Inbound 17 Recap and Review - Inbound After Hours - Ep. 18

Inbound 2017... Wow, what an experience!

It's been about 2 months now since we returned from Inbound 17. We have had lots of time to reflect on what we learnt, how we can implement it for our clients and how other Hubspot users can make the most of what we learnt whilst we were there.

Find out about the key themes, from bots to messenger. Watch or listen below to find out all about Inbound17.

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Thanks so much for joining us this week.

Have some feedback you’d like to share. Do it in the comments below! 

Full transcript:

- Hi guys, welcome to Inbound After Hours. Today we'll be talking about Inbound17. We arrived back about four weeks ago, wasn't it, guys? So, time to reflect!

- Plenty of time to reflect.

- Plenty of time to reflect. Four weeks. We should've been a little quicker, but ...

- I feel all reflected.

- We've been doing this room up.

- Yeah we've been doing this room, we got a new room today. We had a bit of feedback from our listeners saying that the audio was very echoey, so we changed rooms and we've got soundboards now, so hopefully you can see an improvement there.

- Fingers crossed.

- Fingers crossed! So let's kick off with Inbound17. So guys! Why do we invest in going to these conferences every year? It costs us a lot of money to send us five over. Why do we do it, Rikki?

- Yeah, I think it's one of the best places to go to learn, really. You've got a huge variety from other agencies to people in-house, to software experts. It's the only place where you're gonna get that sort of mix, particularly with the sort of quality as well. Inbound will know from my feedback forms every year, I'm not a fan of the celebrity speakers. So I didn't go for Michelle Obama.

- I liked her.

- Didn't even go and see that, I think I got some looks when I told people I didn't even go to that. No wrestlers, none of that.

- He was really good, though, wasn't it.

- Yeah, he was.

- I think that was everybody's best feedback, was John Cena. I regret not seeing that one now. No, it's like anyone, I guess, to go and learn. To get better, to keep getting better. We're just in that industry where if you're not getting better, you're going backwards.

- I don't think you can get that anywhere else. That is the only place they do it. It's just, unfortunately, there isn't anything Inbound-specific in the UK that's like that. Apart from our Hug, obviously. You know, it is in Boston, which is quite a shame. We've gotta fly over to Boston for a week. But just the quality, as you said. And it's HubSpot's HQ over there. And just the way, you know, they know how to put on an event, don't they.

- Oh, yeah. I mean, we've been fortunate, how many years have we been going now?

- It's our third, fourth?

- And then you guys, it was your first time coming, what did you think?

- Crazy, inn't it.

- Yeah, you don't realise how big it actually is until you go there. Because HubSpot's still not big in the UK. But when you go to Boston, it's huge over there. It's quite surprising are sharing the HubSpot platform.

- When we went down the escalator into Club Inbound and got on the guest list and you drop down, and it's got that bit where all the stands are and everything, that's just enormous. And then it's like, the hall's through there, and then you've got all these wings of rooms, it's just --

- The first time I went, I'd only been here a month or two, I was like, okay. And it was just like, wow. It really set the scene for anyone new to Inbound, which I think is that's what they want, isn't it, to wow people.

- Yeah.

- Absolutely massive, and I don't know how many were there this time?

- 22?

- 22, yeah.

- 22,000.

- 2,000 agency partners, wasn't it, or something.

- I think there was less than that.

- Maybe a thousand or so agencies, and the rest was, obviously, just HubSpot users.

- Or potential HubSpot users I guess.

- Yeah, the lighting rigs they have and camera equipment, it's just different. It's almost like a nightclub when you walk into Inbound and what they've done. We'll put some images up.

- Yeah, lots of vids.

- Okay, let's talk about the overall theme then. What was the theme this year, guys? Start off with chatbots, so big topic this year, what else've we got?

- I think there's a lot of chatbots, a lot of AI.

- Yeah, emerging tech, generally, the AI thing and bots are sort of the same, I'd say.

