HubSpot Updates: Clean Data, Surveys, Duplicates, More

Good morning, HubSpot Nation! Welcome to Wake Up with Customer Platform, your unofficial HubSpot morning show where we help you discover the platform value you already own. I'm Chris Carroll, and I'm joined by my co-host Casey Hawkins as we make sure you're not sleeping on HubSpot's true capabilities. If you're joining live, drop a hello in the comments and let us know what you're building in HubSpot today. Happy Wednesday, Casey.

Happy Wednesday, Chris.

Per usual, we got to Product Update 0 yesterday and we, we have 12 Um, we have 12 today.

Well, they had a light— we had a light day on Monday, so they really made up for it since then.

Yes. Um, and, uh, uh, we, we've done such a good job at doing this show every morning that, uh, the goat, um I couldn't help but ask to be a part of this. George B. Thomas, what's up, man?

Just slow your roll with that goat thing. I'm not— no, no.

But I doubt he— I don't think he told you this, George. I tried to explain to my husband last night why I was so excited that you were joining the show.

Oh shoot, I'm excited I'm joining the show. What are you guys talking about? Like, listen, we have, we have been in an ecosystem that it is forever almost impossible to like keep up. And I've been watching the show and paying attention to you guys, and I'm like, man, man, I just need to like force myself to be part of that because then you're just in the know. Like, you have to be in the know and you're helping everybody else be in the know. So I personally am excited just to be here with you two and go through this process.

So Well, we, we thank you for joining us and we will dive right in because we always got a lot to cover. Um, number 1, automatically format property data at the point of entry, a private beta, has medium impact. Uh, what is it? You can now automatically format your data as it enters the CRM. Ensuring that your data is clean, formatted, and valid. This formatting will apply when users edit properties manually or import into properties. This can help you, for example, automatically remove letters from postal code or automatically remove special characters from city.

This gives—

why does it matter, Casey?

Uh, maintaining data quality in the CRM will be faster and easier. Now your CRM will not only prevent entering invalid data, but clean it on your behalf as it enters. Instead of forcing users and admins to correct validation issues and errors, HubSpot will now automatically correct those issues. This is very cool.

I saw this in the, in the Slack chat, CRM Data Management Slack, yesterday. This was, this was shared, and of course the first comment, which I agree with, is taking care of situations like this where you do something and then it doesn't look like what you think it was going to be, and you don't necessarily have any notification or icon or anything showing up as to why. And while these are very clear examples, if you just have a salesperson or somebody just trying to enter data in a very certain way and it's not looking the way they expect it, um, we need to make sure it's super obvious, like, what's happening and why. Uh, what do you think, George?

Well, first of all, I'm a big fan of, like, clean data, and so the fact that HubSpot's going in a direction that makes us a little bit more hands-free, I mean, immediately my brain goes to better reporting. More effective automations, improved customer experience. Like, all of those things are impacted by, by HubSpot helping us as HubSpot users not have dirty data. Like, and then formatting is dirty, by the way, in a lot of portals, in almost all of them.

So we definitely need stuff like this. Uh, just, just take great care, folks. What comes to mind is those, those forms that like You know, if you don't put the phone number in exactly right, you just hit submit over and over and it's erroring you and it's telling— it's not telling you that it's the phone number that needs to be, uh, I, I once was at a big company that, uh, was choosing not to deal with that issue. So it's close to home. Um, this next one, uh, we announced, we shared yesterday. We're not announcing, like, we're not Unofficial, you know, morning show here. Disclaimer, disclaimer. But so, such a big deal that it shows up 2 days in a row, and I kind of agree. Uh, high impact: send feedback email surveys via workflows. Um, and we just get right in. We're so excited, we just get right into the how. We don't even when we talk about the what, it is building surveys and sending them via workflows. We're, yeah, why, why does this matter, Casey?

There's two, how does it work actually for this one? This one is because previously customers had to use cumbersome workarounds such as embedded survey links in automated emails. Which were only accessible to Marketing Hub Pro Plus users. This update empowers Service Hub Pro Plus customers to collect feedback more efficiently. Um, yeah, on the update yesterday I said I— when this first came out, I was like, I'm still going to send it through a marketing email. That's just me. Um, but what I wasn't thinking about was people that don't have Marketing Hub, and if that's not an option for you, this update is really important.

