Episode 239: HubSpot Snippets, HubSpot RSS Emails

Welcome to HubShots Episode 239: HubSpot Snippets, HubSpot RSS Emails

This edition we dive into:

• Our upcoming HubShots 28-Day Challenge
• Subscribe versus Follow
• HubSpot RSS Emails (and Gotchas)
• Using HubSpot Snippets to save time and reduce errors
• Redirecting HubSpot Files (Eg a PDF) revisited
• Should I put my blog on a subdomain versus a subfolder?
• Electric ferries

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Recorded: Monday 15 March 2021 | Published: Friday 19 March 2021

Shot 1: Growth Thought of the Week

The HubShots 28-Day HubSpot Marketing Campaign Challenge is Coming

Are you interested in joining Ian and me for a 28-Day HubSpot Challenge?

This will be a paid program we run next quarter. It is ideal for users new to HubSpot who want to get a campaign planned, implemented and in-market in 28 days.

We’re still putting together all the details, but the format will include daily tasks, plus weekly group check-in zoom calls with us - and we’ll stay on the call until everyone’s questions have been answered.

Why are we running this, when there are so many other courses and programs available?

The main issue we are seeing with a number of HubSpot portals is that they are so overwhelmed they don’t ever get anything in-market - other than perhaps a few email campaigns.

Even though they go through onboarding with HubSpot after purchasing, the issue they don’t have anyone that actually gets hands on with them - instead they are usually given a bunch of training articles to self-learn, and then some follow up calls - but no hands on help actually getting a landing page created and published. Nor do they get help on how to launch the campaign on Google Ads, Facebook or LinkedIn.

If that’s you, then this Challenge might be just what you need.

Look out for details and introductory pricing in the coming weeks.

Shot 2: Quick Shots of the Week

Here’s a few quick items of interest we noticed:

• Apple is changing labels from ‘Subscribe to Podcast’ to ‘Follow Podcast’ in the upcoming version of the podcast app. Coverage suggests this may be because ‘Subscribe’ is becoming associated with payment and perhaps people get confused and think Subscribing to a podcast in the app will cost them money. A reminder: you can subscribe to our podcast and show notes for free (you’re welcome)
• Icons now insertable in Rich Text - The rich text module and rich text field in custom modules now supports inserting icons:

You can easily search through all the Font Awesome icons:

Shot 3: HubSpot Marketing Feature of the Week

HubSpot RSS Emails

HubSpot RSS emails are a really handy way to send out blog post updates.

We use one to send the show notes out each week.

We prepare everything as a blog post - and then after publishing on Friday, the RSS email picks up the latest post and sends it to our HubShots list.

Gotcha with HubSpot RSS Emails

You may have noticed that the HubSpot show notes went out 2 days late last episode.

(BTW If you haven’t yet subscribed to the free show notes email, you can sign up (ahem follow us) here.)

Here’s the sequence that caused it to be missed:

• We prepare the shows notes as a blog post earlier in the week (usually Wednesday), but don’t actually publish it until Friday morning at 9:05am, just after the show has gone live on Soundcloud at 9am
• Our internal process includes a QA step - the person who prepared the blog post, sets the schedule for the blog post to be 9:05am, but doesn’t actually Schedule it. Instead the QA person after checking the process then sets it to Scheduled
• Our Show Notes email is an RSS email that is scheduled for 11:15am each day. It picks up the latest blog post and sends it as the Show Notes email
• Last week our QA queue was a little backed up, and the QA step didn’t get confirmed until Friday afternoon. At that point they set the post to Scheduled (which because it was set as 9:05am then made the post live and published, but slightly back dated to earlier that morning.
• However because the RSS email had already passed 11:15am it didn’t get sent.
• No problem you’d think - it will just get picked up the next day…
• But the next day when the daily RSS fired again, it didn’t pick up the blog post… because it had originally been scheduled to be before the previous day’s RSS send
• To fix this I had to update the publish date of the blog post to be after the most recent RSS send, and then it got picked up the next day (Sunday in this case)

Sounds complex right? Yep, it was. Had me puzzled for a while there...

