Nathan Yerian
HubSpot’s annual INBOUND Conference is the world’s largest gathering of inbound marketing professionals. It's the perfect venue for HubSpot to unveil their latest innovations and discuss what's to come. Last year, HubSpot released Signals, their first-ever sales application product. They also unveiled the groundbreaking Content Optimization System (COS) -- the first integrated website, blog and landing page system to be optimized for mobile directly out-of-the-box.
This year, expectations were high and HubSpot surely did not disappoint. Two trailblazing releases were unveiled at INBOUND14, the likes of which comprise their new sales platform:
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HubSpot CRM: A Customer Relationship Management tool
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Sidekick: An in-app toolset built as an extension to Signals
The two new releases offer sales an impressive spread of nifty new tools designed to help them understand how and when to interact with prospects in a relevant way while cutting down on the time consuming responsibility of tracking activity and data. Here's a glimpse of 7 awesome features you won’t want to miss!
1. Anonymous Personalization
When visitors interact with your website – context matters. Currently, users are only able to personalize content for contacts that already exist within their database. HubSpot’s new sales platform allow users to personalize content for first time visitors as well. Customization can be achieved in three ways:
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By country.
The platform can detect the country in which the visitor is located. This will allow websites to auto adjust content like pricing or contact information to align with whatever country the visitor resides. -
By device.
A new smart content feature will allow users to change content based on the device being used. Take for instance, thinning out the amount of content on your homepage to accommodate a smartphone. With the HubSpot COS which provides responsive design, you can deliver the most personalized visitor experience available. -
By referral source.
The platform will also detect which referral source lead a visitor to your website so you can create smart rules.
2. Editorial Calendar
Companies that implement inbound marketing deal with gargantuan amount of content. The editorial calendar tool will assist marketers by organizing all content pieces (including blogs and emails), helping manage team members and content production efficiently and effectively, through the following:
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Assign content to a resource
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Schedule publishing
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Organize campaigns
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View calendar by month, week, day or list
3. Revenue & Attribution Reporting
Two valuable reporting features will also be made available to users of the new HubSpot CMS and Sidekick sales platform:
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Attribution Reporting
An attribution report identifies that not all page views or marketing channels are created equal when it comes to conversions. The reporting feature will allow you to pinpoint what marketing channel, URL or referring source lead to a conversion at any point in the sales funnel. -
Revenue Reporting
Revenue reporting has existed for quite some time with HubSpot’s enterprise-level platform. Now, revenue reporting will also work with HubSpot CRM and other CRM systems so that all HubSpot users will have access to essential data for marketing and sales comparisons.
4. Email Updates
Because filters, priority inbox and increasing competition is making email marketing campaigns more difficult than ever, several updates are being released in the new HubSpot sales platform to simplify the process. The two most noteworthy updates include a new email dashboard that will clearly display metrics and an email optimization view to help users spot email problems before the message is sent, reducing the risk of missing an opportunity or being sent to spam.
5. List Analytics
According to HubSpot, marketing databases decay at a rate of about 23% per year. To help users keep their marketing databases robust and healthy, list analytics will illustrate how lists change over time and how engaged each contact is with your brand. With this level of insight, marketers will have an easier time diagnosing why certain sections of their database may be decaying and how to improve the vitality of those sections.
6. Branching Logic
Among the most impressive new tools is branching logic. Branching logic allows marketers to optimize workflow goals. Contacts will travel down a path based on an action they take within the workflow. The tool works well with HubSpot’s gold stage workflow framework and allows for small- to high-level goal setting within the workflow.
7. Tally
Tally is a great new way to receive feedback from visitors and customers. Marketers can post a question on any website page or web application, receive feedback from visitors and customers and store the information to detect any shortcomings before they become a problem.
Users of the new HubSpot sales platform can also expect:
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New navigations
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Enhanced settings control
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International release
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New trial theme
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Social inbox tabs & improvements
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Campaign wizard
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SnapEngage integration
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Zerys integration
HubSpot CRM and Sidekick are still in beta and will be released to HubSpot patrons and users of Signals before being released to all audiences sometime in 2015. HubSpot also plans to take their sales platform internationally with a multitude of different languages. HubSpot just keeps getting better and better!