Listen, I think this one is amazing. I think it's huge. I have had a client historically that we literally wanted to do this. We wanted a set of emails for an onboarding, and at a certain time we wanted to send an email that is the, the get the feedback, get the survey. And it was like, wait, we can't? Wait, HubSpot, we can't really? And now, now it's no, we can and we should, by the way, because this to me aligns with voice of customer and you should have a voice of customer engine in your ecosystem, in your HubSpot portal anyway. Yes, this one's huge.

Yeah, and I, I love what it represents. Um, And so much of the value of HubSpot and cost of HubSpot is tied to the fact that they found ways to require Marketing Hub for almost everything else in the platform that you wanted to do. Uh, this is a good signal that, hey, um, maybe you want to do it a different way. Um, and it looks like we should be able to do this this way, but now we need Marketing Hub just to Do. Yeah, so, uh, good to see that progress, especially as they just put so much effort into the customer success workspace and, you know, all that stuff, which has its own cost, and it should because they're giving a ton of value right now.

Um, to see a lot more portals that don't have Marketing Hub, I feel like that used to be really, really uncommon, but, um, it's It's way more common in the past couple of years.

Yeah, especially over the last couple of years. I mean, there was almost a direct change because I used to be part of the partner onboarding process. And there was just like a direct change where all of a sudden we started training just people on sales tools. No Marketing Hub. And I'm like, wait, what world am I in right now? Like, I've been training marketing for like 10 years. Yeah, it's, it's there. You don't know what you're gonna get at this point when you open up a portal, be honest with you.

Yeah, I agree. I, I do— I think I do more sales trainings than marketing trainings nowadays.

Yeah, it makes sense. Uh, number 3: assign customer agent to WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger channels. What is it? Businesses can now assign the customer agent to their WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger business accounts. Streamlining support and lightening the load on human agents. For more information on the existing capabilities of the customer agent, check out our knowledge base article or stay updated with the latest features on our wiki. There's a wiki?

No, wait, what?

I know, I know.

No, no, no, see, that's not normal. We need you to do a little bit better, product updates team. Like, that's your wiki, not ours.

This is your way.

Yeah. Uh-oh. Why does this matter outside of— wow, there's a wiki. Since launching WhatsApp in 2022, we've heard from customers, especially in LATAM, about the challenges of scaling one-to-one communications without automation. To solve this, we're focusing on building the customer agent in flexible, extendable— extensible ways. Now we're excited to enable businesses to assign the customer agent to both WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger accounts, empowering them engage with customers more efficiently and at scale.

Now, apparently I'm just good at something. I don't know exactly what that is yet, but we're going to get an opportunity for me to promote the next show every day because this one got my attention. Streamlining support and lightening the load. On human agents. I'm about to talk about why it's important that the human agents still exist and that we don't just get to get rid of the human agents, which is how a lot of people are thinking about things like customer agents. So cool to see that we are able to use it in more places. They've been doing a lot of work developing knowledge base and all the stuff that it needs to actually do this work for you. So just keep that in mind. You can't just throw it over into those channels if you don't have any content to support it. Got anybody using this yet, George?

So I'm not using it yet. It is turned on. I have the ability to use it. And here's where I'm at with this is like, So if, if I were to hire a human salesperson right now, the first thing I would do is define their role. I'm trying to figure out what I want. By the way, I am a salesperson in my organization, but I'm trying to define what my customer agent's role should be, um, and how it's gonna be. I also realize I've had to train myself, or if you're— if we're talking at a human or other organization level, you have to train your humans. So I want to make sure that I'm paying attention to how am I training the, the AI. Like, it comes down to optimizing the prompts. It's only as good as what you can teach it to actually do or be. Um, and honestly, Chris, the reason I haven't like gone full bore yet, and what I would want people to think about is, um, I realized that as soon as I start to use that, it's another thing that I'm gonna have to monitor and adjust. Like, I can't set it and forget it. You can't set it and forget it. And so All of these things have me on the edge of like getting ready to do it. But I have to make the space to do it right, because this is something if I'm going to augment myself or if you're going to augment your sales team, you can't do this half-buttered. I'll say it that way.