Shot 4: HubSpot Sales Feature of the Week

Using the power of HubSpot Snippets

Remember you can use this system wide to speed up reponses and avoid mistakes and time finding customer information.

Here is an example of utilising contact and company properties readily in HubSpot to create tasks/email and use in notes within the system.

Want to learn more about snippets - search the HubSpot Academy for lessons snippets:

Shot 5: HubSpot Withlist Item of the Week

A/B Menu Testing

I’d love to be able to A/B test menus.

For example, test using Subscribe versus Newsletter versus Show Notes in the menu.

Currently it’s not possible to switch out menus in a template based on smart criteria (note: you can switch based on languages, but this isn’t what I’m after) because smart content applies to Rich Text modules only at the monet.

I tried some workarounds eg using a Rich Text module and text links rather than a menu. Whilst a possibility, it’s not ideal. I even considered inserting a number of smart CTAs into a text module and using that. It’s technically possible, but difficult to maintain.

Just having the ability to add variations to menus would be fantastic - or the ability to switch menus based on smart criteria.

Some examples:

• If a visitor has already signed up for a particular offer, remove it from the menu and show the next offer they may be interested in
• Show special menu options to VIP customers
• Show special options if coming from a specific source (Eg email or LinkedIn campaign)

Have you ever wanted to test this - or is it just me?

Shot 6: HubSpot Gotcha of the Week

Redirecting HubSpot Files (Revisited)

Last episode I mentioned how I managed to take down a site by setting up an incorrect Flexible Redirect.

The issue I had was a PDF was indexed in Google, and we wanted to redirect the PDF to a pillar page instead.

After some back and forth with the HubSpot Support team, they confirmed that there’s no way of redirecting HubSpot files - they are protected system directories.

So, at a loss of what to do I reached out to Daniel Berschi and he chatted with the higher ups internally - they also confirmed that it wasn’t possible from the HubSpot side. However, turns out there is an easy way to do this… if you use Cloudflare for your DNS management.

You can use Page Rules in Cloudflare to catch the specific PDF URL and redirect it from there (ie before the request even gets to HubSpot).

To be clear: this isn’t recommended by HubSpot - they made it clear this isn’t a formal recommendation - rather it is just a comment of what is a potential option…

I’ve put this in place and it works a treat.

BTW there is a Community Suggestion to allow Files to be redirected within HubSpot - vote it up if you think it’s a useful function to add.

Shot 7: Marketing Tip of the Week

Subfolders versus Subdomains

“Should I use a sub-domain for my blog, or a sub-folder - which is best?”

We’ve covered this before on the show, but the question continues to be asked by well meaning, yet concerned, customers.

They are concerned that having their blog on a subdomain won’t be ‘as good for for SEO’ as using a subfolder.

Fortuitously ahrefs had a blog post on this recently. The summary: either is fine - Google will work fine with either. And have said so many times.

Your decision most likely will be swayed by which is easier to maintain.

Shot 8: Insight of the Week

Feedback

This was highlighted as we spoke to Elliott from HubSpot.

Let’s start with what it means in the dictionary - information about reactions to a product, a person's performance of a task, etc. which is used as a basis for improvement.

This is following on from our previous episodes.  So how can we use feedback in a positive way for improvement?

We think:

1. Have an open mind
2. Actively ask for feedback
3. Always try to understand why and possibly dig deeper
4. Have a way to track the feedback, like a trello board!

Feedback offered in a supportive constructive way is a gift to the recipient!

Shot 9: HubShots Throwback of the Week

Via the HubSpot product updates blog.

This time a year ago HubSpot added the ability to control the Page Title (meta) on a blog post. This is actually quite useful - and we made it our feature of the week at the time (in episode 196).

Shot 10: Resource of the Week

HubSpot Academy - Lead Management Training: Segmentation, Nurturing, and Lead Qualification

What you'll learn:

• Create a contact management and segmentation strategy
• Understand and set up lead nurturing and qualification
• Hold your teams accountable with a service level agreement (SLA)

Should take you 1.5 hours to complete.  Take the course here.

