The last two days have been an amazing, inbound marketing history-making experience for HubSpot customers and HubSpotters alike. Many virtual friendships were cemented in person with hugs and learning at the inaugural HubSpot User Group (HUG) in Cambridge and Boston.
Monday night, HubSpot welcomed customers and Value Added Resellers to celebrate the beginning of HUG at a reception in HubSpot's new office in the Davenport building. The reception, special HubSpot TV episode (watch the archive here!), and networking combined for an amazing evening.
Yesterday, during the main conference at UMass Boston, the learning was palpable with tweets like this one abounding:
The day began with a welcome address from HubSpot Founder & CEO Brian Halligan, who shared HubSpot's future plans and priorities aimed at making customers even more successful at inbound marketing. Following Brian, an all-star panel featuring Chris Brogan, David Meerman Scott, Ann Handley and Dharmesh Shah shared visions for the future of inbound marketing while entertaining attendees with their wit.
The day continued with two tracks, each packed with valuable content and interactive Q&A sessions. Customers from PR 20/20 and Vovici shared their best practices and experiences with content creation to help fill the top of the sales funnel with qualified leads. Deeper dives followed into lead nurturing, sales & marketing alignment, SEO, marketing analytics and importantly, the new HubSpot Labs product called Social Inbox.
Customers sat down with HubSpotters at lunch for topical discussions, sharing their challenges and needs to guide HubSpot in its quest to create even more valuable tools for inbound marketers. A favorite activity throughout the day was 'HubSpot Feature Wars,' where two features were pitted against eachother, with customers voting on which ones HubSpot should build. The results, in most cases, were crystal clear and gave HubSpot valuable insight into customer needs.
Wrapping up the day, Mike Volpe shared key takeaways and reiterated what many of us know: HubSpot just makes the tools, but customers are the ones who bring them to life, creating amazing content and growing their businesses.
The entire HubSpot team was thrilled to meet so many of its awesome customers and partners whose attendance and enthusiasm was critical to HUG's success. VP Customers Jonah Lopin loved handing out as many hugs as he could, and we are honored and thankful so many customers gathered to spend a couple of days with us.
We look forward to seeing everyone again in Boston for HUG 2011 -- stay tuned for details!
Additional HUG Content: