HuBSpot Updates

Wake Up Customer Platform. It's time to start the day. Discover all the value you already own. Don't let solutions slip away way Wake up, Customer platform. The tools are at your hand. No need to sleep on capabilities that can help your business stand. The answer's right before your eyes. You just need to realize Wake up Customer platform and watch your business rise. Wake up. Wake up. The platform's waiting for you.

You.

Wake up. Wake up. See what your system can do.

Good morning, HubSpot Nation. It is time to Wake Up Customer Platform with your unofficial HubSpot Updates morning show where we help you discover the platform value you already own. Chris I'm Chris Carolyn, joined by my co host George B. Thomas. We're here every weekday morning to 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. If you're just discovering us, we are also available as a podcast on Spotify and Apple Music and on the Profoundly HubSpot Updates blog summaries of every episode. What? What's happening, George Happy Wednesday. Day before Thanksgiving.

It is the day before Thanksgiving. I've got today, a couple meetings, and then it is four glorious days of I don't know what AI, Netflix, Hulu.

Some Stranger Things, maybe.

Maybe. I'm in the middle of trying to binge watch Good Doctor through that, which is interesting because there's nobody at my house, so there's zero judgment of what I'm watching and how much of it I'm watching. But I'm also being nerdy because I'm able to sit in front of the couch with my iPad and kind of watch the show and to do some AI stuff, but. And some HubSpot stuff as well. But I'm looking forward to probably later today, later tonight, going to a couple different sub shops and getting a collection of their Thanksgiving subs, shove them in the refrigerator and kind of. I'll be the connoisseur of Thanksgiving subs after the next couple days because I will have probably tried them all.

All right, well, we'll have to get that report after the holiday. Yeah, and I got to avoid some. I'm already going to get judged. I know it. Oh, oh, I'm failing here on Wednesday.

Yeah, no orange. There we go. Now we're even. Matching hats.

Look at some. Some orange.

Yeah, that Casey would come back and be like, chris, we gotta talk.

I'm still gonna get that talk. I guarantee it. Didn't put it in the post. You know, we're trying on this holiday week.

Some of us are doing better than others.

Right? Because you know, this was a. It is a holiday week and you know, we started with three updates. We're not on Monday. So I'm like, all right, maybe it'll be a light week. No. 7 updates today. Never fear. Yeah, this first one we mentioned yesterday, I'll kind of float over it today. Updates to the Knowledge base theme. If you're in the new knowledge base, you've been enjoying a very CMS like editing and management experience. They are taking that to the next level with some more customization options, including autocomplete search results, category sidebar with, with background colors, new spacing options. So if you're invested in the Knowledge Base tool set in HubSpot, you will enjoy this update. If you haven't migrated yet, just get your ass over there. Like it's so good. Like if you got people viewing your knowledge base or even if you don't, this is going to improve that experience. I'm excited for this next one.

You are?

What's that?

You think you are? Just go ahead and go into it.

I mean, I'm excited because it's a hot topic. Not necessarily. I want to run towards all those tools. AEO strategy is in private beta. High impact. Of course.

Yeah.

What is it?

Oh, now go up above that. Go above that. This is why I said you think you are.

Heads up.

Yeah, but let's talk about this. But go ahead and give. Give the top part and then we'll roll through it.

I might be more excited about it now, honestly. Heads up. We have decided to pause this beta while we focus on rebuilding the AEO app to give customers better data and analytics tools to measure their AI visibility and take action on those insights. As this beta is now closed, you may sign up to our waitlist here to be added when we reopen the beta. If you have already requested access to the existing beta, you will automatically be added to our wait list. So I didn't have to.

Don't care. I don't care. I went and filled it out anyway.

Already in the beta will continue to have access now. You know what we need to do is we need to get Blake do another unboxing with Blake.

Yeah, he's.

He's now in charge of. Of this one. He's one of the people, you know, trying to do great things with this tool. But yeah, interesting here. Should we still go into what is it?

Or I think I Think we should? Yeah, just because I think it matters.

So this thing that has been paused, what is it? AEO Strategy is a new set of tools designed to help you optimize your content in a changing search landscape. With it, you can view how your existing content, website pages, blog posts, and landing pages are semantically clustered, get insights into how ready your content is for AI engines, and get recommendations for topical gaps you can fill, and track your brand's online sentiment and share a voice compared to your competitors.

