Inbound Marketing and Sales Software

4.5
184 reviews
Made for

Companies looking for a sophisticated all-in-one marketing automation tool that covers all areas of digital marketing: email, social media, landing page development. 

Not for

Small companies looking for a simple marketing tool. 

 
Free trial
 
$200 - $2400/mo.
Pricing details
Example customers

University of Southern California

Shopify

Relevance

Features

Content creation

  • Landing pages
  • Blog posts
  • Call-to-action
  • email newsletters

Promotion & distribution

Provide relevant, contextual marketing experiences to every contact in your database

  • Social media marketing
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • LinkedIn
  • Email Marketing
  • Calls-to-Action

Support

  • Chat Support
  • Support Tickets
  • Feature Requests
  • Local User Groups

Integration

  • SlideShare
  • SalesForce
  • SurveyMonkey
  • Uberflip
  • Inboundli
  • Dropbox
  • Eyemagine
  • WordPress
  • Google Chrome
  • Eventbrite
  • Zendesk
  • PandaDoc
  • etc...

Collaboration

Assign tasks to different members of your team within the same account

Automation

Schedule social media posts and email newsletters. 

Analytics and Tracking

  • Blog analytics
  • Social media analytics
  • email analytics and A/B testing
  • Landing page analytics
  • Goal tracking
  • Website traffic sources
  • Contacts reports

Monitoring

  • Monitor your competitors' marketing campaigns
  • Compare your campaign to your competitors'

Pricing

Basic info

 
Free trial
 
$200 - $2400/mo.
 
Annual subscription
  • Basic Plan - $200/ month + $600 (required onboarding)
  • Pro Plan - $800/ month + $3000 (required onboarding)
  • Enterprise Plan - $2,400/ month + $5000 (required onboarding)
Vendor Pricing

Reviews

4.5
184 reviews
Sort by
 
Client Interview
Oct 20 2016

One-Stop Shop for Inbound Marketing

4.0

Features: 
4.0
Ease of use: 
5.0
Support: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
4.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Marketing and Advertising
 
11-50 Employees
 
Chicago Metro Area
Digital Marketing Strategist, Digital Agency
1
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

A digital marketing agency uses HubSpot to manage their clients' inbound marketing campaigns. They like that it is user-friendly, and that HubSpot rolls our new features and is updated often. However, it is less cost effective than some competitor products, such as SharpSpring and Act-on. 

Background

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an SEO [search engine optimization] and inbound PPC [pay-per-click] digital marketing agency in Chicago. We work with clients that want better visibility online either through SEO or PPC and/or want to increase their visibility as well as increasing their web conversions and new clients.

As our Digital Marketing Strategist, I work on both client side and our company marketing, anything from SEO clients and inbound clients.

What was the business challenge your clients were facing that initiated the need for this platform?

It's the primary tool that we use for our clients who sign on for inbound campaigns. 

Solution

How does your company implement this platform or software?

We primarily use it as a landing page, call to action, reporting tool, and email marketing. That takes care of all the automation, all the form development and sets up the conversion paths so that our clients can run these campaigns, with e-books and guides and extra content like that. A lot of our clients don't have the capability, or even the time sometimes, to create landing pages on their site. Whether it's a knowledge factor or a time factor, it's just easier to have those landing pages live in HubSpot.  We manage all their campaigns with HubSpot.

We develop their e-books in-house and [we nurture] workflows, marketing campaigns. We run blogs with CTA [call-to-action] to entice people to download that content. All that is tracked in the platform, and it makes it easier for reporting as well.

I would say the larger clients that I have, integrated CRM [customer relationship management] or use the HubSpot one. Primarily I see most people using the Salesforce integration. It depends on the client; we don't mandate that clients must do X, Y, or Z.

As far as the social is concerned, I think HubSpot's platform is easy to use. I think if our clients are paying for HubSpot, I always recommend that they use that over a Hootsuite or Act-On. It's the same functionality and the same reporting, but it's all tracked under one tool. In my opinion, there's no reason to be running social through another platform. One thing I think HubSpot does really well is instead of having six tools that you're trying to integrate and report from; they do their best at keeping things under one roof.

Was your company considering other platforms? Why HubSpot?

I think HubSpot is a better choice if someone is looking for a one-stop shop and a user interface that's easy to use. The best comparison is a Mac versus a PC. Most people, in general, will get a Mac. It's easy to use. They understand click and drag, folders open and move where they expect and want them to, whereas, in the past, PCs have always been criticized for that. A couple of years ago was the first time you could click and drag things. It's not as user-friendly in some cases, whereas Apple makes it stupidly easy. I think that's HubSpot. They pretty much make it stupidly easy, and it's a great product because of that. It does everything you want it to do. It's all under one roof, and it's intuitive. Quite honestly, I think they're capable of putting the most money behind developing the product, so you're going to get new things, new advancements, more often.

I don't necessarily think they're the best, though, in general. I think there are some strong reasons to go with an Act-On or a Marketo or even SharpSpring. We use SharpSpring for ourselves. From a features standpoint, it's not one to one through any of the platforms. Almost all of them will email, some will be social, some will give you call to action, but not in the same way that HubSpot has the CTA and a lot of [users] create them. You'll get tracking through all of them, but it's going to be different.

I think as far as the other ones are concerned, SharpSpring and Act-On, in my experience, are a little bit more cost effective. They don't necessarily update and roll out new features like HubSpot does and announces but they are making changes. Regarding set up, I just think some of them are a little bit harder to get there. Just the way the triggers and tasks work to set up an email workflow, I think it's a little bit more laborious in some of the other platforms than it is in HubSpot. Like I said, I just think they make it super user-friendly.

