By Enhancing their Integration, Hotjar Increases Installs and Retention

Hotjar was founded in 2014 to provide businesses with clear, actionable insights into how users interact with their websites and web apps. This came at a time when there was a growing need for tools that could help organizations understand the what and the why of user behavior.

Over the years, Hotjar continued to refine its platform based on customer feedback and evolving industry needs. Most recently, they added a user interviews product to further complement their heatmaps, session recordings, feedback, and surveys. This was driven by their vision to give businesses a complete set of tools to understand their users and create experiences they’ll love.

Today, Hotjar has established itself as a prominent player in the digital experience insights space, with thousands of paying customers and a loyal user base. Their dedication to continuous improvement and providing actionable insights to businesses of all sizes has contributed to their success in the HubSpot ecosystem.

The Road to an Enhanced Integration

Hotjar’s initial integration enabled businesses to have survey responses sent to the contact timeline. Based on feedback and reviews on their marketplace listing, Hotjar was eager to improve the functionality of its integration. For example, direct feedback from a user included, “I really wish Hotjar would connect records to their session recordings. That would make it much more powerful.”

The availability of the HubSpot technical team assisting Hotjar through their rebuild provided them with an additional resource as they thoughtfully spent time upgrading their integration.

Hotjar assembled a dedicated team of four software engineers, one designer, one product manager, and one product marketer to ensure they could provide sufficient planning, research, and development to the integration improvements. 

Discovery and prioritization kicked off Hotjar’s process for improving their HubSpot integration. The team leveraged regular syncs with their HubSpot partner manager to plan and execute on the changes they were going to make to their integration. 

This collaborative approach not only ensured the successful integration of Hotjar’s solution into HubSpot, but also strengthened their partnership and mutual commitment to delivering exceptional value to shared customers. 

This discovery phase involved an in-depth review of customer feedback and reviews from their existing listing, in addition to working closely with HubSpot’s technical team. The primary objective was to identify the most crucial features that needed to be developed. 

Among the top priorities were implementing the capability to send recordings directly to the HubSpot contact timeline and the ability to filter contacts, create lists, and trigger automations using Hotjar’s session properties. While other potential features were considered, practical constraints, customer value, and competing priorities guided the decision to not pursue all of them at this stage. 

From there, with the most valuable features identified, Hotjar initiated the design and development phase to bring them to life within the integration. The focus was on implementing the critical elements – sending recordings and session properties to HubSpot and ensuring seamless integration with the workflows tool in HubSpot. 

Throughout development of their new and improved app, Hotjar actively sought user input and feedback. An early working version of the integration was shared with select customers, who were granted early access to test it. 

Beta user feedback proved invaluable, resulting in meaningful improvements implemented before the official release. Their feedback also played a vital role in shaping the go-to-market messaging for the integration. 

Go-To-Market Strategy

Go-to-market planning for sharing news of their revamped app commenced alongside the discovery phase. Hotjar’s product marketing team examined customer needs and the value proposition of the proposed enhanced integration. A comprehensive GTM plan was devised, outlining key phases and timelines. 

This included research, interviews with HubSpot users using Hotjar Engage, and messaging development to support product announcements, emails, in-app copy, integrations landing page updates, and marketplace listing updates. In addition, customer education resources, such as tutorial videos and help documentation, were created to help facilitate user adoption. 

To enable their customer-facing teams, Hotjar designed a project management board using Miro featuring an integration overview, demo, use cases, messaging, and their whole GTM plan. This resource was shared with their internal customer-facing teams to ensure they were all well prepared for the upcoming release.

Additionally, Hotjar completed a HubSpot app partner guide, complete with a video overview of the integration to help empower HubSpot go-to-market teams to understand the new release. 

Next, the integration was softly launched into production, accompanied by the help documentation and tutorial videos. This soft launch allowed Hotjar to identify and rectify any issues during a two-week period before proceeding with broad promotion. Vigilant support and ticket tracking ensured they were able to address any concerns. 

Marketing Launch and Adoption

Hotjar kicked off their marketing launch, spreading the word about their new and improved integration in an omni-channel campaign. Primary channels used for communication included email, in-app promotion, product announcements, and social media. 

Email and in-app promotion were the most effective channels, driving the highest adoption rates. Social media posts, specifically on LinkedIn, generated substantial engagement, highlighting the enthusiasm surrounding the integration’s new features and upgraded functionality. 

Posts and reposts on LinkedIn from HubSpot and Hotjar generated a ton of great comments and excitement. One person called the new integration “the best thing since sliced bread” and another called it the “true definition of fabulous perfection.” 

Sustaining Momentum

After Hotjar’s integration with HubSpot was successfully relaunched, they entered what they call their “growth phase.” This phase is marked by an array of ongoing activities aimed at sustaining and expanding their integration’s reach, while continually improving it based on user feedback.

One initiative involves translating their listing on HubSpot’s marketplace into German and Spanish. This move recognizes the importance of accessibility for users worldwide and aligns with Hotjar’s commitment to serving a global audience. To further enhance visibility, Hotjar committed to adding their HubSpot integration to relevant landing pages on their website. This ensures that users exploring Hotjar’s offerings can easily discover their HubSpot integration. 

Hotjar is also focusing on collaborative content such as opportunities for guest blog posts and joint webinars with HubSpot, strategic email campaigns to keep users informed about updates, and best practices. 

In addition, Hotjar made the strategic move to include the HubSpot integration into their free pricing tier, the Basic plan. This decision had a remarkable impact on integration adoption, resulting in a 500% increase. Moreover, Hotjar also observed an increase in retention between 16%-19% with customers on their basic plan who enabled the integration.

This change also impacted the segmentations of their user base leveraging the Hotjar-HubSpot integration, with ~44% of the integration users now on their basic plan, ~45% on their business plan, and the remainder falling under their higher paid plans.

As Hotjar continues to drive more adoption, they continue to gather feedback from customers for ongoing improvements to make sure that the integration remains aligned with user needs and consistently delivers value.

Accomplishments and Lessons Learned

Hotjar’s improvement of their integration combined with their comprehensive marketing plan led to a 55% increase in installs. Due to the integration improvements, Hotjar also saw an increase in customer retention when users leverage their integration with HubSpot. They report that the average retention rate of customers who use the HubSpot integration in the first 3 months is 10% higher than those who don’t use it. 

Hotjar’s team gained valuable insights from their experience making significant improvements to their integration. Those lessons include learning the importance of allocating ample time for research when conducting customer interviews and collaborating closely cross-functionally to align their go-to-market efforts with the integration’s use cases.

By embracing the opportunity to enhance their integration, Hotjar has positioned itself to attract new customers and improve the customer satisfaction of our joint customers. Their investment in the HubSpot ecosystem serves as a reminder for how fostering exceptional user experiences can drive lasting growth. 

Read more partner stories to discover other ways that partners have found success in the HubSpot ecosystem. Check out how CallRail and Arrows grew with HubSpot.