HubSpot’s November releases: A manager’s guide

The release of the WhatsApp integration, which promises to increase contact engagement and user efficiency, highlights HubSpot’s November releases.

Also, last month: 

• Marketing emails can now be prevented from sending without approval first.
• Campaign reporting is enhanced by an improved “influenced contacts” metric.
• gaining actionable insights from calls is easier with more specific clipping.
• Data collection is more efficient using required properties when creating new deals and tickets.
• Plus, several Payments and Playbooks releases allow managers to access the information they need.

WhatsApp integration for HubSpot

Increase the likelihood of prospects and customers engaging with your content by using their communication method of choice — which now includes WhatsApp. 

The new WhatsApp integration for HubSpot helps you serve the 2 billion people who prefer the app while allowing your team to use a WhatsApp Business account as a channel in the conversations inbox for text or voice messages. 

You can also use approved WhatsApp templates inside HubSpot, add WhatsApp messages as workflow actions, and view reporting on WhatsApp activities. See how it works.

Approvals for marketing emails (beta)

To better safeguard your business against costly mistakes in emails and streamline any existing approval process using multiple tools, you can use the new approvals feature inside HubSpot’s marketing email tool. 

Your HubSpot admin can turn on this option and set it for the appropriate people to be notified to approve before the email can be sent or scheduled. Learn more about best practices to begin using this new release.

Updated Campaigns ‘influenced contacts’ metric

To give you better insights for managing campaigns and adjusting strategy based on what’s working and what’s not, HubSpot’s “influenced contacts” metric has been improved to remove previous limitations. 

The latest release in HubSpot’s Campaigns 2.0 improvements, this updated metric shows the number of contacts that engaged with campaign content to understand how each contact was influenced. 

Content that influenced the contact is now visible when viewing a list of contacts. The campaign details page and campaign analytics reports can use an influenced contacts filter, and you can use the data to create active lists of who was influenced or what influenced them. 

Call releases that eliminate confusion and manual work

It’s now easier to train team members using actual call recordings in HubSpot, and improve marketing content based on the voice of the customer, by sharing specific recording clips with your team. 

Previously, you could define the start time but not the end time. Defining start and end times to the recording clip should help you highlight the relevant part of the call for that specific learning. If the clip is shorter, the team is less likely to become confused or lose interest since they can’t see what’s relevant. 

Similarly, a new release attaches comments on call recordings to the specific section of the call the commenter is referring to, preventing back-and-forth user messages for clarification.

An additional calls-related release eliminates manual work and prevents overlooking important customer information. Inbound (incoming) calls are now automatically associated with the existing contact and/or company record. Previously, the calls had to be manually attached.

Payments releases for taxes, fees and subscription billing dates

HubSpot’s Payments features now enable you to see revenue information more easily, reduce friction from the customer purchasing experience, and attribute revenue to marketing more directly.  

Here are enhancements that may aid you with getting started or using Payments:

• Businesses can now add taxes and fees to quotes.
• Your HubSpot admin and accounting team will be able to communicate more easily now that the payment settings in HubSpot have been simplified and the language clarified.
• To match your company’s billing cycles for a particular day or allow for your company to service onboarding before beginning recurring payments, you can now set a future first payment date using Payment links for recurring subscriptions. Previously, the subscription billing date would be the same day of the month that the customer chose to make their first payment. This release will soon apply to Quotes, too. 

Playbooks releases ensure adoption and better use of collected data

Collecting data via Playbooks can help marketing teams gain insights into what customers and prospects are talking about during calls. Here are some of the latest updates:

• To create a better customer and user experience, Playbooks can now update properties on associated records. This ensures all teams and users find the information they need, no matter which associated record they are viewing. Previously, the properties were only populated on one record directly attached to the Playbook. 
• Another release makes it easier for your team to know which playbook to use based on the value of the deal stage property, contact lifecycle stage property, ticket status, or ticket category. This increases the chance the teams will use the Playbooks, fulfilling the goals for which it was created. 
• The Playbook editor experience is now more intuitive and less frustrating, making it simpler to improve Playbooks more often or create new Playbooks as needed to increase the success of your teams.

Set required properties for new tickets and deals in every stage

To ensure you have the data you need for accurate reporting, outreach automation and personalization, you can now require certain properties to be filled out before a deal or ticket is created for each stage. 

Show only the relevant required properties when creating a deal or ticket to collect the information you need more easily without the team wasting time manually inputting irrelevant information.

Previously, team members could avoid inputting the required information by creating new deals or tickets instead of moving existing records to new stages.