HubSpot Company & Product News Blog

As you may have heard, HubSpot headquarters is moving a few blocks from our current location to a new office at 25 First Street, still in Cambridge.

We are fortunate enough to have grown a lot since we first started in a single room at the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), back in 2006.  We now have more than 120 employees, taking up much of the fifth floor of our building, and we are still growing fast.

Our gracious hosts at CIC have supported us the whole way, growing with us and modifying their services as needed.  In fact, they have been quite scalable and flexible, just like we try to be. Tim, Dougan and the rest of the CIC staff have been great.  But ultimately, theirs is an incubator for startups, most often small ones, and there is a finite economy of scale to our arrangement.

HubSpot, however, is committed to staying in Cambridge.  We know where home is, and we want to continue creating great jobs in this area.  It's becoming a global hub of new marketing activity, and we are happy to be a part of it.

Thankfully, we didn't have to look far anyway.  Over on First Street, not only do we have a great new space, but we already have several fun neighbors, like ZipCar and Permabit.  We will have room to grow, at least for a couple of years, with options to expand further.  The space itself has much exposed brick, cool wooden beams, plenty of natural sunlight and a quirky personality that suits HubSpot's culture well.

We'd like to extend special thanks to two partners who helped us make the decision about our move.  First are our real-estate advisors, T3 Advisors, who have been instrumental not just in finding the perfect space for us, but also in ironing out and negotiating a lot of details.  Second are our architects, arch3s, who have been awesome to work with, have a great sense of design and crank out things quickly, while being very respectful of our budget.  It's been a pleasure working with Roy Hirshland at T3 specifically, and Vin and Todd at arch3s.

As readers of this blog know, HubSpot is a transparent company. Now that our lease is officially signed, we will post periodic updates here, with things like pictures, constructions updates and FAQs, as applicable.  We have a few months to go, since our move is scheduled for August 1, 2010.

If you have any questions or thoughts about our move, please don't hesitate to ask.  We also hope to have a little opening party, so if you're interested in that, please let us know ;)

More on HubSpot's move: "HubSpot Leaving Kendall Square; Next Stop: Lechmere" Xconomy

We recently ran a contest on Google Buzz asking people to answer the question "How will Google Buzz affect your inbound marketing strategy?"

Two of the answers we thought were best ended up being quite creative and funny poems.  Here they are:

Winner: Leslie Jones

My gmail caught the Buzz
I'm no longer surfing the Wave

If I play my 'following' cards right,
Buzz could be my new inbound slave

I'm sure Google's Mad Men are working
To find a way that marketers can shine

We all know Buzz's version of the Fan Page
Simply cannot be too far behind

Facebook allows us to Like anything,
While for Buzz it's only the topics

If I can devise a way to make Buzz my Hub
This spot will be hot like the tropics

All inbound marketing must lead to one place
It must come in consistently - at a navigable pace

Buzz must find a way to be top of mind
Above The Wave, Facebook, LinkedIn and Myspace

Through your Gmail - that's how!
Built-in followers - wow!

But do we have time for all of these now?

HubSpot are the ones who have made the Buzz fun
If it weren't for them I may be elsewhere

So to those of you saying ‘time will tell'
Sit down with me, and secrets I'll bear

Now think...think...think...how'd you get here?

Through a blog, or Twitter, some other social end of the sphere?

Each step that you take
For better links to make

Your customers will follow,
And just like us they will take. And take. And take!

Now your inbound trickle, has become an inbound lake!
Full of fish that may bite, but an incentive you must make!

A deadline on this contest Hubspot smartly did not name,
Now all the comments here can grow and mold their fame...

Patience eager guinea pigs...
For the Mac
One soon shall claim.

Runner Up: Madeleine LeFreileux-Weber

(Haikus about Google Buzz)

Clients think us weird
Tweeting and stalking all day
Follow me, over here!

Enter the new guy
Fashionably late, duh.
OMG so cool!

Automatic hype
what's that buzzing sound now?
Gee, mail is old school

Maybe get buzzed
We overdose on new toy
Buzz killed in crash!

Buzz lightyear rescue
New toy called "zzz" arrives - fun!
ZZZZZzz u l8r dood

Congratulations Leslie!  Nice work Madeleine!

