HubSpot for me - all day every day.
Updated August 29, 2016
HubSpot for me - all day every day.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Enterprise
Modules Used
- Site Pages, Landing Pages, Blog, Email, Calls to Action, Keywords, Campaigns, Social Monitoring, Social Publishing, Reporting, Contacts, Forms, Lists, Workflows, CRM, Sidekick
Overall Satisfaction with HubSpot
Update 8/29/16: I have a new job and am no longer with an agency. I'm still using HubSpot and loving it! I chose this job *because* they wanted to leverage HubSpot as much as possible.
Before 6/27/16: We use HubSpot for inbound marketing, for marketing with clients, and we build full websites in the HubSpot Websites platform. HubSpot helps track marketing activities to see what's working and what isn't. It also lets us personalize content and deliver it to the right visitor at the right time and place with smart content. Finally, it helps generate leads with top of the funnel tools for content distribution and lead nurturing.
I love using HubSpot because it's easy to use, I feel like I'm lightning fast at accomplishing tasks like creating an entire marketing campaign including landing pages, thank you pages, CTAs and emails. Plus, the campaigns tool lets me track all that in one place which is extra awesome. (note: the tool to share campaigns with team members is SO fantastic!) Plus, the HubSpot academy and community together have SO many helpful tools for learning and constantly improving. I love participating in the community - it's by far the best one I've ever been a part of! There are podcasts, certifications, meet ups, and more. It's truly, to use an inbound-y term: remarkable!
Before 6/27/16: We use HubSpot for inbound marketing, for marketing with clients, and we build full websites in the HubSpot Websites platform. HubSpot helps track marketing activities to see what's working and what isn't. It also lets us personalize content and deliver it to the right visitor at the right time and place with smart content. Finally, it helps generate leads with top of the funnel tools for content distribution and lead nurturing.
I love using HubSpot because it's easy to use, I feel like I'm lightning fast at accomplishing tasks like creating an entire marketing campaign including landing pages, thank you pages, CTAs and emails. Plus, the campaigns tool lets me track all that in one place which is extra awesome. (note: the tool to share campaigns with team members is SO fantastic!) Plus, the HubSpot academy and community together have SO many helpful tools for learning and constantly improving. I love participating in the community - it's by far the best one I've ever been a part of! There are podcasts, certifications, meet ups, and more. It's truly, to use an inbound-y term: remarkable!
- The email tool is really fantastic and their recently updated email performance and reporting pages blow everything else out of the water.
- Training to use the software is really top notch. There are interactive videos, certifications, and even live events for users.
- The campaigns tool allows me to track all elements of my campaign in one easy place - plus - the sharing tool allows you to email a campaign to a team member where they can view and link to all the components of the campaign right from the email they get!
- Lead generation and nurturing: tools like email workflows with branching logic and smart lists make this easy.
- Support! HubSpot support is hands down the best I've ever worked with.
- The reports add on! I've only just lately started using this but it's really really great. HubSpot has seriously stepped up their reporting functionality.
- The smart content, while amazing, still gets tricky sometimes and can be weird. Update 2/10/16: this has gotten much better! The options have expanded and the color picker works with favorites now! Update: 8/29/16: I've found completely new ways to use Smart Content to personalize the experience!
- The attribution reporting feature is awesome but can be confusing. Update 2/10/16: they've added more training and "projects" to help you get better at reporting!
- The new WYSIWYG editor is a bit weird. Update 8/29/16: this has definitely improved and gotten less buggy but can still be tricky. I sometimes revert back to the sidebar editor.
- Folders are great but are different in each tool for no real reason. Update 8/29/16: more tools have folders now but they still function differently.
- Update 2/10/16: for some reason they seem to have removed the overall blog views from the blogging tool. it's only in page performance now...not sure why! Update 8/29/16: this has been fixed - there's a fairly easy way to get to the overall blog views! I still would love the "views" sort back in the main blog area though.
- We've definitely increased the number of leads coming into our site.
- We're able to capture leads much earlier in the buying process and nurture them until they're ready for us. It builds trust along the way so we have to do less selling at the end.
- Our leads are better qualified!