Results

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I would say a lot of the clients that we get are on the market side. Either they're so new that they were running marketing through their sales department or they just were never doing inbound. I have a couple of clients that I've worked with in the past that have had something to work with then [revised] or supplemented what they're already doing, or taking it over. The trends there aren't going to be as steep.

When they come to us and they already have been doing it, I think from our perspective their gaps are in targeting the persona themselves and certain funnel-stage content. They might come to us and have been really good at promoting their products and services and getting people to convert very far down in the funnel, but they're not very good at that early stage stuff.

I think as far as trends are concerned, what I see the most of is where we come in, and we're building this awareness content, which ties in well to our search engine optimization services. I think we're familiar with it too. I think, in general, people do well with selling themselves and not always as well taking themselves out of the equation and getting someone just interested in problems and issues that they might not even know they have, which could then eventually lead them down to your product.

As far as new people who have never done inbound or never used HubSpot, the trend there is just doing something and then analyzing from there what works and what doesn't. At the end of the day, putting any new forms on your site or any new e-book content it will convert. Again, it's just a matter of which persona are we targeting and if are we targeting it well? I think a lot of our clients [can] help with that.  I don't think they quite understand always one person versus the next unless they work in different verticals as well.

Features

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?

I don't know that it's necessarily impressive, but I do think that the way that their CTA tool is a game changer to at least get someone started. This option doesn't always make them the best for smaller companies, but a lot of these companies don't have in-house designers and don't have people who they're maybe hiring from an agency. They're the only tool that I have seen that allows someone to make a CTA that doesn't look horrible and it has the possibility to match that, again, if you don't have a designer who can throw an image behind it and [offload] that instead.

Aside from that, I do like their reporting tool, but unfortunately, it's an add-on. I think it's $200 extra a month, for which, I think, for most people is a little out of their scope. Their reporting add-on is incredible to report on funnel stages. You can pretty much report on anything. As long as you can create a list, you can compare lists to lists and see when they've converted and what offers they've converted on. It gives you a lot more insight into what offers are working. Again, you must pay for that, which I think is a drawback.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

I don't know if there's anything the can improve upon. I haven't had a new client start up with them in a while, but I assume it's still the same. When somebody new starts up, they create the template for landing pages and email and then go. I do wish that there was an easier way to update those templates. I have a client right now that changed their site, and we can't work with some of the landing pages that were created when they started up. I feel there is not as much flexibility if the client updates their site down the road. Other than that, I can't pinpoint anything that necessarily they need to change.

Have you had to interact with the platform's support team or reference their support resources?

Everything there is great. I would say they’re the best in the industry. They have the most knowledgeable people about the product. They have the most knowledgeable people about marketing. They've got their blinders on, and they're going to give you the HubSpot answer, but for the most part, I've never encountered a situation where they haven't solved my problem or haven't gone above and beyond to figure out an issue. I'm willing to overlook it occasionally when they say, "HubSpot tracks this way; Google Analytics doesn't have anything to do with it," Okay, I got it. Don't worry; I'll figure it out. Anything related to the tool, they're always super on top of it and helpful.

4.0
Overall Score
  • 4.0 Features
  • 5.0 Ease of Use
  • 5.0 Support
  • 4.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Aug 17 2016

Inbound Marketing Campaign for Digital Marketing Firm

5.0

Features: 
5.0
Ease of use: 
5.0
Support: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
5.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Marketing & Advertising
 
51-200 employees
 
Scottsdale, Arizona
Managing Director at Pyxl
Nicole Denton
1
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

A digital marketing company uses HubSpot to run inbound marketing campaigns. They like how easy the software is to use and that the team at HubSpot really listens to their customer base. They feel that HubSpot takes questions to heart and acts fast to solve problems.

Background

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Pyxl is a full-service digital marketing firm. We do everything from graphic design and web development on through marketing strategy and ongoing inbound marketing services. I’m the Managing Director of our Scottsdale, Arizona office. I essentially lead the team here locally in Scottsdale. I’m on the leadership team of the company. I’m responsible for business development and growth in the West.

What was the business challenge your clients were facing that initiated the need for this platform?

It’s actually two-fold. We’re a HubSpot partner as well as a HubSpot customer for ourselves. For ourselves, being in a business development role, we use HubSpot as really the engine that runs all of our marketing. We also use the HubSpot CRM as our internal CRM [customer relationship management], so we as a sales team can manage the flow of leads from end to end, from the moment they come in as an inbound lead on the way through to hopefully closing a deal with them.

As a partner, we resell HubSpot to many of our clients. I can’t even think of how many we’ve sold, but we probably have somewhere between 15 and 20 clients using HubSpot currently. They’re using it as the engine behind their marketing activity. Our team can actually manage the HubSpot implementation and the ongoing use of it for many of our clients. We use it for ourselves and also use it for a lot of our clients as well.

Solution

How does your company implement this platform or software?

I’ll speak mostly to the way Pyxl uses it just because I’m not quite as much on the delivery side of it anymore. We are doing different marketing programs, sending email campaigns, putting those leads into nurturing workflows, and really just using the profiling features to capture all of the information that we can.

