How to Simplify Your Transition to AI: HubSpot's AI Tools for Marketing & Sales [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 65]

Jessica Palmeri
0:00:00
Hey Alex, I just got back from Inbound. Yes. And I can sum up the entire Inbound experience. All the exciting product updates in one word. Really?

Alex Winter
0:00:10
Yeah.

Alex Winter
0:00:11
What is it?

Alex Winter
0:00:21
Join us for Impact Live 2024 in Hartford, Connecticut this October 14th through the 16th. Over three days, business owners, CEOs, and marketing and sales leaders will learn proven strategies to drive business growth. Attend expert-led sessions on marketing, sales, leadership, and AI, and get a chance to network with industry pros just like yourself. Discover how companies like yours are dominating their Secure your spot at impactplus.com backslash impact-5. And for all of our Endless Customers listeners,

Alex Winter
0:00:54
we have an exclusive discount code that'll save you $100. So when you're on the checkout page, just enter the code ECPOD100 in all caps for $100 off. We'll see you there at Impact Live 2024 up in Hartford October 14th through the 16th.

Alex Winter
0:01:10
Welcome back to Endless Customers,

Alex Winter
0:01:11
the show that teaches you how to earn trust and win more business in the age of AI. I'm your host Alex Winter and today we are joined by Jess Palmieri. She's the director of HubSpot training here at Impact. Jess, welcome back to the show. Hello Alex! Hello! Wait, do you smell that? What is that? Are you feeling like a breeze? Yeah, I feel something. What is that? Something's coming. Something is coming.

Jessica Palmeri
0:01:39
What is this thing that's coming?

Jessica Palmeri
0:01:40
What is it?

Alex Winter
0:01:41
Let's talk HubSpot.

Jessica Palmeri
0:01:42
HubSpot Inbound.

Alex Winter
0:01:43
Inbound, baby.

Alex Winter
0:01:44
Let's go.

Jessica Palmeri
0:01:45
Yes, let's go.

Alex Winter
0:01:46
Okay.

Jessica Palmeri
0:01:47
It's time.

Alex Winter
0:01:48
It's the fall season. We're getting into it.

Jessica Palmeri
0:01:50
We are getting into it. Inbound just happened, and we are going to talk about all the fun goodies that came out of the HubSpot likes to put on a show, and they like to make a splash with all of their new technology, new features, new AI, and I'm here to tell you all of the good things

Jessica Palmeri
0:02:14
that are coming to your portal sometime soon.

Alex Winter
0:02:15
I can't wait. You always have your finger on the pulse. You're so plugged into the community at HubSpot.

Jessica Palmeri
0:02:20
No, I try, I try.

Alex Winter
0:02:22
You do more than try, you do. You really do an amazing job, and I'm excited to hear, and just unpack everything that happened because Inbound is a huge event and there's so much going on and I was distracted by a little certain somebody by the name of Ryan.

Alex Winter
0:02:34
Oh, I know, I know, Ryan Reynolds. Totally have a man crush.

Jessica Palmeri
0:02:37
A little bit of my heart drop, yes.

Alex Winter
0:02:38
Mr. Deadpool over there, yeah.

Jessica Palmeri
0:02:39
Oh, yes, oh yes.

Alex Winter
0:02:40
I love Ryan. But besides all the amazing guests and all these huge influential people that come to the show, there's also a ton of new products, a ton of new features, a ton of things that they roll out. So where do we start? What was like the coolest thing for you?

Alex Winter
0:02:54
What's the, where do we kick this conversation off?

Jessica Palmeri
0:02:56
I mean Alex, you go for the Serena Williams of the world, you go for the Ryan Reynolds of the world, I go for the product managers, honestly.

Jessica Palmeri
0:03:04
Nice.

Jessica Palmeri
0:03:05
The folks that know me in the HubSpot world know that I will hunt down a product manager and become their best friend at any opportunity that I can because I really wanna know what's new, what's exciting, what's coming our direction. So I love the position that I sit in because I coach and train folks on HubSpot every single

Jessica Palmeri
0:03:22
day. So when I talk to a product manager, I'm like, listen, it's like having 15 focus groups every single week. I am working one-on-one with these clients. I'm learning about their goals, aspirations, and also their frustrations with how technology is currently helping their businesses grow, but sometimes impeding their progress.

Jessica Palmeri
0:03:41
So how can we work together to really find those real great moments of opportunity where we can take a common business problem and solve it with a technical solution that actually works for the common user, not someone who knows how to code

Jessica Palmeri
0:03:54
or knows how to do all the fancy things on the back end. You know, it's the everyman that we are after. And I think that there are so many great things here at Inbound this year. There's going to really speak to that everyday marketer, that everyday business owner that just wants technology

Jessica Palmeri
0:04:08
to work for them to make the gosh darn process easier. So let's talk about the biggest announcement this year, which was Breeze. So we made a little joke about it in the beginning, Alex. You know, I asked you to do the little smell in the air

Jessica Palmeri
0:04:22
thing.

Alex Winter
0:04:22
Something's in the air. What is that?

Jessica Palmeri
0:04:23
Exactly. It's a new thing called Breeze, and it is a new kind of. It is essentially at its core a repackaging, but also a reimagination of all of HubSpot's existing AI tools and technology into one central location. So in Microsoft, you have Copilot.

Jessica Palmeri
0:04:42
In Google, you have Gemini. And now in HubSpot, you have Breeze. This is going to be their flagship AI tool that will allow you to seamlessly integrate AI into all aspects of your work from marketing to sales to customer support and service and it's really designed to help that everyday marketer, that everyday man, find their way in this

Jessica Palmeri
0:05:04
very complex AI space. What HubSpot is really touting is that they want to make AI less complex and less complicated so that businesses can actually ease into it. So that is really the goal here, to make this a very approachable version of AI that really works with the jobs that you're already trying to do on a day-to-day basis.

