Our favourite HubSpot updates from October 2020

Did you know that HubSpot brings new features to its users every single month? It means that you always have something new to learn from HubSpot. Learning new things also applies to us, HubSpot partners, and specialists. Every month, we publish a list of the most important and, in our opinion, most interesting updates of the previous month, so that you, dear readers, will have the opportunity to learn about the new features quickly and effortlessly. The most important of the October releases is the new Marketing Events standard object, which you might have noticed in your portal as a BETA already in September (although it's still in BETA). Let’s dive a little deeper today to understand what exactly it is all about. This month’s article also highlights the Marketing Contacts feature, which was released a moment ago and will affect all HubSpot users, especially new HubSpot licensed customers.

Marketing Hub & CMS Hub

Marketing Contacts and Non-Marketing Contacts

• What it is about: Pay only for the contacts in the HubSpot database to whom you target marketing and advertising activities through the system. From now on, the contacts will be divided into marketing and non-marketing contacts, and you have the freedom to choose in which category you will classify your contacts. You can select a tier (i.e., a range of paid contacts, such as 2,000 to 5,000 marketing contacts) for your license that controls the total number of paid marketing contacts. You can flexibly vary the status of your contacts from paid to free and vice versa. HubSpot allows you to have up to a million non-marketing contacts in your database.
• What are the benefits: HubSpot pricing has been strongly based on how many contacts live in your HubSpot account. The old contact model has been a struggle for many organizations that have, for example, integrated their external CRM or customer database to HubSpot. Centralizing the contact databases is smart in terms of data integrity, but you've had to pay for so-called "static contacts" that are not intended to end up in the marketing communications in HubSpot. These static contacts could now be set to non-marketing contact status, in which case they will not increase the number of paid contacts. It is also smart for marketing teams to move bounced and unsubscribed contacts to non-marketing contacts, leaving them as historical data in the database but without unnecessary expense. Old license customers can switch to a new type of licensing and pricing program or continue with the current model. New customers automatically switch to the new pricing model.

A new standard object: Marketing events

• What it is about: Contacts, deals, companies, and tickets get a new standard object: events! You can connect an event management system to HubSpot and view events as your own independent activities on your contact timelines. This newly launched feature still requires flesh on its bones, but already you can conveniently connect GoToWebinar, Zoom, and Eventbrite to HubSpot. You can find events and easily as it's own object under the contacts tab.
• What are the benefits: To be honest, HubSpot hasn't been the number one system to handle the events. Events have previously been somewhat detached from other online and offline touchpoints that are already well centralized at HubSpot. Processing event participants as lists have been clumsy, and utilizing events in lead scoring, for example, has not been easy. Importing events as own standard object into the system is guaranteed to bring events more firmly and measurably into the marketing ecosystem. HubSpot hinted that this new standard object that is only in the BETA phase will evolve in the coming months. So stay in the loop!

Multi-language blog settings update

• What it is about: You can now set language-specific settings for blogs.
• What are the benefits: The multi-language blog published a while ago allows you to maintain one main blog page with multi-language versions. (Oh yes! For a long time, language versions of blogs were separate blog entities with unique URLs! We thought to highlight this if, for some reason, you have missed this awesome feature.)

Embedded workflows in Ad campaign creation

• What is it about: When you create an ad campaign directly through HubSpot's Ads feature, you can link your ad-generated contacts directly to ad-specific Workflow automation.
• What are the benefits: Provide more specific and targeted communication to the contacts you find through advertising. Instead of creating nurturing automation under the workflows tab, you can create your automated messaging directly linked to the specific ad campaign in one place.

Commenting on Marketing emails

• What is it about: In the August blog we announced an update that allows users to add internal comments to workflow actions. The same function is now available in the email editor. You can add comments and link messages to other HubSpot users in your account.
• What are the benefits: HubSpot wants to emphasize better teamwork and a smoother user experience to its users. When communication can be done directly in the system, it reduces extra efforts on other channels outside HubSpot.

Clone and move workflow actions

• What it is about: Users can now clone and move individual actions within a workflow.
• What are the benefits: In addition to the commenting feature, two functions have been introduced to speed up and make life easier for users: you can move activities within the workflow and copy them. More versatile editing functions bring the necessary flexibility to the core functionality of HubSpot.

Sales Hub

Edit user permissions to manage templates and sequences

• What is it about: You can set permissions whether the user has a right to create/edit sequences and templates.
• What are the benefits: Sequences and templates are a great addition to a sales toolkit. It is unnecessary to write every email from scratch thanks to templates, pieces of text that can be added easily into communications, such as emails and offers. Templates and sequences help teams unify communications and standardize tone-of-voice. Until now, each user has been able to create their own templates and sequences. In the future, HubSpot administrators will be able to determine who is authorized to create these ready-made templates and sequences, allowing communication to remain more consistent across the organization.

Other updates

Jira updates

• Workflow Extension can be used to open new issues directly in Jira.
• What are the benefits: You can automate the opening of new Jira issues through HubSpot workflows. For example, a support request with a specific topic area can trigger the workflow and transfer the ticket as a new Jira issue for the technical team.

• More than one Jira issue can now also be attached to one HubSpot ticket.
• What are the benefits:  Also, previously only one HubSpot ticket could only be linked to one Jira issue but from now on the number is not limited, thanks to the latest update.

Slack updates

• What it is about: You may now create new channels for Slack through workflows. With the latest update, these Slack channel connections appear in the company/deal view as a separate card. The card shows, among other things, how many people belong to that linked Slack channel. HubSpot generates automatic notifications to these channels regarding deal/company communication actions.
• What are the benefits: These small yet useful updates provide excellent support for teams implementing an Account-Based Marketing strategy. When notifications update automatically to the entire team for each customer/deal, all members stay on the pulse.