- Messenger stuff, and there were ties in, again, very connected.

- I think HubSpot were big on that, personally. I always picked a lot of those bot talks, 'cause I was enjoying them, and you can tell that they specifically are going heavy on Facebook Messenger as a platform beyond Facebook Ads, as well. Now it's into Messenger, as far as almost coming away from the landing page and just delivering everything direct through that, there was a lot of talks on that, and the engagement that that's given HubSpot's massively increased. We had chatbots, I mean, talked about it last year, but just a bit more advanced now, a lot more options. And I know they've acquired--

- Every talk that mentioned bots as well, it was, "Oh, and bots of course." Like it was sort of last year.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I think we found it, yeah, with video, Facebook, it's sort of, any marketing type you do, it's 10 steps to make that a success, and like, the 10th point is "use a chatbot". It's just the order of the day, it's a bit of a theme. Obviously they've acquired Motion.ai on the AI side, so they're probably pushing that as well.

- What was that AI talk?

- Um, so basically, the AI, in all the sales features, they had, like, predictive scoring, so basically, like, they're already doing currently what's gonna be more advanced. So basically, they'll follow the user on the sites, see what sites they've been on, and then basically all come back together, and then they'll tell you if they're gonna be a good client of yours, or if they points are low, then, no, don't.

- The email AI sending was good as well. So you could send it to all different people, optimised at the time they're in their inbox.

- Yeah, we went and talked to a guy on a stand about that as well, didn't we, who had a similar sort of product.

- An integrated one.

- Yeah, it was an integrated one, it'd be interesting if HubSpot pull it in. So actually, thinking back, Brian mentioned, when we interviewed him, that they were doubling down on AI, and helping marketers make decisions, like what James mentioned, with the predictive lead score.

- Good bloke for an old podcaster.

- It was, "Yeah, I'll link back to it." Yeah, I'm getting the hang of this now! But yeah, I think last year, massively video and podcast were the two things I wrote down a lot. And this time, bots, Messenger, AI, were the three things I wrote down a lot.

- In 12 months we'll call it evil.

- Yeah.

- We got ads for podcasting in the end.

- Yeah, we had a play with Messenger. We haven't played with bots yet, but it's on the list, isn't it.

- Yeah, I think it's on my list.

- I think it's on everybody's list, something we want to do.

- Yeah, they just purchased, acquired, an AI company, is that right?

- Yeah, Motion.ai.

- Yeah, so that was released, they're doing a lot of work with them guys now, getting them out.

- I think bot messaging is riskier to get wrong, isn't it. I think that's a bigger leap for me. We did the podcast, we had the echo, the cameras died the first time, all that stuff. But you don't mind, you've done some video, audio, content, that's fine, you're still ahead of the curve. But getting a bot messenger wrong, and it just ruins --

- Everything, yeah.

- The customer experience, it's not even worth getting it wrong, isn't it.

- Yeah, it just sounds like a nightmare. It's like emailing people that they're not expecting, like, oh god. I think, I dunno, it depends what we do with a bot. You've just got to start incredibly simple. And like, click, you can't undo the click, and reply rather than the free time. So it just gives you some yes, no, yes, no, just gives you an answer, so it's like, you're starting with not really a real bot. Just an interactive form, and then you slowly build it up and then hopefully by the time they release some stuff with Motion.ai, I'm sure they'll have something that we can plug into the sites and use. But yeah, I'm playing it safe to start with, for sure.

- I'm gonna do my second plug back to a previous podcast, but one of the tips we got, I know, I'm going crazy! One of the tips that Neil Patel mentioned was a first way to get in with messenger is, instead of filling in a form to get your ebook, just have them go on the messenger to get the ebook, and that's a really low-risk way. Just go on there, you want the ebook, and it'll just send you the ebook on messenger instead of via your email. I think that might be a nice, like, what you mentioned, the click buttons and things like that, just nice, easy start in place.

- Yeah, slowly get into it, yeah.

