Last month the marketing community gathered in Boston to attend HubSpot’s yearly INBOUND conference. The conference includes high profile speakers (ranging from former first ladies, HGTV stars, professional athletes, and pop culture icons), educational workshops, and most importantly, the keynote speech from founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah.

Halligan and Shah typically use this as a time to look at where they began, how the company has grown, why they’ve made certain changes, and where they hope to go in the coming year. Halligan takes on the role of grand visionary and Shah comfortably fills the role of product expert. Halligan’s portion of the speech is always interesting. He typically introduces new strategy, explaining how it will help businesses grow and how it will alleviate pain points. But for me, Shah is the real star. He introduces all the new product features and updates. I think this is the most interesting and the most important part of the conference, and that’s what I’ll be focusing on in this article.

HubSpot Updates You Can Expect in 2020

At INBOUND 2019, Shah demonstrated numerous exciting updates and previews of what’s to come in 2020. But before we jump into the long list of tools and features to look for in the coming year, we should review the thought process behind these updates.

This year, HubSpot worked to solve the following three problems businesses commonly face:

• I need this to be easier.
• I need to grow.
• I’m on a tight budget.

According to HubSpot, businesses want tools and tasks to be easier, they want their businesses to grow more rapidly, and they want to do all this on a tight budget. None of this is surprising. As a marketer or a business owner, you are commonly faced with the issue of balancing a budget while also trying to achieve your goals. HubSpot knows this – and has known this for a long time. I would argue that they have been working to provide a better product and help business owners solve these problems long before Halligan and Shah’s keynote. Just look at some of the updates they released in 2019.

HubSpot released the Contact and Company Deduplication Tool earlier this year. This tool helps you to stay organized in your CRM by creating a list of contacts that HubSpot believes to be duplicates. These are contacts who typically share a name or company but have records under two different email addresses. This tool allows you to merge the information from these two contact records and reduce needless database bloat.

Simple tool. Simple fix. Now your life as a HubSpot customer is much easier.

Its also worth mentioning that HubSpot did a complete overhaul of the look and function of individual contact records this year. They are now more streamlined, making it easier to access all the context you need to create better customer interactions while maintaining clarity and cleanliness.

Even better, the new contact record loads significantly faster, so you can get back to building meaningful relationships with your customers.

These updates are now live in all HubSpot portals – and have been for months. HubSpot is always working to make things easier, help you grow your business, and do everything on a reasonable budget. The updates Shah announced are just an extension of that mentality.

So, let’s get into those updates.

The App Marketplace

HubSpot now has a marketplace! You will no longer be forced to use third-party integrations to sync all your information. The app marketplace will help you to connect tools, teams, and processes all in one place. With more than 300 app integrations, HubSpot has more than doubled their previous support offering with integrations to widely used tools like Slack, Xero, WordPress, and more.

The App Marketplace is now live and available to all HubSpot users.

The Conversations Inbox

Last year, HubSpot introduced Conversations, an all-in-one live chat / chatbot. They’ve improved this tool by allowing you to connect Facebook Messenger as well as Service Hub website support forms to the inbox. Connect with your customers where they want to chat. Never miss a conversation.

These features are currently in beta and will be available in 2020 for Marketing Hub Starter, Professional, and Enterprise.

Knowledgebase Article Access

Your customers are important, and the best way to show that you value them is to treat them as individuals. The Knowledge Base, part of Service Hub, now allows you to customize article access based on list membership and audience type. Don’t just share more knowledge – share knowledge that is important and relevant to your customer.

Speaking of treating people as individuals, HubSpot has also created a new editor. This gives users more flexibility to make the knowledge base their own.

These updates are now live and available to all Service Hub Professional and Enterprise users.

Advocacy Automation

Now live in Service Hub is Advocacy Automation — new workflows that trigger email outreach based on survey data. Use this new automation to power and scale your customer’s testimonial or case study program. Furthermore, you can now deliver feedback surveys in new ways, like on your website, and gain new insights through feedback reporting.

Advocacy automation and improved feedback reporting are now live in Service Hub Professional and Enterprise.

Landing Pages

Love the simplicity of HubSpot’s email editor? Then you will love the new update to landing pages. HubSpot has added a new drag-and-drop editor, allowing you to create and edit beautiful landing pages.

This feature will be available in 2020 for Marketing Hub Starter, Professional, and Enterprise.

Social Post Boosting

HubSpot currently has, what I consider to be, the best social posting and reporting tool on the market. That being said, they realized they were limiting users by not allowing them to boot successful posts from within the tool.

HubSpot has announced that users will soon be able to boost Facebook posts from within the social tool. You have always been able to track your success, but now you will be able to act on it.

This feature is currently in beta and will soon be available for Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise.

Native Ad Creation

With native Facebook lead ad creation in HubSpot, advertisers can easily create an ad with all campaign assets in one place. These ads can then be used to create lists and trigger workflows.

This update is now live and available to all HubSpot users.

Publish Anywhere Social Reports

As a marketer or business owner, you’re on the go — juggling projects, scheduling meetings, and attending conferences. You do the best you can to schedule your social posts, but sometimes you need to post, tweet, or gram something on the go. Now you can. HubSpot’s new publish anywhere reporting allows users to publish from HubSpot, the social network, or a different tool entirely (Hootsuite, Buffer, etc.) and still track your success within HubSpot across all networks that you’re active on.

This update is now live and available to all Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise users.

Automation

Workflows are great, but sometimes they can get a little crazy. HubSpot is here is help.

HubSpot has given us the gift of workflow folders. Now you can categorize all your workflows into different folders and quickly find what you’re looking for.

HubSpot has also updated their workflows, allowing users to add simple go to action branches. This makes large, detailed workflows more manageable and easier to follow visually.

Folders and Go to Action are both currently in beta and will be available for all Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub Professional and Enterprise users.

Sales Hub Professional

Sales Hub Professional will now provide users with a native e-signature option. This will allow your sales team to get digital signatures on quotes. HubSpot is also adding calculated properties to Sales Hub. This will allow users to create fields that roll up data from other fields.

These features will be available in 2020 for Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise.

Business Card Scanner on Mobile

Are you a sales or marketing professional on the go? Do you regularly meet new contacts? Then you should download HubSpot’s visually refreshed business card scanner for Android and — for the first time ever — a business card scanner for iOS, powered by machine learning. Transforming your cards into digital contacts has never been easier.

This update is now live and available to all HubSpot users.

Buy Now Button

Finally, Sales Hub Professional will soon allow users to create a Buy Now button that directly connects a product in your product catalogue to an online purchase in Stripe.

This feature is currently in beta and will be available in 2020 for Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise.

Why You Need to Buy Now

HubSpot announced these updates in September, but they also announced updated pricing. If you want to take advantage of legacy pricing, you need to become a HubSpot customer before November 1^st, 2019.

Click here to review updated pricing.

For more information about the INBOUND 2019 product updates or to discuss becoming a HubSpot customer, click here to contact us. Arc is a Certified HubSpot Agency Partner. One of our HubSpot experts will speak with you about your options, what tier makes sense for your needs, and how HubSpot can help your business grow.

Want more? Watch this HubSpot product spotlight video recapping all the INBOUND 2019 updates.