Yeah, why does it matter? Hopefully you know this already, but AI is quickly becoming a big part of the research buyers do when making purchasing decisions. The way AI talks about your brand and the citations that appear in AI engines are key ways that your prospective buyers learn and form opinions about your brand. Ladies and gentlemen, please know that this is true. I was talking to Chris two weeks ago about how I got somebody knocking on our doorstep, not physically, like at my house, but Sidekick Strategies, because in AI chat, they were having a conversation around data cleanliness. That was the question, that was what should. And Sidekick Strategies came up and she reached out, filled out a form, we had a conversation. And now, like, we'll be moving forward with a partnership or relationship probably the beginning of next year, because AI, because content was there, because we're focused on optimizing. Like, I'm so psyched when everybody can get access to these tools and hopefully they're paying attention to other things that they could be doing right now, even outside of HubSpot.

Like, I mean, I. I would imagine that that's part of the reason that they're pausing. But also, there's an acquisition that happened recently for the AEO focused company. I can't remember the name exactly right now, but the latest acquisition is all about AEO. And here's. I think the challenge for HubSpot, and you know, everyone in general, is that we think of content in terms of these things. Website pages, blog posts, and landing pages, even as we look at the sidebar here. Videos, podcasts, case studies. What's not in here is currently or has traditionally always been focused as a distribution channel. Right. And that's social.

Yeah.

Right. Like most people are understanding and you see it on LinkedIn every day. Like, content gets created for LinkedIn, only it doesn't get published anywhere else. Yeah, Right. And it doesn't link back to the website. It does. So it's net new creation of content and it's separated from the rest of the content right now. Right. So to try and bring that together, that's what Rounds out. When we see track your brand's online sentiment. We know how important social is to that equation, especially in terms of AI right now. Yeah. So if we cannot, you know, see that part of the picture, we might not get the best AEO recommendations.

Have you seen the, have you seen the AI Discovery panel yet?

I have not.

Yeah. So it's, it's pretty legit. If you signed up for this beta, if you were watching us a long time ago and you signed up for this beta and you haven't gone and looked at it, please do go to Content SEO. And then the first tab, by the way, it, this is what I find funny is it used to be like topic clusters and recommendations and like and now if you go there, AI Discovery is literally the first tab. Chris, if you want, I can share my screen just so we can give people a pin into what this might look like.

Because I have, I remember the seeing the experience before.

So go into your again, go Content SEO and see if you have this tab. If you were one of the lucky ones that got in one, there's a video you can watch, right. And then you're going to be able to start an analysis. But you'll notice like HubSpot ideal customer profiles and you can literally like view these profiles, products and service data that it brings in and you can literally add new products and so you're able to like not only just do an analysis but like interact with it and it's pulling from your ICPs, from your products and you're able to add new stuff and then again do the analysis. So definitely, definitely check that out. If you get an opportunity and it's in your portal.

Oh man. Yeah, I've been wanting to unbox that like for a while, so a little bit sad on that front, but this probably means it's gonna take a little bit longer. But I think there's a great, like there's so many things that we just saw on that screen and that nuances to this. Yeah, I bet we could just chat with Blake just to talk about it. We should in general make it happen. If you're listening, Blake, let's. Let's get it on the schedule and at the risk of having an hour long show, we'll move on. Give instructions to your customer. Agent. Private beta. Low impact.

No, I don't agree.

Right, Low impact, that matters to every single hub. What is it? Expressions. Oh, right, a new word. Yes, thank you.

Appreciate that.

Expressions define how your agent expresses itself.

Go figure.

Remember Loop Marketing Stage Express. You can instruct your agent on tone response style, when to use scripted responses and the guardrails it should follow.