- Yeah, I went to a talk on that, and he said 30%, they think within the next two years, 30% of customer interactions'll be via bots or AI, which is huge, inn't it.

- I hope so. I mean, I'm not one for speaking to people if I don't need to, as people know.

- It's a real chore.

- It's just as far down the sales process as you absolutely have to for me, but if I can speak to a bot, and it's good, and I can get the same information quicker, or equally as quick, I think that's a good use.

- Fun stuff for introverts, then, bots.

- It definitely is.

- I mean, you said video was big last year, but there was only three or four talks, how many talks on video this year? I mean, 20, 30, but I couldn't get them all.

- A lot of people still weren't doing it. A couple, where they had a show of hands, like, who's done video, all hands go up. Who's doing video regularly? A lot of hands drop. Who's doing video to bring leads in? Who's getting productivity out of it? There was --

- Everyone's done one, a few years ago, yeah, put me hand up, but.

- I've done the battles with you, and that's it.

- Yeah, same with most things, like most people will play with a bot, and not follow it through. A big part of marketing's sticking with stuff. I don't want to do this, but, the previous podcast we ran, he said, with Rand Fishkin, yeah. It was just released last week. He said his Whitebot Friday's got no traction for about two years, but it's only done well because he stuck at it, and I think that's the same with any marketing, like look at --

- It was 'cause he's that good as well. But yeah--

- The knowledge he's got.

- Yeah.

- He coulda given up after six months, though.

- Could be the best podcaster in the world, but if you don't do it regularly.

- Yeah, Gary D, took him 12 months with the Wire Library, didn't get any traction, then suddenly, off it went.

- It's all the same.

- There's hope for us yet! In a couple of years, people'll be listening to this!

- Chicken Connoisseur, took eight episodes.

- Took one for me!

- Let's talk about key takeaways, then, let's go around the table, Andrew, key takeaways?

- So, tough to pick one, really. But the one learning I really enjoyed was listening to HubSpot and how they change their workflows for their actual software, their own personal workflows. A very quick rundown on what they used to do. So their original workflow was a 30-day one. So this is somebody downloading whatever it was. It'd go through introductions, education about marketing, vague introductions to key people, so introduce those. They didn't take a demo, they just go into what they call the lead pool, and they'd just be sat there, they'd get a blog, subscriptions, and if they, well, they did sell triggered, so if they went on the pricing page, if they did a certain one a certain number of times, they'd get their trigger to the sales team, and they'd be in touch and try and convert them. They found that that was too educational, they were just telling people more about marketing which they probably already knew, 'cause they had downloaded the ebook, and there was no real human connection. Like, real one. They were putting, "From Kim", but it wasn't actually.

- Wait, what?

- Yeah, yeah. It's a little trick! So what they did, they switched, and they went to sending emails direct from a sales rep, so it was automated, but it'd actually come from their inbox when it replied to a sales rep. What they found that did was, instantly, they got quick replies increased, and they had a smooth process. They'd continue speaking to that sales rep all the way. So the salesperson was always still bring in some of the marketing automation, but it just opened up in a session earlier. Interestingly, what they then did, they just delivered emails based on need rather than persona, which sounds a little bit counter-intuitive, but the way that they did that was, some of their emails presented three or four CTAs with options or pinpoints and solutions, so click here if you want one of these. That would then, so it's kinda getting them to confirm the pinpoint, which kind of is a persona aspect, but they click that, it'd then take them off to certain things, they'd just speak about their specific need with an inbound, so it might not be everyone's need for an inbound, but it's the same one. So it's specific there. And then the last thing they did to increase conversion was show and tell. So rather than big emails, trying to convey HubSpot in an email, it's very difficult, they found that the thing that really wowed people was scrolling through the content record and seeing that history, that timeline, from first touch to when they last spoke to them, that's what they found, in feedback, was really impressive. So what they did was, they just created that as a big scrolling gif in one of their emails. Send that out, and there was like massively boosted conversion, people would quickly see the benefit of what, I think they actually did it off of the person.

