HubSpot Updates Rolled Out in May 2021

by Melanie, on 25 May 2021

HubSpot is constantly rolling out updates to its platform and, although they email us about some of them, there are so many updates that we definitely don't hear about all of them.

That is, until I sit down to write this monthly series.

Then, I check out ALL of the updates that have been introduced to find things that people have asked us about, features that we have requested, and ones that are outright useful on their own terms.

Putting this blog together always feels like a big task, but I also feel giddy and just want to go try some of these things out!

So, let's dive in to what HubSpot has rolled out in the last few weeks. As always, we'd love to hear what you're most excited to use. If you want to discuss HubSpot further, please don't hesitate to reach out!

CRM & SALES HUB

deal Priority

HubSpot provides many ways to segment your database. You can designate target accounts in the ABM functionality. You can set up your own calculations for manual lead scoring or you can use HubSpot's predictive lead scoring. But, these tend to be for contact or company records.

Now, at the deal level, you or your sales reps can assign high, medium, or low priority to each deal, meaning you can segment your deal pipeline and let your sales reps know which deals to work first.

Docusign Integration

If you need e-signatures and use DocuSign, you can now integrate this with HubSpot. This means you can create, send, and track DocuSign envelopes from a contact, company, or deal record while working in HubSpot.

Google Meet Integration

When people started using calendar booking tools a few years ago, I was skeptical. It felt cold and impersonal. I mean, who is so important that they can't find time to schedule a call or a meeting? Fast forward...

Now, I cannot rave enough about having a meeting booking link. I'm grateful when someone shares one because it saves so much time by avoiding the back and forth. I've really enjoyed HubSpot's integration with Zoom, which eliminated the need to send a Zoom link when someone books time with me. Now, people who prefer Google Hangouts can take advantage of the same functionality.

Lead Scoring

As mentioned under deal prioritization, above, lead scoring is a key way for marketers and sales teams to segment a database. With this recent update, you'll find more in-app pop-ups to provide contextual help as you set up lead scoring variables and scores.

Skip If Known

This feature was just introduced yesterday! Importing contacts may sound easy - if you haven't done it before, BUT, if you have, you know that it's critical to think through scenarios to make sure you don't break or lose data along the way.

When importing a list of contacts, you can now tell HubSpot not to override existing data if a field contains a known value. This removes the need to make sense of HubSpot data and list data to combine values before importing, which can get hairy in a hurry! Importantly, it remains a choice. Maybe you do want to override with new information - the choice is yours.

MARKETING HUB

BRAND COLORS

Most marketers can rattle off their brand's primary hex codes in their sleep. So, it's annoying to have to type them in whenever you're selecting colors for elements like font, dividers, and really, anywhere it's not necessary.

Worse, people on your team might think "oh, our brand color is blue" rather than #085464, and pick a color that's 'kinda close'. But, that does not count!

HubSpot is streamlining how you can set up preferred brand colors across landing pages, emails, and CMS.

HubSpot Color Defaults

SIDEBAR COLLABORATION

HubSpot has been gradually introducing sidebar spaces where, within certain parts of the platform, teams can collaborate and leave comments. They have recently rolled this out to more segments, including ads, emails, campaigns, and forms. I can't wait to see this reach the CMS and blog modules!

CAMPAIGNS

Campaigns has been one of the less-used parts of HubSpot, but now that the HubSpot team is rolling out improvements, I suspect we'll see more and more marketing teams using this part of the software.

You can now assign campaign owners, start and end dates, specify goals, and add assets. This means that campaigns is no longer just a reporting tool for designated assets, but also a planning tool and more of a strategic tool.

NEW NAVIGATION

Be on the lookout for a reorganization of menu items in the Marketing Hub drop-down menu. Landing pages no longer appear under website but SEO has been moved there!

The changes are meant to better align with marketing teams' workflows, processes, and goals.

SEO UPDATES & EXPORT

This is one thing I requested to HubSpot! Their SEO audit tool is getting pretty good at making recommendations, but it hasn't been easy to figure out which webpages were impacted by a particular SEO issue (like titles being too many characters).

Now, we can export this data from the system! And, yes, I am that excited. Some SEO audits return hundreds of pages that need tweaks and unless you can easily bring that information into a spreadsheet or project management tool, you'd need to spend quite a bit of time on needless data entry.

reporting

EMBED EXTERNAL DATA ON DASHBOARDS

Even though HubSpot is a powerful platform that captures tons of data across the buyer's journey and customer experience, we regularly need to access data from other systems to add context to what's provided by HubSpot (from Google Analytics, for example).

HubSpot has now introduced the ability to pull in data from other systems and display it on reporting dashboards.

WORKFLOWS

"SIMPLE" BRANCHES

This is going to save you/us soooo much time! Rather than explain it, watch the video below. The mind boggles at how often this will be helpful.