Bro, this is the missing piece I've been waiting for. Why does it matter? Previously, the agent's tone style guardrails came from a single personality and a fixed set of HubSpot guidelines. Customers wanted more. Yeah, yeah, we do want more control. We're used to chat GPT where we've got three boxes and Anyway, I'll, I'll stop want more control expressions. Solve this by letting you write natural language instructions so the agent consistently responds the way you intend. This is so. By the way, HubSpot, somebody go in and change this. This is high impact. This is so high. It's the highest of high impact. If, oh, I have a client right now that I'm thinking of that I'm like, I literally just want to go and hit the. I mean, they've got this. Two distinct types of people that come to their website and knowing now that we can create expressions to like, as soon as you define it's this type of human, or as soon as you define it's this, this type of human, then take these actions and I can fork the road because I can now give it custom instructions, aka HubSpot's expressions. Yeah, okay.

Man. Yeah, that's good stuff. So many thoughts. We'll move on now to the other side of the journey. Create and apply credit memos. Do invoices. What is it? Credit memos enable you to record adjustments that reduce customer balances due to overpayments, prepayments or other corrections. You can apply credits directly to invoices to keep your financial records accurate.

Interesting. Why does it matter? You can now create, track and apply credit memos directly within HubSpot to streamline the billing process and help ensure your financial reporting stays accurate. I believe that that's kind of the same thing that Chris said. Just said a little bit differently. It matters because you want your financials to be aligned. Maybe. There you go. I don't know. Yeah, I guess maybe. People do run into this a lot. I'm sitting here thinking of like the last four years that I've been in business.

Exactly.

And I'm like, I. I don't know if I would have ever needed this, but I know I'm not every business, so obviously somebody does.

Yeah.

I don't know. Interesting.

Yeah, well, you know, try to keep it simple, bro. Transactional humans out there, they need to correct make corrections from time to time. We've got a deprioritized code Blue here, Blue dot that showed up I think last week for the first time.

Are you. Are you old enough, Chris, to remember Blue Light Special Kmart. Yeah, sorry, I digress.

It's not that. Rolled back to development auto merge. Oh, auto merge duplicate records in Manage Duplicates tool. What's changing? We're rolling back automatic merge functionality for records with exactly one to one property matches. This means that records will no longer be merged automatically based on your configured auto merge settings. Instead, you'll still be able to identify and manually merge duplicates using the Manage Duplicates tool.

Hmm, why we're making this change. I feel like there's a story behind this one, but HubSpot introduced auto merge to help teams save time by automatically merging high confidence duplicate records. However, after learning from customers feedback and observing real world usage, we found that automatic merges can sometimes create uncertainty or impact data accuracy in ways that are hard to review or reverse. To ensure you. Oh man, there is a story behind this. To ensure you maintain full control and visibility over your CRM data, we're pausing auto merging this. HubSpot's pausing it. I'm not pausing anything. HubSpot's pausing auto merging While HubSpot revisits how to deliver this functionality in a way that's both intelligent and transparent. Yep, that makes sense. HubSpot.

So what happens now? Number one, any previously configured automerge settings will no longer automatically merge records. Number two, you can continue reviewing and merging duplicates manually in Manage Duplicates. And number three, no data that's already been merged will be unmerged. Yeah, this was a part of a great conversation with Trisha Miriam yesterday about like who's who should be responsible for merging in general. And, and this is just one of those spots where at the time of merging, like solving for the automation of the merging is probably like the, the highest of level band aids towards some other kind of issue happening. And I do hope that as they go back into development, like it needs to be more than just hey, these look the same. So we're going to merge it. Like can we coach a little bit? Like, hey, this is why there's duplicates. This is where this one came from. Like maybe we like can we look into this together to see if we can prevent this from happening like in the future or if not, if there needs to be duplicates for whatever reason because we're integrated with other systems and we need to separate humans that are working in multiple different capacities for their organization. Let's set some guardrails for that too. But yeah, sticky situation that. That. Merge. Merge records.

Yeah.

This looks like a fun one. Increased project pipeline limits. All right. Is live already.

Yeah.

What is it? Project pipeline limits are increased for professional and enterprise customers.

Nice. You can now create more project pipelines to better organize and manage your team's workflows. This allows you to customize processes for different project types or teams, improve visibility and reporting across various project categories, and scale your project management as your team grows and takes on more diverse work. It says professional 15 pipelines increased from five and enterprise 50 pipelines increased from 15.

Dang.

Those are some good increases.

Yep. So. And those limits unchanged for free and starter free. You get one, starter you get two.