Maybe we can say half-assed here, George. It's okay. Okay.

I didn't want to get anybody canceled.

We keep it real. We keep it real on this show. Um, all right, uh, number 4. I'm interested in this title: Target Accounts Home Revamp, Integrated Account Research and Account Sourcing. Man, this hits it all— sales, breeze intelligence, prospecting, ABM tools, data enrichment— but just a low impact, uh, somehow. How is that What is it? The new target account home helps sales and marketing teams— sales and marketing teams, I like that part already— implement an effective account-based strategy without the complexity and resource intensity that typically comes with it. Teams can now prioritize high-value accounts, research them efficiently, and coordinate engagement all from one central place.

Why does it matter? Key problem solved. Find promising accounts faster, identifying high-fit accounts quickly without manual evaluation or expensive third-party tools. Research in minutes, not hours. Get comprehensive account insights automatically so your team can focus on personalization and outreach. And keep your team aligned, ensure sales and marketing coordinate efforts on the same target accounts. I love the target account feature. I think it's so underused. So any kind of visibility or improvements to it, I'm, I'm all about. Sign me up.

Yeah, Chris, I think you hit the nail on the head when you talked about aligning sales and marketing, but there's definitely two things that come to mind immediately for this one that like Hey, great, you can find the stuff faster, you can research it. Like, but I think people should take a step back and see with this update, is it time that they actually refine their ICPs? Like, have they just been set it and forget it for the last years? And like, has it changed? And so what's happening there? But also, I'm super curious if you sit back and honestly think like, this is all about ABM and insights and like, are you leveraging the insights that you can gain from doing this type of thing?, to actually do personalization at scale. So like redefine your ICP, do personalization at scale, and then yes, enjoy this update.

And I think that's probably why the target account has been underused, because you set it up, you just leave it in there, and then it stops being relevant immediately.

Yeah, right.

And the other thing my brain goes to is like, if you're not doing buyer intent— because buyer intent, by the way, directly aligns with what we're talking about here too. But, and that's part of like why I love being on this show. It's, I know it's first day, but it's like you got to understand the connective tissue of how the things work together and what this means to that when we're actually having these conversations.

Yes. And one of my favorite things about target accounts has been it immediately shows disconnected CRM data when you click on stuff. You're like, oh, this, this, this has should have this many contacts and it's only one. It's like, oh, we probably have a duplicate company record, then let's go handle that. Or where are the deals? Or— and that's why, like, even when it comes to buyer intent, like, slow down. Do you have your CRM data model right? Like, if you think you're gonna just shove all of this into one company record when there's a global company involved Like, no, like you're not gonna do that. So luckily you can't just leave it all to HubSpot Insights anymore. So I think that's gonna do that for you. This stuff's gonna work when you figure out how to associate like parent and child companies for true like account management. Like, like maybe you're lucky and most of your stuff is like just one place, one location, and one set of people. To talk to. But in most cases, even at, even at SMB level, like, you're serving organizations that have multiple, uh, you know, multiple groups of people, multiple places. And, uh, you don't— the beauty of HubSpot is that you can really effectively, uh, segment all the contacts related to that business in a way that still associates everything together, and that you could really just take something like this and just make this strategy so easy for your team to align on. But you are still responsible for the strategy, right? This page, this target accounts area is still not going to execute the ABM strategy for you. Number 5. All right, go ahead.

No, I, I looked at what number 5 is and I jumped.

Auto merge duplicates. Auto merge duplicate records in Manage Duplicates tool. Again, see George, this is, or somehow this is low impact. I don't know how. We've heard stirrings that it's like it's not gonna impact anybody or the way that they use the tool, but Um, in this spot, you know, it's hard to agree with that. Uh, what is it? You can now automatically merge records with exact one-to-one property matches, streamlining your data deduplication process. This intelligent feature works seamlessly on top of our existing model to consolidate matching records without manual review.

