If you have ever experienced the joys of industry conferences, you’re aware of the formula: Get a lot of experts to form panels, get a lot of people in suits into a building, and pass around an agenda for attendants to pick and choose which sessions they’re interested in.
HubSpot’s Inbound 2021 had similar elements in a virtual format: The panelists, the agendas, and lots of guests — albeit wrapped in blankets from the comfort of their own homes. Yet, that’s where the similarities end.
The sessions have been highly interesting, showcasing helpful tools and tricks of the trade for inbound marketers to feast on. However, the pièce de résistance are HubSpot’s newest features. As if the platform weren’t wonderful enough, these new components will help both your team and your customers get things done much more efficiently.
How so? Glad you asked!
Inbound is a three-day conference where attendees get to enjoy HubSpot’s product update announcements, attend presentations by noteworthy keynote speakers, and take notes on industry trends. Even with the post COVID-19 virtual format, there were interactive options available, such as submitting questions to panelists through chat, or attending a meetup so that you can mingle and network with other guests.
Another cool feature that made this virtual event unique was that you could reach out to other attendees in the networking tab, either by starting a chat window or following on social media. And each name tag had the attendee’s name and pronouns, so that you could set off to a good start.
And if you happened to miss an event you were interested in (or want to revisit ideas for your next marketing campaign), you can still watch it on demand.
But let’s get back to those HubSpot features. Just when you think the platform is an all-in-one solution for your CRM, sales, marketing, and customer service needs, they come up with new ideas that prove how there’s always room to make things even better.
If you’re not familiar with HubSpot, we have plenty of content to keep you busy. At Bluleadz, we love waxing poetic about their customer relationship management (CRM), how to conduct website migration, Marketing Hub, sales engagement tools, software integrations, and a myriad other uses. But since this blog is about Inbound 2021, let’s take a look at the newest features:
HubSpot’s new admin tools come with a recommended list of permissions, based on each team member’s job role. Just review and accept or adjust with a few clicks. You can also monitor user activity, such as login history, access, security activity, and exported content.
Additionally, you're able to manage your account by inviting more users and/or giving access to team members for easier collaboration. And if your business has unique features, you now have more customization options, such as custom objects and layouts, and sandboxes, which are explained in more detail below.
Raise your hand if you like answering repetitive questions from customers! And mind you, we’re not knocking customers. When you pay for a service, it’s only natural to want to know its status. Well, HubSpot’s Service Hub Customer Portal makes life a lot easier for your team and for your customers.
By creating customer portals, you empower them to get their information whenever they need it. They will have access to project status, view and manage support tickets, browse your company’s knowledge base, and keep track of every communication in one centralized location.
Branding is also a cinch with the customer portal, since HubSpot gives you the ability to customize them with your logo and colors. And because they make everything easier, the feature also comes with tutorials on how to set up a portal, as well as how to create articles for your knowledge base.
Alright. This is one feature you’ve probably wished existed before. How many times have you made a purchase from a company, only to find out that it’s easier to locate the Holy Grail than to make a payment?
Despite the fact that we’re more than two decades into the new millennium, old school companies apparently don’t know much about the customer experience.
HubSpot’s payment feature is built natively within the platform, and it makes it so easy to include a secure payment link in any customer communications, including quotes, live chats, and emails. Now, there is one little caveat, world readers. As of now, it’s only available in the United States. But don’t fret. It should only be a matter of time.
You can also set it up to receive recurring payments and to accept different forms of payment. It also makes it easier to provide a good customer experience, since all transaction histories will be located within the contact’s CRM file.
One of the most effective ways to increase customer satisfaction is to make them feel listened to and valued. HubSpot’s new custom feedback surveys tools offer a wide array of templates and customization options to ensure they fit your specific business needs.
Once you create the surveys, they’re easily shareable, and you can collect the data to analyze insights with your team. And if you feel like you’re too busy running your business to come up with a customized survey, you can use one of the pre-built net promoter score (NPS), customer effort score (CES), or customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys.
As you can see, HubSpot makes it easier to pave the way toward happy customers.
Find me a business that only uses one software product, and I’ll show you a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. HubSpot understands that you’re already using other platforms to help you run your business more efficiently.
This is why, throughout 2021, HubSpot enables you to easily interconnect all of your applications with their platform — no coding knowledge required. You can browse through the HubSpot App Marketplace to look for all the tools you’re already using, such as Salesforce, Slack, Hotjar, and Shopify, to name a few.
You can also use filters to sync only certain portions of your databases, and you can choose to do one-way or two-way syncing.
Gathering data is fine and dandy — in fact, it’s crucial — to identify trends within your business. If something is working, you keep doing what you’re doing. If there are recurring issues, you want to know what they are, why they’re happening, and design strategies to fix them.
However, the information you collect is useful only if you’re able to understand it. HubSpot’s custom report builder lets you set it up in a way that makes sense to you, and provides guidance so that you collect only what’s relevant — making sure your data has a purpose that’s related to what you’re analyzing. It also makes it easy for team members to access it when they need it.
Let’s say you want to try something new — processes, marketing automation, software integrations, webpages, or custom objects, for example. You’re not really sure you’ll stick with it until you test it first. HubSpot’s Enterprise customers will be able to try such iterations without modifying their current HubSpot setup.
This feature is available through HubSpot’s sandbox software, and it lets you see how something you want to try out would impact your workflows before taking it live.
All of these features are noteworthy for obvious reasons:
And above all, they allow for your services to be more customer-centric. At the end of the day, no matter how wonderful your goods or services are, it’s how customers feel when interacting with your company that determines whether you’ll reach sustainable success.
You’ve worked really hard to get to where you are. HubSpot’s newest features make it a lot more manageable to maintain your profitability and help you grow.