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Introduction to HubSpot Marketing Automation Software

The HubSpot marketing automation platform and CRM (customer relationship management) were created in 2006 as an all-in-one platform for digital marketing, sales hub, customer support as well as a blog dedicated to the methodology of the services it offers. They’re considered to be one of the pioneers of marketing automation and implementing lead generation and lead management.

If your organization is considering adopting the HubSpot marketing automation tool, you’ll want to know the basics such as pricing and capabilities. But you also want to know what it does best and where it falls short so that you can be sure it’s an appropriate fit for the kind of marketing campaigns you plan to run. These are the topics we’ll cover today.

By the end of this post, you’ll be equipped with all the necessary data to make a decision as to whether HubSpot is the best option to meet the needs of your online marketing initiatives. As an added bonus, if you’re currently using another tool, and wish to migrate to HubSpot, we’ve included a number of checklists at the bottom of this post to help you make the transition.

However, if you want to have an expert team conduct your migration for you, reach out today so we can set up a time to speak with you about our services and how we can assist you during the migration process.

But for now, let’s move on to the considerations for choosing the HubSpot marketing automation as your MOPs solution which includes its pricing, capabilities, and pros and cons.

Why Use HubSpot?

HubSpot offers both a CRM and an inbound marketing software platform to help you align sales and marketing with the goal of increasing website traffic and conversion rates. It enables marketing teams to optimize website content and distribution while enabling sales teams to easily create company profiles and manage deal communications and dashboards.

HubSpot is an excellent choice for startups, small businesses, and SMBs who are just starting to see the value of CRM and marketing automation and don’t require a lot of the complexity provided by other, more costly solutions such as Eloqua or Marketo.

HubSpot Pricing & Capabilities

Unlike some of the other marketing automation tools we’ve reviewed, HubSpot’s marketing automation platform is very affordable with pricing plans that range from $50 to $2,400 per month.

You’ll be happy to hear, however, that their CRM is 100% FREE, with a limit of 1,000,000 contacts, which is a big differentiator for them. Let’s first take a look at their free CRM capabilities, and then we will review their marketing platform pricing packages and capabilities.

Free Hubspot CRM Capabilities

• Contact Information Management
• Contact Website Activity
• Company Profiles
• Company Insights
• Deals
• Tasks & Activities
• Gmail & Outlook Integration
• HubSpot Connect Integrations
• Custom Support Form Fields
• Prospect Database
• Ticketing
• Reporting Dashboards
• Email Tracking & Notifications
• Email Templates
• Canned Snippets
• Documents
• Calling & Scheduling
• Messenger Integration

Marketing Features/Packages

HubSpot Marketing Hub Platform Pros & Cons

Now that you know a bit more about HubSpot, their product, and their pricing, let’s break down the specific pros and cons to help you decide if this is the right tool for your marketing strategy.

PROS

User-Friendly UI

HubSpot has one of the best UI’s and automation workflows, in our opinion. Their easy-to-use layout has a limited learning curve so onboarding is faster and content marketing execution is more efficient.

Updated Resources, Expert Forum, and Excellent Customer Service Hub

HubSpot has made a lot of improvements to its initial platform, including supping up their support team, to help you resolve queries and streamline your marketing program. Their resources are also available to help any marketer who needs strategic advice or wants to implement best practices in their email campaigns and marketing needs.

Built-in CRM – No Integrations Needed

Unlike some of its competitors, HubSpot is designed to align sales and marketing with a CRM and Marketing Automation in one. Thus saving you time and money on the cost of additional licenses. That being said, please note that HubSpot’s CRM is better for SMEs who don’t need a ton of power out of the gate.

Great Reporting Capabilities

As a marketing agency, we work with companies of many shapes and sizes. But regardless of their configuration, they all have the same marketing goal: to increase and convert leads. It’s for that reason that we love HubSpot. Its comprehensive and collaborative data structure enables us to show ROI with precision and help clients allocate budgets efficiently.

Pricing

Another aspect we love about HubSpot is the strength and capability you get for the price. Unlike some of the other tools we’ve reviewed, while powerful, still tend to be a bit unreasonably priced without much leeway. We feel that HubSpot is truly a “grow with you” tool that can be scaled as your organization grows.

Robust Integration Library

We also love the robust selection of integrations that Hubspot offers. They go above and beyond to meet the needs of SMBs.

HubSpot CMS

As an advocate of inbound methodology and content-based, growth marketing, HubSpot provides a superior, feature-rich content management system that is a viable alternative to competitors like WordPress.

CONS

The CRM isn’t as Feature-Rich as Other Tools

As we stated before, for small to medium-sized businesses that are just starting to use a CRM and only need basic functionality, HubSpot is great! However, if you are further along in your marketing journey and your marketing programs require a high level of customization- such as dynamic content, the sectioned structure of forms, etc, HubSpot is probably not the best fit for you.

Inflexible to Complex Sales Processes

This second complaint is tied to the first. Due to HubSpot’s limited functionality, it’s not really built for larger organizations with complex sales processes. For these enterprise-scale businesses, it is likely they will need a separate tool for sales operations like Salesforce.

Ready to Migrate?

Now that you have a good understanding of HubSpot, it’s strengths and weaknesses, you’ll have to decide if moving to this platform is the best for your organization. If so, we welcome you to use our HubSpot migration post as well as these customized checklists to help guide your transition.

Marketo to Hubspot
Mailchimp to Hubspot
Eloqua to Hubspot
Pardot to Hubspot

Don’t have the bandwidth to commit to migration or implementation of extensive marketing efforts? Worried that assets might fall through the cracks and campaigns won’t function properly once in HubSpot? Let us help!

At Interrupt Media, we are automation experts and we provide a white glove approach to migrating your database from your current automation tool to HubSpot.

Reach out today and let’s set up a time to chat.

Topics: Marketing Automation, Marketing Operations, Marketing Tools