Shot 11: Quote of the Week

“If you want to be remembered, associate your product or service with the solution to a problem.”

― Donald Miller, Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step StoryBrand Guide for Any Business

Shot 12: Bonus Links of the Week

Google Analytics 4 Event Tracking

Benjamin Mangold has done it again with a thorough post on GA4 Event Tracking.

Electric Ferries

Nothing to do with marketing, but everything to do with renewable energy - Norway recently launched the world’s largest electric ferry. It can move 200 cars and 600 people, 20 times a day between charging.

Shot 13: Big Shot of the Week

YouTube Video Builder - easy and free

Read about it here.

Shot 14: Follow Us on the Socials

Connect with HubShots here:

• HubShots YouTube channel 
• HubShots Spotify channel 
• HubShots iTunes
• HubShots Facebook group 
• HubShots Twitter 
• HubShots Twitter Show Notes
• HubShots Instagram 
• HubShots LinkedIn 

Connect with Ian Jacob on LinkedIn and Craig Bailey on LinkedIn 

HubShots, the podcast for marketing managers and sales professionals who use HubSpot, hosted by Ian Jacob from Search & Be Found and Craig Bailey from XEN Systems.

HubShots is produced by Christopher Mottram from Podcastily.

Please share this with colleagues - it helps us improve and reach more marketers.

Full Transcript of HubShots Episode 239

- Hi, everyone. Welcome to HubShots Episode 239. In this episode, we talk about HubSpot snippets, HubSpot RSS emails and our upcoming 28-day challenge. You're listening to Asia Pacific's number one HubSpot focus podcast, where we discuss HubSpot tips, tricks and strategies for growing your sales, service and marketing results. My name is Ian Jacob from Search & Be Found and with me is Craig Bailey from XEN Systems. How are you, Craig?

- I'm really well. And wasn't it just so good to catch up with Elliot from HubSpot today.

- It was fantastic, Craig.

- Good to see him in person. First time I've seen someone from HubSpot in-person for a while, a year. It's just been so much soon, but yeah, just catching up with him for a coffee. There was lots of useful insights and tips on HubSpot and feedback which talk about later in the show.

- That's right. Now, what's our growth thought of the week, Craig?

- I'm really excited about this. This is the HubShots 28-day HubSpot marketing campaign challenge is under development and will be coming soon. So this is something we're putting together and wow, didn't that just roll off the tongue, that name. But I wanna chat about, this was your idea Ian. I'm really on board with it. And you had this whole idea that, I find this as well. We're talking with clients and we often get people that have had HubSpot for six, nine, 12 months. And when we look in their portal, they actually haven't got a campaign done and in market. They've kind of got little bits, they've started. And we see this often. So listeners, if this is you and you kind of feel a bit embarrassed about it, don't be. You're actually, it's quite common. And so what we find is that HubSpot does a good job of onboarding, but they kind of tell you, oh, go and do this. They point you in the right direction. But they don't actually do it with you. And so people kind of like, there's no shortage of resources, but they don't get stuff done. So the 28 challenge we're working out all the details and the format, but we will have Zoom calls with you. We have a whole plan 20 days worth over 28 days, that's about 20 business days. So things to do and then weekly calls where we work with you to actually get it done. It's tailored, you actually get stuff done. It's practical and hands on. And this is really what you've found with your clients. Isn't it in, Ian?

- Correct. So I think what we're gonna do, Craig, is we're gonna have, at start of the week, we're gonna have a training session. Then you get to go implement during the week. And then on Thursday and on Friday, we'll have a Q&A. So you get to come back with questions and people will get to learn from each other as well. So that's the benefit of being and doing this together. It's just like this podcast, Craig, I always think back and I go five and a half years on. We would not be here, if we weren't with each other, because there are days when I don't feel like doing stuff and you don't feel like doing stuff and we just push each other. And I know when we push each other, we get stuff done. And so this is really the life learning of us doing life together and doing business together, working on HubSpot together. And we wanted to share that with our listeners.