Jessica Palmeri
0:05:25
So often, we talk about the promise of AI. We know that that's a huge part of the endless customer's journey about really multiplying your impact with these AI tools and technology, but so often, you invest in a tool

Jessica Palmeri
0:05:37
and you get so excited about the promise of what it could be. And then, six months later, that tool, that functionality, it's lost funding, it's out the door, there's a new thing. So what HubSpot is doing well, I really believe, is that they are taking common problems, common busy work, common functions

Jessica Palmeri
0:05:54
that people are already experiencing within their HubSpot portals, and saying, okay, let's make that a little bit better. Let's make that a little bit faster, a little bit smarter, so that the folks that are a little bit hesitant about AI can say, well, I don't know if I want to start learning

Jessica Palmeri
0:06:09
how to prompt on chat GPT, but I can totally click this little star-shaped button and I can have HubSpot rewrite this quick line of text and make it sound professional, make it sound like a great email that I want to send out.

Alex Winter
0:06:21
Totally, totally. And some of the features and what they've shared at Inbound, it really feels more like an assistant, like an AI assistant, like your own personal assistant versus typing prompts into GPT, which GPT's great, but if you're not really into the prompt game

Alex Winter
0:06:34
and how AI works on that side of the equation, this is much more intuitive, feels like somebody on your team that can help you with your CRM.

Jessica Palmeri
0:06:41
I mean, every AI tool is moving in that direction. They know that they need to move away from the coder developer community and speak to that common man. So this is just HubSpot saying, hey, we have so many people using our software on a day-to-day basis,

Jessica Palmeri
0:06:56
and they are from all different walks of life. So how do we make this on-ramp as short as possible so that they start using this new technology without ever realizing that it's actually an AI algorithm that's going to work for their business to help them grow better and grow stronger and grow faster?

Alex Winter
0:07:10
Yeah, I think it's, we talk about this a lot, and this is what you're an expert in and what we, I love talking with you about this specifically is you know how to bridge these gaps of like very technical pieces and then figuring out a way to apply it for common folks. People that aren't necessarily experts in this so that it bridges that gap and it gives them a chance to leverage these tools in a way that's meaningful for their business,

Alex Winter
0:07:30
for their job and for their colleagues. So that's what it's all about.

Jessica Palmeri
0:07:34
Exactly. You don't want to be paying for endless software that doesn't actually help your business grow. You don't want to pay for software that actually has all this promise but doesn't deliver on any of it.

Alex Winter
0:07:44
So if you're a partner. Sorry to interrupt, but how many times have we heard, and how many clients have you worked with where they're spending enterprise-level money for HubSpot, and they're not using it. And they don't know how to use it.

Alex Winter
0:07:54
And nobody's really touched it in months, weeks, years. Like it's crazy how often that happens, because there's a fear of the complexity of it. So to be able to break down some of those barriers, give people access, give people the chance to really use it in a meaningful way,

Alex Winter
0:08:09
it changes the whole landscape.

Jessica Palmeri
0:08:10
I mean, for so long we thought of professional and enterprise level software as the tools that you needed once you got the big boy business or the big girl business. Once you grew to a certain point, you would need more complexity in your organization.

Jessica Palmeri
0:08:24
You would need that extra oomph to make sure that your campaigns are hitting the right way that you could analyze the data and really understand to make those data-driven decisions to grow your organization. Totally. But now, there's a whole new mindset of professional and enterprise means access to more user-friendly tools that can actually help you accomplish all of those same things but is not as intimidating

Jessica Palmeri
0:08:45
as it once was because before when you had an enterprise-level HubSpot platform, that meant that you probably needed a dedicated HubSpot admin and some technical people on your team to actually make it worth your while. And I saw folks all the time that we like to say they had a Ferrari in the garage and they just never took it out for a

Jessica Palmeri
0:09:03
spin, because they had access to these amazing tools. And someone like me, who nerds out on that stuff 24-7, was so excited that when you had the right data and the right tools to analyze it, you could make amazing data-driven decisions for your organization and see those results. But there was always that gap.

Jessica Palmeri
0:09:20
There was always that technical gap that you needed to fill of someone to really dive in deep to understand how to fully leverage your HubSpot software. And now, with these new technologies that's really incorporating AI, we're really making every aspect of the portal so much more user friendly now. I have to ask Alex. Can you run a content ROI report in HubSpot for me right now?

Alex Winter
0:09:42
Yes question mark Alex

Alex Winter
0:09:45
I'm going to give

Jessica Palmeri
0:09:47
Little peek behind the curtain. Yeah Alex do you know this as an administrator? I know the last time that you logged into HubSpot I'm sure you do. Yep, which I don't know if we should share on the show. We're not going to share it. It's not a pretty number, but.

Alex Winter
0:10:05
In theory, I know how to do what you're saying. In practice, if you wanted me to right now do this, it might take a second. I would have to get my bearings.

Jessica Palmeri
0:10:12
It's going to take longer than a second for Alex to figure this out, ladies and gentlemen.

Jessica Palmeri
0:10:16
But that's okay.

Jessica Palmeri
0:10:17
Because with AI, you can actually just prompt AI and say, hey, Breeze, I want to run this report. Can you show me exactly how many companies we added to our CRM.

Alex Winter
0:10:27
See, and this is why Breeze is going to be my new best friend.

Jessica Palmeri
0:10:30
Even Alex Winter can figure out how to run HubSpot reports now, people. This is the exciting thing that just happened.

Alex Winter
0:10:36
That's right, and if I can do it, that means you can do it. Exactly.

