HubSpot Announces Significant Marketing and Sales Product Updates at #INBOUND15

HubSpot welcomed more than 13,000 people to Boston this week for its annual INBOUND event, where the company shared a slew of exciting new updates. HubSpot co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah took to the keynote stage to share the latest and greatest product updates and beyond.

Today’s keynote announcements weren’t just about inbound for marketing and sales. This year’s INBOUND was about inbound for everyone. As CEO Brian Halligan, who espouses INBOUND as his favorite week of the year, shared, “HubSpot is on a mission to bring inbound to everyone and make our customers’ lives easier so that they can focus less on reading through the lines of the technologies that power their businesses and more on the strategies required to grow their businesses. It’s about building seamless connections between platforms so that companies can focus on building seamless relationships with their customers.”

So, let’s dive into the details and see how everyone can now get more inbound:

HubSpot Connect

HubSpot Connect is a collection of integrations to power your whole business. Within an organization, different departments use different software but that software often times cannot share information back and forth which leaves companies with an incomplete picture of how the business engages with customers across different applications.

HubSpot Connect brings data from all the key front office systems into one integrated platform. New integrations announced today that will bring information onto the contact record, timeline and CRM include Zendesk, FreshBooks, Eventbrite, UberConference, Teamwork, Unbounce, Smartling, BlogMutt, PandaDoc in addition to existing integrations.

Predictive Lead Scoring

Marketers generate dozens of leads through campaigns and lead nurturing, but not each one is qualified. Understanding all of the factors that go into making someone qualified can be difficult, if not impossible. Predictive lead scoring takes the pressure off of marketers by providing a lead score based on behavior, demographic, social, email, and spam detection data.

The Reporting Add-on

As businesses grow, the metrics needed to ensure accountability become more advanced. Going back and forth between different analytics tools can make reporting tedious and frustrating. The HubSpot Reporting Add-on dashboard takes all of these reports and consolidates them into one easily accessible and customizable screen. Both marketing and sales can see all of the metrics they are accountable for in one place.

The Ads Add-on

We used to think if you bought an ad, you were irritating your customers. We don’t see things that way anymore. Why? Our customers have taught us that it’s not the format that matters, it’s the content itself. Around 53% of HubSpot customers used online ads this year. These are smart, creative marketers tying ads to inbound marketing campaigns. And it’s working. Whether it’s using ads to help people find what they’re searching for (hint: meaningful content) or exposing that content to a larger audience, ads can play an important role in a marketer’s toolkit.

Yet, there’s still one big problem:  It’s hard to do ads well. Most ad strategies are filled with missing pieces. You’re missing the information you need to know the ROI or profitability of campaigns. You don’t have the experience to set up effective campaigns. You’re lacking the experience to know how to optimize campaigns for better results. Enter HubSpot’s Ads Add-on.

As of today, LinkedIn Sponsored Updates and Google’s AdWords campaigns can be managed through HubSpot to give inbound marketers greater insight (and data) on their customers’ journey, while easily tracking ROI of their ad-fueled content campaigns.

HubSpot Website

Just having a website is no longer enough. Optimized and relevant content must be at the center of your company’s website, and a key part of your overall marketing strategy. At the same time, consumers expect instant gratification. This means that the websites we create need to consistent, fast, and relevant to any device the visitor is using. Marketers must dig deeper into their customers’ and prospects’ lives and build a website that can deliver intimately personalized experiences that resonate with them. HubSpot Website is the next-generation website platform.’

HubSpot customers who host their website with HubSpot in addition to using the platform to power all of their inbound activities saw average organic traffic increase by 70% in 9 months, compared to only 30% for HubSpot Website customers.

New additions to HubSpot Website include:

• SSL for all!

• New editing interface

• Optimizers on all pages

HubSpot CRM

Since its unveiling at last year’s INBOUND, HubSpot CRM has taken off with small businesses (with more than 60,000 individuals at companies now using the product) who need an easy way to get organized, and get growing.  We’ve added some additional functionality to make that an even simpler task:

• @mentions in HubSpot CRM will now allow users to mention a co-worker from any note space in the CRM.

• A Gmail integration allows HubSpot CRM users to pull their full history of interactions - including messages both sent and received - into HubSpot CRM automatically.

• Multiple deal pipelines make it possible for teams to set up separate pipelines for different divisions, teams, or products inside HubSpot CRM.
  

Sidekick for Business

Like HubSpot CRM, Sidekick for Business has become a fast favorite for sales professionals and others seeking productivity in the workplace. Companies everywhere are transforming their sales process with the product and we’re excited to share that Sidekick for Business is now sporting:

• Access to a world of new warm prospects and deep information that is hyper-relevant to their company, but they never knew existed through Prospects.

• Sequences,  a new feature of Sidekick for Business that makes following up easier and better for both the buyer and the sales rep. Sequences allows users to schedule and customize a series of highly targeted, timed emails to nurture prospects over time.

• A completely rebuilt experience for Salesforce users, who can now leverage email templates, manage & share documents, place phone calls, and see valuable metrics on every part of their sales process - all without ever leaving Salesforce.

Oh, and one last thing…

We know that disruption is out there. We know that the power behind HubSpot may be WAY more than some early stage start-ups, or self-employed professional needs right now. So HubSpot Labs decided to work on something for you, too, and we’re calling it Leadin.

When someone visits your a site, you want to know more about them. What pages they've visited, when they return, and what social networks they’re on. Leadin, which can be used on any website, gives you the details you need to make your next move. Leadin is a brilliant tool for companies who aren't quite ready for a full marketing platform, but want to start understanding their website visitors and leads better.