Why does it matter? Manual record review and merging is one of the most time-consuming aspects of data management, often leading to backlogs and inconsistent data. By automating the merge process for high-confidence matches, teams can focus their attention on more complex matching scenarios while ensuring the data stays clean and consolidated faster than ever before. I feel—

all right, so let's start there. Why did you jump when you saw this, Casey?

Well, I just wrote to someone before jumping on the show that, um, this was not possible. So that's one. Um, if you've ever merged duplicates in HubSpot It takes a lot of time. You have to go through each one individually. It is one of my favorite intern tasks personally because it's so time-consuming. However, there are a lot of tools out on the marketplace that will check things like this is saying where if first name matches and domain matches, for example, then just auto-merge them together. I shouldn't have used that example. That might stress Chris out, but But for example, then merge the two duplicates together, which is just gonna, you know, if you're able to get the easy ones out of the way, then your time can be spent looking at the ones that are a little more complicated that you might not be sure about. Maybe they have multiple websites, maybe they have multiple locations and you want them to be separated, things like that.

So I'll be that guy.

Um, good, because I'm usually that guy.

Yeah, I know, I'm gonna be— I'm gonna have haters. I'm surrounded by haters.

I'm just, I'm just saying, if you don't have operations, like, whoopee! Like, who— like, yeah, so like, just, just know that you have to have operations. So by the way, like it might be just another reason. And this is not a sales pitch, I swear to all that is holy, it's not a sales pitch. But it might just be another reason why you could get buy-in to get the operations hub to do the thing that we're talking. But also, part of me— you jumped, you're like, and I'm like, I jump too, because I'm like, just because we can doesn't maybe always mean we should, and my brain went to like the immediate ways that this might go sideways. Yeah, I'm torn. I'm actually torn on this one.

And the intention, right? Because even like, and I know that, uh, Casey probably executes this in the very best way, but when she mentions that she loves this to be an intern responsibility It is because it is cumbersome and very tedious and seen as kind of low-value data, data quality maintenance. But in reality, and maybe this is just my experience, but the people that are best equipped to do this and make sure it's accurate when it gets done are the people managing those records, right? And it's something sales— the best people, the best salespeople definitely want to be able to do this themselves, right? Because they have data in different places and they want to make sure it's correct. And that's where it's like, take a step back. If you can't— like, most people jump into this and they haven't even manually figured out what this process is supposed to look like, and now we're supposed to come up with matching data to figure out, okay, every time we pick these two fields, we are definitely merging them. Like, that's where I'm thinking as we talk about out loud, this is one of those places where AI is just gonna come and save the day because we're not gonna get good at putting this in the hands of the, of the people doing the process. So all of this I think is steps into like, AI being able to say like, all right, everybody else step back. You suck at this. You've never gotten good at it in 25 years, right? So now I will, I will take care of this for you.

So and it's an intern task because I take it so seriously, Chris. They have to search the people on LinkedIn. They have to find the people, make sure there's not two John Smiths at that company.

Right. No, that's fair. But again, I'll push back.

No, I know, I know, I know. I agree.

They have to do all that research because they are not the ones interacting with that contact record, right? But that's the, that's the work you gotta do when you, when you delegate it. So at least that part's going good. Centralized view into what HubSpot assets are using subscription types. Okay, yeah, good. I had no idea what that means, so I'm glad it was not found. Uh, and we're, we're lagging behind here, so thank you for the help. Uh, A/B testing for CTAs.

Oh, thank you, Jesus!

What is it? You can now run A/B tests on CTAs created through the new editor. Oh, this feature allows you to compare two CTA variations to determine which one performs best based on clicks and views. With a 50/50 traffic split, you can optimize your CTAs and make data-driven decisions to improve conversions.

Why does it matter? A/B testing was a highly requested feature that helped customers optimize their legacy CTAs. Now the same powerful testing capabilities are available in the new CTAs tool. AB testing allows you to test different CTA designs and copy to increase conversions by using data to implement the highest performing version of popups and buttons. Currently, AB tests can be run on CTAs placed on your website only. AB testing CTAs in marketing emails is not available at this time. That makes sense.

