Last week myself and our MD, David Roberts, were in Dublin for the EMEA
HubSpot partner summit. Hosted at Croke Park, this annual event brings together the top
HubSpot partner agencies from around Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Over the two days, HubSpot unveiled a remarkable series of new features and developments - some of which are available immediately, some of which will be coming very soon.
So here's a run down of the 7 key takeaways from the event:
1) Grow Your Business With Fast, Measurable & Automated Customer Service
You can grow your business by generating more leads, and by converting more new customers - but you can also grow your business by making your customers happier.
Happier customers means higher spend, more repeat purchases, more referrals, more case studies, more positive online reviews, and so on. HubSpot have recognised this, and have moved from a growth model based on a funnel, to this - the flywheel:
The latest part of their product suite is the Service Hub, a brand new product designed to make your customer service faster and easier for your customers, and also more measurable and more automated.
So what's included? Service Hub provides three main features:
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Tickets. Your customers can submit a help request via your website or a dedicated support email address, and a 'ticket' will automatically be created. These tickets then act like deals, they can be assigned to specific members of the team, allowing your business to track it through to resolution . This can be linked to automation - for example customers can receive automated responses to let them know their request has been received, automatically assign tickets to the relevant team members, and send a survey request to ask for feedback once the request has been marked as resolved.
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Knowledge Hub. A knowledge hub is like an easily searchable blog but for FAQs and videos for customers. Think of all the times you answer the same types of questions from your customers - the answers to these questions can be answered in article and video format. This would become a fantastic resource for your customers and make it quick and easy for them to find answers to their questions - no waiting on hold, no phone calls, no waiting for a response through emaill. If you are a HubSpot user, you may have used the HubSpot academy, in which case you'll have seen the power of creating lots of content for your existing customers.
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Feedback/Surveys. You can easily send NPS surveys and automated feedback request emails for tickets once completed or marked as resolved - and this can be linked to automation. For example, if someone gives you a score of 9-10, you could send an automated email asking for an online review. Similarly, if someone gives you a score of 0-3, it could trigger a task for a senior person to review the customer account.
To find out more about the Service Hub go to https://www.hubspot.com/products/service
2) HubSpot is becoming a platform you can run your business on.
HubSpot has always had a large base of third party apps and software programmes. HubSpot's aim for the future is to enable you to run your whole business on their platform.
Below is a series of slides showing the sheer number of marketing software programmes available today (for the full graphic go to https://chiefmartec.com/2018/04/marketing-technology-landscape-supergraphic-2018/):
In this section of the event, the following graph was also displayed, showing the growth of the number of software subscriptions per business - now at 18 on average:
This means that we're all using more software programmes, and the more we need to have them working together, not in isolation. So here is the list of programmes HubSpot already integrates with:
It's an impressive graphic - and this is just the start, over the months and years ahead we are going to see more and more programmes added to the list.
3) HubSpot have done a great job on GDPR
HubSpot have been working on GDPR since the early announcements - here is the timeline of the way they have responded to the new legislation:
- GDPR toggle - there is now a simple switch in the HubSpot settings which can be turned on to allow GDPR features to be switched on.
- New 'lawful basis' contact property - there is a new contact property called 'lawful basis to communicate' where you can select your rationale for contacting each contact in your database.
- Subscription types - email types have now changed to subscription types, to allow users to opt out of specific subscriptions clearly and easily.
- Notice & consent - there is a new form field which allows business owners to collect explicit consent to communicate and to process data, or simply to provide a notice of use of data via legitimate interest as well.
- Get consent via email - HubSpot have created an 'insert subscription confirmation link' feature for emails, allowing you to send emails to your list and ask them to confirm their consent easily.
- Cookie consent pop up.
- Unsubscribe links will now also be included in sales emails e.g. Templates and Sequences, as well as marketing emails.
- Ability to perform a GDPR-compliant deletion of someone's data, as well as to export their data if they request it.
4) The Future Of Online Lead Generation Is Live Chat - Fully Automated
Most marketers love online chat - an opportunity to quickly chat directly with website visitors. However the question or problem that always gets raised is having someone who will be available to man the online chat - most small businesses don't have the manpower, and therefore their online chat is mostly unavailable.
Automated bots solve that problem - HubSpot have been working on bots for several years and now have this functionality available in some portals. It allows you to plan a sequence of questions and comments for your online chat bot which can be fully personalised and most importantly fully automated. It also makes it fast for your customers and prospects - much faster than waiting for a call back, and faster than filling a form in.
Done well, it will allow you to have one to one conversations with your web visitors at scale.
5) HubSpot and Facebook are working closely together
Many of our B2B clients dismiss Facebook, assuming that they should focus on LinkedIn - as, in their view, Facebook is not a 'professional' network.
But Facebook is the media that the majority of your customers spend the most time on. Imagine twenty years ago being able to run a TV advert on a prime time TV show, and the impact that would have on your business - well Facebook is the dominant media platform of today. The difference with advertising on Facebook is that you don't need to spend the millions you'd need to advertise on TV, you can spend money to advertise only to a highly targeted audience, for a fraction of the cost. That's what Facebook provides now for business to business.
HubSpot are leaning in to this. They already have a publishing integration with Facebook, integrated Facebook 'lead ads', and Facebook ads integration.
HubSpot have also been included in Facebook Workplace (
https://www.facebook.com/workplace), plus HubSpot are now a badged
Facebook marketing partner. This is unique among similar software companies - no other marketing automation/CRM company has been included as a Facebook Marketing Partner at this stage.
We can expect to see more from this relationship, but a big new feature is the introduction of Facebook Messenger in HubSpot. Growing numbers of consumers want to talk to brands and businesses using Facebook Messenger, and this is now possible using HubSpot.
You can add 'Chat with us on Messenger' calls to action to your website, and automate your chats using the new bots feature, recording the entire conversation into the contact record.
6) E-commerce Improvements
We'll often recommend alternatives to HubSpot for E-commerce websites, but HubSpot have now made a few significant advances in E-commerce. The first is their full integration with Shopify, the cloud-based E-commerce platform. The second is their E-commerce Bridge, which will make it possible for other developers to easily create similar integrations with other platforms.
7) The Rolling Stones Are Still Touring!
The partner summit was held at Croke Park stadium, Dublin. And while we were there, the stadium was busy preparing for the main event of the week, The Rolling Stones in concert. In fact, we got a sneak peak at the septuagenarian rockers warming up during an afternoon coffee break:
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JDR Group are an
inbound marketing agency, and one of only a handful of Platinum certified
HubSpot partner agencies in the UK. If you have any questions about the new features or new developments from HubSpot, give us a call on 01332 343281 or drop me an email. Otherwise from myself and Dave, thanks for reading, and happy HubSpotting!