Connect with us

MARKETING

HubSpot brings popular enterprise features to pro-level customers in its latest release

Published

on

HubSpot's release brings quoting and payments improvements

HubSpot rolls out new product features almost every day, and some of the most exciting updates from the past month include: 

  • Playbooks, call transcription and call coaching are now available in the Professional level of Sales and Service Hub.
  • Records imported from Salesforce to HubSpot can now be filtered using the native integration.
  • Social media creation and scheduling tools received efficiency improvements.
  • Payment links can now be associated with a meeting scheduling page.
  • Line items in Quotes and Deals now support fractional quantities.
  • Commenting features are improved inside Forms and Campaigns.

Greater access to Playbooks and call transcription and coaching

Enterprise-level HubSpot customers have enjoyed using Playbooks, call transcription and call coaching features, and now Professional-level HubSpot users can benefit from these powerful tools.

Playbooks are interactive content cards found in deal, contact, company and ticket records that guide users and can help create standardized notes during calls.

Professional-level users can create up to five Playbooks. Enterprise users can create 5,000 playbooks. Professional-level Playbooks cannot add embedded properties, so the only option is to use an open text field for the answers. At the same time, Enterprise users can create a set of custom answer options or save answers to a property.

Call Transcription and Coaching are features related to the hot topic of Conversational Intelligence. At the Professional level, HubSpot allows for 750 hours a month of transcription, compared to 1,500 hours a month on Enterprise. The Professional level does not have tracked terms, which in Enterprise is the ability to report on metrics related to specific keywords mentioned in the call. 

Why we care: In their quest to be the CRM platform for scaling businesses, Hubspot first added value to its Enterprise-level tools to eliminate the myth that when companies grow over a specific size, they need to switch to a different platform. We’re now seeing limited versions of Enterprise features appear at the Professional level, for companies earlier in the scaling journey. This brings hope for seeing even more highly-requested Enterprise features in the Professional level in the future, which will help smaller budget customers achieve a similar efficiency and usability as customers with a budget for the Enterprise tools. 

Customers often uplevel to Enterprise for one feature, so this limited access lets Professional level users try before they buy, and build processes around the features before jumping into Enterprise when they scale further. 

Advertisement

Allowing Professional level users access to sales enablement and conversational intelligence tools helps HubSpot compete with other software in this growing space. This move indicates that it may soon be possible to reduce the need for additional third-party tools, slimming down the tech stack complexity and budget.


Get the daily newsletter digital marketers rely on.

Advertisement

With predictions of tech company layoffs, reducing budgets may be a top priority. Eliminating the need to upgrade to Enterprise immediately while still accessing versions of these powerful tools as they scale could help save the budget to retain more jobs.

In addition to the big-picture benefits of bringing Enterprise features to Pro levels, these particular features help HubSot users close more deals in less time, improve their sales process more efficiently, spend less time on data entry, and ramp up new team members faster. 

Improved data filtering options in the HubSpot Salesforce integration

When using HubSpot’s Salesforce integration to bring Salesforce data into HubSpot, you can now use two new filters to make sure they are not importing irrelevant, duplicate, or otherwise unnecessary data. Previously, all historic data would be imported or synced for the chosen objects.

The two filters are:

  • Create date. For example, only importing records created on March 1, 2022 or later.
  • Update date. For example, only importing records that have been modified in the past month.
1654880770 169 HubSpot brings popular enterprise features to pro level customers in its

Why we care: Adam Stahl, HubSpot strategist at Remotish, said, “The ability to use filters in HubSpot’s Salesforce integration is an update that may seem small but is mighty. There are many reasons why you may not want to pull in all historical data for each object you’re bringing over. For example, a company may have been using Salesforce for a decade but recently added HubSpot to their tech stack. If Salesforce remains their primary CRM, they may not want to import every lead and every one of their up-to-decade-old interactions. Most importantly, in that scenario, they now have an easy way to follow through on that decision right in the integration.”

This update saves time cleaning the irrelevant and/or duplicate data out of HubSpot compared to when you had less control over what data came over from Salesforce. You can now rely on more accurate data in HubSpot and have more time to concentrate on higher-level work.

HubSpot’s social media publishing tools for creating posts now have a full-screen experience instead of only using the right-side sidebar. 

Advertisement

Old experience:

1654880770 7 HubSpot brings popular enterprise features to pro level customers in its

New experience:

1654880771 699 HubSpot brings popular enterprise features to pro level customers in its

Other improvements include:

  • Choosing all accounts in one step instead of choosing each network and then choosing each social media account to post.
  • Editing drafts of each post most quickly.
  • Easily tailoring the messaging and media for different audiences.
  • Removing the additional step for previewing.
  • Reviewing all posts at the same time on the Review screen.

If you don’t notice these options in your HubSpot portal yet, opt into the beta. When you’re inside the social tools, click on the teal button on the lower left side of your screen that says “Beta.” 

1654880771 291 HubSpot brings popular enterprise features to pro level customers in its
1654880771 267 HubSpot brings popular enterprise features to pro level customers in its

You can watch this video for a walkthrough of the new features from HubSpot product manager, Jacqui Malis.