Once a lead has been very active, has filled out some sort of kind of contact form, or we just notice them as being someone that we just want to talk to, we take them over to the CRM and use that to email them with trackable emails, set up meetings, and manage just the tracking of all the different touch points that we may have had with them in terms of meetings and calls. We also use that as our CRM system of records. Since we have four different offices, all reaching out to different people, we have it tagging and categorizing leads appropriately so everyone knows who I’m talking to and that we’re not calling the same people.

We use all custom developed templates that have been designed and coded by our internal team. A lot of our clients do that as well. We do occasionally use the out-of-the-box ones, but I would say more often than not we’re using custom coded ones.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We can look at everything, from the number of leads coming in, to the actual progression of those leads, so if they’re becoming marketing-qualified leads, sales-qualified leads, or as a customer, we can check on the performance of all of our campaigns: email campaigns, email workflow, and landing page performance. We are not really using the blogging feature because we use our blog through WordPress. We don’t have our site built on HubSpot, but we do have the tracking code on our site. We’re able to see the progression and what different leads are doing on the site. We also categorize people by persona so we can see if there’s any influx of people that would fit one persona or another.

We have over 30,000 contacts in our database and I feel like we started with a very small fraction of that. I wish I had exact results. Overall, it just makes everything really easy for us. It makes it really quick and seamless to spin up a marketing campaign or a sales campaign.

Features

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?

There are a few things I really like about HubSpot. The first is just the general usability and ease of use. We previously had used other platforms and have clients who have used other platforms. We used to use Salesforce as our CRM. HubSpot, hands-downs, is just the most user-friendly of just about every marketing automation or CRM platform I’ve ever used. They’ve done a really good job of just making things simple and obvious. That obviously saves a ton of time when you’re trying to launch a campaign or do some reporting.

The other thing I love about HubSpot is that they listen to their customers. We have been with them now for probably four or five years, and the system and the platform has continued to improve on a monthly basis. They’re making those improvements based on customer feedback. There have been a lot of different features that we’ve requested over the years that maybe are not implemented right away, but once enough of a customer base says, “Hey, yeah, we really need this feature,” HubSpot does a great job of actually taking that to heart and implementing those features. They’re really agile in that way.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

The feature that we always felt could use a little more love was their reporting - the ability to create customer reports. They actually did create a reporting add-on that we are not using for ourselves, so I can’t speak to how good it is. In some ways, I wish selfishly that the reporting add-on would be more core to the platform and not an extra fee per month. That has always been the thing that we always felt was lacking just because we use the system to pull data and then create our own reports to make it more usable for ourselves and our clients.

Have you had to interact with the platform's support team or reference their support resources?

I have. I actually just used it this week. There are a few different ways I interact with HubSpot. For support, I’ll usually just use the email support and they’re very fast and very thorough. It doesn’t usually take a lot of back and forth; you ask something, they may follow-up with a question, and then they’ll come up with a solution. They’re just really good at being really supportive in that way. They’re [HubSpot] quick. I would say I always have a solution [to a query] within 24 hours.

Do you have any recommendations or advice for potential users?

I think that the majority of companies can benefit from using it. I would say that HubSpot probably targets more of a medium-sized company, but I’ve seen enterprise-level companies use it well. I think that I would say that even really medium to big size businesses could all use it really well.

In terms of industry, I haven’t seen any limitations. It seems to work really well across a variety of different types. As far as advice, I would say that when someone’s getting setup with HubSpot, take advantage of all of the training resources that they offer because there’s a lot that you can do with it. I’ve seen people really only scratch the surface with setting it up. It is good to either take advantage of that training or engage with a partner to be able to ensure that it’s implemented in the best way possible.

5.0
Overall Score
  • 5.0 Features
  • 5.0 Ease of Use
  • 5.0 Support
  • 5.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Aug 16 2016

Email Campaign & Analytics Utilization of Marketing Automation Software

4.0

Features: 
4.5
Ease of use: 
4.5
Support: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
4.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Marketing & Advertising
 
11-50 employees
 
Denver, Colorado
Director of Marketing at Revenue River Marketing
Marc Herschberger
1
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

A digital marketing company uses HubSpot to track leads and create email marketing campaigns. They really like their COS [content optimization system] tool.

Background

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Revenue River Marketing is a full-service digital marketing agency. I am the Director of Marketing.

What was the business challenge your clients were facing that initiated the need for this platform?

It really helped us give more structure to our digital marketing efforts, taking what we were doing across multiple platforms that weren’t connected and bringing them all into one place.

Solution

How does your company implement this platform or software?

We use pretty much everything within HubSpot for ourselves. We have our website within HubSpot, so all of our web edits and everything else happens through there. We also use their landing pages’ tool to help convert visitors into leads. We use the email marketing tool to help nurture those leads and keep our database connected to what we’re doing. We use the blogging tool to continually produce optimized content to help attract new visitors to our website as well as just to improve our overall brand. We do just about everything.

Because we have custom design and development in house, we do some of our own custom coding but we still utilize the drag and drop module templates set up within HubSpot. We are definitely doing list segmentation and personalization. A/B testing inside of HubSpot is reserved for the enterprise license only, so we don’t have A/B testing functionality.

Right now we’re using the sources tool, so getting to see website traffic broken down by sources has been helpful, as well as doing the same for leads. The analytics within their email and blogging tool have improved quite a bit recently, so it’s been nice to dig a little bit further in to see not just who is opening our emails but what devices are being used to open the emails versus clicking the emails and things like that. HubSpot released a reporting add-on last year, which has been interesting just because they want people to pay for it versus its use. We tried that out, but we didn’t find it worth the investment. I think it was a couple of hundred dollars extra a month.