- It was that person's contact?

- It was their own, so it's off of their timeline --

- How do you automate that?

- No idea. They didn't tell us that. I don't know if the personas where, yeah. I think the sales rep, if they got to that stage, would expedite that, and would just create a quick one. As a hot lead. So, and then that would scroll through, and then while that person, and then it would just be trying to speak to how you could do this for your own business. So takeaways were, I took on a lot about how to implement that for us and our clients. I really enjoyed that, and I mentioned before I tended to shy away from the celebrities as well, I really like stuff that I can just bring back. Yeah, so it was really good.

- I went in that talk as well, it was one of my favourites. I quite liked, she said in the opening that, a trap that we've fallen into before is just going so educational in our workflows, and she said, it got to a point where people were replying, like, what's our software? Like, you get to the close, so they were these helpful guys, and at the end when they try and sell them software, it's like, whoa, where's that coming from? So no, I really enjoyed that one as well

- Okay, Rikki?

- Mine, staying away from the big topics that we talked about in the intro, I quite liked one called Kill the PDF. It was quite a niche little tactical one, Mark, you came to this one with me, didn't ya. It was one of those moments, when he was talking through it it just made complete sense. So when we do landing pages we all do PDFs as gated content. Some of the big problems with that is, if you're on mobile, downloading the PDF's a pain, and if you do download it you've got to nip and squeeze and stuff like that. They don't integrate with anything. Like, people playing with the PDFs, we made some previously, and things like Google Sheets, where people can update and stuff, but there's a chance for you to collect that data. Like if someone's filling in a form about things you'll do and why and you're collecting that, and things like PDFs make it impossible. You get no analytics from it. You can't find out how much people have read it, or how long for, things like that. And finally, you're making a big piece of content that doesn't get indexed by Google very well. PDFs do get indexed, but they're not great, they're not optimised. So we're all producing this content, and it's just 'cause that's the way it's been done for so long. And he talked about the origins of the PDF being like a print file and things like that, and it's how we all still use PDFs for this. So the idea we spoke about, and we're gonna have a go at this on our next one is, instead of making a PDF as your download, so you go to your thank you page, and you get a PDF, you go to your thank you page would would be content, so same thing. Make a webpage ebook.

- Yeah.

- It's just a really good idea, it's so much more accessible and on mobile, you can have a little track list, skip through things, and then if you've made a typo, you can just update it live. If you use a PDF, someone's already downloaded it, you can't change it. If you need to change things like stats or pricing, or state of environment reports, we've got some out there from 2015, you can just update them live. So if someone bookmarks a URL, I just think, it was just one of those moments when you're like, why doesn't everyone do that?

- Sounds too obvious doesn't it. I think, it might have been Eric, I can imagine it'd be falling into the trap of, you know, the PDF, it's like, you click it, it downloads to your computer, so you're getting that thing, it's a kinda nice feeling of ooh, I've downloaded this, it's now mine! And have that little reward mechanism. But it makes so much sense, yeah.

- Yeah, quicker to deploy and everything.

- Create a template and--

- Mark's the one that threw me right at the end, he said, oh, by the way, a lot of people email us and say, I want my PDF, so I put my PDF on the page as well. I'm like, you've gotta see that through, you've gotta reply and say, actually, we don't do a PDF. The cost of these reasons --

- Screenshot the webpage.

- Yeah.

- Another thing I though was great, Rikki, can you actually talk, to book a meeting within the ebook, so if they're interested, they can book a meeting with your sales rep or BDM straight away from the ebook.

- Yeah, definitely, and go and put them onto the next phase, and as followup content, you could put forms in there. It's all the things we know about, it makes sense.

- It was an a-ha moment.

- Such a simple one.

- Why aren't we doing this?

- It made a lot of sense.

- I thought it was great. Paul?

