Part Two: We Test it: HubSpot

This is the second post in the series, We Test it: HubSpot platform.  We’ve received a 30-day access to play with the HubSpot tool for our global software development company, WordImpress. We’re testing it so you don't have to.  So far, we really like it. 4.8 stars!

Feel free to learn about the sales process and initial platform launch in the previous post.

When logging in, I am a big fan that HubSpot forces you to consider persona development.  Activating campaigns with customer-centric technology is very welcome in my life.  Clearly, HubSpot built their system to support customer-centric and data driven marketing methodology. Immediately after persona development, The HubSpot platform guides you to start working on formatting your customer lists, based on the personas previously developed. First snag! Our current lists aren’t broken down by these personas; rather our customer lists are broken down by product sold.  OOOOOOO, the first real decision in using the technology. Do I break the HubSpot rule and set my products as audiences or do I painstakingly go through my data and re-org it.  Well, since I’ve allocated “marketing activation” budget, time to get my customer data hat on and “try my best to segment” thousands of people.

Ok, so after starting this process I’ve decided to go a different direction (for this test). Rather than spending 10 hours right now reconfiguring our data, I’ll only use new download data. That being said, we can keep moving forward with this test.  We currently generate somewhere between 500-1000/downloads per day, so we’ll have plenty of data to play with if I just wait a few days.

In the meantime, before we can start creating “workflows off our customer data” (I’ll discuss in the next post) here’s a few more reasons I really like about using the HubSpot Marketing automation tool.

1) Support: We’ve got our VP Media, account strategist and sales people viewing the dashboard and our test progress, then asking questions to HubSpot. They have been very responsive and we not only have two sales people, we’ve got their product and tech teams playing in the sandbox, too!

NOTE:We have also been trying to test InfusionSoft, but couldn’t even get a license to test and the sales guy would only provide us a “weak demo”. Lame.

2) Centralized Reporting:

Tracking, “beyond first click” interaction has always been a challenge; less the client already had a great tool like Domo or Google enterprise. Reality is, HubSpot can solve this issue and at a much fairer cost than what Domo or G-enterpise would like to eat from your budget.

Reporting is a centralized “one stop shop” from sourcing paid outlets to reviewing blog engagement. We love this because it can empower ad ops AND produce reporting to share with your bosses, ad councils and the industry. Most importantly, we can view attribution, informing our campaigns that may have ran months ago, but are still responsible for leads generated.

3) Seemless Integration (with and without development teams)

API integration is something we work on regularly (especially with our Google Maps plugin product). With HubSpot, integration is seamless, and hasn’t yet required our development team. HubSpot has done nearly all the dev work for us. So far we have integrated WordPress, WP HubSpot Plugin, Mail Chimp and all of our social accounts.  If you can click a mouse, you can integrate your third party tools; period.

In our final look at HubSpot in the week ahead, we’ll have our customer data into the system and will be testing and commenting on WorkFlows.  Can’t wait.

-Jason