Features

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?

I think the HubSpot COS, which is their website tool, is really cool. Coupling that with HubSpot’s contextual marketing program and allowing us to create web content customized to the viewer is probably the coolest thing right now with what they’re doing.

It has been really interesting to see that a lot of B2B [business-to-business] companies have picked up HubSpot. B2B consulting services are good potential users of the platform, but also any kind of industry that requires a little bit more education in terms of bringing a prospect up to speed on what you sell and how it can help, HubSpot’s really good at helping you there. From our own experience, we’ve probably quadrupled, if not more, our traffic since we started using HubSpot, which was years ago. Part of that is just organic growth, but we’ve had clients who have doubled their traffic, their leads, and their customer generation within six months of implementing HubSpot along with a marketing campaign and things like that. We’ve seen plenty of results coming from the use of HubSpot.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

The reporting is decent but I think that there are a lot of things that could be done to make it a little bit more enterprise-level in terms of helping us better see and trace ROI [return on investment] back from our marketing efforts. They did the reporting add-on, which is technically supposed to help that, but even then we didn’t really see the benefit and the functionalities we wanted to see. That’s probably the big one.

Have you had to interact with the platform's support team or reference their support resources?

Yeah, I’ve interacted with their support teams. I’ve used their online resources. They have a lot of resources for training, and that’s probably one of the best things outside of their product in terms of HubSpot. They [HubSpot] have great customer support, and they take the time to make sure that you get the most out of their product.

4.0
Overall Score
  • 4.5 Features
  • 4.5 Ease of Use
  • 5.0 Support
  • 4.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Aug 08 2016

Lead Management for Drupal Company

4.0

Features: 
4.0
Ease of use: 
3.5
Support: 
4.0
Willing to refer: 
4.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Information Technology and Services
 
11-50 employees
 
Kelowna, Canada
Project Manager at Cheeky Monkey Media
1
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

A web development company uses HubSpot to track leads and create email marketing campaigns. They like that they are able to target a specific client and funnel them in a particular direction based on how they have interacted with the company.

Background

Introduce your business and what you do there?

Our company is Cheeky Monkey Media. I'm a project manager here. Formerly, I was the developer. I've had first-hand at implementing some of the different HubSpot tools.

What was the business challenge your clients were facing that initiated the need for this platform?

We actually don't use it ourselves, but for our clients. One of our clients was using it for a mix of different tools to sort of manage their leads as well as their different email campaigns. What HubSpot allowed them to do was concentrate everything into one platform so they could create landing pages easily. It's a tool to save them a headache at the end of the day.

Solution

How does your company implement this platform or software?

We use it a couple of different ways. One of the ways is a basic lead capture feature. From the client's website, they'll fill out a form that goes directly into HubSpot where it gets funneled into different personas. It'll take them through a different persona if they happened to check off a couple of different fields. It'll bring them right into this category where it will send out a couple of different emails.

Another thing they do is a lot of webinars. Similarly, they need landing pages dedicated to these webinars, so we've built out some custom landing pages in HubSpot to allow them to create these webinars really quickly. It connects them to go to a webinar and funnels them, making sure that they get emails prior to the event as well as follow up emails automatically after the event. We've done that.

We've also done custom templates for their email newsletters that come out on a monthly basis. We make sure it's easy for them to use. The other thing that we've done are some custom modules to allow them to get things displayed certain ways with various pop-ups and libraries, and integrated them into HubSpot for their specific usage.

What kind of metrics and analytics are you pulling from HubSpot?

I haven't gotten into too much of that. Some of the analytics that we're pulling out are open rates, different emails stats, new sign ups, and drop offs on their campaign. Most of the metrics have to do with emails. Obviously, we’re funneling them in from that total and breaking them down into their specific personas based on different campaigns, and tracking the marketing qualified contacts and bringing them into a customer. You can really track where this person is in their buying cycle as well.

Features

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?

The one that I like the best is the way you can bring in a lead and then just create the specific rules to target a specific type of client. That's one thing that it does well.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

There's definitely things I would like to change. It's a growing platform, and one of the things that they're doing is changing quite often. That's one of the things that I most dislike about it because you learn how to do something a certain way, and they go and change it. Then you go into make that change and you wonder where the feature went. Is it still there or did it get buried? They’re in the constant state of change, which obviously is good, but on the market developer side, it's just another one of those things you've got to keep up to date on.

Have you had to interact with the platform's support team or reference their support resources?

I haven't used their technical support at all. I think one time, a feature wasn't quite working, and we reached out to them at one point, but I forget how that experience was off the top of my head. I have used some of their tutorials on how to set some things up. Some of the documentation is good. Some of them could use a little bit more work.

Do you have any recommendations for anyone that's considering using HubSpot?

The biggest thing is that it can do a lot of different tools. I think learning what it can do, and what it can't do, and leveraging all that it can do is something good to do. A lot of people might use it for just a small fraction of what HubSpot's potential is.

Can you share any results from using the platform?

Overall, we can definitely see that it's being used more and more. It looks like it's doing its job fairly well.

4.0
Overall Score
  • 4.0 Features
  • 3.5 Ease of Use
  • 4.0 Support
  • 4.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Aug 05 2016

Sales Tracking for Video Production Agency

5.0

Features: 
5.0
Ease of use: 
5.0
Support: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
5.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Video Production
 
11-50 employees
 
Newport Beach, California
Marketing Manager at VeracityColab
Holden Raulston
1
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

A video production agency uses HubSpot to manage relationships with prospective clients and for other general sales purposes. As they have begun to use the platform, they really appreciate the support staff at HubSpot. They have plenty of resources and the ability to track analytics is great for the client.