The HubSpot Service Marketplace is adding 1 - 2 new services per month.  Last week, we announced a Do-Social-Media-Marketing-For-Me service and today, a Lead Nurturing package to help busy marketers and business owners convert more of their leads into customers.

What is this Service?

Inbound Marketing and HubSpot Certified Partners will create custom lead nurturing campaign(s) for HubSpot customers and non-customers starting at $100 per campaign.   A single lead nurturing campaign includes:

• One 30 minute lead nurturing strategy session by an Inbound Marketing and HubSpot certified Partner
• One set of emails (up to 5 different emails sent on Day 1, 3, 5, 10, 15) drafted and set to auto-send to your leads upon conversion
  

Why this Service?

Lead nurturing won't help you get new leads (you need to Get Found and Convert for that).  It helps you increase the likelihood that your leads turn into customers.

1. You've Got to Show Some Love to Get Some (customers).  Don't let leads languish in the queue.  Research proves that following up with interested leads in the 1st week of conversion increases likelihood that they buy.  Send automatic followup emails with more information, links, other offers, etc. to keep your leads engaged and learning even when you haven't called them back yet.  When you do reach them, you'll have that much more to discuss!
2. Talk to Your Most Qualified Leads When They're Most Ready to Buy.  Make the most of your and your staff's time.  Walk your leads down the buying path in an automated way by providing them information and prompts before a human even touches them.  According to Marketing Sherpa, 70% of your leads will end up buying something from you or one of your competitors, but they won't do it right away!  Automatic emails and offers let you keep progressing those leads down your funnel and stay top-of-mind so that when they are ready to buy, there's a good chance they'll buy from you, and not one of your competitors who has not shown them love along the way.
   
3. Measure Results by tracking click-thru and unsubscribe rates.  Lead nurturing is easy to test to see whether your leads are engaged, close quickly and most often.

About the HubSpot Service Marketplace

Available services now include Call to Action designs, Landing Page Designs, Lead Nurturing, Social Media Marketing, Blog Writing, Video Production, Website Design and Do-Inbound-Marketing-For-Me.

Learn about the mission and details of the HubSpot Service Marketplace by reading Brian Halligan's Transforming the Marketing Services Industry.

This is post two in a series chronicling the inbound marketing journey of HubSpot customer, Randy Chavers of RE/MAX Metro Atlanta (RMA), from his early decisions about inbound marketing, through selection, setup and success with HubSpot!

We are sharing how his story unfolds, and will present most of this material interview style, even if that means blogging about any rough patches along the way.  If you are just joining us now check out the whole series to follow Randy's Inbound Marketing Journey. 

Randy, RMA set aggressive business goals for new leads, client retention and agent productivity; once you decided on inbound marketing, how did you research ways to implement the strategy?

I did research for a year just learning about the different methodologies and then the tools, including attending the Inman Technology Conference to see who is advancing and innovating in the area of real estate technologies. 

I found that most of the available website and web marketing options being targeted to real estate companies looked the same.  Their approaches were very similar to one another - the main differences were how technical or feature rich they were.  The commonality was that they all relied on broadcast or outbound communication.  I knew I needed something that used a different non-broadcast approach because we couldn't afford to become part of the noise that get's TIVO'd or filtered out.

I knew we needed to be more proactive around search engine optimization (SEO) and started my research there.  I found out about some of HubSpot's free tools like website grader, twitter grader and others.  They were interesting enough that I started attending free webinars that let me be part of a conversation.  I felt like HubSpot could really advise me on my inbound marketing issues - and not only did I like what I heard, but I also wanted to emulate HubSpot's approach and learn from a company that was doing inbound marketing well. 

HubSpot's was the only solution that I thought could help me earn confidence with my potential clients by providing education and information of value that positions RMA as the ‘go-to agency' once they are ready to buy.

Why did you ultimately choose HubSpot? 

Beyond HubSpot's apparent expertise, the ultimate benefit is that HubSpot gives me a single, integrated and easy to use platform to do all my inbound marketing.  I considered cobbling together a variety of other tools and knew that there was no way that I could create platform or keep up with it - there are a lot of components that you could kludge together -  but they would be hard to integrate and wouldn't have a very friendly end user experience.