Sounded like George was excited.

Yeah, so listen, I'm gonna just call it how it should be called. It should have never launched without it. Like, what? Anyway, anyway, anyway, I digress. Like, what I— that there are two things that I got really sad about when the new CTAs tool came out. One was A/B testing was missing. The other one was this idea of like being able to do super dope smart content stuff with call to actions that I used to do. So to see that we're kind of headed back in maybe sort of the right direction with what we should be able to do with these tools is amazing. I'll take A/B testing, please, by whatever you have to do. Get it in email too. Get it everywhere. And the next thing, once A/B is like locked down, can we please start to do some like smart stuff? Yes, these as well. SMART, all capital letters. Contextual marketing. This is what I'm talking about. If product is listening— anyway, I'm happy that we at least have this.

Yes, always good to get back to product parity, uh, when you do new stuff for us. Um, number 8, use HubSpot in meeting app. In Google Meet. What is it? With HubSpot's Google Meet integration, you can access and update HubSpot records without opening a separate window during your meetings. You can now create new HubSpot contact records, associate the meeting to any relevant HubSpot record, add notes to HubSpot contact records. Use HubSpot Playbooks.

Why does this one matter? Previously, you had to use a separate browser window to reference HubSpot contact records or add notes during a Google Meet meeting. This interrupted your meeting flow and required constant back and forth. Now you can maintain focus on your conversation while having your customer information and note-taking capabilities right inside Google Meet. This is nice, but also a champagne problem, I think.

Yeah, seems like a big deal.

My brain is torn. My brain is torn, honestly. Like, one side of my brain is like, dude, you're really spoiled because you've had a lot of this with Zoom, like, for a long time. But I've also toyed with this idea of like, man, if I could cancel Zoom and just use Google Meet, would I do that for my business? Like, what would the cost savings? And it's like, ah, but there's this big disconnect of like what I actually use it for. This actually fills a lot of the gap of what I would use Zoom for in like meetings and trainings. I'm doing HubSpot trainings now. If, if Google Meet would just get a dope annotation system to their meetings, I don't know, Zoom.

Then we're canceling.

I don't know, I'm just saying. I don't know.

No, it's— count your days soon.

Good, good to see, um, uh, again, product parity in the market as far as like what we're able to do with some tools and not others and all the different meets we have to be on, uh, every day. Uh, number 9, edit or delete campaign UTM values, uh, comes back. To, uh, for us to talk about. High impact. What is it? You can now edit or delete campaign UTM values, providing greater control and ensuring more accurate reporting.

I was super excited when this one came out. This one matters because this new functionality ensures accurate and up-to-date campaign UTM tracking, allowing you to make data-driven decisions easier and faster. By giving you full control over your UTMs, this feature helps maintain clean, reliable tracking, ultimately improving campaign performance and ROI. Why. Um, the TL;DR is it makes your reports easier to read if you can, um, edit your campaign's UTMs to make sense.

Yeah, pretty straightforward. I've heard this one has been wanted for a long time, and, and now you have it. Uh, AI feedback summaries. They love this one. I mean, this is where it's like they must just be adding like little words here and there, George, to have this one show up again. But I'm okay with talking about this one over and over because people really need to know, um, that this stuff is available. What is it? AI feedback summaries analyzes key themes and summarizes feedback by objects like companies, deals, and tickets. Of course, not any of the other 15 native objects. Um, reducing manual work and speeding up decision-making.

Why does this matter? CSMs and CS leaders waste time manually tagging feedback, missing key insights. AI feedback summaries highlight trends on product and pricing feedback by date range, filter agent feedback by deal owner, identifying recurring issues for specific deals, track operational feedback by ticket or agent, and summarize feedback for specific accounts, helping CSMs focus on what matters.

Have you seen this one yet, George?

I just signed up for the beta, by the way. I, I feel like the amount of betas I've signed up for this morning of just being part of this show might be kind of ridiculous, but that happens.

That's how it works.