Background

Introduce your business and what you do there?

I am the Marketing Manager for VerocityColab. I am involved in the long-term projection of our marketing plans, marketing strategies, and also the day-to-day content creation and distribution across our social platforms and across our website.

What was the business challenge your clients were facing that initiated the need for this platform?

We were in the market for a CRM [customer relationship management] software that would not only be able to handle all of our clients but also had a marketing side to it as well.

Solution

How does your company implement this platform or software?

Currently, I would say 90% of our involvement with it right now is the sales portion of it. We're building out our marketing campaigns and just our understanding of the marketing side with HubSpot. Currently, the majority of what we're doing is we're tracking prospective contacts, current clients, and managing those relationships. We're also using it for their sales dashboard and their sales forecasting, so we can see where we are with sales going forward. We use it to generate landing pages and callbacks.

Features

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?

One thing that we're very excited about moving forward with is going to be analyzing our marketing performance through the analytic tracking. We haven't really found anywhere else that has that sort of thing. I'd say that having one platform that has everything is appealing to us.

I would say that we're happy. We're also in the beginning phases of it. From what we have used it [Hubspot] for and what we have seen, we're impressed with it. We're excited to see how we can customize it to give us the feedback and the insight that we're looking for.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

Maybe two years ago, HubSpot might not have been there entirely, but I think they've arrived because they've built out a great support team, they know their product very well, and they've made onboarding very easy. Our entire experience with them has been very delightful. They've been very easy to work with, making sure that we're paying for what we need and not anything else. There are no real downsides to report.

Have you had to interact with the platform's support team or reference their support resources?

They have a phenomenal support team. They probably have more resources than you could ever need. Anything that you're looking to learn about, understand, or evaluate has a video to go along with it that's well done and teaches you and informs you. I think they've done a great job of providing support and resources where there might not be a human touch. We're very pleased with their support and their resources.

Do you have any recommendations for anyone that's considering HubSpot?

One thing that our team has really benefited from is going through HubSpot's marketing course and through their inbound certification course, two things that they offer for free that teaches you about the actual topic. We've had multiple team members go through that, and it's been very informative.

Can you share any results that have come from using the platform?

I would say the results would be more of a comprehensive understanding of our client base: who our customers are, and seeing their engagement and their shelf life in a sense. Seeing the first interaction, how things go, and after that, how long they last, has been very useful. HubSpot has been able to give us a very good picture of that overall.

5.0
Overall Score
  • 5.0 Features
  • 5.0 Ease of Use
  • 5.0 Support
  • 5.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Aug 05 2016

SMM, Lead Tracking & Email Campaign Utilization

5.0

Features: 
5.0
Ease of use: 
5.0
Support: 
4.0
Willing to refer: 
4.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Marketing and Advertising
 
11-50 employees
 
San Francisco, California
CEO at Incredo
Artash Arakelyan
1
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

An inbound marketing company uses Hubspot to manage their social media accounts, track leads, and create email campaigns. They like the lead history timeline and appreciate the platform’s support staff.

Background

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a marketing consultancy agency that does content marketing, social media marketing, website design development, and custom CRM [customer relationship management] integration. I am the founder.

What was the business challenge your clients were facing that initiated the need for this platform?

In order to do an integrated marketing campaign, we needed to have a tool to improve ROI [return on investment] for clients. The first challenge was doing the integrated marketing campaign. The second is improving ROI to our clients.

Solution

How does your company implement this platform or software?

We used marketing automation, social media publishing and monitoring, blogging, call-to-action, and landing pages features. We also do email marketing with Hubspot. If we want a fast campaign, we just use drag-and-drop templates with our marketing team. We do segmentation, advanced reporting for every lead, and some email marketing to target the leads.

Features

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?

The lead history timeline is what I'm most impressed with. We like to refer to it daily; it's helping our marketing and sales teams.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

No, the only thing was that the pricing is a little bit high for an agency like us.

Have you had to interact with the platform's support team or reference their support resources?

Hubspot’s support team is great. We have a dedicated account manager, who's jumping in on every call if we want any questions to be answered.

Do you have any recommendations for other agencies considering using Hubspot?

I recommend them, but it depends on an agency’s needs. Integrated marketing campaigns, improving ROI, or having a marketing manager that manages a team while traveling, could all benefit from Hubspot.

Have you seen any results from using Hubspot?

It's been helping to grow our agency faster and smoother. We're getting leads that are turning into conversions.

5.0
Overall Score
  • 5.0 Features
  • 5.0 Ease of Use
  • 4.0 Support
  • 4.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Jul 18 2016

Lead Nurturing and Capture With HubSpot

4.0

Features: 
5.0
Ease of use: 
4.0
Support: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
4.0
See More
the reviewer
 
$251 - $1000/mo. spend
 
Marketing and Advertising
 
11-50 Employees
 
San Francisco, CA
Co-Owner at BayCreative
Scott Danish
1
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

The use is BayCreative, a digital marketing agency. They use HubSpot to nurture prospects more effectively through an automated marketing solution for themselves and their clients. They like HubSpot's ease of use and the ability to customize landing pages and campaigns based on lead information and quality. The user recommends that companies using HubSpot have a dedicated resource allocated to the tool as it is very complex. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your role there.