Jessica Palmeri
0:10:40
So no excuses, right? Exactly. So all of these technical pieces that once required some skill and understanding to figure out now can be answered with a common language prompt of show me this thing did we grow last month what was our closed one revenue for the month of October all of these things are now possible because we're taking the

Jessica Palmeri
0:11:00
complex and breaking it down into the simple with the use of AI so this is the actual promise of AI that I'm excited about because I'm I'm gonna be honest with you Alex when Bob Ruffalo came to us I don't know about a year a year and a half ago and said it's gonna be huge you have to get on this bandwagon, we gotta get ahead of this game. I was hesitant, because I'm like, I don't know,

Jessica Palmeri
0:11:20
I like technical stuff, but I live in HubSpot, I live in Breathe HubSpot, I don't wanna learn anything new, I'll play around with chat GPT, but I want the AI to come to me, I don't wanna have to go to it. Well guess what Alex, I waited it out,

Jessica Palmeri
0:11:31
and now the AI is coming to me. And so I can be an AI champion as well, but I can do it from within HubSpot, which is a tool that I log into on a daily basis, unlike some people at this table, and I can actually use this technology

Jessica Palmeri
0:11:45
to make my everyday life easier. And I am someone who has taken the time to dive in, to make those complicated reports, to really understand my data, to clean it up, to make it less messy, and now all of that grind that I had to put in

Jessica Palmeri
0:12:00
to get to those achievable outcomes just suddenly got so much easier for, again, that everyday marketer.

Alex Winter
0:12:06
Yeah, and it sounds appealing enough that I would even use it.

Jessica Palmeri
0:12:09
I bet I could get you to log into HubSpot this week, Alex.

Alex Winter
0:12:12
Let's do it.

Jessica Palmeri
0:12:13
Just to see some of these fills and actions.

Alex Winter
0:12:15
I feel like coming off inbound and all of this, it's like it's got me in trouble if there's ever a time, right?

Jessica Palmeri
0:12:19
I know.

Jessica Palmeri
0:12:20
If there's ever a time to get Alex Minter to log into his HubSpot account, this is the moment. This is the one. Because you're that excited. Let's talk about some of these specific tools

Alex Winter
0:12:28
and features. Okay so Breeze is clearly here to stay. It's exciting, it's big news. What facets of Breeze are like, what are some of the features that really stood out to you or some of the things that you're most excited about? So when you

Jessica Palmeri
0:12:38
think about HubSpot's new Breeze AI functionality, you're gonna think about three key areas. There's Breeze Co-Pilots, Breeze Agents, and then Breeze Intelligence. So Breeze Co-Pilots is what I was just talking about. When you have a question, it's essentially the evolution of ChatSpot, which was something we talked about in the past. It was kind of Dharmesh's sort of starter project of when he got really excited about AI,

Jessica Palmeri
0:12:59
he was like, hey, let me build a version of this for HubSpot. Now, that ChatSpot has gotten a complete overall and it's becoming, again, this tool that helps you throughout any area of the software. And what I love about it is that it is context aware and also available on mobile. So if you are struggling to understand exactly how to build a report, if you're in the reporting tool, Breeze is going to know that and you're going to be able to say,

Jessica Palmeri
0:13:25
hey Breeze, how would I do this thing? And it will give you the right context, the right instruction in that moment to help guide you through the software. Think of it as a hotspot trainer that you don't need to sit down with once a week to learn the tool. It's that starting point, that element to help you understand where to point and click to be able to use that tool more effectively. Gotcha.

Jessica Palmeri
0:13:44
It also is available on mobile, so there are certain functionality. I mean, I know that Alex, we've already established you probably didn't try to do this anytime soon, but I could never run a complicated report on mobile because there is just no way to build reports on the mobile app in an effective way. You can do certain things, very limited.

Alex Winter
0:14:00
Well, and in my defense, I'm on the go a lot.

Jessica Palmeri
0:14:02
So I'm off my phone.

Alex Winter
0:14:03
Okay, okay.

Jessica Palmeri
0:14:04
And it was, yeah.

Alex Winter
0:14:05
That's the excuse I'm going to go with.

Jessica Palmeri
0:14:06
Okay, we'll go with that excuse. Well, now you have an excuse.

Jessica Palmeri
0:14:08
Now there's no excuse, exactly.

Jessica Palmeri
0:14:09
Because Breeze is available as a copilot on mobile. So when you need to be able to find something quickly within the app, or you need to be able to run a report, you just say, hey, I'm going to use this AI functionality within the mobile app to surface the right information at, you know, during a business meeting or during, you know, on my way to an on-site visit, I can say, hey, Breeze, tell me about, like, summarize the last meeting that I had with this company as I'm walking

Jessica Palmeri
0:14:33
through the lobby to go meet with the CEO so that I can, you know, quickly get up to speed before I have that sit-down in-person meeting.

Alex Winter
0:14:40
That's awesome, though. Exactly. That's, I would use that, I would definitely be using that in the future.

Jessica Palmeri
0:14:43
Exactly. We're going to make HubSpot so simple that even Alex Winter can adopt it.

Alex Winter
0:14:48
Yes!

Alex Winter
0:14:49
Let's go.

Alex Winter
0:14:50
Yes! Let's do it. All right, so that's the co-pilot.

Jessica Palmeri
0:14:53
OK.

Alex Winter
0:14:53
And then you said the next one was agent, is that right?

Jessica Palmeri
0:14:55
Oh, agents.

Alex Winter
0:14:56
Agents.

Jessica Palmeri
0:14:56
There are multiple agents throughout the HubSpot software. We currently have social media agent, content agent, the prospecting agent, and the customer agent.