- On the content theme again, it was, like a confirmation there's that much content, and it's kind of saturated, we're reached peak content. So to get ahead, you've got to do proper technical, nuts and bolts, SEO, to just even stand out from the crowd. So quality content isn't always enough to get a quick enough result. And best talk, well, not the best, one of the best. It was how to do a State of Environment Report for your own industry. Or one of your client's industries. So like, state of construction industry, whatever, yeah. It was really good, really simple. Something we've talked about when we've had state of environment reports come to us, like, good to do one of these ourselves.

- Looks like a massive piece of work.

- Yeah, but it's really not! It's just, they reckon you need about a hundred survey responses, but you can invite your network to do it. You just, if you end up getting, using the marketing, for example, well, use the construction one, because it's what you might end up doing. You could ask 10 construction managers, 10 electricians, 10 const surveyors, if some other people take part, you just add them into the data pool when you present it. You ask open-ended questions, and then they generate content for you, you repurpose that. And getting 100 responses is quite easy if you give 'em a little reward like an Amazon voucher. The guy said a $25 Amazon voucher they gave out, cost them $1,000 for 100 responses, they got the hundred responses in two weeks because of the vouchers, and they've had this content that's just fed for six months, and loads of authority. All the people who've taken part are more likely to share it so they spread your network further, they got loads of social content, loads of blog content, and the download piece. He said it was just a massive success.

- I like that.

- For such a relatively small outlay.

- I think that's, it sounds like a big investment, but the time your probably spend in man-hours trying to get some of it around, share it yourself, and not getting any kickback, it's just showing that, pay out $1,000, whatever it is, just get it done, get the authority, which will take a long time, and it's just, do it up front and get the results quicker.

- A thousand, you'd spend that on social ads. But you're getting a thousand, you're getting a hundred shares, to then engage, to inform your network. So it's a no-brainer. And they included competitors. Because, they share it, because they're a part of it. They've taken part in this survey, but it's you who's made it, they've taken part in your survey. So it just puts you that nose in front. But one thing I think would be interesting to speak to clients about that for the budget, and be the first one. Be brave, and get the stats to show it works. But especially when comparing yourself to competitors.

- Yeah, I think it's perfect if you in-house it. Like, it's not a big sell to manage that. Just a thousand pounds, it's a survey, a few weeks, the marketing manager himself would have to either hire an agency or sit himself and research and write an ebook, it's a thousand-pound cost no matter how you do it.

- I think, in-house, as well, trying to sell that is like, I'm not gonna write this myself. Mister One Man Mark thinks he knows about construction, I'm gonna ask your peers, get your address book to give me the information.

- But the data's good as well the data's valuable to you as well for doing it.

- You're gonna find out pain points, personas you didn't know, yeah, I can't see anything wrong with it, it's such a good idea.

- It could fuel your strategies going forward. What are the biggest problems facing construction? There's my blog list for the next six months, isn't it.

- Yeah, a little bit.

- Okay, so we're gonna suss out a client and give it?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, good, on the to-do list. James, first time you've been on our podcast! James is usually in the background, fixing the camera and keeping everything running.

- I feel like we didn't even say welcome to James.

- This is your welcome home!

- Drinking neat vodka.

- Not within view, so welcome, James! What's your key takeaway?

- So, I went to most all the video talks at Inbound, and it was quite surprising, every video talk, they always asked, so how many of you guys are actually doing video? And you just see a couple of hands, it's like, really surprising, like, when they started explaining why you need to do video, it's like, well, if you don't do video, you've got less social proof out there. If you do a video, put it all on social media. You get more followers on your pages and likes. A lot of the talks, I don't understand why people don't do videos, it's like, well, they don't want to see their own face, or their voice. But like, you don't really have much to lose, really. So you just give it a try, if you don't like it, no one can see it. So you just get, and it's like, how simple it is to do. But the thing that was quite surprising, was, if you're gonna do a Facebook video for a campaign, is to make sure, like, when you edit it, to make sure you listen to it without sound. It's like, 80% of the people on Facebook listen to all the videos without sound on. It's just like, 30-second videos, just scrolling through, just watching a little clip about something. But it was really quite surprising how many people listen to it without music really.

