HubSpot’s March 2024 release includes AI management, enhanced CRM features and more

The March 2024 HubSpot updates include tools that will help your team leverage AI for better email marketing, along with better ways to visualize and understand your data. But that’s just the beginning.

The latest release enhances team productivity with mobile access to custom objects and provides advanced insights into team HubSpot adoption. All told, the March 2024 update aims to make your interactions more insightful and your strategies more impactful. This aligns with recent HubSpot updates, which also aimed to simplify processes, empower data-based decisions and improve everything from team engagement to customer interactions.

Dive into the March 2024 updates:

• Easily review and manage AI use in marketing emails.
• Improved file management within the CRM.
• Enhanced forecast accuracy insights with AI Comparison.
• Centralized marketing command center.
• More detailed deal progression insights with new properties.
• Announcement: upgrade to the new QuickBooks integration by May 14, 2024.
• Upgraded mobile access to custom objects on iOS and Android.
• Better trend monitoring for records.
• Easier data visualization with 100% stacked charts.
• Advanced insights into team HubSpot adoption.
• New suggested activity: reconnect with re-engaged contacts.
• Quick notes addition from anywhere in HubSpot.

Easily review and manage AI use in HubSpot marketing emails

What’s new: HubSpot has added an AI filter and view option to the Marketing Email management page, allowing for easier management of emails created or assisted by AI.

How it helps you

For managers overseeing marketing campaigns, the new filter makes it straightforward to identify and assess the performance of emails developed with AI assistance. This feature streamlines the process of analyzing email strategies and enables quick adjustments to improve engagement and effectiveness.

This should also lead to a more efficient oversight of marketing efforts, with the ability to rapidly pinpoint successful AI-assisted content and replicate its success across other campaigns. It simplifies the management of complex email marketing strategies, ensuring that teams can leverage AI-generated content for maximum impact.

Status: Public Beta
Applicable HubSpot Hubs: All Hubs
Applicable HubSpot Tiers: All tiers

Learn more about managing AI emails

Dig deeper: 3 keys for email marketing in 2024: AI, change, learn

Improved and customized file management within the CRM

What’s new: HubSpot enhances the CRM experience with improved file property functionalities, making it simpler to upload, manage and utilize files like contracts, CVs and product specs directly within the CRM.

How it helps you

This update transforms how files are managed and accessed in HubSpot, streamlining operations for managers and their teams. Now, you can create custom file properties that allow for direct file uploads in forms, ensuring necessary documents, such as purchase agreements or contracts, are attached at crucial stages of the customer journey.

For managers, this means enhanced oversight and efficiency. Whether it’s ensuring a contract is uploaded when a deal is won or attaching specific documents to a contact record, this feature supports more robust data management. Moreover, field-level permissions offer control over who can access these files, safeguarding sensitive information while facilitating easy sharing among authorized team members.

Status: Public Beta
Applicable HubSpot Hubs: All Hubs
Applicable HubSpot Tiers: All tiers

Learn more about using property functionalities in HubSpot

Enhanced forecast accuracy insights with AI Comparison

What’s new: HubSpot now offers a feature allowing managers to compare their team’s manual forecast submissions with the accuracy of HubSpot’s AI forecast tool within the Forecast Accuracy Over Time Table.

How it helps you

Anyone who asks for a forecast from a sales rep knows the challenge that comes with predicting these numbers. As a result, this is invaluable for sales leaders as it provides a clear comparison between average manual forecast submissions and actual sales outcomes, revealing trends and discrepancies. This insight allows managers to identify coaching opportunities to enhance manual forecasting skills across their teams.

Leaders can also make more informed decisions regarding their forecasting approach thanks to the ability to compare manual accuracy with AI forecasts in the Analyze tab. What if the AI consistently outperforms manual forecasts? This too provides an opportunity to coach the team to improve manual submission accuracy. This dual approach not only bolsters forecast reliability but also enhances strategic planning and decision-making processes.

Status: Public Beta
Applicable HubSpot Hubs: Customer Platform, Sales Hub, Service Hub
Applicable HubSpot tiers: Professional, Enterprise

Centralized marketing command center

What’s new: HubSpot introduces Marketing Home, a unified dashboard providing a comprehensive view of all marketing activities, tools and data in one place.

