Hubcast 60: Inbound 2015 Conference Product Launch & Review

Welcome back to The Hubcast , folks: A weekly podcast all about HubSpot news, tips, and tricks. Please also note the extensive show notes below, including some new HubSpot video tutorials created by George Thomas.

Show Notes:

Inbound 2015 Product Launch

There were three items that we feel did not get the major spotlight at Inbound 2015, so we chat them up a little first.

• The Easy Initiative
• HubSpot Goes Multilingual
• Introducing Leadin

Now on to the major spotlight product launch items.

THE REPORTING ADD ON

One Dashboard. All Your Reports.

Improving and optimizing your marketing starts with understanding your data. HubSpot's Reporting Add-on brings all the reports you need to analyze your marketing and sales data into one ... TRIAL THE REPORTING ADD-ON

THE ADS ADD-ON

Finally, Master Ads

The Ads Add-on is the easiest way to create, measure and leverage ads for inbound marketing. You can now create ads right inside HubSpot and figure out which ads convert the most leads into customers. Easily build great ads that support your existing ... TRIAL ADS NOW

PREDICTIVE LEAD SCORING

Stop Guessing. Start Knowing.

Understanding all of the factors that go into making a contact qualified can be difficult, if not impossible. You need to figure out all of the properties to factor into your score and how much to weigh them by. Predictive lead scoring takes the pressure off of the marketer by providing a lead score based on ... TRIAL ENTERPRISE NOW

HUBSPOT WEBSITE PLATFORM

A Website that Works for You.

You want a website that delivers results. That’s a given. But what about a platform that enables you to do more with the content you publish? The HubSpot Website Platform ties your content into a full-funnel marketing system, optimizes it for search, adjusts to mobile, and even ... TRIAL THE WEBSITE PLATFORM

HUBSPOT CONNECT

Integrations With the Systems You Use Most.

With the launch of HubSpot Connect and a collection of new integrations, HubSpot is bringing data from all of your front office systems into one integrated platform. See billing data alongside website activity. Trigger workflows from help-desk tickets or event participation. Drastically expand the inputs you can use ... SEE HOW IT WORKS

SIDEKICK FOR BUSINESS & HUBSPOT CRM UPDATES

Tools for a Modern Sales Process

Transform the way you sell with the HubSpot Sales Platform. This year, HubSpot is introducing a collection of great updates within Sidekick for Business and a number of improvements to HubSpot CRM. Uncover new sources of warm prospects you've never seen before with Prospects in Sidekick for Business. Surface connections between your network and the companies you sell to that ...

Inbound Event thoughts from the crowd

Marcus wrote a great article right after Inbound called 7 Honest Observations of HubSpot’s Inbound 2015 Conference #Inbound15 well, we had some great feedback and we wanted to pull some information out of it. We also want all of you Hubcast listeners to give us your feedback as well. Let's help HubSpot with Inbound 2016.

First things first, Dharmesh was the first to comment on the article. Well played HubSpot, Well played he says... :-)

Dharmesh Shaw

Marcus,

Thanks for your candid thoughts and all of your support of the inbound movement over the years. You have been an inspiration to many.

Appreciate your helping spread the good-will.

See you at #INBOUND16

Cheers,

Dharmesh

Joel Gerdis

Good insights Marcus. I shared all your sentiments. As a tiered partner agency we are looking closely at other automation solutions for our clients because the HubSpot pricing model is right at the level that makes it one of the primary deciding factors for us to close retainers. Add-on pricing will make it that much more difficult.

I also heard many people (one of my clients included) disappointed that the keynotes and spotlights lacked practical inbound know how or application.

Maximum capacity? It might be time to go regional with these conferences or break the partner track out and have a partner specific conference…, or B2B or B2C specific conferences. Just some thoughts.

My take away was Inbound 15 was spread thin; attempting to be all things to all people. I did not receive as much value as in years past. I do know Brian and the crew will take these suggestions and likely blow us away next year so I expect I will return for Inbound 16′.

