Rebecca Gonzalez
INBOUND official wrap-up and announcement insights (well, Orange Marketing thoughts anyway).
OVERALL. Best Inbound since 2019. It feels like "we're back." The show floor was exciting and vibrant; people were pumped, friendly, and outgoing. The networking was off the hook and the learnings were everywhere. It was the best Inbound we have ever attended (number six).
AI. What else did you expect? And HubSpot named it Breeze. Queue the comedy. However, many of my SoCal 90's colleagues laughed when PacTel Cellular was renamed to AirTouch Cellular. All the way to the bank.
AI IS FOR REAL. Time to jump in with both feet (said to self) and figure out exactly what HubSpot is doing with all its AI. Video clips and webinars are coming from Orange Marketing (the best way to learn is to teach). HubSpot doubled down on reassuring us humans that the robot army won't hurt us. Okay, we get it already. It's like the launch of scary PCs or cell phones. Everything. Will. Be. Okay.
BREEZE AGENTS do the work for you. How can anyone resist? Do more with less? Sign us up. The Social & Content Agents are obvious fits for any Marketer (available only in Content P/E). Service Agent (in Service P/E) and Prospecting Agent (Sales P/E). These look great, but more to come (demos are available on hubspot.com/spotlight).
BREEZE INTELLIGENCE. Think Apollo, Seamless, ZoomInfo type data native in HubSpot, and why HubSpot purchased Clearbit last year. It's a game changer for HubSpot and, for many of our customers, we predict another very welcome marketing/sales tech stack consolidation (buh-bye one-off data intelligence solutions). Oh, there will be charges you silly geese.
CASE STUDIES. New content type! We did not see that coming, and we love it. Think landing pages, website pages, blog pages, but case study pages. We saw the coolest demo in the product booth. You need Content Hub P/E to get Beta.
THE FUTURE OF SEO AND EMAIL. We are all concerned about the gutting we have seen in our website traffic with major SEO whiplash from Google and email delivery challenges from all the ESPs. In general, the take from all major presenters at INBOUND 24 was repurpose your content multiple times, in multiple places. The old strategy of blog post to email newsletter is just not gonna fly. And HubSpot's new AI-powered content tools available only in Marketing Content Pro & Enterprise, are what is going to drive both marketing productivity and revenue conversion. Nothing is dead, but it is all morphing rapidly. Learning and pivoting is key.
HUBSPOT STOCK PRICE. Monday 9/15, 495 points, and closed Thursday 9/19 at 530 points. Up forty points or 7%. The market liked these announcements.
INBOUND IN-PERSON. Bring it. We talked to so many of our industry colleagues, awesome HubSpot partners, sales reps, managers, partner team members, and HubSpot-centric tech vendors. The show was bright, beautiful, pink, orange, diverse, and fabulous. Commented a colleague who had spent last week at SaaStr, "INBOUND isn't a tech bro show." No cap (I had to look it up).
CUSTOMERS IN-PERSON. Wow. What a concept. There is nothing like it, and business runs so much smoother when the humans truly know each other at a level deeper than a 30-minute Zoom. I dig the remote work lifestyle, but a chance to connect is sooo EXTRA (in a great way) Matthew Cook, Lisa Hadrick.
INBOUND 25 IN SAN FRANCISCO: HubSpot has announced that the INBOUND 25 will be in San Francisco, Sep. 3-5 at the Moscone Center. SF is the home of Salesforce and the site of Dreamforce, which should happen about a week after Inbound. We believe this location change is both a bid to increase West Coast HubSpot market share and a message to Salesforce. INBOUND 26 is already slated to return to Boston. We are a West Coast partner and are curious how Inbound will go down on our side of the country. Booking the Airbnbs ASAP.
PRODUCT ANNOUNCEMENTS. All the product announcements are summarized right here, and neatly organized to boot.