How it helps you

When users log into HubSpot, they’re asked what they want as their home screen. Marketers used to have to choose between individual marketing details. Now, Marketing Home gives you a personalized dashboard, displaying immediate insights into the performance of various marketing efforts, from email campaigns to social media engagements. This central hub ensures that you start each day with the latest data, enabling swift decision-making and prioritization of tasks that need your attention.

Managers should be able to spend less time navigating between tools and more time on strategic planning and execution. This one-stop-view of information helps simplify the workflow, enhances efficiency and keeps your team aligned on goals and metrics, all while providing a “home base” for your marketing operations. It’s about having the pulse of your marketing efforts at your fingertips, ensuring that nothing slips through the cracks and every opportunity for optimization is captured.

Status: Public Beta
Applicable HubSpot Hubs: Marketing Hub
Applicable HubSpot Tiers: Professional, Enterprise

More detailed deal progression insights with new properties

What’s new: HubSpot introduces four new properties for tracking deal progression within sales pipelines for Professional and Enterprise customers: Date Entered Stage, Date Exited Stage, Latest Time in Stage and Cumulative Time in Stage.

How it helps you

While many teams have insights about speed to close overall, these new deal progression insights bring a magnifying glass to each stage in particular, helping to analyze and improve sales processes. Easily pinpoint where deals are slowing down by examining how long deals remain at each stage. This data allows for a clearer understanding of pipeline velocity and efficiency, enabling teams to identify and address bottlenecks effectively.

By leveraging these new deal properties, managers can make informed decisions to streamline their sales cycles and improve overall sales performance. These insights are crucial for refining sales strategies and achieving better outcomes with less guesswork.

Status: Live
Applicable HubSpot Hubs: CMS, Marketing, Ops, Sales, Service
Applicable HubSpot Tiers: Professional, Enterprise

Learn more about deal stage calculated properties

Announcement: Upgrade to the new QuickBooks integration by May 14, 2024

What’s new: The legacy QuickBooks Online (QBO) integration is being retired in favor of a new, more robust integration powered by Data Sync, effective from March 12, 2024, with a sunset date of May 14, 2024.

How it helps you

For managers, the transition to the new QBO integration is crucial for maintaining seamless financial data flow between HubSpot and QuickBooks. This upgrade means not just avoiding disruptions after May 14, 2024, but also gaining access to advanced features like two-way Contact and Product syncs, sync customization options and valuable sync health insights.

This move is designed to set your team up for success with a more scalable platform, ensuring your financial data integration is both secure and efficient in the long term. For those concerned about the migration timeline, HubSpot offers support and possible extensions in extenuating circumstances, ensuring your transition is as smooth as possible.

Status: Announcement
Applicable HubSpot Hubs: All Hubs
Applicable HubSpot Tiers: All Tiers

 Learn more about the migration process

Upgraded mobile access to custom objects on iOS and Android

What’s new: HubSpot updated its mobile app for both iOS and Android, making it easier to manage custom objects. These objects are now accessible from the global menu, with capabilities for filtering, sorting and adding up to five saved views. Additionally, custom objects with pipelines can now be viewed in board mode.

How it helps you

These improvements bring Custom Objects to the forefront, ensuring they’re treated with the same flexibility and accessibility as standard objects. For managers with teams on the go, this means enhanced productivity and seamless operation. Your field team can now easily interact with Custom Objects, access critical data and manage pipelines directly from mobile devices, rather than waiting to get back to their desk or computer to work with this part of the platform. 

This update aligns custom objects with standard HubSpot functionalities, streamlining management tasks and facilitating better mobile CRM practices.

Status: Live
Applicable HubSpot Hubs: Customer Platform
Applicable HubSpot Tiers: Enterprise

Better trend monitoring and visualization for records

What’s new: HubSpot introduces a new chart and table feature, enabling users to visualize trends in data actions — creating, deleting, updating and merging records— across various sources.