- So I'll just expand on some of the things that you talked to me about ideas. In those calls, we would basically stay on those calls until we've answered everyone's question. We're gonna keep them small, so a little group of 10 people maximum and these little cohorts. Well, to get the most value, you must be prepared to share in the group and share your screen. Here's what I'm doing. We will actually work with you implement this. So you'll get to see us doing things. You'd probably give us access to your portal as well. We can actually help you get things in place. So it's actually hands-on. And I think this is the big difference between a lot of these courses. They kind of say, oh, go and do this, but they don't actually help you and then hands-on and do it. And over the course of those four weeks, you'll go right from setting up a campaign, having goals, getting landing pages in place. We'll look at email nurtures. We'll look at actually getting them live and in market with Facebook. We'll show you how to set up a LinkedIn campaign or Google ads or whatever's appropriate for your particular industry. We'll show you tips and tricks with each of those things. So it's right through to the end. And then the other thing you'll get at the end is reporting, how to actually track and see that it worked well and then report on it. So in the space of a month, you get a campaign live and in market. So if you've been having fun with HubSpot for six months, but you actually haven't got anything done and in market, this might just be for you.

- And listeners, you must be using HubSpot Marketing Professional to join this cohort.

- All right, so we'll have details on that in the coming weeks. We don't even have a sign up or register interest page. We just thought we'd mention it here. It's coming up while we get the format confirmed. But in the next couple of weeks, you'll be able to raise your hand and show interest.

- All right, onto our quick shots of the week, Craig. And Apple is changing labels from subscribe to podcast to follow podcast in the upcoming version of the podcast app. I find that quite interesting.

- There's been a lot of discussion around this. I guess, because people are so used to the App Store and you subscribed to--

- Which indicates some sort of monetary--

- Yeah, I use the word subscribe related to money. So you subscribe to news plus or fitness plus or whatever. So podcasts, I've seen surveys where it's like high numbers, like 47% of people thought that subscribing to a podcast and the podcast that mean you actually have to pay. So that's why they're changing it to follow. And there seems to be this change in the industry, isn't there? Where you think about subscribing actually has a monetary component. Oh, I subscribed to the New York Times. Are you paying money? Good change. So just reminder folks, you can subscribe to our show notes for free.

- Correct. And the other thing is now icons are now insertable in rich texts, Craig, and the rich text module or the rich text field in custom modules now supports icons. And if you subscribe to the show notes, you'll see an example of that within there. And why is this important you ask, is because previously you had to know some HTML and CSS to make this happen. And now with a few clicks, you can make it happen. So that's the benefit.

- I'll give you one that's really common, copyright symbol, copyright icon. Here it is, easy.

- All right, onto our HubSpot marketing feature of the week, Craig, and this is HubSpot RSS emails.

- Just gonna quickly talk about this because listeners might be wondering how we send out the show notes each week. It's not a campaign that we prepare. It's an RSS email based on a blog post. So we prepare all the show notes and it's prepared as a blog post that gets published. And then the RSS email pulls it and automatically sends it out to the list of people that have subscribed, or have they followed? We'll change from subscribers who have subscribed to the show notes. Now it's a really useful tool. I'll just mention the way we do it is a daily RSS because people say, Oh, is it weekly or whatever? We do it daily because it only picks up new content. So the reason I say daily is just like, well, if we're late in publishing, rather than waiting a whole week to send it, it'll just catch it the next day. So that's all automated. And of course we try to automate as much as stuff as possible in our agency. And this is just another good example, so RSS emails. However, I wanted to highlight a bit of a gotcha. You might've noticed that our show notes went out on Sunday.

- Yes.

- Did you notice that I--

- I did. I was waiting for the email, Craig.

- I was like why, why hasn't it gone out? I'll tell you the sequence of steps that led to this. It's kind of complex, but because we have a QA kind of process. So although we've prepared the blog post, and then as part of preparing it, we say, oh, it's gonna be scheduled for 9:00 AM on Friday. Actually 9:05 because SoundCloud is scheduled to go at nine. So 9:05, we've scheduled the post to be published. However, we have a QA process and someone else on the team has to QA everything and then he says yep, okay. So the post was saved as saying, oh, it's gonna be scheduled. But we haven't actually said scheduled, because the person at QA is that goes scheduled. And that normally happens on a Thursday. So there was a bit of a backlog. And so the person that was doing QA, it was actually on a Thursday. So they got it. They didn't actually check it and approve it till Friday, about midday. Now our RSS email is scheduled to go out at 11:15 on a Friday morning. Can you start to see where the problem's coming?