- After moving our entire WEBSITE into HubSpot (not just marketing landing pages and the blog but now the whole site) we've seen an almost immediate increase in conversions. Plus, we've ramped up our blogging and there's a distinct increase in the number of views we're getting as well.
- As a marketer I'm more efficient in doing my job since I can make changes to our site myself without needing a developer!
- We're able to track our leads through to SFDC campaigns and integrate seamlessly with Salesforce.
- Pardot Marketing Automation
First just to note: Pardot is just marketing automation and does not include a CMS or something in which you can build and manage a website. In addition, at least when I used it, Pardot doesn't have a blog portion to it so you'd still have to have your blog in something like WordPress which gives your site yet another disjointed, different-looking piece.
While Pardot does offer a landing page tool, it doesn't have any SEO tools built-in. It also lacks lead conversion assets like calls-to-action (update August, 2016: they say they have now added a CTA tool. I haven't seen it but - late to the game much? this piece is vital), and requires a separate tool (or manual labor) to track and analyze the effectiveness of top-of-the-funnel activities such as blogging. HubSpot's built-in SEO tools can spot SEO errors on your site and make suggestions for improvements and optimization continuously. Pardot lacks this as well.
Pardot has rudimentary social tools for publishing but expects you to use trackable shortlinks to monitor engagement. Plus, it lacks any social monitoring streams for competitors, keywords, campaigns, etc. Finally, I use HubSpot support weekly and they're always incredibly helpful. With Pardot, you can't even get phone support in the standard or pro versions.
10,000 to 25,000
HubSpot Marketing Hub Feature Ratings
Using HubSpot
5 - The people in my organization who use HubSpot include our Sales/Business Development Manager, Marketing Manager and UX Designer (me), Visual Designer, Front-End Developer, and our CEO.
- We used smart content to display different information to different visitors to eliminate the client's 3 different sites and create one cohesive site that presented appropriate content, imagery, language and tone to each visitor type.
- We use calls-to-action at the end of every blog post that are related to the topic to pull people through the site down a defined path to conversion.
- I love finding new ways to use HubSpot. We've used it to track direct mail campaigns by sending people to landing pages that were tracked in the campaigns tool in HubSpot.
- We've used smart content to display a different map and address on the contact page to different people based on their location.
- We decided to only show the app download options to mobile viewers while providing desktop viewers with more information about the app.
- We're hoping to design a site for a new client that uses smart content on almost every page because the language for different target markets is drastically different.
- I want to use HubSpot to expand our email campaigns by using smart headers to make the emails feel more personal.
Evaluating HubSpot and Competitors
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Vendor Reputation
- Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
- Third-party Reviews
People do business with people they trust. HubSpot has such an amazing team, community, and commitment to delighting their customers and it really shows. They educate you on the software and inbound marketing best practices in a way that's truly useful. We didn't just purchase software - we signed on to a new marketing way of life!
I wouldn't change a thing :)
HubSpot Implementation
- Vendor implemented
- Implemented in-house
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
- Blog redirects (though we have everything working now and understand how to do it perfectly!)
- Image imports with the blogs
- There weren't folders in a lot of the tools at the time, though there are now.
HubSpot Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
No - The support we have absolutely gives me everything I need. I think there is premium support available but I've never felt the need to even investigate.
Yes - Yes, absolutely. They were actually already aware of the issue and fixed it shortly after. Trust.HubSpot.com also keeps me up to date on everything.
Yes, every time I've used support it's been exceptional. I had an issue with our CNAME and they helped me figure out we had mistakenly included the "http://." They also helped me fix my Zpaier integration with Eventbrite before we sent our event invitations. They helped me fix an issue when my blogs weren't populating a preview on Facebook and they helped me when I was stuck trying to link images in a smart content area on a website I was building. I've also worked with HubSpot support at the previous two places I worked and was impressed every time.
Using HubSpot
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Posting blogs! HubSpot wins this for sure.
- Email analytics and A/B testing
- Awesome CTAs
- Attribution reporting
- Linking smart images can be tricky
- Occasionally, the emails can be a bit wonky on mobile even if the preview looks okay. Some custom HTML can fix this easily.
Yes, but I don't use it