Alex Winter
0:15:07
Oh, nice.

Jessica Palmeri
0:15:08
Four agents. I mean, basically, we've got like agent Colson in there, and like all the agents that help the Avengers. You know, they're all hanging out in the portals.

Alex Winter
0:15:14
Is agent Skarn in there, too?

Jessica Palmeri
0:15:16
I mean, I have no idea who that is, but we're just gonna say yes.

Alex Winter
0:15:19
It's from the office.

Jessica Palmeri
0:15:20
Okay, I should know that, I'm from Scranton, but.

Alex Winter
0:15:23
Oh, come on.

Jessica Palmeri
0:15:24
Oh, you got me, Alex. You got me, Alex. I'll brush up on my office trivia, you log into HubSpot and we'll call it a day.

Alex Winter
0:15:31
Deal, deal, we can wait to happen, yeah.

Jessica Palmeri
0:15:33
Let's talk about social media agents. So this is designed to scale your social strategy. Again, it's a repackaging of some tools that already existed when the launch of Content Hub earlier this spring, but it generates posts tailored to your business, suggesting some times to post.

Jessica Palmeri
0:15:47
So you never wonder, when is the best time to actually publish that piece of content? HubSpot breeze is going to tell you. And then it uses your past performance on your company's own social media accounts to generate the right content and generate that right moment to engage with your audience.

Alex Winter
0:16:03
That's amazing.

Jessica Palmeri
0:16:04
So it's going to use all that data that you've been struggling to comprehend and organize for years and it's going to take all that information and say, okay, for impact, this is exactly how and when we should be posting. Or for, you know, river pools, this is exactly where we should be, you know, sending that message out at what time, you know, and the type of tone that we should take.

Alex Winter
0:16:22
Well, I mean, currently the analytics, they give you some great information. They do. But it doesn't really tell you that specifically, where you do have to still do some experimentation to find the best times and days and all that stuff. So if that can help solve some of that for you and give you very accurate data, like

Alex Winter
0:16:36
this is when you should post and that's a cool feature.

Jessica Palmeri
0:16:38
Exactly. Again, AI is not designed to replace your job. You're still going to need someone to command the ship. But the goal of AI is to not take your job, but take your job and replace it with something better. So imagine if you had that time back in your day, Alex, to just create and be that creative force behind your brand voice, behind the strategy that you're trying to develop for

Jessica Palmeri
0:17:01
endless customers, for impact, for whatever organization you're working for. You get to be that person at the command center of the ship and using all of these co-pilots to help you steer the right course.

Alex Winter
0:17:13
Very cool.

Jessica Palmeri
0:17:14
So that's the social.

Alex Winter
0:17:15
That's the social.

Jessica Palmeri
0:17:16
Content agent. Okay. There are some interesting things in here. Again, some of this already existed. HubSpot did have a bunch of features in place after the release of Content Hub in the spring to help you quickly and easily write blog posts, quickly get your brand voice locked

Jessica Palmeri
0:17:31
in so that you can kind of feed it prompts so that when it was generating content for you, it sounded like the voice of your brand. It had that right tone and energy so that it didn't seem like a robot was just kind of making up words as they went. But the, and now we can actually view the landing pages, which is something they were bringing up before, but now it's, it's again getting beefed up.

Jessica Palmeri
0:17:51
You can do podcasting, which I know you should be excited about because they have podcasting, they have podcasting analytics, so you can actually develop your podcasts on the HubSpot platform and see the ROI of your podcasting efforts, which we know is constantly a struggle for marketers of, hey, we're generating all this information, this content, how can we actually put it into place? And something new and exciting that I'm really interested to see how it plays out is the

Jessica Palmeri
0:18:15
development of case studies. So Alex, you've developed a lot of case studies for Impact. What does that process typically look like? How long does it take you? What does it look like?

Alex Winter
0:18:22
It's a pretty involved process. I love doing it. It's probably one of my favorite parts of my job because we get to interface with clients directly and get to go on site and see them. But you're basically coordinating a documentary film shoot where you're filming logistics as far as travel

Alex Winter
0:18:37
to get to these people, filming for a day or two, and then editing afterwards. So it's pretty involved. And the end result is wonderful, but I would say it's at least a month or two to fully coordinate, shoot, and edit, and start to finish, get the 5 to 10 minute video

Alex Winter
0:18:49
that we end up coming up with. Exactly. And that's just on the video side.

Jessica Palmeri
0:18:52
I know that we also have a team at Impact that takes all that video content and turns it into written content. So they have to do... Social content, and yep. They have to do all that work to synthesize that information, write up a really fantastic case study that highlights the success of the business, the success of the organization.

Jessica Palmeri
0:19:06
So in this new world, you could potentially have a Zoom interview, take that Zoom recording, feed it into HubSpot, be able to generate content based on that interview and use that stats and information to basically spit out a case study that can give you a starting point to shorten that process dramatically.

Alex Winter
0:19:24
That's amazing. That's amazing and I feel like for a lot of businesses, we're lucky we have the means to be able to travel and do this and the budget to do that but not all companies do. And ultimately, when you think about the ask you answer and what Endless Customers is all about, we want to tell those stories because for end users or potential customers, there's no better person to hear from than other people who have used

Alex Winter
0:19:43
these services or who use these products. So that's the value and that's gigantic.

Jessica Palmeri
0:19:49
I know and if you're a remodeling agency or like a home building company, you don't have the marketing budget to be sending out a film crew to say, hey, we built this patio or hey, we redesigned this kitchen. What you can probably do is sit down on a Zoom meeting and say, hey, homeowner Susie or homeowner John, can I sit down and ask you a few questions about the process?

