HubSpot announces new AI sales and marketing tools for SMBs

HubSpot, launched in 2006, has succeeded on the strength of its social media and digital marketing tools, as well as a customer relationship management (CRM) software platform, Smart CRM, designed to grow with entrepreneurs and small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Now, the company is looking to leverage generative AI and predictive AI to help its clients of today and tomorrow on their own customer acquisition and communications journeys.

Today at Hubspot’s INBOUND 2023 conference, the company introduced HubSpot AI, a suite of new AI features available to users of HubSpot’s social publishing and marketing tools.

“It’s platform-wide AI powered tooling that helps SMBs grow better — it exists throughout the entire platform,” Christopher Miller, HubSpot’s VP of Product for AI, told VentureBeat in an exclusive video interview.

Platform-wide AI features

The new AI features include:

• AI Assistants that can draft emails, design images, and even brainstorm blog ideas.
• AI Agents, virtual customer service attendants set to launch next year. These are “products that help SMBs fully automate, respond to and elevate customer service across like live chat and email
• AI Insights, a predictive analytics tool for better decision-making,” Miller told VentureBeat.
• ChatSpot: which uses OpenAI’s hit large language model (LLM) application ChatGPT and combines it with data from a Hubspot user’s Smart CRM to answer all the questions a user might have about their clients or business prospects, such as their funding. It can even help craft and edit marketing content and messages. It’s available in public beta and has already recorded 80,000 total users. “It started off as a side project,” Miller said. But it quickly became much more.

A revamped Sales Hub

Selling in the AI age is a whole new ball game. HubSpot’s revamped sales and deal tracking software Sales Hub has also been updated with features aimed at modernizing sales processes. Among them:

• A streamlined prospecting workspace that offers a unified dashboard for all of a HubSpot customer’s sales activities.
• Advanced lead management and reporting features, including auto-generated reports for marketers on how their leads are doing with their reps downstream
• Intelligent deal management: An AI-powered feature to help customers prioritize those deals and project future sales at 95% accuracy. This leverages predictive AI rather than generative AI. “I know generative AI gets a ton of the attention right now, but predictive AI is still super important for businesses,” Miller said. “Things like deal health scores, those are going to be AI-powered insights found throughout the platform.”

HubSpot has also expanded its partnership with LinkedIn, allowing users to link their Smart CRM to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, bringing data from LinkedIn leads into Hubspot, though the feature is currently only available in private beta.

“We are building a product and platform an offering that businesses can get value from on day zero,” Miller said. “But what’s also important to us is that businesses don’t outgrow HubSpot.”

The next evolution of HubSpot

With the launch of these new AI features and tools, and smart integrations with existing category leaders like LinkedIn and OpenAI, HubSpot aims to evolve into the SMB marketing and sales platform of choice.

“Our role is to help SMBs easily adopt and implement new technology like generative AI,” Miller said. “SMBs generally don’t have the time and resources to properly research and implement emerging technology. That’s where HubSpot comes in, as a platform that our customers trust to help them grow better.”