Ainhoa Rodriguez-Muguruza
So close to the New Year... that we need a HubSpot 2021 round-up! This year has brought us new updates and features that have revolutionised how we do marketing. And we are expecting even more for the next year! So you can make the most of your platform, it is essential that you are aware of all its features. But, it is now always easy to keep up with HubSpot! So, keep reading for a quick, concise, and compelling summary!
If you have not read my blogs before, my name is Ainhoa, and I am Insynth’s Inbound Marketing Specialist, or, in other words, their in-house HubSpot expert. Since last April, I have been gathering the platform’s updates monthly to make sure that you are not missing anything from HubSpot. However, time is of the essence, and we know you do not have much to spare, so let’s dive in!
This post will summarise the critical updates from the last few months. However, if you want to learn about every new feature the platform has brought to light this year, you can find my monthly blog posts below for 2021!
- HubSpot: What is New in April
- HubSpot: What is New in May
- HubSpot: What is New in June
- HubSpot: What is New in July
- HubSpot: What is New in August
- HubSpot: What is New in September
- HubSpot: What is New in October
- HubSpot: What is New in November
- HubSpot: What is New in December
Marketing Hub
#1 The Revolution Deal Create Attribution
For Marketing Enterprise users, reporting has become an even more compelling tool, especially when marketing teams are given the credit they deserve. To achieve that, HubSpot has come up with a third reporting category that, together with contact create attribution reports and revenue attributions reports, will allow businesses to understand the interactions and efforts behind deal creation.
#2 A wider Variety of Automation for marketers
Up until May, quote and ticket-based workflows were limited to Sales Hub users but, from that month on, Marketing Pro users were also able to create more e-commerce focused workflows. These workflows use metrics like Email Open Rates or Click-Through Rates to trigger different actions and, consequently, provided marketers with greater control over the automated actions they could trigger to reach their audience.
#3 A New Metric to track email performance
So HubSpot users had the ability to evaluate the performance of their email campaigns and could gain more control over the success of their marketing efforts, the platform allowed them to track the open-rate and click-through rate of their emails. Increasing the insights users can get of the engagement their emails are prompting, HubSpot has enabled tracking the reply-rate of our emails.
#4 Compare the Performance of Your Forms
Available for Professional and Enterprise users, HubSpot enabled the feature users to compare up to ten forms in August, with the tool assessing metrics like submissions, number of fields, and form settings. This data will allow users to identify underperforming forms and to come up with amendments that will reduce form abandonment and increase the conversion rate.
#5 Updates for Lead Syncing for Ads and Google Leads Syncing
Through the Google Ads HubSpot integration, HubSpot users have been able to report on their ads’ performance, looking at how their ad spend is influencing their funnel. This integration also enabled users to analyse best performing keywords, helping them make the right decision when it comes to their SEO strategy. Customers can, since September, sync leads they have gathered from Google Ads into HubSpot’s CRM automatically.
Sales Hub
#1 Increased Pipeline Deals
For those using Sales Enterprise, the number of pipelines that they had available has suddenly doubled and now goes up to 100 pipelines. If you have different product lines or a combination of products and services that present separate sale cycles and processes, creating a new pipeline for them could be beneficial. It is important, however, to understand when multiple pipelines are required so you are not overcomplicating it...
#2 Team-Focused Workflows
Because of how useful they are, some users have reported that they end up with too many workflows and their different teams get confused regarding which one they are meant to use and overview. For that reason, HubSpot enabled in May the partition feature so only the people that need to use those workflows had access to them and the data was safe and secure.
#3 Priority-Based Deal Ranking
HubSpot has now enabled in May a traffic-light style deal classification that will be visible in the main layout of our sales pipeline. Setting different levels of priority for each deal will help sales reps to view which deals require urgent attention, allowing them to filter deals with higher priority. Priority levels can now also be used within workflows and sequences to trigger automated actions.
#4 Add Sequences to Your Workflows
Using sequences allows users to manually enrol contacts to a chain of emails that are sent from a specific inbox and that can be tracked when opened or replied to. In order to maximise the effect of those conversations, HubSpot enabled in August the feature to automate sequence enrolment and unenrolment, triggering a sequence based on a status change or a set value property. As a result, any contact who meets a certain set of requirements or actions can be added to a highly personalised sequence.
#5 Business Units Available in BETA
Whilst having a separate portal for their child company is an option, setting disjointed portals seems to defeat that second brand’s purpose. With the Business Units released in September, you can manage multiple brands in one HubSpot account. The most significant feature of this update is customising branding and associating assets independently of other brands.
service Hub
#1 Conversation Based Workflows
Available for all Professional users, but particularly helpful for users of the Service Hub, conversation-based workflows are now available. Users have, since April, been able to set up as triggers customer behaviour and activity actions, enrolling certain contacts into workflows that would allow automated tasks creation, notification sending, or email sending, etc.
#2 SurveyMonkey Surveys Available within HubSpot CRM
Updating the integration already available for all HubSpot portals, SurveyMonkey users have had, since May, a smoother and friendlier experience when sending surveys from HubSpot. Among other advantages, installing the SurveyMonkey integration in your HubSpot portal will allow users to ensure that the contacts on their database and their survey recipients are always synchronised.
#3 Service Analytics Available within Analytics Tools
In May, Service Hub users were made aware that the Service Team Productivity app was being removed from the Analytics Tools. This was due, partly, to some users finding it limiting. The Service Team Productivity was replaced in July with the new Service Analytics BETA, that offers users more compelling reports among which we can find customer satisfaction score, team performance, chat wait time or, average time to close a support ticket.
