Optimizing For Customer Connection With HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan | INBOUND22

Welcome. Welcome, everyone. We have over 60,000 people attending inbound from all over the world. So whether you're joining me here in Boston. Boston. Or you're joining me from your couch, welcome. I'm just so excited that I get to speak with all of you today. Let me start by asking you, how are you? How's life been since last inbound? Easy, breezy. I know, I know. I'm kidding. How are you? Has become such a loaded question, hasn't it? You know, we've seen each other's kids and pets and colorful living rooms all on zoom. When the lines between life and work have blurred so much in the past couple of years, it just feels weird not to have a real conversation. That's why when someone asks me the question, how are you? I honestly don't know where to start. Because my year, I'll tell you, has felt like a roller coaster ride. On one hand, I've had some amazing heists. I stepped into this dream job as CEO of HubSpot. I have a dream team here. I have a supportive husband, two lovely teenagers. No, lovely teenagers is not an oxymoron. But then I also lost my dad. He was my rock. And that was two weeks after I stepped into my new role. And that was tough. So I've had to step up as a daughter, as a mother, as a CEO all at once. And at the same time, work has been anything but easy and breezy. The world is changing, and every week it feels like a new twist and a new turn. But I know I'm not alone. The past year has felt like a roller coaster ride for many of us here. Right. Because when I talk to you, I get to hear about your highs and your lows, too. At the height of the pandemic, you had to pivot hard and fast. You did some amazingly clever things to survive, and some of you even thrived during the pandemic. But now, this year, that momentum seems to be stalling a little bit. It's harder to reach our customers, and the flywheel that was spinning seems a bit frozen, and it's hard to figure out exactly what's in the way. And that is one of the things as CEO that keeps me up at night. Because helping you all grow, that's our focus here at HubSpot. That's our bread and butter and our jam. And so over the last six months, spent a lot of time going on a listening tour. That's part of my job I love the most. I spent a lot of time talking to many of you to get to the bottom of what's holding back growth and what we can do about it. And across all of those conversations, there have been three overarching themes that are emerging. What I call as disconnects that are creating a gap to your growth, but more importantly, ways we can connect and what we can do about it. That's exactly what I want to talk with all of you today. So let's actually dive in. I want to start with the first disconnect, and that is that companies are struggling with disconnected systems. You know, we actually sent out a survey to businesses to figure out what were the biggest pain points that you had. And I was expecting to hear things like slowing growth and decreasing demand. But what was really surprising was the number one pain point for businesses today turns out to be disconnected systems and data. Wow, that actually makes a lot of sense because during the pandemic, many of you had to pivot and turned into fully digital overnight. There was just this frenzy of buying point solutions to be able to solve point problems. You want to process payments? Yep. You got an app for that. You want to resolve customer tickets? Yep. There's another app for that. You want to make your reps productive? Well, there are hundred apps for that. No Wonder the average SaaS company today has 242 SaaS tools. 242. Now, the thing is, having this many tools, that's not the problem. The real problem is that they're disconnected. As a result, your data is disconnected, your teams are struggling, and your customer experience, that's suffering. And that's exactly what we are hearing from our customers today. Let's listen.

The inefficiency slowing us down is using too many tools. When you're spread out, it's ineffective because.

We'Ve grown so quickly and we've had to evolve our use of different applications rapidly. I have to spend a lot of time cleaning data, and it's complex. So unfortunately it falls on me. It's not something that's easy to delegate, and it often comes at the cost of me getting to spend time with customers.

So I find that some of the efficiencies that slow us down are really synthesizing all of the kind of data points and systems that we've got and taking that information. It enables us to go and execute on kind of delivering a good customer experience.