Jessica Palmeri
0:20:08
Record and capture that information and then use those wonderful photos that I'm sure you're taking of the before and after pictures in that case study environment to at least get that written content out there so that folks like me who are homeowners who are trying to figure out, oh gosh, who do I hire to remodel my kitchen, can see, oh, I'm going to see this case study of this client that went through the same design and

Jessica Palmeri
0:20:29
rebuild process that I want to go through. And I can see that from start to finish. But you can be spitting those out on a regular basis with this new AI technology.

Alex Winter
0:20:37
Yeah, wow.

Jessica Palmeri
0:20:38
That's incredible. I know.

Alex Winter
0:20:40
So I'm excited about that. That's definitely a big game changer for a lot of people.

Jessica Palmeri
0:20:42
Yeah. Now, let's talk about another game changer. Okay. Prospecting agent. Yes. So when you think prospecting, who are you thinking of?

Jessica Palmeri
0:20:48
Like who in the organization is doing the prospecting? What do those tasks look like? You've worked in sales before, Alex. What does that look like to really get those leads and get them engaged?

Alex Winter
0:20:59
It's a lot. You have to create different funnels and there's all different avenues that they come from. So basically, it's the sales team's job to really get out there and beat the drum, hit the pavement, go to events, get online. So it's basically like any way you can start to attract more of these people.

Jessica Palmeri
0:21:16
And you meet a thousand people throughout the year, you go to all these events, you get them in your CRM, you get them to engage with you initially, they go cold, but sometimes they re-engage. How do you know that that person is on your website looking at some of your content or opening an old email? Sending those signals through the noise like, hey, I might be open to this conversation

Jessica Palmeri
0:21:36
again with prospecting agent, that's what you can actually see. You can actually have someone lurking in the background of your CRM saying, hey, Alex and I had a great conversation. He had an open deal maybe a few months ago, but he didn't really, like wasn't ready to pull the trigger then. But suddenly he's back on the impact website looking at some of those case studies we just

Jessica Palmeri
0:21:55
published, checking out those blog posts and content. Maybe he's opening some old emails. This would be a great time to send an email to say, hey, just checking in, seeing if you're interested. Here's the thing. With Prospecting Agent, you can either have Prospecting

Jessica Palmeri
0:22:09
Agent identify those opportunities, draft that check-in email, and then you can manually hit Send. Or in a new world, you can actually have the Prospecting Agent sending out those initial emails.

Alex Winter
0:22:19
It's automated?

Jessica Palmeri
0:22:19
Automated.

Alex Winter
0:22:20
Wow. Wow.

Jessica Palmeri
0:22:21
Yeah.

Alex Winter
0:22:22
That's really cool.

Jessica Palmeri
0:22:22
Exactly.

Alex Winter
0:22:23
That is incredibly cool. And I think it's one of those things too from an end user standpoint. So not only just for sales folks is that a really awesome feature, but for end users if I wasn't ready to buy or make a purchasing decision and then a couple weeks, a month goes by or whatever and then I revisit and I'm like, hey, maybe things change and I'm interested in looking at this again. And then I get an email right after I looked at this stuff that's

Alex Winter
0:22:44
like, hey, in case you're interested or if you have any other questions, that's concierge level service to me.

Alex Winter
0:22:50
It really is.

Alex Winter
0:22:51
That feels very high touch in a good way.

Jessica Palmeri
0:22:54
Exactly. Exactly. You've got to do it in the right way. I do like that they're giving us that option between total automation and automation and ease with some manual controls still built in.

Alex Winter
0:23:02
Well, in the past, if you don't check your CRM, like hi, me, you wouldn't know that these people are looking at your site and that there are potential opportunities that you're leaving money on the table.

Jessica Palmeri
0:23:11
You totally are leaving money on the table. So that is really exciting to me. Again, as Marcus always says, we still need to keep the human in these outreach efforts. We need to keep the human in these AI efforts. So I'm really excited to see how we can leverage this

Jessica Palmeri
0:23:25
technology for the good without losing that humanity in the process. And I think it's totally possible. We just need to get in there and play with the tool and see what's what.

Alex Winter
0:23:33
Yeah, and I feel like that's true for most AI, whether it's in HubSpot or whatever you're experimenting with. The only way you can learn is to get your hands dirty. That's it. You got to experiment, test, and that's how you learn and how you grow.

Jessica Palmeri
0:23:44
Exactly. So the last one is the customer agent, which is an elevating customer support. So if you're a business that has really invested in a lot of content on your website, say you have thousands of blog articles on your learning

Jessica Palmeri
0:23:56
center, or you have a ton of knowledge-based articles of how to use your product or how to use your service, this customer agent is basically HubSpot's next iteration of its AI chatbot. So you can feed all of that proprietary information into a chatbot. It will learn how impact answers questions about they ask you answer, and then it will spit out questions to, or answers when someone is chatting with that chatbot on your website

Jessica Palmeri
0:24:19
so that you don't have to predict what questions someone might ask. It's intelligent enough to say, hey, is this the article that you're looking for? And give that at least first touch point to handle some of those initial high-level requests. But it will also seamlessly pass off to a real human being in a HubSpot help desk if those questions become a

Jessica Palmeri
0:24:37
little bit too specific and those general answers are just not going to cut it. So it's the best of both worlds in a lot of ways.

Jessica Palmeri
0:24:43
Wow.

