INBOUND 2021 recap: Here's what went down

INBOUND is HubSpot’s annual conference — hosted in Boston, USA since 2012. It’s grown year on year, with the last in-person session (in 2019) attended by over 20,000 people. The Huble Digital team attends INBOUND with an almost religious passion. But aside from the event itself, one of our highlights is being able to share the latest marketing, sales and customer service trends with our clients and readers. 

Please excuse references to The B2B Marketing Lab, this video was created before we merged with MPULL to form Huble Digital.

INBOUND is usually when HubSpot announces any large new products and features and shares a sneak peek into the trends and insights that have been making their team and product tick. And INBOUND 2021 was no different — making it the must-attend event for anyone in digital sales and marketing that’s as hellbent as we are to place customers’ delight at the heart of their business and strategy. 

If you had to skip important talks or missed the entire event, don’t worry. We’ve got everything you need to know about INBOUND 2021, recapped right here. 

Don’t miss out a second time. Catch HubSpot’s CEO, Yamini Rangan, headlining at Huble Digital’s free, all-virtual event, Grow With Inbound 2021. Click below and register.

Product and features updates

To quote HubSpot, they’re “Putting the “C” back into CRM”. They’re making the CRM more customisable, and more customer-centric for scaling companies. Here’s a quick overview of key products and features coming our way:

• Customer portals and custom feedback surveys

Your customers will soon be able to self-service through customer portals, gaining the ability to shape their own experience with your brand and reduce turnaround times. Customers will be able to view and manage their support tickets, access the knowledge base and submit custom feedback surveys. This encourages customer trust, ensures they feel heard, and decreases the load on your support reps.

• HubSpot payments

Payments are now native to your CRM. This upcoming feature lets you deliver a seamless buying experience by easily embedding payment links into emails, quotes, websites or live chats. This is a huge addition to the HubSpot platform and really focuses on allowing your customers to purchase via your site without the need to include salespeople 100% of the time. 

• Operations Hub Enterprise and datasets

Datasets are a new business intelligence feature built into Operations Hub Enterprise (available for purchase from November 1, 2021). They let you curate collections of data for quicker, more consistent reporting. Meanwhile, Ops Hub Enterprise also makes it quick and easy to integrate HubSpot data into Snowflake data warehouse, letting you connect your data, channels and the team like never before.

• Business units

Is your company home to multiple brands? Now you can easily manage all of them from one HubSpot portal, using business units. Enjoy clear reporting on each brand’s performance, track contact interactions and communication preferences per brand, and more.

• Sandboxes

Enterprise customers can now build and test new workflows, integrations, pages and other changes, without impacting their live set up. Sandboxes are a mirror of your HubSpot portal. You can easily copy CMS assets, deal and ticket pipelines, custom object definitions and more into your sandbox, and test changes without putting anything at risk.  

What’s on the HubSpot horizon?

One thing is clear: HubSpot is placing an even bigger focus on solving for customers, with the new payments feature being a significant step in this direction. They’re also making it easier and safer to customise your portal (thanks, Sandbox!) and to deliver crafted messaging that anticipates customer needs and desires. 

With HubSpot leading the way, businesses no longer have an excuse for delivering cobbled-together messaging or reactive, inconsistent customer experiences. They’re putting world-class operations and service delivery tools at our fingertips — and we can’t wait to hear what more HubSpot has to say on this in the coming months.

Session highlights

Get a firsthand account of what INBOUND 2021 was like — our team share their favourite sessions, learnings and moments:

“Notable quotes by Yamini [Rangan] and Dharmesh [Shah] have sparked my brain into gear. I love this! Yamini’s point to “care deeply, and persevere relentlessly” and Dharmesh’s insight that “customers want MAGIC, not management” has influenced my approach to a business overnight.” — Jess Gamble, Client Services Director

“The most enjoyable “aha moment” for me was observing Dharmesh [Shah] artfully deliver key concepts that have huge business impact, in an engaging way. I never expected South Park’s Underpants Gnomes to make an appearance, but Dharmesh managed to use this popular, entertaining reference and steer clear of gimmick!” —Tasneem Rossouw, Content Writer, on the 2021 HubSpot Spotlight 

Dharmesh Shah, CTO of HubSpot, illustrates how companies have a similar challenge to the Underpants Gnomes — except, instead of collecting underpants that serve no purpose, we collect data.

“The quote that will stay with me is this African proverb: If you want to go FAST, GO ALONE; if you want to go FAR, GO TOGETHER. It’s an eloquent way of driving home the point that sales teams can close bigger deals when working collaboratively with other members of the delivery process, like the CXO or Customer Service.” — Rowley Cubitt, Head of New Business, on How To Close 6-Figure Deals With Team Selling

“The strong focus on sales coaching and analytics in How To Grow From 5 To 50 Sales Executives Without Losing Productivity was refreshing, as this is often overlooked.” — Taryn Schamberger, Sales Hub Consultant

“‘Lead by intent, insight, inclusion and inspiration.’ I couldn’t have said it better than Cynt Marshall. She sums up the type of leader I try to be daily, in my personal and professional life.” — Michelle Pearman, Account Director, on The Start Of Leaving A Legacy

“There were two words that stuck with me from INBOUND: “Revenue Team”. We shouldn't talk about marketing, sales and service anymore, but a unified team that works towards the same goals. Any company that doesn't understand that now will find it very hard to compete in today's marketplace. — Alex Enache, Sales Hub Consultant

“I enjoyed the huge variety of topics and engaging speakers, learning and relearning about so many new subjects, solutions, and ways of thinking. Quite an incredible INBOUND conference." — Elias Boutsikaris, Sales Tech and Consulting Lead

“I thoroughly enjoyed the one book club session with Melody Wilding, which sparked the subject around the psychology behind working in general (especially remotely now) and how to deal with imposter syndrome and sensitivity, both personally and professionally. I think it is a subject that is often overlooked and not addressed within the workplace, and I think it is such an important discussion to be had in order to thrive long-term.” — Alex Jerenic, HubSpot Implementation Specialist

Grow with Inbound

If you missed INBOUND 2021, there’s still an opportunity to immerse yourself in the latest developments in inbound methodology for business (and even hear live from HubSpot leaders). 

Grow with Inbound brings professionals together to brainstorm, learn and network to discover the best ways to align marketing, website, sales, service and operations teams for business benefit. This year, we’ll also dive into how the right tech stack can make this process faster, and more cost-efficient. 

Register for your free ticket, and get front-row seats to talks from Yamini Rangan (CEO, HubSpot), Christian Kinnear (SVP of International Sales, HubSpot), Irina Chuchkina (CMO, Thunes) and many more. Get the full list of speakers, register your interest, and hear from previous attendees by clicking below.