- Yeah, that's true.

- So yeah, if we do things for clients, just make sure we always check without sound. And it was just little tips I learned. Like, Facebook videos, Twitter, and it was like, only 30 seconds, because people are on social on buses, on social media, and they don't have 10 minutes to watch a video.

- Or download it as well. Like, rubbish internet, 15 seconds loads quicker.

- You're in your social media feed, you haven't got on thinking, oh, there's a video of Digital 22 up next!

- If it's 30 seconds, when you're scrolling, you can give that time to somebody, 'cause you tap it twice, and it brings up the thing in the bottom, and you can see, I do, I check to see how long it is before I bother watching it. If it's four minutes, aww. If it's 30 seconds, I'm like, alright. Great!

- That's a good takeaway, I think, as soon as we come back, we cut our videos up in snippets, so Brian Halligan, for instance, I think we got 10 snippets out of that video, all 30 seconds, that we shared on social, now, every day. And that's one thing we got out of that, that's good. And you mentioned about watching it with sound off, one thing we did, we used a bit of software called Rev.com, and it's $1 a minute for the actual audio file, which we'll load, and that's the captions. So I'd do that as well.

- Yeah, definitely, I just want to say, I think the reason people don't do it is self-judgment. Like you were saying, people don't like their own face or their own voice or whatever it is. But weirdly, the internet isn't as bad as it seems. Like, you always think you put something on there, it's gonna get loads of trolls. But we've not found that, have we.

- Now's your chance!

- Now's your chance to absolutely troll us. But it's not as bad as you think. There's not as many people desperate for you to fail as people watching that video wanting you to be good and wanting you to get value.

- People are really wanting good stuff. It can be funny to see, but it's not really funny. If you watch someone fail, or balls up on a video, it's like, hah, aw, fuck.

- Yeah, the internet's a nicer place than I'd assume. That's my takeaway from that.

- I went to a good video talk, and it made sense. I think he called it something like, Marching to the Video Drum, so every week, drum, dum, video, same ol' blogging, make sure you do it at the same time, every week, constantly, and you'll get traction as a drum, don't ever miss a beat. I thought that really good, that resonated with me. Especially with the blogging, just keeping it going. We missed a week podcasting.

- We fell out of the habit.

- Yeah, so let's get back on it now. And let's not do it again!

- Yeah, exactly.

- Mikey takeaways, totally switched up my session this year. Instead of going to all marketing stuff, I went to a lot of agency growth. So how can we make our services better to you guys, clients and prospects, how can we make our team happier. How can we improve processes and systems. I went to a lot of them talks. A lot of diamond agencies out there, talking about their pitfalls, what they did wrong getting to diamond, and a lot of EOS experts as well, the guys who run big multi-million-pound agencies, and learned from them and brought it back, and started doing a lot already to improve our customer success, in a way, so that's a lot of talks I went to, which is totally different to the last two or three years.

- That's what's good about, I didn't quite realise until I saw the schedule over summer, is just how much variation there is. Like, you could go just as a PPC person, and have a week's worth of talks at an Inbound event.

- Yeah, sales people, managers, developers ...

- You have a look at any developer stuff? Or did you avoid them, you went to a lot of video.

- No, I mainly just focused on the video and design side. But they weren't much help with developing stuff. The odd few parts about integration, I like the new Shopify and that, but most of it was more like video and design.

- They're gonna rename COS to CMS. I was on a call with Olivia earlier and she was saying, did I need CMS? And I'm like, yeah, they're doing the sales session. No, CMS! You mean COS?

- They just changed it because nobody knew it was call COS. Now they've changed it, yeah.

- Obviously I'm mindful of time, we're coming to the end. But let's talk about direction of HubSpot, new product releases, there's some good stuff coming out, some big investment with HubSpot, Rikki, do you want to kick us off?