- Yes, I can see it--

- So the 11:15 one goes out. And of course there's no new content cause that thing hadn't been QA'd and gone live. So then the QA person at 12 goes, oh yeah, that's good. And they publish. And at the time of publishing, because it was scheduled for nine, the publish date is set for 9:00 AM on a Friday. You see what's happening? Even though they didn't actually do it till noon on Friday. So you think, oh no worries. The RSS email on Saturday will catch it. No, because the RSS email on Saturday goes, oh, was there anything after 11:15 on Friday? And because the post, even though it'd been done at noon, was published at nine, so it missed it. So there's a little gotcha just in process. Anyway, how do I get around it? I just changed the publish date to Sunday. By the time I caught it--

- And then it got picked up.

- Then it got picked up from the RSS email on Sunday that went out. So there you go. Shows you the power of RSS emails, but also a little bit of a gotcha there.

- So am I understanding this right, Craig, that an email only gets triggered if there is new content that's been picked up. So when you say it's a daily email, it's looking for something new every day and if that's not happening, then it's not sending.

- Correct.

- Gotcha. All right, HubSpot sales feature of the week, Craig. And this is using the power of HubSpot snippets. And remember listeners, you can use the system-wide to speed up responses and avoid mistakes and time finding customer and company information. I've put an example there of a snippet that one of our customers use. And you can use this across the system, but they were using contact details and company details in this snippet because I found out sales were spending lots of time trying to dig up information about our customers, to send it to their accounting team, to get a particular account created in SAP. And so I said, well, let me help you speed up this process. So we were collecting the data into HubSpot. There are some custom fields in there, like in Australia we have the Australian business number. And so we're collecting those details. So when we had to get the account created, it was really, let's put this snippet into a task and send it off to the person in accounts to fulfill it. So there's a good example of snippets. Now another pro tip listeners, when you are creating snippets, create the folders and organize your snippets correctly instead of having it all in the root, because that'll help you as your team grows and as things grow within HubSpot, it'll help you keep everything organized. And as a bonus, if you get the show notes, there is an academy lesson about snippets as well. Okay, the HubSpot wishlist item of the week, Craig.

- That's a really, really small use case. I'd love to just be able to A/B test menus. Would this be of interest to you?

- I'd Love that, Craig?

- And do you know what prompted this? Because on our HubSpot site menu, it says newsletter and I'd love to A/B test newsletter, show notes or subscribe. That's just a simple example.

- So Craig, I'll tell you one thing that we do is, in the menu section, we don't use the menu, but we have a call to action at the top right. We run tests in a CTA that switches it out and test it. So that's another way.

- That's one work around or the other one was actually replacing the menu with actually a rich text field and just having links in the content that you could switch out. Cause I wanted to actually have smart, not only A/B test menus with smart menus, and there's no real way to do that and I'll give you some examples. Let's say you've got a customer come back or you've got a VIP piece where you'd love to be able to change the menu based on that. So that's really gotta to be a CTA based thing or a rich text thing. But I would just love to have some standard menus and switch between them to test.

- That's a good idea. All right, the HubSpot gotcha of the week Craig. And this is something we spoke about before, about redirecting HubSpot files.

- So I'll revisit this from last week. You might remember I managed to take down a site cause I put in quite a dodgy flexible redirect--

- How could you do that, Craig? Tell me.