Alex Winter
0:24:43
That's really cool. I don't know as much about this as you, but are there features where if they get to a certain point in the questions, that's when you like switch over

Jessica Palmeri
0:24:53
to a real agent? Exactly. Exactly. You can always say, I need a human. Like this is too, like this article didn't help me. I'm looking for some specific thing. But how often, I mean, spoiler alert, when I'm training clients, sometimes when they ask me questions, I'm just Googling the answers and finding the exact article that they're looking for and then serving it up to them. And that's time out of my day to find the right resource for them so that it can answer their question. If we can get to the point where folks are comfortable enough using AI and comfortable enough analyzing the sources,

Jessica Palmeri
0:25:23
it's not just searching everywhere on the Internet, making up stuff as it goes. It's using specific articles, specific pieces of content that you already have published and saying, this might be the answer to your question. So you're not sending them out into the wild and saying, good luck. It's actually giving them answers that you've already taken the time to write or to produce video content about. It's just serving up your own content in that moment in the way that they need it.

Jessica Palmeri
0:25:44
That makes total sense.

Alex Winter
0:25:45
Well, it sounds like Breeze agents are going to be highly anticipated and then highly used as they start to move us out.

Jessica Palmeri
0:25:51
Exactly. And the final element of Breeze is called Breeze Intelligence. Now, in the HubSpot recently acquired Clearbit. I remember this.

Alex Winter
0:26:06
Exactly.

Jessica Palmeri
0:26:07
It was big news at the time because Clearbit is that data enrichment software where you can be going out and seeking new information. So for so long, the HubSpot CRM has been static. You put information in, you have to enrich that data as you go, either through additional form submissions and people inputting their data into the CRM or getting more information from sales calls and having those sales reps actually manually input

Jessica Palmeri
0:26:31
that data. Now in this new world, HubSpot can do that data enrichment for you. So there is a lot of promise here and there's a lot of interest in the market. It's a huge element that people are trying to find

Jessica Palmeri
0:26:42
the most relevant data and information about these target accounts, these target prospects. So if your CRM is smart enough to do that legwork for you so that you're not outsourcing that work or trying to do it yourself. You can be enriching the data set of your own CRM and it's really a great fit for those

Jessica Palmeri
0:26:59
enterprise level users that want to just know more information about their prospects from publicly available information on the Internet.

Alex Winter
0:27:06
That's really cool. Yeah. That's really, really cool. So could this be a Zoom info killer?

Jessica Palmeri
0:27:11
Maybe. I don't know. I don't know. That's the first thing that came to mind. I have so many clients that use the Zoom Info integration in HubSpot and they're happy with it.

Jessica Palmeri
0:27:20
They like that added knowledge and information. I'm just wondering when HubSpot provides that own innate support, is it something that you could really see a lot of current HubSpot customers switching over to and just becoming HubSpot Breeze Intelligence users rather than

Jessica Palmeri
0:27:35
HubSpot Zoom Info users?

Alex Winter
0:27:36
I mean, I love Zoom and we all use Zoom here at Impact, but it's one of those things where if you could stay in one platform, why would you have to go back and not go back and forth? I feel like that makes a lot of sense. I would probably lean that way as well. Exactly.

Jessica Palmeri
0:27:48
So it could be, I will say watch out for the credit-based pricing is not, you know, three and eight for every HubSpot enterprise portal. You're going to have to really dig into those costs to see when you weigh apples to apples, is it the right fit for your size organization? So TBD on those details, I don't have as much about that pricing element to share today. But it's exciting, and it's something to definitely look at to see could we potentially enrich a part of our database,

Jessica Palmeri
0:28:13
especially those high-value prospects that we really want to go after.

Alex Winter
0:28:16
I love that. So can I get hyper-pointed or specific here with you? We talked about AI and about Breeze and all the cool things that they're rolling out. How does this apply for people that are really into the Ask U, Answer and for our endless customers community? And what updates do you think are really going to be most useful for basically our community?

Jessica Palmeri
0:28:37
I think that the role of the content manager has always been so crucial and so central to seeing success with endless customers in the Ask U, Answer. It's the first hire that we always recommend when we're going into any 90-day planning period. That is the first position that you need to have on site.

Jessica Palmeri
0:28:53
There have been some arguments that maybe that first hire in this video-first world needs to be a videographer. There's been that debate within our community. And now with these tools, there might be this possibility that if you have the right human in place that can sit at the command center

Jessica Palmeri
0:29:09
and marshal all of these resources, if you're a small business, maybe you just need one content manager who does some of the video, some of written content, but really can use these resources to their best disposal. I mean, larger organizations are probably going to need two humans just based on the sheer level of output.

Jessica Palmeri
0:29:27
And it depends on your investment and your industry. There are so many different factors in place. But we have seen small success cases where one human being can at least take it above and beyond with the written content, maybe dabble in video and make some shorts or make some film that makes a lot of sense for that community.

Jessica Palmeri
0:29:46
So I think as we see AI evolve, it might not be there yet, but again, the more that we can work within the same ecosystem and make sure that the content is being produced in the right way. One thing that also is really exciting that I have to mention because we are on a video podcast

Jessica Palmeri
0:29:59
is that now HubSpot is going to allow you to use Content Hub to repurpose content into different formats so you can take video and turn it into written content and take written content and turn it into video. So there are really...

Alex Winter
0:30:11
So it just plays into more of what you're...

Jessica Palmeri
0:30:13
Exactly. There's a lot of great possibilities here, but you need to invest in the right tools and you really need to have that vision of what does my endless customers team look like? If I'm going to be pursuing this full time, what are the different skill sets that human being need to have, especially depending on the industry and depending on the way that I want to tell my stories

Jessica Palmeri
0:30:31
to become the most trusted voice in my space. So there's a lot of nuance there. I like to stay off the fence, like off the fence in those type of debates. I like to just play in the data, but I am really excited that now,

Jessica Palmeri
0:30:43
the more that content managers and videographers or people in those hybrid roles are encouraged to work and play in HubSpot, the better data that folks like me get to see what's working, what's not working, and what we should double down on.