Ineffective, stuck. Inefficient. These are some of the most common words that I hear during customer conversations. We're all spending a lot of time cleaning and connecting data and not enough time connecting with customers. And that's a problem, right? So that brings us to this point, which is disconnected point. Solutions are not the solution. We now have a tool for every task and every feature and every department, but we're not connecting the dots. And that is our biggest challenge. Now, when we have challenges like this, what do we typically do? Well, we rely on each other for support. Think about this. You're a new parent. You join a parent's group for support. You take a very tough class, you join a study group for support. If you're a sales rep, you got your quota, you want to crush it, you join a sales group for support. But throughout this pandemic, it's become really hard to connect as humans. Almost every survey tells us this. In fact, 45% of workers say that they have fewer interactions at work, and 57% of people are engaged in fewer social activities today. And we can all feel this because we're no longer tapping each other on our shoulders anymore. So this brings me to the second disconnect. People are feeling disconnected from each other. No wonder Peloton was so popular during the pandemic. For me, Peloton was the community that just grounded me. Anybody out here is a Ross Rayburn yoga fan on Peloton? Yeah, you know what I mean. I just love his yoga sessions and the community of regulars that he built. Just so much joy. And isn't that why we're all here today, for this community? Because we just love that opportunity to learn together, share ideas together, get inspired together. And that brings us to this point, which is people crave community in good times and not so good times. So it's become really clear, talking to many of you, that systems are disconnected. People are feeling disconnected. But folks, there is a giant chasm that's developing an even bigger disconnect. I hear this loud and clear in almost every one of my conversations with customers. That brings me to the third disconnect. Companies are disconnected from their customers. Wow. It's really hard to connect with customers today and build meaningful relationships with them. Yeah, you're all writing blogs at like, a frenzied pace, but you cannot cut through the noise. They're all sending out emails like they're going out of style, but you just cannot get to that prospect. Why is that? What has changed? We got really curious about these questions, and the answer is something that all of us here can easily relate to. Digital fatigue and distrust are now at an all time high, leading directly to a disconnected customer. There's just no question about this. We are now In a digital overload mode. Think about this. We used to love scrolling our social feeds. Now the only thing they feed is advertisers. We used to love opening those emails from our favorite brands. Now they all go straight to spam. And every piece of data shows this. You, me, we are digitally drained. 65% of Google searches ended up without a click. Sales email response rates have plummeted down by 40% compared to pre pandemic rates. And the average blog has shrunk by 1.6% compared to 2021. So all of the channels that companies relied on to connect with their customers are no longer working right now. In addition to all of this, customer preferences are completely changing because we live in a privacy first world because privacy is queen. We're all very protective of our data. Why wouldn't we be? It's our data. No one's really interested in downloading more white papers and resources anymore. Because giving away your email does not feel free, does it? That's why the cookies consent tracking that businesses just relied on is really getting cut off in this privacy first world. I mean have you seen Apple's latest ad campaign that literally stopped me on my tracks. When one of the most valuable companies on the planet comes this strongly for a value, we should all pay attention. Our customers are, let's listen to them.

We are definitely starting to see the impacts of digital fatigue now. People are just, they're tired, they're just really, I'm finding, protecting their time.

And that was a lot of what we were finding when we had to kind of make that shift from being mostly in person to now we are completely and fully virtual, still wanting to have the same nurture, the same touch and make sure that we're still able to anticipate those needs in the same.

Way the way I used to talk to leads two years ago, three years ago changed drastically for us. We are more disconnected from the customers than we would like to.

And we're constantly evaluating traditional ways and the new ways to reach people where they are and when they need to hear our message.