- I know. I am still amazed of it. Anyway there you go. That's how to take down HubSpot. Go crazy with flexible redirects, but it still had the problem. I'll reiterate the problem as we mentioned last time. We've got a client, they've got a PDF of an ebook and it has been indexed in Google. And in fact it's ranking number one for quite a good term. So we don't want to lose that ranking. So we've taken all the content and we wanted to put it on a pillar page, which we've done. Now all we wanna do is redirect that PDF to the pillar page. It's fun for the content to be there cause it's in there. So it's not like we're trying to gauge the content. It's just that we want a page to be ranking for it not the actual e-book. So all the e-book contents in a full page. How do you redirect it? You can't. So I've been through HubSpot support, backwards and forwards and they can't do it. And shout out to Daniel Bakshi, sales engineer. So actually Ping Tim. He did some internal checking, pulled some strings. They came back and I'm gonna tell you how we've actually got this working. They were quite clear to say, they're not suggesting this. This is not a recommendation. It's more just a, here's something you could do. We're not really recommending it. But there was like if you could somehow proxy that URL. So enter Cloudflare where we manage the DNS. Cloudflare has page rules. So from Cloudflare, we're grabbing just that URL of the PDF and redirecting it to the page. So before it even gets to HubSpot to take over. So client sites, so that's the answer. Cloudflare page rules are your friend if you're using Cloudflare for your DNS, which I would recommend.

- All right, our marketing tip of the week, Craig. Sub-folders versus sub-domains? Should I use a sub-domain for my blog or a sub-folder? And which is best?

- Do you get this question from customers?

- All the time, Craig.

- All the time, I still get them asking. And people have quite strong opinions on this. We've covered this on the show before, by the way. However, the answer has not changed. And the answer is, it doesn't matter. Google will look at both. And in fact, the answer to which one should I choose is actually what's easier to maintain. So for many people actually having it on a sub domain is easier to maintain. Maybe they're separate systems, but maybe if you've got it all in one and it's all in HubSpot, well, I have a folder through there. So we've got a link off to a new Ahrefs article, actually quotes Google and many cases, saying it doesn't matter, Google can work it out. So don't be worried about that. And so folks, it just comes down to what's easiest for you to implement and maintain.

- And if we look at HubSpot, everything is on blog.hubspot.com.

- So they've got a sub domain.

- Exactly.

- Others have got sub folders.

- Onto our insight of the week, Craig. This is gonna be about feedback. And this was following our conversation with Elliott from HubSpot.

- Shout out to Elliot. So good catching up with you today.

- He's a good egg, isn't he?

- He is.

- Now why we were thinking about this because we were sharing a lot of feedback with each other about product, about systems, about processes that way.

- Can I just jump in when you say feedback, do you mean Craig whingeing about stuff?

- No, so lemme take a step backwards here, Craig. Let me start with, what is the dictionary meaning of feedback? It says information about reactions to a product, a person's performance of a task, which is used as a basis for improvement. So I think that's really the key here. How do we use feedback for a basis of improvement? And I'd also like listeners to understand that over the last few episodes, we've really been unpacking a lot of stuff around these kinds of topics, just so that we can get a better understanding of how to be better at what we do. So how can we use feedback for a positive way of improvement, Craig? So I think the first thing is having an open mind. Like I often think when we try to understand more about ourselves and more about a situation is we need to be open to learning or hearing from others. That's a big thing. I think the other thing is actively asking for feedback. So I think often people don't ask for feedback and even in tough times, they don't ask for help. So that's another scenario which I've had to change. I think always try to understand and ask more questions and dig deeper. So ask why. In some training I did not so long ago, I think one of the things they suggested to us was asking somebody why five times to really get to the real reason. Because if you keep asking why, people keep reiterating and trying to help you understand why that happened or why that was not good or why it could have been better and you get to the real crux of it. And I think another thing is, have a way to track feedback. And I think in one of our previous episodes, we talked about, with NPS, having something simple as a free Trello board where you can track feedback and you can see what's going on and you can address it without getting it and then doing nothing with it. Closing this off, I love what you said. Feedback offered in a supportive constructive way is a gift to the recipient.