Why we care: The previous layout made it hard for users to know about or use any new or existing helpful features. These recent updates will save time when posting because it takes fewer clicks to create more posts and prevents errors since the review functionality is better. This update hints at the possibility that HubSpot will release future improvements to compete with the integrated third-party social media tools, which could reduce the marketing tech stack and tools budget.

Collect payments from meetings scheduling page

This beta allows HubSpot users to associate a payment link with their meeting scheduling page. Previously, several workarounds and steps were required to have a customer pay for a meeting using HubSpot. 

1654880771 339 HubSpot brings popular enterprise features to pro level customers in its

Why we care: This is a simple and easy way to get paid for meeting time, especially for people who already use HubSpot meeting links in their processes. It also makes it easier for HubSpot users with less technical expertise to quickly start collecting payments for their time in meetings.

For a specific example of how this improves processes, at Remotish we have one-off consulting calls available to purchase on our website. Still, we had a two-step process of collecting payment first and then redirecting the success page to a calendar link to schedule their meeting. This new beta could cut that process down to one step and more easily associate the data about which meeting was paid, allowing customers to feel more in control by choosing a time and date before paying. 

Another important benefit is previously, once a customer had access to a meeting link, nothing prevented them from booking another session without paying first. This new update prevents that issue, eliminating any awkward follow-up communication to collect payment.

Line items now support fractional quantities

Deals and Quotes now allow fractional values, such as 1.33 or 2.275, in the “quantity” field inside Line Items. The quantity field now has up to seven decimal points to precisely sell a partial quantity, such as 2.75 hours of consulting. It is available to all levels and all users.

Advertisement
1654880771 326 HubSpot brings popular enterprise features to pro level customers in its

Why we care: This is an anticipated update, evident by this HubSpot Community post from 2020, with 161 upvotes and 67 replies. Previously, if you wanted to sell a partial amount of a line item, it would increase the number of Products or custom line items. Users were forced to break up the item into the smallest amount possible and add multiple quantities on the quote or deal, or users needed duplicate Products in different quantities.

This workaround created a mess inside Line Items and Products, leading to more time in data entry, more errors and more issues when integrating accounting systems such as Quickbooks. If you sense a common theme to these releases, this update also saves time, keeps the data cleaner and reduces potential errors, which saves the company money.

This public beta allows users to comment on various parts of the screen inside Campaigns and Forms in Marketing Hub, using a crosshairs tool to select items to comment on. Previously, comments were limited and somewhat hidden in the tiny commenting sidebar. Now, you can select certain properties or options inside of forms and campaigns and have a threaded conversation where you can tag another HubSpot user to discuss ideas. This feature has existed in Workflows and is expanding to other tools.

1654880771 493 HubSpot brings popular enterprise features to pro level customers in its

Why we care: As users become accustomed to commenting abilities in other tools such as Google Docs, they expect similar features across all tools. Remote work also requires improvements such as this for asynchronous collaboration. Providing clearer direction to team members will save time commenting back and forth to identify the specific items being discussed. The ability to highlight or pinpoint a certain part of the page will help teams to finish campaigns and form creation or edits more quickly and accurately. 

The improved commenting features could also start important discussions amongst the team, which Kyle Jepson, senior inbound sales professor at HubSpot, said in a LinkedIn video. He mentioned some of the comments could ask: 

  • Should we turn this option on?
  • Who should receive this form?
  • Do we want these to be marketing contacts?
  • Can we discuss revenue attribution for this campaign?

He said the email composer tool would be the next Marketing Hub tool to receive this commenting upgrade. That will be exceptionally helpful to ask questions while editing another user’s email and helpful for the email content creator to get their own questions conveniently answered inside the email draft.

All the updates, all the time

If you are a HubSpot user, you can find a complete list of recent updates by clicking on your profile picture, Product Updates, and filtering for the last 30 days, past three months or past year.  

HubSpot also describes select new features and shows roadmaps of future items in development on its website, and the HubSpot Community has a releases and updates section.

I also recommend following HubSpot Academy Senior Inbound Sales professor Kyle Jepson on Linkedin or Twitter. Search for #HubSpotTipsAndTricks.

Advertisement

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About The Author

HubSpots release brings quoting and payments improvements

Jen is the head of operations at Remotish, a HubSpot RevOps and WebOps agency. Her work includes creating plans, processes and programs such as a knowledge management program (wiki), a comprehensive employee onboarding program and a referral partner program that generates 45% of company revenue and earned her the 2022 Heroes of RevOps award from Revenue.io. She was a lesson professor for the HubSpot Revenue Operations certification, a RevOps correspondent at INBOUND2021 and a panelist on the INBOUND After Hours show and the MoPros Career Fair. Jen is currently writing a book about RevOps, to combine her love of research, writing and lifelong learning.

Advertisement

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address

MARKETING

How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

Published

on

A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

Advertisement

Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

Advertisement

Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

Advertisement

“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

Advertisement

Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

Advertisement

Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

Trends in Content Localization – Moz

Published

on

Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

Published

on

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

(more…)

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

Trending

Follow by Email
RSS