Yep.

And I've run into this five a few times because basically the object library objects like appointments, courses, listings, and services have this five limit of five. So different from deals and tickets and the other objects that we're used to. So good to see this increase. It's easy to see. It's easy to understand that we might need a few more pipelines if we're doing project management. And now I'll just continue to pray.

For the task object to be born and custom task properties.

That's.

I'll just keep praying for that over the holiday weekend.

We'll get there. Appreciate everybody's love and support to get us. Get us to that. That holy grail.

Yes.

Of doing all of our project. How about that? Like if we were project management. Customer data, Financial data. Dude.

Come on.

Oh, something to look forward to for sure. And I want to shout out, like, if you want to recap of some of the best updates of the year, Buddy. Joshua Oaks has been doing like 25 updates from the year that he's been thankful for. Check him out on LinkedIn. I think it was like seeing like six or seven per day on LinkedIn. Just calling out some of the best updates of the year. So check that out. And remember, folks, you probably already. You.

You got one left, bro. Scroll down. What are you doing?

What am I doing? Maybe the best one. Good cough. Good cough. Yeah.

Holy mackerel.

The one I put in the LinkedIn post to you.

Yeah.

How about that? HubSpot connector for Gemini, Medium impact.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

What is it with the HubSpot connector for Gemini? Customers can bring their HubSpot context to Gemini to surface insights and generate content to be actioned back in HubSpot. Marketers can ask, show me a list of contacts in the lead lifecycle stage, or maybe you call it the audience Lifecycle stage and draft Follow up notes that I can send in HubSpot. Sales reps can ask show me a list of deals and draft follow up emails that I can send in HubSpot. Support teams can ask show me a list of companies and recommend a follow up note that I can send in HubSpot. The HubSpot connector for Gemini is now in public beta and available for HubSpot customers across all tiers with a paid Google Workspace, Business standard, Business plus or enterprise plan. And Gemini Alpha is turned on.

Yeah, definitely learn more there. Why does this matter? We HubSpot want customers to be able to use HubSpot context everywhere they're using AI. That's why we're expanding our list of connectors with the HubSpot connector for Gemini. Now Gemini 3 by the way, which is amazing. Anyway, nearly half of HubSpot customers are using multiple LLMs to work so we've made it possible to bring their HubSpot context into these tools, get insight and take action. Back in HubSpot we moved fast because to become the first CRM with connector for chat, GPT and Claude and we're excited to add Gemini to our growing list of connectors. Yeah, if you're. Yeah, just do this. Just, just this.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's hard to keep up with all the updates. Uh, I had thought we heard this one before based on all the other Google apps that have been dropping for HubSpot, but now I, I know that we have not. This is a new connector.

Well, it might be an updated connector because we're, we have a. We've signed up for the beta which means we've talked. That's true, we've talked about it. But it definitely was not this robust last time we talked about it. So I would suggest anybody go into their portal and go read all of the stuff that is below and see all the screenshots that it's talking about. Yeah, I, I now really do feel like maybe my holiday weekend is wrecked because with some other stuff that I'm messing around with Gemini and this.

I.

Need to go play some more. Hey, by the way, guess what? We now have covered all of the updates, Chris.

So remember folks, you probably already own the solution you're looking for in HubSpot. Sometimes you just need to wake up to it. I'll be there to wake up with you. Join us Monday morning live at 7:30am Central or catch us anytime on Spotify and Apple Music or the profoundly HubSpot updates blog. Drop your biggest segue in the comments and let us know what capabilities you want to wake up to next. Until then, I'm Chris. Carolyn.

And I'm George B. Thomas. Happy Thanksgiving. If you celebrate it, and this has.

Been Wake up, customer platform. Now go build something amazing and have a wonderful Thanksgiving. We'll see you next time.

Wake up, customer platform? It's time to start the day? Discover all the value you already own? Don't let solutions slip away? Wake up, customer platform? The tools are at your hand? No need to sleep on capabilities that can help your business, business stand? The answer's right before your eyes? You just need to realize? Wake up, customer platform? And watch your business rise? Wake up, Wake up? The platform's waiting for you? Wake up? Up? Wake up? See what your system can do.