- Supportive constructive way. By the way, I just want to say, is this the Elliot Prize Show? Because I wanna say to Elliot because he listened to me, carry on. Like I was having a real whinge complaining about a bunch of things. He was very receptive. I think he took feedback really well. And it wasn't about him by the way. It was about HubSpot stuff. And I'm actually gonna mention one of them in a second because well, for various reasons, but he took it and he didn't take it personally. He didn't try defending, he just said, yeah, that's really good and what about this? And it was really good, a great way, Ian. And he will take that back internally and probably improve things. And I actually just feel even better about HubSpot after having that time with him. So if Elliot, if you're listening to this, I know he doesn't listen to podcasts, but if he did, thank you for that, I thought that was really useful. I'll talk about some of the feedback I gave, which was about HubSpot support, which of course he's not, that's not his area at all. He's not at all involved in that. So it's not at all a reflection on him. However, I mentioned that I thought HubSpot support has gotten worse slightly. I wouldn't normally mention a negative on the show, but I do want listeners to know that for all the things I do praise HubSpot about, I also do crumble about things when I don't think they're performing. And so I like to mention that because if I do say something good, it's not just me drinking the Kool-Aid. It's like, ah, that is actually good. And there are things that they don't do well. And sometimes I just think support has been like this lately. I've had two experiences in the last week when I've thought, that's really bad HubSpot support. And in fact, really bad advice that they've given. And I think it's because they've got juniors that haven't been trained up properly and they may be too busy. The first thing they do is just, we just do a quick Google and come back with the first result, which is just really bad. And the reason I'm calling it out is because it's so unusual. HubSpot support is normally something that we hold in such really high regard. It's been so good. And we've just noticed really degrading lately. And I don't know why that is. Maybe it's unlucky and maybe it's a blip or, and I'm scared, do you remember when we said a year ago with, it was like--

- Yes, I recall that.

- We would go, hi, the telltale sign when HubSpot's about to be acquired is when they pump up all their numbers and they withdraw, they cut costs. And like I said at the time jokingly are, if customer support goes down, we'll know they're about to be acquired. I'm joking. And I have no inside knowledge, by the way, in fact, I'm just totally making this up, but it always worries me when you see a company that's had excellent support, something stumbles like this, like what's going on? That it's so important and it's such a differentiator. I just don't know why. So here's an example of feedback that I've, well, I'm giving internally through back channels and maybe mentioning on the show. I haven't actually written this in the show notes. I didn't want it to be in writing. So this is just on the show for people that listen. But this is really important. And as Elliot said, it's like, well, if he wasn't getting that feedback from people, how would they know? Because they're not gonna be getting it from metrics. By the way, I don't give them writings on, support, when they give bad answers, I used to go, oh, that's a five, but I know they get counts to their incentives and I'm actually affecting someone's career, perhaps bonuses by giving them a bad score. So I actually don't do that. I actually think it's a reflection on HubSpot, not the actual person. So then giving that feedback, how do they get that feedback? They wouldn't know from me otherwise. And that's the great thing about having a channel like Elliot or some other way to communicate that feedback and know it's gonna be pushed up.

- And I don't think this is the first time that we're going through this, Craig. I remember many, many years ago, possibly when I first joined or just before I joined and started using HubSpot, I recall that there was a really bad slump with support. And I think it was brought to the attention of Dharmesh and Brian and they did actually do something about it. And they went about the change. Again, they've hit some amazing milestones in terms of 1 billion in annual recurring revenue, a hundred thousand customers globally. So again, I'm sure there are some new challenges that they're facing as they grow and mature. So let's hope it's just one of those little bumps along the road and we see more great support. All right, Craig, onto our HubShots throwback of the week. And this is what was happening a year ago. HubSpot gave you the ability to control the page title on a blog post.

- Before the blog post, page title just inherited the blog post's title, and you can separate them out. We were so excited about it a year ago. We actually mentioned it on the show as the feature of the week. So that was a year ago, Ian.

- On episode 196 here, Craig. Now Craig, I'm just gonna ask you a question. Why on earth would people think that this is important?

- Oh, well this is only with people that have got their SEO nerd caps on. So page title is what appears in the browser tab, for example. Like Google users as a hint for what they use in the Google results. Not always, Google tends to rewrite them more often than not these days, but that might be different to the actual blog post title itself. Blog post, what would you call it?

- Heading?

