Flawless Inbound Case Studies

INBOUND 2024: 14 New Features Unveiled At INBOUND That Make HubSpot The Ultimate Smart CRM

Written by Shaoni Das | Sep 18, 2024 4:00:23 PM

It’s no longer enough to simply have customer data. 

You need a CRM that can transform that data into actionable insights and uses the most efficient automation and processes to do so. 

At INBOUND 24, HubSpot made a bold move. They’re going beyond just anticipating customer needs, automating routine tasks, and personalizing communication—areas they’ve already addressed with their Hubs. Their new goal is to provide a clear, unified customer profile: a single, straightforward, secure, and customizable source of truth that includes everything you need to know about your buyers, prospects, competitors, peers, industry, team members, and more. 

Take a closer look at the new features announced at INBOUND that define HubSpot as the ultimate Smart CRM: 

1. Sensitive Data Storage 

Enterprise customers can now store sensitive data, including personal health information and highly sensitive data like social security numbers, in HubSpot to power their go-to-market, manage compliance, and mitigate disruptions. 

All images via HubSpot

2. Quick Record Create 

Your teams can effortlessly create new contacts, companies, deals, tickets, and tasks across the HubSpot platform. This prompt in-context creation process reduces disruptions, helping you stay focused and efficiently manage your primary tasks. No need to navigate away — you can just conveniently create relevant records directly where you need them. 

3. New Permissions for CRM Activities 

New access settings for CRM activities have been built upon permissions that already exist. 

  • For meeting permissions, users can now control access to view logged meetings based on different criteria, including all meetings, meetings owned by their team, meetings they personally own, and unassigned meetings.  
  • Similarly, call permissions allow users to manage access to view logged calls across HubSpot, with options to filter by all calls, calls their team owns, calls they own, and unassigned calls.  
  • Users can now edit and delete notes and CRM emails with new permissions too.  

These updates provide more granular control and augment the management of user access to important CRM data. 

4. Sales Workspace 

This new Workspace gives your sales team one unified place to spend their day working from. From leads to opportunities, to deals to tasks to meetings scheduled, this space has everything reps need to work efficiently and without distractions so they can focus on closing more deals!

5. Unified Record Page Editor 

The unified record page editor allows admins to customize the entire record page in one place, delivering a view of what their teams will see. Through this customization you can provide your teams with the right information at the right time. 

6. New Setup Features 

HubSpot is introducing a set of new features to reduce the overwhelm of getting started in HubSpot, ensuring that key decisions are made with the right scaffolding.  

  • Data Setup Checklist outlines important steps to set up your data model paired with links to the relevant part of HubSpot and supporting guidance. 
  • Industry templates are a recommended set of custom data configurations that reflect your industry

7. AI-Assisted Insights for Reports

This technology will provide quick, data-backed takeaways for your Reports, so you spend less time interpreting and more time capturing value. No need to spend hours combing through data to make conclusions; instead, leverage AI to access concise summaries and takeaways that matter, all with a click of a button. 

8. Personalized Search Results 

Global Search results for Companies will now pull up company search results you have recently clicked on the most to the top, even if other companies have names or properties that match your search term. 

9. Manual CRM Backup 

Workflows can now be configured to be user-based. Customers will experience the same behavior they are used to when building workflows centered around users.  

Since users are becoming full CRM objects, it's important to expand functionality outside of the Users & Teams space. By enabling users as an object in workflows, admins can automate functions like setting user properties, notifying team members about changes to a user, and setting up alerts for when a user's email or calendar accounts have been disconnected. 

10. Export Approvals 

Export approvals allow users to set up an approvals mechanism for CRM exports. Once set up, a user on your platform will need an admin or someone with the correct permissions to approve an export before the file is made available to them. 

Export approvals can be managed in the following ways. 

  • Require approvals for specific users on your platform  
  • Require approvals if the export is larger than ‘X’ number of rows. 
  • The export contains sensitive data (this will be a default). 
     

11. HubSpot Object Library 

Looking for objects outside of the standard Contacts, Companies, Deals, and Tickets but don't have the capacity to build Custom Objects? Good news! You can now conveniently access and enable templated objects in a user-friendly interface for customized use throughout all core HubSpot features based on company and team needs. Check Settings > Objects to start browsing templates.

12. Control Gradual Feature Releases 

Admins are able to schedule when a specific portal (or set of features) will be updated or released. By placing it at the end of the release schedule, admins can control when it goes live and minimize the potential disruptions or issues from a new release. New features or updates do not have to negatively affect the portal immediately. 

13. Content Remix V2 (Video and External URL) 

It was released into Beta previously, but Content Remix is already getting an overhaul! This tool allows marketing teams to take one piece of content and "remix" it into many, many others! And now - you can add a video and remix it into additional clips and content pieces OR start from any external URL and get remixing into your choice of content type!

14. AI Assistant in Lists 

Searching through an endless list of properties, events, and associations to create your list can be a tedious and time-consuming endeavor that only prevents you from focusing your time and energy on what matters most: the customers.  

With AI Assistant in Lists, simply describe the contacts you want to engage with, and AI will create the right set of filters for your list.  

UPGRADE TO A SMART CRM WITH FLAWLESS INBOUND 

Want to try out these new Smart CRM features? Join our Post-Inbound workshop on October 2 as we peel back the layers of the new functionalities available in HubSpot and show you exactly how you can leverage them to refine your sales and marketing processes. 

Don’t want to attend the webinar and just chat with an expert directly?  Get in touch today!