We just came back from INBOUND22 and, wow! HubSpot has definitely given us a few surprises. Whilst no products were released, it is clear that HubSpot is maturing and it is stablishing itself as an end-to-end one-platform CRM software that can work in tandem with other integrations. As HubSpot users, INBOUND22 gave us the confidence that we are in safe hands.
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 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, and August updates.
Improving the way in which SEO wins are reported on HubSpot, the platform now connects with Google Search Console! Instead of toggling back and forth between Google Search Console and HubSpot to see your data on your pages' organic search metrics, you will be able to visualize it on your portal, giving you an effortless view of your overall search performance. This dashboard will display high-level GSC metrics: impressions, clicks, clickthrough rate, and average position.
Each metric will include an indicator of how it is trending compared to the previous time period, so you can assess your progress with a glance. Underneath, HubSpot will show a graph of your site's overall performance for the selected metric over time. You can also select up to 10 individual pages and see how their performance for a given metric compares to one another. But remember, to use the tool, you will need to install the Google Search Console integration from the marketplace!
With automation being one of the greatest assets of HubSpot, they are looking at how to make the most of the tools available. With that in mind, they are introducing a new type of workflow delay that lets users delay a workflow until a specific date or until the date value in a date property, in any object type workflow. This action will be available on workflows under the tags of “Add the Delay Until a Data Action”.
Users can choose whether to delay a particular action until a calendar date, until an event, until a particular date property (e.g., close date, invoice date, etc.). This provides users with a greater control over when emails are sent, tasks are assigned, or sales reps get notified. It will also guarantee that you are kept on the loop about customer actions such as website visits, email opens, or social media interactions.
Multi-channel communication is key for success. HubSpot is aware that users are talking to prospects through every possible channel and there needs to be a way for them to reflect that on their contact record. With a new update to the contact record layout, users can now track any kind of activity, even if it is not an email, a call, or a meeting. Logging one of the new activity types will update properties on the record such as the last activity date.
HubSpot has added several options, like logging a SMS, a LinkedIn message, a WhatsApp message, even a postal email! You will also be able to use the new activities in other HubSpot tools such as reporting, list filtering, workflows, and scoring criteria on contacts, companies, and deals. Search is not currently supported for new logged activity types, but HubSpot plans to add support for this functionality in the future.
Multiple sales pipelines are recommended for businesses that have different service lines or that have their sales managed by different teams. Until now, those teams had to roll with pipelines that, even if independent, shared a common layout. Whilst they could make it work, there was a real need for pipeline-specific customisation. Users are now able to configure each of the pipeline boards to view the most relevant card properties for each.
This feature gives the user greater flexibility to customise what appears on cards in the board view, by pipeline, and will help improve the productivity of each team by prioritising the information that is most relevant from their workflow. Admin users will be able to use the settings are a to configure up to four properties to appear on the cards for each pipeline’s board view.
There are many cases where specific Forms need to set a Lifecycle Stage other than the default. Imagine that you have a form on your website for job applicants; it is clear that they are not leads! You can now have greater control and flexibility over how you manage your Contacts and Companies and orchestrate hand off between Marketing and Sales. The defaults will set the Lifecycle Stage for all new records. You can now override this on Forms from the Options tab.
Users can also update the Lifecycle Stage property in a number of ways (for example, manually on the Contact or Company record, or automatically through workflows and imports). This update is particularly helpful now that lifecycle stages can be fully customised, making sure that the information on your CRM fully reflects the journey your prospects go through.
The record page sidebar gives users a quick glance of associations, tools, and integrations. But not all teams need to see the same information. With that in mind, HubSpot has allowed users to configure the sidebar by team so that each team can focus on the information they need without being distracted or confused by irrelevant properties. Once saved, all users on the selected team(s) will see the customized right sidebar.
The right sidebar can also be customised per user or per account, which can further improve the capacity your team has of customising the way you look at and manage data.
To improve the experience developers have working on HubSpot, the platform is moving towards a model that allows for the developer to have more agency. This involves allowing developers connect third-party apps to their HubSpot portal to sync data in both directions. This improvement comes together with a new GitHub integration for HubSpot that will allow developers to easily store and track their codebase and collaborate with other teams.
As the developing capabilities of HubSpot become more and more complex, it is also important to guarantee that developers have available tools that would allow them to debug any issues that might arise. With that in mind, HubSpot is introducing a new CRM mid-panel card logging system that will give developers the chance to monitor how their apps are functioning and whether there are any inconsistencies in them.
Developers will also be able to enter the backend of the portal and customise every single element of your records, making sure that the way you view your data is fully tailored to how you interact with it. The new CRM Card Builder tool will provide users with an interactive interface that can be easily customised either on default or on custom objects through JSON payloads. This is a real game changer!
As part of the new releases that were launched during INBOUND22, HubSpot presented their new Data Model Overview. This model will allow users to access their data in a more personalised way, optimising how they interact with their CRM. This model will help users customise how their data is structured and organised in their CRM, generating reports that truly reflect the information that you need to report on daily.
The data model overview is a learning and planning tool that visually represents the system of data that is stored in your portal. Users can track the health of this data through the Data Quality Command Centre, an additional tool that gives users, at-a-glance, insights on the health of all their data on HubSpot. This tool will identify issues like unused properties, data sync bottlenecks, formatting issues, duplicates, etc.
Following HubSpot’s efforts to ensure that the data that is on your database is healthy and clean, they have also released the tool of Property Validations that would allow to enforce rules for certain properties that govern what users can and cannot save as a property value. This will lead to a more reliable database that teams can look at consistently and coherently, helping also with the reporting of that data.
Once this is standardised, HubSpot will also recommend automated fixes! With the new AI-powered formatting recommendations, users can set rules that automatically fix certain formatting issues and guarantee that all the records in your database have a consistent inputting model. Catching those issues in time will help speed up processes and reduce that amount of manual input that is needed to keep your database clean.
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