- Heading, maybe. I don't wanna use the word, cause page title has something as a meta line which is different to the, like the post name. So it just means that the post name itself can be quite descriptive. Whereas the page title for that post can be much more optimized for Google.

- Gotcha. All right, our resource of the week, Craig. And this is from the HubSpot Academy. It's about lead measurement training, segmentation nurturing and lead qualification. It's about one and a half hours to do this course. It says you will create a contact management and segmentation strategy, understand how to set up lead nurturing and qualification and hold your teams accountable with a service level agreement. Now there's one that we haven't talked about for a long time. But listeners, I would definitely encourage you all to do this and keep ahead of the game because as more and more people join and we've been training quite a few people of recent. People seem to go through a cycle where they understand that the team grows and then people that joined the team haven't been appropriately trained. And so now you've got these SLAs in place or you've got a strategy for your segmentation and they don't understand the strategy for doing all of that. And so you get all of these random lists created, you don't understand lead quality and how things should be passing between teams. So it's really important. I think we've almost got to be thinking about doing this on a quarterly basis about getting everybody on the same page and saying, hey, this is what our strategy is, and this is how we're gonna make it better. And this is how we're gonna work together. Because as teams grow, I tend to find it becomes increasingly difficult for people to work or they go, oh, there's too many people in these meetings. We can't talk to each other. And I think it's really important. We've got to get this right, because I see across organizations, people that work with sales and marketing work well together and they openly share about things that are happening, things that they're getting stuck with, how they can improve it. And when the two work collaboratively, you get a so much better result.

- I don't like the word SLA or service level agreement. There's something about it. This sounds contract. It sounds harsh--

- It sounds IT, isn't it?

- Well, it's IT, but it's also, I demand that you give me this level of service or else there's penalties. So I think whenever I hear service level agreement, I hear penalties and I don't like that. So when you just said collaborative, I'd rather another word, collaborative goals, let's say.

- That's exactly right.

- So we've documented our collaborative goals. I think that's a blocker. How many of your clients actually have SLAs between sales and marketing?

- None.

- None. And I'm pretty sure it's because people don't think of SLAs in that way. And there's lots of HubSpot Academy courses that do it and they do it themselves. But yeah, our clients don't embrace it. I think that needs another terminology.

- All right, quote of the week, Craig. And this is from Donald Miller, from "Marketing Made Simple: A Step-By-Step StoryBrand Guide for Any Business". It says, if you want to be remembered, associate your product or service with the solution to a problem. Now Craig there's some Cracker bonus links of the week.

- Yeah, we're gonna mention them all. But just to call out electric ferries, have you seen this? Nothing to do with marketing, Ian.

- But no.

- Norway has launched an electric ferry. So this is great for renewables. It's got mega batteries on it. It can take up to 60 cars--

- No, 200 cars--

- And 600 people, 20 times a day, just cruising across a channel. They've there, all electric, God, it's the future.

- So there you have it listeners. And there is a big shot of the week, which is--

- We've got an iPhone about YouTube video builder.

- That's right. Like it said, it's easy and free. Let's see how easy that one is.

- That's a little animated GIF or GIF there.

- That's right.

- Is that gonna work in the email and the show notes?

- We should test it out.

- It'll work on the blog post.

- I think it does.

- I think it will.

- Because, you know on HubSpot Videos, when you send the video, the kind of animated GIF.

- There you go.

- If you haven't, please connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a note saying that you listened to the show. And as always, we appreciate you listening to us. Please sign up for the show notes at hubshots.com/subscribe. And if you've got any questions or you want anything to be resolved or you've got a little blocker, please send it to us. We'd love to see if we can resolve it for you.

- What about if you've got something that you'd love to see in the HubShots HubSpot marketing campaign challenge?

- Yeah, that sounds like a tongue twister there, Craig. Yeah, send us any feedback of anything you would like to see.

- Send us, I love it.

- Reply to the email and Craig will get it and we will respond back to you. Well Craig, until next week.

- Catch you later, Ian.

- Hey there, thanks for listening to this episode of HubShots. To get the latest show notes, HubSpot tips and resources, sign up at hubshots.com. You can also book time with us to help you grow better with HubSpot.