- Yeah sure, we went to, before the Inbound event they do an event for partners like ourselves, called Partner Day, which is very creative. And they release all the new product stuff to us a little bit earlier. So we've been abreast of this for awhile, but it is quite interesting to see the direction they're going, obviously HubSpot started as a marketing platform, and it's probably still what most people know them for. Couple of years ago, Inbound, they launched the CRM and the sales tools, this year, Inbound, the big release was around customer service and customer success. And I think what they're trying to do is just make HubSpot your whole back office system for the full cycles of somebody through from a visitor through to being a customer, and keeping them happy. I guess the argument, the way they tie it back in is, keeping customers happy, giving customers a good user experience, will drive more prospects and drive more visitors in the future through referrals. There's always been that bit on the Inbound methodology called Delight, which is keeping clients happy once they're in, and that will, again, come back in a cyclical nature.

- They mentioned, at Partner Day, when they released the Delight they weren't really sure how they'd do it. Like, they just said, you should do it. We'll leave you with that. And the other big one was, we're so focused on bringing new leads to the business, and bringing new ranges of customers, saying, well, if you can grow your actual customer base, you can actually achieve a lot of your growth targets alongside what you've got. You've got these people that've bought into what you do, they're happy with you, you've got a good relationship, make that great, over-deliver on this with the help of HubSpot and you can really take that to the next level. And it's that hidden growth that everyone just forgets once they're through the door. It's sorta like, yeah, so it's looking back and trying to grow that as well.

- At the same talk, another thing that was in there was the conversations talk. A big part of the customer hub was you could have a chat on Facebook Messenger, and they get into work and pick it up on email. But like, the same conversation is in the same timeline.

- It makes a lot of sense doing that.

- What you know is that content record, that timeline, they would sort of look at a conversation timeline, and you had multiple users talking to multiple different platforms, all goes into the same place, there's no handover, the obvious example is customer service, people doing different shifts and picking up other peoples' tickets, it's all there, but also from a marketing perspective, understanding where a lead's at, sales have had a chat with them, what they've said, coming over to us as inbound managers, okay, that's the conversation, that's their expectations. And also being able to deliver, from the service side, the marketing materials. You've got HubSpot at your immediate disposal, you've got that library of content, being able to quickly insert knowledge articles, creating that knowledge hub, you're using the power of HubSpot in customer replies to make that more efficient. It's just keeping you in HubSpot, isn't it. I think they've realised, people are going out of HubSpot to use other tools, and they're just thinking, that's the next step, let's grow it up a little bit.

- Yeah, I think it's an exciting time as a marketer. I think companies like HubSpot are pushing you to be a bigger part of the full user experience. With a company, like, we've always been involved in making sure people find us and we talk in the right way and become a customer in the right way. But what happens when you pass the button, how can you get involved in sales to make sure that you've been lovely, you've talked in this particular tone of voice as a marketer, but they're completely different to the way you've been marketing to them, and that's gonna create friction. So they want you to go and get involved in sales and make sure that experience is good, now they want you to get involved afterwards and make sure that experience is good, because you've sold them something, they've become a customer and a gain. If the customer service is shocking, it's a completely different ethos or tone of voice to the way you've been marketed to, you'd be disappointed. So they want you to get involved from end to end.

- Even on a simpler level, just, it's such a good breakthrough from the customer point of view of, "I was speaking to somebody earlier on "your online chat, on your website. "Let me try and explain." You can just go, "Don't worry, I've already got it." It's perfect.

- There's nothing more frustrating than that, even on the phone. But on chat, tell me again.

- And you know you have to do it as a customer, you'll definitely have to explain again, so then, if your marketer or salesperson can come on and go, "Don't worry, I can already see what you've sent." That's winning. Problem, if they've got a complaint, they're gonna be more calm, aren't they.