BayCreative is a full-service B2B [business-to-business] marketing agency based in San Francisco.

I am a co-owner of the agency.

CHALLENGE

What was the business challenge your clients were facing that initiated the need for this platform?

The main goal was to be able to nurture prospects more effectively through an automated marketing solution. We wanted to be able to capture more people that were visiting the BayCreative website and be able to send content to them on a regular basis depending on their different type of persona.

SOLUTION

How does your company implement this platform or software?

HubSpot is integrated with our website, which is built in WordPress. We don't build our website on HubSpot. They have their own content management solution, but we've elected to use WordPress instead. The forms that we have on our website are integrated with HubSpot, and our campaigns to drive traffic to the website are utilized landing pages that we have built in HubSpot. When we do a Google AdWords campaign, it jumps to a HubSpot landing page. We use the landing page creation tool as well as social media and blog publishing tools that it offers.

Once you have a blog written, then it makes it easy to propagate that blog to your social media properties. We use it for a context database of our prospects and our clients. We use it for email marketing campaigns.

We do drip campaigns and nurturing campaigns via email marketing to our prospects and to our clients. All this we do for both helping to run the BayCreative as well as several of our clients have asked as to manage similar type of content distribution as well as lead generation, and we do that through HubSpot as well.

There's a variety of different metrics that we can get on HubSpot ranging from the traffic that's visitors of our website or a landing page to who's clicked on it, to if they've opened an email and have responded to an email. We know how many times a page has been seen. It's similar to Google Analytics in that we can capture a lot of intelligence from it, understand the performance of a certain campaign, and be able to adjust it if performance isn't up to the levels we want it to be. It also lets you weigh the prospect based on certain criteria that you've set. If a prospect is coming in and fills out a form, and it's from a certain type of company and a certain type of job title, and they've visited a certain number of pages on our website, we can set a criteria for how that prospect is weighed, and so we can then customize campaigns for prospects that have different weight classes or weight levels. If somebody is classified as a very strong prospect and maybe they have a weight score of 80, we can send them a different type of email nurturing campaigns than somebody that's less attractive and has a much lower score.

Was your company considering other platforms? Why this platform?

We were considering Eloqua, Marketo, and Pardot. We went with HubSpot because they had a very helpful sales team and customer support team that onboarded us very closely and spent a lot of time with us to make sure that we had set up the HubSpot solution correctly and we were using it correctly. Then, they also had just a plethora of content available that was relevant to helping us not only use HubSpot, but also sell it to our clientele.

We are affiliates of HubSpot. We get a commission for every time that we sell HubSpot to our own clients. They did a great job of empowering us with the right messaging and the right sales tools to go out and engage with our clients and get them to buy into HubSpot as well and then manage their HubSpot accounts.

On an annual or monthly basis, how much does your company spend to utilize the platform?

We spend around $800 a month on it.

FEATURES

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?

HubSpot is very customizable, and the user interface is very easy to use. It makes it very easy, for instance, to create many different landing pages that are very customized for whatever campaign you're doing. You can create landing pages based on the characteristics of the prospects that you're going out to. If somebody has viewed Google AdWords and they hit on a landing page, we can have it go to multiple different types of landing pages based on different campaigns that they've seen, based on geographies that they are located in and on different services that we're trying to sell. I think what's great about HubSpot is that it's very flexible. It allows you to customize whatever you need to customize very rapidly and then does a great job of tracking performance very effectively.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

One of the challenges that we've had with HubSpot in some of our clients is the price point. There's a lot of pressure from newer companies like ClickFunnels, for instance, that have a lower price – at  $99 a month – that don't have all of the features and functionality that HubSpot has, but have about 80 percent – enough for you do the job, but the price point is much lower. We've lost some accounts because we've tried to implement HubSpot and sell them HubSpot, and it's just too high of a price point. I think that's one of the things that HubSpot could benefit from – to have a lower price offering.

Do you have any results that you can share that come out of your use of HubSpot?

From our own business, we've seen the number of what we would call warm leads – a good quality lead – increase by about 300 percent year over year for the last three years because of HubSpot. The more we get to use it, the more we understand the benefits it can provide and how to customize it better, the better off it is. I think we're doing a good job also of keeping the leads that we get – that they're just more valuable to use – because we're able to nurture them more effectively using HubSpot.

Do you have any recommendations about using the tool?

I think one of the most important things is that you need to have a resource for it. It's a very sophisticated tool that can do a lot for you, and you get what you put into it. I think one of the things that we learned is that we tried using HubSpot where a number of us were using it and trying to run the business using HubSpot in our spare time. It really does take some allocation of resources to be dedicated to being the administrators and users of HubSpot because, if you don't to that, you're either going to set things up improperly or not get all the benefits that you possible could out of HubSpot. I think that's one of the things I'd recommend: don't be surprised once you get this solution that it definitely takes some time in there to set it up and customize it properly. Ongoing, it's a good idea to have a dedicated resource that will ensure that you are using it as effectively as possible.

4.0
Overall Score
  • 5.0 Features
  • 4.0 Ease of Use
  • 5.0 Support
  • 4.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Jul 05 2016

Content Management and Website Performance Tracking with HubSpot

5.0

Features: 
5.0
Ease of use: 
5.0
Support: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
5.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Information Technology
 
11-50 Employees
 
New York City
Project Manager, Web Design Manager
1
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

The user is a web design agency. They integrate HubSpot into the websites they build for their clients, so clients can then create new pages as needed and track website performance easily. They really like the clean and simple content editor that HubSpot provides and the CRM that is built into it. They recommend HubSpot to those looking for a flexible marketing automation and content management tool.

