without any risks.
Through this new feature, HubSpot is providing all Enterprise users with a safe space within their portals where users can experiment and test changes without making any permanent alterations to the actual portal. This is particularly useful if you have a new member joining the team or if you are looking at testing something new in your portal.
#2 Advanced Settings for Publishing Pages
With more people choosing HubSpot’s CMS to host their website, HubSpot has continued increasing the tools available within the platform for website editions and publishing. It is important for editors to not only be able to edit their current content but to be able to plan in advance the content that they would like displayed on their website on a specific day and time.
Now, you will be able to schedule updates to pages that are already published so you can plan ahead page updates without leaving their publication for the very last minute (if a sale goes live at midnight, you do not need to stay up to hit the “Publish” button anymore!). Alternatively, you can also schedule a page to be unpublished. You can also scale your efforts and publish/unpublish pages in bulk!
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.