- They do a great job of empowering marketers, don't they. They definitely are fighting our call. They can just run the company. All the tools involved at every single stage, it's great. And they've realised that marketing, and that early-stage messaging, is what people expect throughout the whole journey through sales, and then the Delight side and the customer service bit.

- I agree, what helps us helps them, if we keep customers, they keep customers. Lifetime value, it's just gonna keep retention, don't they, which is Delight.

- Like you say, we've been going to Inbound for three or four years. I thought this was the year they really stepped up on product, on the marketing side, the Motion.ai acquisition so being able to do chatbots inside of HubSpot's amazing, on the connect side, Shopify and Terminus, they've looked at SCRM and they're putting a more mid-market enterprise version of the CRM in there, there's all that customer service stuff we talked about, this was a big year for HubSpot. Share prices went through the roof at the same time, bit of gossip, but I felt like this was the biggest year they've had in product release, and it's really exciting.

- Yeah, it is, that big investment, as we all know, we talked about in previous podcasts. The customer success is a Q1, 2018?

- Yeah, a lot of this stuff was Q1 wasn't it. So some of it launches, some CRM stuff launches first November, but the vast majority of it was Q1. We did the HubSpot User Group events, we videoed a girl called Kirsten who did a talk on all of these new products and features, so again, that's something we can link to below. It's too much for us to go into now, but she did a good talk on all these features that you can watch. I'm the king of the hooks today, and completely unscripted as well! No, no, no, it's a terrible drawing!

- We haven't mentioned Round!

- No, I'm getting to it now! You spoilt it!

- Sorry.

- I was gonna say, one thing we're particularly proud of is traction we've got through doing this podcast. We've kinda been practising what we preach. So we've had Brian on the show, we've had Neil Patel on the show, and it's getting bigger, and we've got kind of a bucket list. And one guy on there was Rand Fishkin, I know you've particularly loved him for a long time.

- He's the boss of me!

- Rikki's a stalker. Anyway, we reached out, and he said yes! So while we were at Inbound, we hired out a room, and he just waltzed in, and he was the coolest guy we ever met, absolutely.

- We were so Insta-ing out!

- No, it's like, he's coming in two minutes, go easy!

- And then he was like, hey guys!

- Where do you want me?

- And we just had a great chat, and the podcast went out last week, we'll put a link in again, definitely worth a watch, we're proud of that podcast.

- Very honest, as Rand would say.

- Yeah, he was great.

- He's got opinions on all sorts, we didn't really talk about SCL that much until the end.

- No.

- Yeah, we talked about everything from events, to, we mentioned Facebook in there, he had a couple of rants, just really worth a watch.

- Our best episode, I think.

- Yeah, what'd you think of Rand?

- Aw, I love him.

- Top guy.

- Yeah.

- A bit surreal, really. Like, we watched, on the podcast, we watched his videos, as I'm sure a lot of youse do, and yeah, just weird. Like, why did he say yeah?

- I really liked, he had another meeting straight after us, but we were still in the podcast, and it was going pretty well, he was chatting, and all that, and he just let it go on a bit, past his deadline.

- The masterstroke of that was, it was coming to an end of, no, we'll try anyway, "SEO"? "Alright!" And so another 10 minutes, it's like --

- But he stayed after as well, he didn't just go! Like, "Sorry, we've over-run, bye."

- Super polite.

- He was.

- What a great guy. So yeah, who's next on the bucket list? Who do we have to get next?

- I keep sending lists, weird influencers. The last one I sent through had, like, Barack Obama on the top, that's where we're setting the bar! We gotta aim up there, and see who we can get on.

- I think he'd be great, even, I'd love Tony Robbins as well.

- There you go, shout out, Tony, if you're watching. Email in, we'll find time!

- Okay, we'll wrap her up there, guys! We're out of time, but thanks for tuning in, and any feedback, please leave, and thanks you guys for giving us feedback on the audio, hopefully this is a lot better now. So take care and see you soon!

- Cheers!

- Thanks guys!