BACKGROUND

Can you provide a brief description of your company?

We're a website design agency.

What role do you play there?

My position here is project manager.

OPPORTUNITY/CHALLENGE

What was the business challenge your clients were facing that initiated the need for this platform?

The reason that that HubSpot is most used on our side is for client integration purposes. Many times, we'll integrate that into our client side, not specifically for ourselves. Internally we do use the HubSpot CRM [content resource management], so that would be the most prominent tool that we're using from that software.

SOLUTION

How does your company implement this platform or software?

Based on the requirements of the client, the integration is dependent on what the client is looking for. HubSpot provides these marketing tools that we will integrate into the client's website. Sometimes, we'll build the design. One example would be we would build the design and set up the back-end using something like HubSpot so that if they wanted to create additional landing pages or if they wanted to monitor and assess the analytics of their pages, they're able to do that using HubSpot. That back-end from HubSpot allows us to provide an editor for content management and then many marketing tools so that they can assess the website performance. Based on what the client is looking for, HubSpot does a good job in providing tools and creating landing pages, calls to action and that sort of thing. Once the website is built, if there are other additional landing pages or campaigns that the client is looking to set up, they would most definitely use that platform to create those new pages and to create appropriate forms to capture lead information and then take it from there.

Was your company considering other platforms? Why this platform?

My team made that decision collectively. I know that HubSpot is easy to use, and I think that my clients have felt that their interface – again, I don't really know about some of these others that you just mentioned because I haven't used them, so I can't compare and say this was better. I do know that we have clients that have worked with HubSpot. It's a very dynamic tool. The interface is very clean, so we feel that we've heard some good recommendation on HubSpot with regards to how flexible it is and the amount of functionality they provide. Of course, I'm not able to compare it to Infusionsoft or any of the others.

FEATURES

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?

HubSpot's editor is very nice. I've used a bunch of editors, and content management is a very strong aspect of our overall process as a web development company. I know some clients are looking for a very sharp content management system. Their editor was pretty impressive. It's a couple steps ahead of other tools. For example, WordPress, which is not what HubSpot does, but WordPress is a content management back-end. Their editor couldn't really compare to what HubSpot has. I think their editor stands out.

They have a CRM, which is not extraordinarily unique, but pretty dynamic. One of the good things about it is that it's free. Although some of the tools that HubSpot offers are a little bit pricey, you can definitely get onboard onto their CRM. I think that's another one that stands out.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

I couldn't say so. They have good customer support. At times, I felt that something was missing, so every time I've called in someone has been able to help me out and pretty cheery on the other side. I don't think I've come into a situation where we're not able to figure it out or they don't provide something.

Do you have any results that came out of your use of HubSpot?

Just the fact that it allows for result analysis I think is a big one. Whether performance is good or bad, at least we have a tool now where we can use it to determine what pages are working. I know that our clients use HubSpot to determine is this lead form working for us, then they'll make some edits to the form, and then they'll check again to kind of see if the conversion is coming through. The constant analytical activity that they provide and give you a picture of is something that really helps us all on my side and the client's side. It really helps determine how we need to make changes on the marketing end. I think in that respect if you continue bettering your pages and your marketing material to achieve what it is that you're looking for.

RATINGS

We ask you to rate the software on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best.

What would you give the software for functionality of the features available?

5

What would you give the software for ease of use or ease of implementation into your business?

5

For support, as in responsiveness of the team or helpfulness of the resources available?

5 – They're good at that.

How likely are you to recommend the software to a colleague or similar business?

5 – I always recommend it.

For overall satisfaction with the platform?

5 – It's good.

5.0
Overall Score
  • 5.0 Features
  • 5.0 Ease of Use
  • 5.0 Support
  • 5.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Sep 18 2015

Digital Marketing Agency Implementation of HubSpot

5.0

Features: 
4.0
Ease of use: 
4.0
Support: 
4.0
Willing to refer: 
5.0
See More
the reviewer
 
$10,001 - $100,000/yr. spend
 
Marketing and Advertising
 
11-50 Employees
 
Miami, FL
Digital Content Manager, White Shark Media
Ximena Cordon
1
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

The client is White Shark Media, a digital marketing agency focused on pay-per-click and search engine optimization strategy. This client was in need of a tool that could help to address gaps in multiple marketing channels including email, blogging, and website landing pages. White Shark Media now utilizes HubSpot internally to streamline their marketing processes. This client highly recommends HubSpot and highlights their blogging tool as a reason for recommendation. White Shark Media looks forward to improvements in HubSpot's mobile application in order to make key metrics more accessible.

BACKGROUND

Can you please provide a brief description of your company? What role do you play at White Shark Media?

White Shark Media is a digital marketing agency that offers pay-per-click, search engine optimization, and website building services for small and medium size businesses.

What role do you play at White Shark Media?

I am the digital content manager. In my role, I coordinate and develop content for our marketing efforts.

OPPORTUNITY/CHALLENGE

What was the business challenge your company was facing that incited the need for this platform?

We were in need of a platform where we could tackle many of the marketing activities we were pursuing like blogging, email marketing, and building effective landing pages. We wanted a solution for these efforts all in one platform.

SOLUTION

How does your company implement this platform or software?