Alex Winter
0:30:54
Yeah, absolutely. And listen, it's a loaded question. I know I'm asking you a loaded question. And there's a lot of different industries, B2B, B2C, different folks we have in our ecosystem. So it doesn't, we're generally talking,

Alex Winter
0:31:04
this doesn't apply to everybody, but I like what you said where there's different stages of growth for businesses. And if you're in a startup situation, and you can find a multifaceted person, because your budget or whatever the confines are only allow you to do that in

Alex Winter
0:31:16
that moment, you can still have somebody that does your written and then you can leverage these tools to help the video and help with this. They don't necessarily have to be a video expert like me. And then as you scale, you can start to bring in more people that are experts and can help round out the content creation because two to three articles a week, two to three videos a week as you scale.

Jessica Palmeri
0:31:35
It gets a lot. It gets to be a lot. The content train is serious. It's dragging along, but again with the promise of these tools, with some of those manual tasks and those, you know, pouring everyday grind just kind of easing up as we breeze into this new reality. It's definitely something that we should consider of what does this new content manager, video written, whatever you want to call it, what does this new position look like? What's

Jessica Palmeri
0:32:03
possible in this role? Because that's where I like to play. What is possible? How can we produce the best content, make sure that we are speaking to our audience in the right ways that sounds and feels and is genuinely human, but still leverage all of the tips and tricks that we can possibly find to make sure that that person is putting as much content out there as possible.

Alex Winter
0:32:25
Yeah. And ultimately giving people the best content we can to build trust.

Alex Winter
0:32:29
And all that trust.

Jessica Palmeri
0:32:30
Yeah, make sure that they're... It all comes back to trust.

Alex Winter
0:32:33
That's right. That's right. So inbound, again, it's like drinking from a fire hose.

Jessica Palmeri
0:32:37
It is.

Jessica Palmeri
0:32:38
There's so many things.

Alex Winter
0:32:39
So much stuff. Okay. This is going to be a tough one, but I'm putting you on the spot here. What's like the one thing you're most excited about? Or what was like the one feature, the one thing that really stood out to you that you're like, I can't wait to get back to my desk and roll

Alex Winter
0:32:51
my sleeves up and get after it.

Jessica Palmeri
0:32:52
Okay, I've just got to do the quick hits because I can't pick one thing, but like here's like the, there should be shouting from the rooftops of like, God, thank you, finally, we can actually publish YouTube videos from within the platform.

Alex Winter
0:33:03
Thank God.

Alex Winter
0:33:04
I am so happy about that.

Jessica Palmeri
0:33:05
YouTube is going to be a huge deal now that you can publish video content from within HubSpot, but let's talk lead scoring. Lead scoring is finally getting an upgrade. I am so, so excited. I have loved using lead scoring functionality with my clients to really help them identify those warm prospects that are warming up, maybe reaching out, maybe ready for that moment

Jessica Palmeri
0:33:26
of outreach. Right. And so this is going to really lead into the ways that we can use prospecting agent to help identify those prospects that we absolutely should be reaching out to, to close more business.

Alex Winter
0:33:37
Thank you.

Jessica Palmeri
0:33:38
And then, podcasting analytics. Podcasting has been in beta for a while. We know we can now publish podcast content, but now we can actually analyze it, see that ROI. So I was super excited to see that they were pushing that swing sooner rather than later.

Jessica Palmeri
0:33:51
So I love some good data, and I love seeing that content drives revenue, and I love the idea that podcasting analytics will be that promise of good things to come.

Alex Winter
0:33:59
Selvishly for us, too. We're really excited about this one. We work very closely here on the marketing team with the sales team, so to have everything in one centralized place, all this data, it's only going to help.

Alex Winter
0:34:09
I know, I know.

Jessica Palmeri
0:34:10
It's only going to help.

Jessica Palmeri
0:34:11
There's so many other things here at Inbound that we're just so excited to talk about, but I don't have time to go into all of them in detail, but here are some quick hits for you guys. Let's rapid fire. Okay, rapid fire. Let's see what you got.

Jessica Palmeri
0:34:22
Number one, spam validation and detection. We're going to be able to finally do something about those spam form submissions that are driving everybody crazy. Spammers get out of here. I know. It's never going to be perfect, but at least there's something now. Then there's content embeds on third-party sites. So if your website is hosted on something like WordPress, you're no longer completely out of luck. Now you can embed content on WordPress and all these other platforms to be able to leverage

Jessica Palmeri
0:34:45
some of the cool nifty tricks and tools within HubSpot, but you don't have to actually move your entire website to the HubSpot CMS, which is really nice. HubSpot has been leaning into more HubSpot workspaces. So for folks like you that don't maybe log in as often as they should, there is one place to go to basically give you all of that information.

Jessica Palmeri
0:35:03
So they're making a marketing home, which is similar to help desk or sales and prospecting workspaces so that if you're not a all-around HubSpot admin that knows all aspects of the

Jessica Palmeri
0:35:13
tool.

Jessica Palmeri
0:35:14
If you're an Alex, I give you one link and one place to make your home screen and be like, you live here now. Perfect.

Alex Winter
0:35:21
This is all you're going to look at.

Jessica Palmeri
0:35:22
I can't wait. Don't, like, blinders on, buddy. Yeah. Just focus on the things that you need to focus on.

Alex Winter
0:35:26
That's what I, the TLDR, that's what I want, yeah.

Jessica Palmeri
0:35:27
You, yes. Perfect. That's the goal of more HubSpot workplaces, or workspaces, rather. Nice. That's the goal of more HubSpot workspaces.

Alex Winter
0:35:34
Okay.