How it helps you

With data influx from multiple sources, it’s been a challenge for managers to track the origins and actions affecting their records. This update offers a more clear view into your data’s lifecycle, answering pivotal questions about record dynamics. Use cases for this may include things like pinpointing the primary sources of deal creations, identifying causes behind ticket deletions or spotting significant changes in data update volumes.

For managers, this means enhanced decision-making capabilities, with the ability to spot and monitor trends, address issues proactively and optimize data management strategies based on concrete insights. It’s a leap toward more informed, data-driven management across all aspects of your HubSpot environment.

Status: Private Beta
Applicable HubSpot Hubs: All Hubs
Applicable HubSpot Tiers: All Tiers

Learn how to view and record source properties

Easier data visualization with 100% stacked charts

What’s new: HubSpot introduces 100% stacked charts for bar, column, line and area charts, enabling users to view changes in proportions over time more effectively.

How it helps you

Converting standard charts to percent stacking makes it easier to understand how different segments contribute to the overall picture. For instance, you can quickly discern what proportion of traffic comes from various sources or how each stage of the pipeline contributes to the total.

Ideal for presenting complex data in an accessible format, 100% stacked charts simplify the comparison of relative sizes of data segments across different categories or time periods. This clarity can significantly aid in strategic decision making, allowing managers to pinpoint trends, identify potential issues and allocate resources more effectively.

Status: Live
Applicable HubSpot Hubs: Customer Platform
Applicable HubSpot Tiers: Professional, Enterprise

Dig deeper: Data visualization: How to transform analytics data into actionable insights

Advanced insights into team HubSpot adoption

What’s new: HubSpot introduces a new analytics tab within the Audit Log page, offering managers a clearer view of team activity and software adoption.

How it helps you

HubSpot keeps reminding us that increasing usability of the software is key — and this update should help make it  easier for managers to gauge HubSpot adoption across teams by providing high-level insights into user activity. The analytics tab reveals which areas of the account are being utilized and the types of changes being made, which is crucial for identifying both active and less engaged users. 

Managers can leverage this information to pinpoint power users, whose practices and experiences can be shared to boost overall team adoption and efficiency. While the audit log doesn’t capture every action (like one-to-one emails, calls and notes), it is likely to contribute to understanding of change management and overall system adoption of HubSpot across the organization.

Status: Public Beta
Applicable HubSpot Hubs: CMS, Marketing, Ops, Sales, Service
Applicable HubSpot Tiers: Enterprise

What’s new: HubSpot now highlights re-engaged contacts in the prospecting workspace, enabling sales reps to easily identify and reconnect with previously disqualified leads.

How it helps you

Recognizing when a previously disengaged lead shows renewed interest is crucial for sales success. This update empowers your team to quickly capitalize on these opportunities. A simple action, like a website visit or form submission by a lead, could signal a ready-to-convert prospect. 

By making these re-engaged contacts readily visible, your sales reps can efficiently follow up, potentially turning cold leads into valuable customers. While many teams may rely on workflows to power similar notifications, this update makes it much more straightforward. This proactive approach ensures your team doesn’t miss out on rekindling promising connections, making it a small but mighty new tool in your CRM toolkit.

Status: Public Beta
Applicable HubSpot Hubs: Sales Hub, Customer Platform
Applicable HubSpot Tiers: Pro, Enterprise

Quick notes addition from anywhere in HubSpot

What’s new: HubSpot now enables users to create notes directly from the preview sidebar across various pages, including index, board, lists and deal forecasting views.

How it helps you

The ability to add contextual information quickly and easily is key for sales success, and this update delivers. Users can now add important notes to records without the need to navigate away from your current page. For managers, this means enhanced efficiency in reviewing and noting key information across team activities and records. 

You can now oversee projects, track progress, and provide guidance directly within list views or deal forecasts, ensuring swift communication and documentation where it matters most. This simplifies collaboration and oversight, allowing managers to stay on top of their team’s work with minimal disruption to their workflow. This centralized note-taking feature will help maintain team alignment and enhance productivity.

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Status: Live
Applicable HubSpot Hubs: All Hubs
Applicable HubSpot Tiers: Pro, Enterprise