That's exactly right. The world is changing and old go to market strategies will not work in this new world. It's become really clear to us that systems are disconnected. People are feeling disconnected from each other and companies are disconnected from their customers. And all of this means we're now in a crisis of disconnection. When a crisis we're grasping for growth revenue feels unattainable and people just feel like they're underwater. So this is the point where we need to evolve. There's no question about it. Standing still here is not an option. This is the point. We rise to the challenge and we connect. We have to connect with our customers. We have to connect with each other here. And we need to find a way to connect back to growth. Companies will not win by focusing on customer management. They'll only win by focusing on customer connection and what that actually means. You need more than data, you need context. You need more than content, you need connection. You need more than contacts. You need this community. What you need is a connected customer growth strategy. So we created a 20 point multi layered strategy that will take you two years and $2 million to implement. Nah, I'm just kidding. We wouldn't do that to you. But we are here to help HubSpot Cares and we want to help you evolve your strategies so you can drive that connection. And I want to start by offering some practical advice for every stage of your customer journey around the flywheel. Now, my good friend Brian Halligan introduced this concept of the flywheel in 2018 here on stage inbound. Make some noise if you've heard of the Flywheel. Yeah, it was just an innovative framework to be able to attract, engage and delight customers. But now it's time for us to grease the flywheel and evolve those strategies so we can drive that customer connection. So let's do that, starting with the attract face. And here I want to start by talking about your advertising strategy. And my first piece of practical advice is be first to the party. With first party data. You have so much more valuable context in your first party data compared to your third party data. Use it, it works. In fact, companies who sync their first party data with Google get a 20% improvement in conversion rate compared to companies who don't join that party. Your customers will love the relevance of your ads and your CEO will love the results. Trust me, she will. Yeah. Now the next thing you need to do is to be able to cut through that noise. And this is where you diversify your distribution of content. If you're already just looking at organic and social, you have to get creative. Are you on TikTok, YouTube? Get going there. If you're not leveraging creators and influencers to be able to expand your reach, now is the time. At HubSpot, we launched our podcast network. But more importantly, we tapped onto talented creators and saw massive distribution. 9 million downloads per month. That's the power. Okay? Now you've done that, you've gotten creative and you've been able to reach Your audience. The next step is for you to engage. And here my advice is earn that open rate. We've all gotten prospecting emails that go something like this. Hey Yamini, I see you're in business. Can I get 30 minutes of your time to talk about business things? How about next Thursday? Are you free? You know the former salesperson in me dies every time I get an email like that. Your reps need to offer something really valuable. Unique piece of data, Access to an expert, access to an excellent resource, a pure resource, a compelling video. Make it compelling. Because just praying and sending out emails is just going to get you a one way ticket into that spam folder. That's not good. All right, now your prospect is engaged. Your customer is engaged. What are you going to do to drive that connection? This is where you need to bring context to the conversation. It just sounds so simple, but it's such a breath of fresh air when your reps actually have the context of the customer to have a real meaningful conversation. What product are you using? What was the last content you dealt with? What was your last support ticket? How did it get resolved? Empower your reps with that context and data so it's not a cold start of a conversation every time. Now you've had great conversations and your customer is ready to buy some more. It's time to delight. You can absolutely delight them by making buying a breeze. Think about Amazon. They've set the gold standard in terms of the online shopping experience. They've made it so easy to buy from them. That's exactly what B2B buyers expect and deserve today. Now compare that to current processes, invoices, duct tape, paper cuts, paper checks. Not fun. It's bogging down your growth and burdening your customers. So make it easy to buy from you by offering a variety of payment options. Okay, now your customers bought. That's great. It's time to get real. Give customers channel choice. Email is not dead, but there are other channels like SMS and text that are much more alive. Meet your customers there. Take DoorDash for example. They certainly have in app notifications, but they text me when the delivery is on the way. They send me a photo when the food is right outside my door. I feel so special and taken care of. I know I'm not special, but you know, I feel good. That's what we need to do. Drive that connection. You need to meet your customers where they are now. These are just a handful of strategies for you to get started and you all go back to your teams on Monday. Get Creative. Breathe some fresh air into your flywheel and send us what you've learned. If there's just like one takeaway from this entire presentation, it is this. Optimize for customer connection. At HubSpot, we know we want to help you grow. We want to help you bring your data together, we want to help you bring your customers together, and we want to bring you all together. That's why we are combining three powerful combinations of our solution with connected applications, connected platform and connected community. The combination is our connected customer platform. Now let's talk about connected applications. If you have our anchor hubs, you can certainly create automations. As a marketeer, you can close deals as a sales rep and you can resolve tickets as a service agent. But more importantly, you can see where your customer is throughout their journey with you. That's important. We just did not build any of these anchor hubs and silos because we truly believe that marketing, sales and service should not be in silos. We know that you need data and flexibility. That's why we're building a connected platform. Even when you have connected applications, customer facing applications, you'll still need data from other systems like your accounting systems, project management systems, your analytical systems. And that's why we have over 1100 application integrations to be able to bring the data and connect the dots. And that's why we're building commerce right into our platform so you can sell to your customers with one click and bring that context right in to your next conversation with your customer. And we know that you need more than software to be able to survive and thrive. That's why we're building this connected community. We've always brought educational resources to this community. In fact, we have over 454,000 growth professionals that have gotten certified through HubSpot Academy. Now, in addition to that, we're bringing experts and assets right into our marketplace and we're bringing this entire community together through our network. Something Dharmesh will talk about in his spotlight. As you can see, we just left this old notion of best in class behind for this new notion of best in connection. We want to bring the data, the channels and the people so we can empower all of you to connect and grow better. Phew. That's a lot, huh? Now let me ask you this. How are you doing? Yeah, I hope you're feeling a little bit lighter, a little bit clearer on what you can do to drive that connection with your customers with data and with each other. But more than anything else, I really hope that you're ready to navigate this roller coaster together as a community. You know, my kids used to force me to go on these roller coaster rides with them all the time. I was so nervous. Couldn't wait for it to be over. I'd close my eyes and grip the seats. Yep, I was that kind of a mom. But I realized after a couple of these rides and little bit of hand holding and coaxing that roller coaster rides can be very energizing. Now I have my hands almost up in the air, you know? Yeah. So if you were to ask me now, how am I doing? After talking with many of you over the last six months, I'm feeling creative, energized. I know we're on this ride together, and we have the right strategies and we have this community to be able to connect. So let's get rolling. You all inspire us tremendously, and we hope to inspire you during the rest of this keynote as well as the next three days of content here at Inbound, as we step into this age of a connected customer with each other. With that, I'm going to hand it off to Steph Cuthbertson, who's our Chief Product Officer, to share with you how we're bringing this vision to life within our product. Thank you so much, and be well.