We use HubSpot in the marketing and sales department on a daily basis. HubSpot has helped us solve the challenge of streamlining processes in our marketing department. HubSpot is an easy-to-use, comprehensive, and convenient platform.

Was your company considering other platforms? Why this platform?

Not really. We consider HubSpot to be the best platform out there.

On an annual or monthly basis, how much does your company spend to utilize the platform?

It's been around $2,000 each month.

RESULTS

Can you share any success, metrics, or overall results of your implementation of this platform?

For our team the biggest benefit or metric of HubSpot is the amount of time we are able to save through marketing automation.

FEATURES

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?  

HubSpot's blogging tool is very intuitive.

Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

Yes. I think HubSpot needs to improve the usability of their mobile app so that key metrics can be checked fast and anywhere.

Have you had to interact with the platform's support team or reference their support resources?

I have/ I usually contact them by filling out a ticket. They are quick to respond and have always had a solution for any of our issues.

OVERVIEW

We have a few quick questions and, for each question, we ask you to rate the software on a scale of one to five, with five being the best. What would you give the software for functionality of the features available?

Four.

What would you give the software for ease of use or ease of implementation into your business?

Four.

For support, as in responsiveness of the team or helpfulness of the resources available?

Four

For overall satisfaction with the platform?

Five.

How likely are you to recommend the software to a colleague or similar business?

Five.

5.0
Overall Score
  • 4.0 Features
  • 4.0 Ease of Use
  • 4.0 Support
  • 5.0 Willing to Refer
 
Client Interview
Sep 17 2015

HubSpot Implementation by Software Development Firm

5.0

Features: 
4.0
Ease of use: 
4.0
Support: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
5.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Confidential spend
 
Information Technology
 
51-200 employees
 
Washington, DC
Director of Marketing, Software Development Firm
1
 
Verified
The Review
Recommendations

The client is a software product development company. They were in need of a marketing automation platform to increase their marketing campaign efforts. They implement HubSpot for this purpose. The client is very satisfied with their implementation of HubSpot. The client highly recommends HubSpot as it allows a single person to create and manage a whole company's online marketing campaign.

BACKGROUND

Can you please provide a brief description of your company?

We are a software development company. We build apps and websites for companies ranging from small startups all the way up to enterprise.

What are your role and responsibilities?

I'm the director of marketing. I oversee all the marketing content, which includes writing case studies, managing social media, and creating content for conferences, events, and meetups.

OPPORTUNITY/CHALLENGE

What was the business challenge your company was facing that initiated the need for this platform?

Our marketing department and efforts were inexistent. We needed a tool that would allow us to automate our marketing efforts and save us a lot of valuable time. We needed a tool that would allow us to monitor various websites, manage social media marketing campaigns, and spread the word about our company. Implementing HubSpot is like having multiple hands on deck with only one person managing it.

SOLUTION

How does your company implement this platform or software?

We use HubSpot a lot for social media, reporting and tracking, and email marketing. For example, we have a "contact us" form on our website that we track with HubSpot. Whenever people fill out the form, their contact information is uploaded into our contact list immediately. We are able to see how they use our site and what they do on our site. That's very useful information to know when we build and update our website. It lets us know how people want to use the site, and we can create the user interface for those purposes.

Was your company considering other platforms? Why this platform?

I was looking at a few similar platforms, like Marketo and HubSpot. I chose HubSpot because it gives you many tools and features in one platform. There's a lot of great marketing software for social media and email marketing specifically, but HubSpot allows you to do it all through one interface. The tutorials and educational pieces are extremely helpful. Their customer service is exceptional.

RESULTS

Can you share any success, metrics, or overall results of your implementation of this platform?

HubSpot allowed us to create our marketing strategy and campaigns from scratch. We can consistently blog and build up our Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn following. It's very easy to push out content through HubSpot, and we saw an increase of traffic onto our website because of it.

FEATURES

Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?  

HubSpot has a great plug-in feature that allows users to use and curate content from any website for their social media marketing campaign. You can highlight specific text, put in a link, and they even recommend hashtags given the content. If you highlight text, it becomes the text that you push out through Twitter. While it's a small feature, it's great because you don't have to log into HubSpot to create your campaign. If I'm on a blog post, and I want to post about it, I just need to click that button. I really love that.

HubSpot has good reporting features, too, which is really helpful to marketers. It gives them the numbers they need to back up what they're doing to their boss.

Are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?

HubSpot's design content could be improved. Other marketing software, like MailChimp, have beautiful templates that you can start off with. HubSpot's templates are very bare. They are relying on companies having a designer or developer that can create the content for you and add that to the email. If they had more design options for people that don't have UX [user experience] and development background, it would be ideal.

Have you had to interact with the platform's support team or reference their support resources?

They have 24-hour customer service support. We also have a dedicated sales rep. I can email or call him if I need help. A lot of times, I can find the information I need or have a video or a tutorial teach me what I need to know. They have extremely helpful resources online.

OVERVIEW

We have a few quick questions and, for each question, we ask you to rate the software on a scale of one to five, with five being the best. What would you give the software for functionality of the features available?

Four.

What would you give the software for ease of use or ease of implementation into your business?

Four.

For support, as in responsiveness of the team or helpfulness of the resources available?

Five.

For overall satisfaction with the platform?

Five.

How likely are you to recommend the software to a colleague or similar business?

Five.

5.0
Overall Score
  • 4.0 Features
  • 4.0 Ease of Use
  • 5.0 Support
  • 5.0 Willing to Refer