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Recorded: Thursday 26 January 2023 | Published: Friday 03 February 2023
HubSpot has changed significantly over the past two years, and it can be easy to miss what’s available. So I thought it might be worth spending a minute or two to review the main Hubs of HubSpot and what they provide.
Here’s the HubSpot Hubs as of 2023:
As a general rule, across all of the Hubs there is extensive reporting and dashboard functionality, as well security and permissions.
If you’ve been using HubSpot for a few years you likely started with one of the hubs (perhaps marketing or sales) and perhaps haven’t explored some of the new hubs.
The two main hubs we are seeing growth in are:
If you’re confused about what’s available, or just have had a chance to look at what’s available, feel free to book in with Ian and me for a HubSpot QuickCheck - after learning about your business and current use of HubSpot, we can give you some guidance and recommendations on other areas you could potentially use HubSpot to grow your business results.
This week we’re starting a new ‘Shot’ (based on the ONE thing) and it is simply one thing we suggest you get in place this week (if you don’t already).
There’s so much to cover in HubSpot, and even these episodes can be a little overwhelming at times, so if nothing else, we want you to take away one thing from the show that you action and get in place. Each week we’ll feature a ‘ONE thing’ related to sales, marketing, service or CMS.
The week’s ONE thing relates to Sales, and is HubSpot Meetings.
Jump to Shot 4 for the details.
Here’s a few quick items of interest we noticed:
Enterprise Hubs are starting to roll out approval process functionality, that allows requiring users (based on permissions) to request approval for an asset to go live (Eg web page, landing page, email, blog, etc)
We’ve started playing with it (it’s in public beta at the moment) and like it so far.
A few quick tips - to enable it you first need to turn it on in settings:
Once that is enabled, you’ll then see an option in the right hand side of assets eg email:
Most listeners will know that HubSpot has its own calendar meeting scheduling tool - called HubSpot Meetings - that allows you to share your Google or Microsoft 365 calendar availability via a nice web page or web page embed.
This allows people to easily book in time with you (eg here’s where you can book in time with us).
HubSpot Meetings will look at your calendar and check when you are available.
We’ve discussed this a few times on the show, for full details check out episodes 261 (Shot 4) and 264 (Shot 4).
However, what should you do if you want to tentatively block out some time in your calendar (eg to work on a presentation) so that:
Ie you want HubSpot Meetings to consider that time as available, but you want to block it out from colleagues?
Turns out that HubSpot Meetings will look at the Free/Busy indicator in Google Calendar, and if it is Free, will consider that as available for contacts to book in.
This is really handy - it means I can block out time in my calendar like this:
My team will know I’m not available.
But HubSpot Meetings will consider the time as available.
To remove it from being available in HubSpot Meetings, I can just switch it to Busy:
(Aside: In case you are wondering, at XEN we use naming conventions for all our meetings - anything with a Prefix of ‘1’ means it is important and can’t be moved (eg a client meeting), but anything prefixed with ‘2’ means it is flexible. So, actually the meeting above is flexible - the team know that if there is something urgent it is fine to move this particular meeting. Nothing to do with HubSpot functionality - but just a little tip on how we name meetings.)
You’ve been able to move a Conversation out of one inbox into another for a while.
However, when doing so the conversation was set to Unassigned.
Now, as part of the move to another inbox, you can set who it is assigned to (can be a specific user or a team)
Since permissions can be tricky, trying to troubleshoot them can be time consuming - if you are working with someone who doesn’t have enough permissions.
One way to troubleshoot more efficiently is to impersonate a user. This is available in Enterprise hubs, for Super Admins, and can be accessed from the User’s action menu:
You’d log in as a specific user in a separate browser instance (eg an Incognito window) and tweak permissions for the user (or their permission set) in your usual browser instance.
This is available for Super Admins, and you can only log in as non Super Admin users (ie a Super Admin can’t log in as another Super Admin)
Here’s a bit of a gotcha…
It relates to the process you use when deactivating a user (eg they leave the company).
There’s two gotchas:
Instead, you need to:
Simple when you know, but easy to miss if you don’t. Working with a client this week we freed up a bunch of paid seats that were being consumed by deactivated users.
We had to reactivate the users, then remove the paid seat, then deactivate again.
If you have an Enterprise hub you can create Permission Sets that include/exclude paid seat details.
We like to create a permission set called: Remove All Permissions that has no permissions, and no paid seats.
When a User has left the company we switch their permission set to this first (which also remove any paid seats), and then Deactivate.
When wouldn’t you do this?
The only reason you wouldn’t do this is if you think there’s a good chance the user might return to the company - in that case you might keep their current permissions intact and just deactivate for the period.
Folders are a very handy way to organise your assets, but they aren’t available everywhere (yet).
Here’s a quick overview of where you can use them (as of late 2022 - this may change in future):
Notice that landing pages have folders (and subfolders) but website pages don’t. Go figure.
However as HubSpot rolls out the Views approach to more areas (ie as it is in Web Pages, Landing Pages and Blog Posts) needing to use folders will be less of a benefit anyway.
Another reminder to take a few minutes out of your day to reflect on how lucky you are.
It’s easy to get caught up in the gloom of daily news stories (wars, layoffs, inflation), so remind yourself to focus mostly on the things you can control and not so much on the things you can’t.
Here’s a cute puppy to brighten your day. You’re welcome.
“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”
― Sun Tzu
Last year Ian and I ran a private Masterclass for our clients, where we went through a ton of tips and new features using HubSpot.
We’re making the event recording available to our HubShots subscribers - you can access the slide deck and recording using the link in the show notes (not a subscriber yet? - you can sign up at hubshots.com/subscribe )
In the masterclass we go through 11 areas of HubShot across the hubs, highlighting the tools and features that we see most people miss.
We’re planning another online masterclass in the coming month - look out for a separate email with details soon.
Our new HubSpot QuickCheck service has been popular with companies who are looking for a quick review of their HubSpot portal to understand:
If you’re asking yourself any of these questions, our QuickCheck call might be ideal. Here’s the details:
You can view more details and book in your session here.
Connect with HubShots here:
Connect with Ian Jacob on LinkedIn and Craig Bailey on LinkedIn
HubShots, the podcast for marketing managers and sales professionals who use HubSpot, hosted by Ian Jacob from Search & Be Found and Craig Bailey from XEN Systems and XEN Solar.
HubShots is produced by Christopher Mottram from Podcastily.
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