#4 Create Multiple CES Feedback Surveys
A Customer Effort Score (CES) survey measures how much effort a customer needs to put in order to interact with you. HubSpot enabled in August a CES survey to be set up for each support pipeline. CES surveys follow the belief that customer loyalty is to be improved by making it easier for them to address their concerns and get helpful and timely answers.
#5 Create Custom Surveys
With HubSpot’s characteristic drag-and-drop editor, users can, since Septermber, add unlimited questions and use diverse question types without any coding. The question on the survey will be property-based, allowing you to use the same questions across multiple surveys and follow-up with your customers in a more personalised way through after-purchase automation.
CMS Hub
#1 New Landing Page Templates with Swap Experience
New optimised landing page templates are, since April, available for CMS Pro and Enterprise users, enabling them to maximise the customisation of their content and the engagement of their customers. Modifying templates became easier as new templates were released with a simple drag-and-drop editor with swap experience. Did we mention this editor is completely code-free?
#2 Improved Dynamic Pages with HubDB
HubDB is a website add-on tool within HubSpot that allows users to create interactive pages almost code-free. HubDB is connected to your CRM and can use the data stored within your HubSpot platform to offer the visitors of your site a more personalised experience. This personalisation is enabled through dynamic pages. A dynamic website page is a page within your site that varies depending on the behaviour of the user.
#3 SEO Check for Broken Links
A high number of broken links within your website can impact negatively on your SEO. HubSpot was optimised in July to check for any broken links within a website and help users fix them. It is important to be aware of the different causes of a broken link, which range from an involuntary typo when you created a link to renaming or moving a page and forgetting to update internal links!
#4 CMS Starter
From August 2021, the starter tier of CMS Hub is available to be purchased as a standalone product, as well as part of the Starter CRM Suite alongside Marketing Hub Starter, Sales Hub Starter, Service Hub Starter and Operations Hub Starter. If you purchased the Starter CRM Suite or the Growth Suite before the CMS Starter became available, you can add CMS Starter into your portal at no cost.
#5 New brand domain limit for CMS Hub Enterprise portals
Also complementing the update above on Business Units, HubSpot has answered to the companies looking to host their child-company within their main portal. The purpose of hosting multiple brands on the same portal is to guarantee the synchronisation and data leverage between them, avoiding information to be inconsistent or outdated. Consequently, HubSpot has made it available to acquire hosting domains as a one-off purchase, adding them to your main platform.
Operations Hub
#1 More Apps available for Data Sync
In April, HubSpot launched a new Hub ago, and they have kept updating and upgrading the features that came with it. One of the main features of the Operations Hub is its sophisticated Data Sync method that allows users to sync their customer data with over 25 other apps. And HubSpot has just added another 92 new apps to that list. Data Sync was born from the reprogramming of the platform PieSync.
#2 External Content Available for Embedding on Dashboards
Aiming to elevate the reporting experience HubSpot users had when reporting on the platform, HubSpot added at the beginning of the year the possibility of inserting images, text, and video documents on dashboards. This feature came particularly handy for those who needed to include some context or further instructions for when other members of the team accessed certain dashboards.
#3 Set Up Conditional Sections in Your CRM
Recording data in an organised, clean, and segmented way is recommended when looking for ways to facilitate identifying business opportunities within a database. HubSpot enabled in August for Enterprise users to make sections conditional, meaning that sections will only come up if a record has a specific set value for a specific property.
#4 Test and Debug Your Custom Code Actions
For all Operations Hub users, the ability to use custom code actions to write and execute JavaScript has been a revolution. From October, HubSpot has improved the development experience, giving them the chance to test their custom code and ensure that it runs as expected before getting the workflow live. This test will run only the code in the custom action; once the code has finished running, developers will be able to view the code outputs and the log of their test.
#5 Chronological Display of Upcoming Activities
From October, the timeline of activities in the upcoming section on CRM records will display chronologically and not in the order in which the interactions were scheduled, for easier reference. Even if a small detail, this has proven to improve the productivity of teams! Having the possibility to have all the information about a client in one single screen regardless of the channel used to complete that interaction or the rep that was in charge of getting in touch with that particular lead makes a huge difference for those looking for an efficient CRM.
Not Sure about how to apply these new features For Your Construction Product Business?
HubSpot is the only CRM designed following the principles of inbound marketing. Construction companies have felt excluded from the inbound conversation, not feeling like inbound marketing could relate to the industry. But that is quickly changing! 81% of construction leaders agreed to adopt digital tools before the end of 2021.
According to Kim Orlesky, CEO of KO Advantage, in her INBOUND2021 session, 77% of organisation plans to invest more in sales intelligence tools, with 40% of them willing to spend significantly more on CRM tools, sales intelligence, and engagement tools. In contrast, 66% of businesses have felt not fully supported when implementing those solutions.
A question that is always in the back of the minds of construction professionals is whether they are doing enough to guarantee the success of their brand. And, if they feel they are investing each second of their day into making sure their brand is supported, an even more urgent question pops up: why am I not seeing results? The key to those questions could be in the tools you have available!
HubSpot could be the solution to those questions and the key for your construction product business to make a difference. To know more about how to use HubSpot for your construction business, you can read our blog post on this topic here.
About Insynth
At Insynth we deliver a predictable flow of leads, customers, and specifications for building product brands through our inbound marketing approach, proven to reach a technically demanding audience.
We use the latest marketing techniques such as construction inbound marketing, to equip building product companies to grow sustainability in this era of digital transformation.
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major in construction marketing. We have a proven formula of bringing a variety of functionalities together including CRM Implementation, Web Design, Sales Automation, SEO, and Email Marketing to achieve your ultimate aim: Growing your business and gaining new specifiers and customers.