The fact that the tools are laid out with a roadmap, built in wizards that incorporate best practices and training to help me be successful was an unexpected bonus that I didn't see in almost any other solution.

Along the way I learned a few painful lessons:

• Many ‘web marketing tools' are still focused on traffic, not conversion or helping you actually sell! Eyeballs don't help in the real estate business.
• Most offerings didn't embody built in best practices - they are tools and you have to figure out how to use them yourself.
• You can start with a ‘small' investment to build a site with a blog, only to find out that if you want SEO ... add money ... you want to capture lead intelligence ... add money. And it all starts to add up really fast.

Now that I am using HubSpot I really like how, for example, when creating a new page it auto-prompts you to optimize the page or blog post.  It lets me focus on my message while relying on a sort of ‘paint by numbers for inbound marketing' to ensure I do all the right things to get found and convert leads.

Were there any technical limitations that you uncovered?

As a real estate agency, the ability to integrate an IDX [MLS 3^rd party vendors information broker) is crucial.  I'll admit, this wasn't a seamless process, but working with our provider Ihomefinder.com who was very helpful and with the team at HubSpot support we were able to resolve the integration.  In fact, I am not sure Al ever goes home!  But, now that we've done a full integration, I expect that it'll be that much easier for the next HubSpot customer who is looking to do something similar.

Coming Soon ...

In our next post, we'll share how Randy's on-boarding with Inbound Marketing Consultant Lucy kick started the really interesting parts of this story ...

Check out the entire RE/MAX Metro Atlanta Inbound Marketing Journey Series. 

Image credits: Leaky Tiki

Today, HubSpot unveiled a new study conducted by a student at MIT Sloan, on the ROI of HubSpot. The report is now available at www.hubspot.com/roi.

The study, comprised of two parts, is based on an aggregate of 800 customers' actual traffic and lead data tracked by HubSpot, as well as a qualitative survey of more than 200 HubSpot customers.  Overall, the study confirmed that HubSpot customers achieve dramatic increases in traffic and leads within the first year of use.

A few highlights from the study:

• HubSpot customers get 4.2 times more leads after 5 months of use
• Customers experienced lead increases ranging from 25% more leads up to 760% more leads depending on how many leads they were capturing when they first set up HubSpot
• Customers who did not capture leads prior to using HubSpot reported getting more than 50 leads per month within a year
• 9 out of 10 respondents said they would recommend HubSpot to a friend or colleague.
• SEO, blogging & social media were cited as the top ways HubSpot helped improve traffic, leads, and sales.

Read the full 2010 HubSpot ROI study here.

To learn more about how successful HubSpot customers are using HubSpot's software and advice to advance their businesses, please check out some of our customer case studies.

Last month, Brian Halligan's article on Transforming the Marketing Services Industry introduced the beta version of the HubSpot Service Marketplace, a place where anyone (HubSpot customers or not) can hire marketing services.  Today, we've added a new service, Do-Social-Media-Marketing-For-Me, to help busy marketers and business owners do internet and social media marketing.

What is this Service?

Inbound Marketing and HubSpot Certified Partners can implement a range of social media marketing, including:

• Developing a social media strategy
• Setting up social media accounts and profiles
• Monitoring social media mentions about your brand and industry
• Participating in social media conversations
• Building your social network
  

Why this Service?

1. Social media is at the core of inbound marketing and the next phase of marketing on the web.  It is where people's eyeballs (and wallets!) are these days.  Participating helps you understand and influence your audience's needs, AND social media drives traffic, leads and links.  It may also fluff your pillows and help you stay regular too.
2. There's doing it... and there's doing it right.  Everyone knows they should be doing social media marketing.  Everyone's desperate to start.  But too often, it's easy to do it blindly, indiscriminantly and by rote.  Putting up a Facebook Fanpage will not guarantee you face-time; it takes more than a couple of tweets to get the masses all atwitter.  Not all watering holes are equally valuable to you and each has their own set of norms.  We encourage you to do it yourself (HubSpot has a free social media playbook and 14-week social mediasphere webinar for customers) but experts can help you make the most of your time and efforts.
3. Your ROI on social media is actually measurable.  Social media marketing is not just a black hole into which you pump $ and effort with uncertain returns.  We have home renovations and kids for that.  If you are a HubSpot customer, log into your HubSpot every day and view the traffic, leads, customers and reach you're getting from the social media marketing service.  If you are not a HubSpot customer, pick your Partner based on their record of producing results for other buyers (as represented by the HubSpot auto-calc Customer Happiness Index for each Partner).  All of the Partners on the HubSpot Service Marketplace are inbound marketing and HubSpot certified so they do social media marketing in the context of inbound marketing and generating measurable returns.