Like, dang gone again, the value of paying attention to this stuff daily. Right. Yes. You're going to reinforce that. But like, at the end of the day, when I hear this one, I'm like, oh, so you're saying that I can again make smarter decisions as like a person around the things that I'm doing, whether business owner or employee? You're saying like HubSpot is actually thinking about or helping me boost my team efficiency? Okay, I'm down with that. And at the end of the day, I think this comes down to the most important piece that we should all be talking about is it's going to impact customer experience along the way because of what it's giving us. Again, I love me some AI. I love me some feedback, and the fact that it can summarize this stuff for us is amazing.

Yes. Again, I will be that guy this time and saying in order for AI to give you summaries of feedback, there has to be feedback. So ask your customers for feedback. Wow, you now have access. You don't have to get Marketing Hub anymore. You can make it really easy to send out surveys. No excuses anymore, folks. Uh, two left today. Uh, sunset automated deactivation for publicly exposed tokens. Lots of API stuff we talked about a few times. Just keep in mind, customers can choose to opt in and proactively enable this account security upgrade in advance of a mandatory rollout and enforcement on April 7th, 2025. A good security measure as I think it's going to continue popping up. As we start to create all this connectivity. Some close friends talking about having their API tokens and stuff getting found and used. Take care of your public tokens and be on the lookout for this. Last one today. See, this is one of those. I don't think we've seen this one.

No, I, you don't think we've seen this one?

I got updated on March 4th. Utilize calendar integration to sync users out of office. What is it? Users can utilize HubSpot's calendar connection to sync user out of office between Google or Microsoft calendars and HubSpot's out of office feature.

Why does it matter? Utilize existing calendar integration to automatically sync users out of office between HubSpot and Google or Microsoft calendars. This makes setting user out of office easier than ever. I like it.

Seems straightforward. I guess that's really cool if we could set this from HubSpot. Yeah. Yeah. Getting closer to that world of, of doing everything from one place, that's for sure.

Uh, it's interesting because I, I've sat here and wondered for the last several months, like, why do they have this new, like, thing in HubSpot that you can click that is like your availability or office hours or like those things? And I'm like, I'm looking at this and I'm like, Oh, snap. Like, I don't know. I don't even know how to explain it. But there's a waterfall of thoughts in my brain, especially as a business owner of like the just immediate, like, flood of information and visibility. Like, let me explain this. The process right now when somebody takes time off in my organization is they go to my wife, project manager,, submit the dates, and then a thing gets added to my calendar so that I can see when people are gonna be— I, I'm just saying. So I'm looking at this and I'm like, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, we're doing something wrong and this is doing something right. So I'm just— I don't even know how to verbalize where my brain's at right now. I'm glad this is the last one because I might just shut down in a minute. Yeah.

And again, like, if, if you are going to get help from AI to, you know, hand tasks out and assign live calls and agent stuff and the more that information exists in other systems, the harder it's going to be for AI to do it right. So again, I think this is another example of setting up AI for success. Now we just need to— I know I'm not actually that great at setting out of office, um, but yeah, we need to work on our process for actually notifying other people that we're gonna be out of office.

Because here's the thing, like, imagine now all of a sudden, like, next week, product team, uh, this is somehow connected to, like, Slack, and it automatically sets my Slack to out of office, or my Microsoft Teams to out of office. Yep. Can you also do my, uh, Google out-of-office message for me? Because that'd be great too. Like, how far does this go?

Like, uh, yeah, someday. That's very like, you know, maybe there's an AI tool for that. Um, but, uh, soon enough, soon enough, George. Uh, all of the things will be handled. Uh, but that's what we'll wrap for today. Casey and George, thanks so much for diving into these updates with me. Uh, remember folks, you probably already own the solution you're looking for in HubSpot. Sometimes you just need to wake up to it. Join us tomorrow morning as Casey, George, and I continue exploring what's new in HubSpot and in the ecosystem. Drop your biggest takeaway in the comments and let us know what capabilities you want us to wake up to next.

Until then, I'm Chris Carroll.

I'm Casey Hawkins. And I'm George B. Thomas.

And this has been Wake Up with Customer Platform. Now go build something amazing.