Sean Farrell

As a first time Inbound attendee, I felt the need to comment. I would like to start off by talking about #7. I as a CEO, have been to many conferences and I was incredibly impressed with the majority of the logistics of this size event. Check-in from start to finish was less than 15 minutes, always Hubspot employees out in the venue to help guide you to the right place and had a genuine excitement for the community involved. The line thing was a turn off, which is simply a factor of growth and preparation. Some suggestions…Have the APP come out way sooner, like at least 30 days to event. Also make course registration mandatory to allow you to align room size with attendence. Also, in the event someone isnt using the app have touchscreen stations to register for classes at the event and make registration required before Wednesday. Lastly, get rid of the badge scanning. I only saw it at a few locations but it REALLY slowed down the process. Last suggestion, I would see adding a BEGINNERS track for those wanting to learn more how to apply the concepts to the tool itself. I realize you have an Academy group that needs to generate revenue, but only offering paid classes seems contrary to the Inbound movement. I think usage of more of the tool, versus the 10-20% that most new Hubspotters use would increase dramatically with the opportunity to see how to do some of the cool things in the tool itself. Also, lunch was tough. I almost always ended up with sessions during both lunch periods I wanted to attend with no break really to allow for a breather or time to run and get lunch. Perhaps you could cut one of the breakout sessions to allow a 45 minute session free time to recover mentally and get some food without the worry of missing a session. All in all it was a great experience and I look forward to attending next year.

Brendon Dennewill

Couldn’t agree more Marcus,

Apart from the fact that I rated you one of the top 3 speakers at Inbound (with Ms Brown and our man Seth Godin), you have the deepest insight into the challenges and opportunities in the inbound ecosystem and the ability to articulate those with incredible clarity.

Look forward to seeing and learning from you again soon.

Hannah Eisenberg

Marcus,

First of all, I was thrilled to not only finally hear you talk live and in person but also grateful for the insights – I look forward to attending your WOW event in November!

I share your feelings about how frustrating it was to get locked out. We are a small Hubspot partner and having now a team of 4 prople to pay for is frustrating – we spent more time waiting in line or finding a new session than actually being in one.

Also, I feel very strongly that the reporting should be free (and if not, there should be a way for partners to get a discount for client accounts?) and the ad add-on can be more expensive.

But what about the business directory of 19 million businesses? How will I explain to my clients that we do inbound marketing and they should never buy lists – oh and btw you can now use Hubspot to search a list of businesses. Great that you can connect with existing contacts to get an introduction but this is based on Sidekick, D&B data or prospect tool, no thank you!

I am the biggest Hubspot fan but this year there were some things that left me shaking my head…

BTW: I showed my two little girls your daugther’s blog Traveling with Dad. They love hearing the stories and hope they can do the same thing when they are bigger! ????

Johan Vandecasteele

Great event all over. Had the chance to meet a lot of people (HubSpotters, users and agencies) and had really, really good conversations.

But all things considered, we do share the sentiment the event was somewhat less exciting than last year.

#1

Keynotes (other than Halligan and Dharmesh) disappointed somewhat. Seth Godin – excepted a lot more, Brené Brown and Chelsea Clinton – not sure how to relate that to Inbound (hey – that’s me). The sessions left me 50/50. Some really great ones (yours, for example :-)), some real generic ones.

#5

Looks to me HubSpot is upping its game, and targeting Enterprise-level with the reporting, predictive lead scoring, … We do regret the extra charges. Enterprise customers will probably not mind the extra charges, but these are items our current, Belgian, (PRO) users would benefit from, but not sure they are willing to pay for them. .

#6

14.000 attendees revealed some cracks in the organization, but mainly in the waiting rows at the sessions. Scanning the badges at the door might not be the best option. Pre-registration could be a good alternative. Then again – 14.000 people is massive… I have been organizing events in the past, this is a monster

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