Let us know your thoughts on this service or any others.  Have a service you'd like to see offered?  Suggest one and get it for free if we launch your idea.

Current HubSpot Service Marketplace offerings include Call to Action designs, Landing Page designs, Lead Nurturing campaigns, Social Media marketing, Blog Writing, Video Production, Website Redesign and ongoing Do-Inbound-Marketing-For-Me help.

Urban Interact, Inc. will hold their Annual Social Business Boot Camp, a conference designed to help companies build their social media efforts to better support business objectives, on March 4th, 2010 in Dallas, TX. The one-day conference will present emerging marketing trends that savvy marketers are currently using to successfully increase sales and generate qualified leads. All proceeds raised from the event will benefit the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Rick Burnes will present HubSpot's strategy along with the Amazon best-selling book Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs, a copy of which will go to every guest. Shama Kabani, President of The Marketing Zen Group, will also present and discuss her book The Zen of Social Media Marketing alongside Rick. Additional segments of the conference will include personal branding, developing an effective social media policy for your company, and an open forum discussion led by an all-star social media panel. The panel will feature leading companies who will share their secrets about leveraging social media to boost company sales and lead generation, as well as answer questions from the audience.

Find out more information about the conference!

Register for Social Business Boot Camp!

It's true! There are lots of ways you can do inbound marketing. However, at HubSpot, we work hard to give our customers "the whole package" to make their inbound marketing easy.  

Here's a cute video starring two folks on our marketing team. It will help answer the question, "What is HubSpot?" (And of course, feel free to try HubSpot for yourself.) Catch!

Cast:
Dan Zarrella (@danzarrella)
Kirsten Knipp (@kirstenpetra)

HubSpot captured the "National/International B2B Company" title in 2009 B2B Twitterer of the Year Awards. The runner-up was American Express OPEN Forum, a premier business community that gives small business owners the tools to connect and collaborate.

The B2B Twitterer of the Year Award recognizes B2B organizations for outstanding contributions in practicing, promoting, and/or enhancing business through the use of Twitter. The awards are presented to qualified nominees judged by B2B veterans, who focus on the creation of a community by B2B entities. Rather than concentrating on the amount of tweets or the number of followers, the organizations are judged on the value they bring to their respective industries.

HubSpot uses Twitter to interact with its community of customers, prospects, fans, friends and anyone else interested in learning about/communicating with the company. By providing a two-way communication with its stakeholders, HubSpot personally engages with its followers and enhances its brand image in social media. HubSpot also uses the micro-blogging tool to promote content, offer free tools and answer technical/support questions. Overall, HubSpot's strategy embodies establishing itself as a thought-leader in inbound marketing and offering advice and help in the industry.

Follow @HubSpot on Twitter!

Grade your presence on Twitter using HubSpot's free tool, Twitter Grader!

Check out HubSpot's other Internet Marketing Awards!

On Tuesday, February 23rd, the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) will host Massachusetts: Start Here, a statewide campaign to promote entrepreneurial spirit in Massachusetts.

Governor Deval Patrick will introduce the event and present his welcome speech beginning at 2 pm. Statewide partners, including MassChallenge, Flybridge Capital Partners, NEVCA, MITX, and the Mass Office of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, will follow with announcements related to entrepreneurship. The ceremonious "ground-breaking" (firing the first nail) will be performed by Governor Patrick on the 4th floor of the newly-expanded building. The afternoon will conclude with a panel discussion titled "Starting Here - The Real Stories of Massachusetts Entrepreneurs", featuring Brian Halligan and other distinguished speakers.

Register for Massachusetts: Start Here taking place on February 23rd at Cambridge Innovation Center, One Broadway (4th floor) in Cambridge, MA beginning at 2 pm.