Jessica Palmeri
0:35:35
Okay. So then we have more reporting collections in the analytics suite. This is again moving towards that goal of helping the folks like Alex that maybe don't log into the portal as often, maybe don't understand how to build those complicated HubSpot custom reports. We're going to give you a place where you can kind of see all of these insights in a

Jessica Palmeri
0:35:51
reporting collection that are kind of contextualized to the other things around it. They started doing this with sales analytics. It was one of my favorite, favorite, favorite areas, the tool where you could coach and train your sales reps using real data insights. They keep adding more and more reports. So if you said, hey, I looked at sales analytics or I looked at service analytics

Jessica Palmeri
0:36:09
and it was, eh, when I first checked it out, go back in. Log back in. Go back into that area of the tool because they have been adding more reports, adding more improvements. You can look at things like sales velocity. You can look at average time to close.

Jessica Palmeri
0:36:20
All of these things that we all wanted but didn't quite know how to build with the back end data are now just at your fingertips. Really cool place. And then finally, two-way SMS conversations and marketing. So last year, their big deal was that they were able to now do text message marketing through HubSpot.

Jessica Palmeri
0:36:38
The big caveat was that it was one way. It was basically just text message email blasts. But now, there's the opportunity to actually field replies and be able to have those two-way conversations. We are still waiting for SMS on the sales side, but at least the marketing side is getting a little

Jessica Palmeri
0:36:52
bit more in-depth and a little bit more savvy. Very cool.

Alex Winter
0:36:56
Wow, rapid fire. That was awesome.

Jessica Palmeri
0:36:58
I know. So much to go through, Alex.

Alex Winter
0:37:01
You got through it all.

Jessica Palmeri
0:37:02
I mean, that was a small, small taste of everything that happened at Inbound. There is a lot, lot, lot to cover, and I know that our end customers community probably has a million questions of how can we actually use these new AI features for marketing and sales, where do we go to find the answers, do we need to go watch a million YouTube videos or go stalk Kyle Jepsen on LinkedIn. But Alex, I've got some breaking news.

Alex Winter
0:37:26
Yeah, break it, what do we got?

Jessica Palmeri
0:37:29
Kyle Jepsen is going to be at Impact Live.

Alex Winter
0:37:33
Oh!

Alex Winter
0:37:34
Yes! Dropping bombs, whoa!

Jessica Palmeri
0:37:36
Exactly, he's bringing some folks down from HubSpot. They're making the long trek down from Boston to Hartford, and we are going to have some HubSpotters, and Kyle Jepson himself, the HubSpot evangelist, in the room to talk with Marcus to talk about all of the AI functionality

Jessica Palmeri
0:37:50
that now lives inside of HubSpot. So if you are in that endless customers community, and if for some reason you're still on the fence of like, hey, should I go to this cool event that's happening in Hartford in October?

Alex Winter
0:38:02
14th through the 16th in October.

Jessica Palmeri
0:38:03
14th through the 16th. Thank you, Alex. This is your message from on high to say, hey, maybe this can actually help me grow my business because I am a HubSpot user. I don't understand all this new technology.

Jessica Palmeri
0:38:15
I want to understand how to apply it to the endless customer's journey. You've got it covered. You've got Kyle Jepson in the house.

Alex Winter
0:38:22
That's amazing news.

Jessica Palmeri
0:38:23
Showing you exactly how we can merge these two wonderful journeys together of becoming a amazing HubSpot user and also an amazing endless customers practitioner. Wow that's epic

Alex Winter
0:38:34
epic news and you know I always feel sad when Inbound ends because I'm like all the events over and like now what do I do but I always forget that Impact Live is only a month later. I think it's in the moment I just feel so sad that I

Jessica Palmeri
0:38:46
forget. I know. Now with Kyle Jepsen coming. I know the excitement just keeps building Yeah I'm personally very excited because I I love to nerd out with my other fellow nerds and I feel like in the past We've done an amazing job with the content. There's been so many great tools that we've covered and highlighted I know that me and my team are really Pushing for more HubSpot content at this next event and I mean we got Kyle

Alex Winter
0:39:08
I think that that huge you know and a shameless plug here if you haven't booked your tickets times running out tickets are limited, Kyle's coming, don't miss out, don't miss

Jessica Palmeri
0:39:16
it. Exactly, I'm going to be hanging out with Kyle, you should be too.

Alex Winter
0:39:20
Yes, Jess this is an awesome conversation, thanks for being on the show and for just all the insights, I love talking with you about this stuff.

Jessica Palmeri
0:39:27
Someone has to educate you on HubSpot, Alex, I mean again, you promised me you're going to blog on HubSpot, right? I am, I have no excuse now. You have no excuse.

Alex Winter
0:39:36
I really don't.

Jessica Palmeri
0:39:37
We gave you a little home space, we put your little blinders on.

Alex Winter
0:39:41
I got my AI assistants now.

Jessica Palmeri
0:39:43
Exactly. When you get lost, you don't have to call me up. You just say, hey, Breeze.

Alex Winter
0:39:46
That's right.

Jessica Palmeri
0:39:47
Just told me I'm supposed to be in here. Can you tell me where to go?

Alex Winter
0:39:49
That's it.

Jessica Palmeri
0:39:50
We're fine. Okay. Alex is going to log into HubSpot. You all, lovely listeners, are going to get your tickets for Impact Live, and we are all going to hang out with Kyle Jefferson together to continue to learn more about how to grow our businesses with HubSpot and with Endless Customers.

Alex Winter
0:40:05
Couldn't have said it better myself. Jess, thanks for being on the show. Thank you, Alex. And for everybody out there watching and listening, this is Endless Customers. I'm your host, Alex Winter. I'm your host, Alex Winter.

Alex Winter
0:40:11
See you on the next one.