How HubSpot’s New GenAI Play Is Shaking Up Content Creation

This week on Funnel Frontier: Discover HubSpot's latest GenAI as your new co-pilot in digital marketing, Salesforce-Informatica deal that wasn't, and more!

This week:

• HubSpot re-launches content hub with genAI

• Salesforce is not buying Informatica

• AI-generated content and “the experience era” (via IDC)

• Wrike vs monday.com

• Inside sales, outside sales (via Pipedrive)

Stat of the Week 

80% of startup founders say AI has yielded positive results in customer experience and success. (HubSpot)

HubSpot re-launches content hub, this time with genAI

You know that feeling when an old neighborhood you lived in gets gentrified? Well, get ready to feel that way again—HubSpot has just “genAI-ified” its Content Hub.

This enhancement, unveiled at the company’s biannual Spotlight showcase, intends to transform mundane content creation into intertwingled innovation. 

Once again, AI is the co-pilot—this time for digital marketing—crafting texts and images, remixing single assets for content variation, and ensuring your brand's voice remains consistent across communication channels. 

It can also customize audio for podcasts and transform written content into spoken word, ensuring your message resonates across the big dipper of diverse audiences. 

Plus there’s a Members Blog and a Gated Content Library for content management and lead capture. 

HubSpot was a real pioneer in inbound content marketing. But as Nicholas Holland, HubSpot’s VP of product, says: “There was just an explosion of how people were doing content marketing, yet we had stayed frozen in time because we had invested in the CMS.” 

Now they’re unfrozen, ready for a time when content creation is less about manual labor and more about strategic command.

Peep the ultimate walkthrough for the updated platform.

The Week @ CRM.org

How to Choose a CRM. For starters, before you blast off, strap in for some trial runs. 

Top 10 CRM Certification. A must-have if you’d like to jump from crew member to captain.

The Best CRM Analytics Tools. Analytical CRM is your personal Hubble telescope for customers, zooming in on those customer details.

Weekly Bloom

The Power Paradox: How Empathy becomes Tyranny. Started as Mr. Nice, ended as Emperor Palpatine. Avoid the pitfalls of powering up.

Salesforce is not buying Informatica

In mid-April, rumors began percolating about CRM behemoth Salesforce acquiring data management company Informatica. 

Things looked juicy. And after all, Salesforce has absorbed Slack, Tableau, and MuleSoft in just the last few years—room for one more? 

Apparently not. Informatica has shut the airlock and blasted the rumor-morph into the abyss.

In an update ahead of Q1 2024 financial results, the company took the unusual step of plain-stating it wasn’t engaged in sale talks with anyone.

Wall Street wasn’t so chuffed on the deal anyway. As whispers of this corporate romance leaked, Salesforce shares tumbled about 10%. Investors “got the ick” over splurging on a company perceived as offering nothing-too-new for too-much-dough.

Ray Wang of Constellation Research opined that: “The potential acquisition of Informatica is quite curious as the client base and tech is not cutting-edge. Although it could potentially solve a data integration challenge that Salesforce has had, Data Cloud is already a strong offering, so I’m not sure if this deal makes sense.”

Salesforce has a torrid history of assertive acquisitions, boasting a whopping 74 buyouts since its 1999 birth. 

A recent focus on profitability seems to have quieted its voracious M&A appetite… for now.

Stellar Strategies: Tips & Tricks for Sales, Marketing & Service

AI and winning in the “experience-orchestrated business” era (via IDC)

In the era of AI, experience will be the great differentiator. So says a report from the International Data Corporation (IDC). 

IDC’s recent research indicates that 66% of organizations are exploring genAI, while 40% of legacy application code has been replaced with genAI applications. In other words, genAI is fast becoming ubiquitous.

Going beyond “keeping up with the AI Joneses” means bringing the swagger. To turn each touchpoint into a strategic advantage, IDC recommends:

• Being trusty—share knowledge, and be transparent about privacy and data 

• Being authentic—bake that authenticity into the brand DNA

• Being intelligent with content creation—leverage genAI to craft engaging and authentic content, without losing the human touch

Wrike versus monday.com

In the project management software verse, Wrike and monday.com are two baddies sharing a constellation of features. 

However, the alien is in the details. 

Wrike is robust, seemingly tailor-made for sprawling enterprises—the kind big enough to have their own weather. 

Meanwhile, Monday.com, with its sleek, user-friendly interface, tends to attract zippier startups and small biz.

It's not just a battle over features but a strategic skirmish over pricing and operational context. If it’s frugality-or-flight, monday.com wins the fedora tip. But scope? I like Wrike.

Of course, before you click to pick, it’s wise to scout deeper.

Fortunately, we’ve got a big article comparing the two.

Building inside and outside sales teams (via Pipedrive)

It’s not good to use our “outside voice” inside. 

Similarly, inside sales and outside sales need to be finessed differently.

Inside sales involves remote techniques to close deals at warp speed. Outside sales, on the other hand, is more exploratory and requires face-to-face interaction and travel. 

Technology empowers inside sales to rapidly expand its universe, but outside sales remains crucial for complex negotiations in uncharted territories.

Post-covid, hiring hybrid reps who do both is a viable strategy. But the old school ethos of silo-ing inside/outside retains its merits.

Feel like you’re on the outside looking inside (or vice versa)? Check Pipedrive’s sales rep strategy guide here.

Galactic Gourmet

CRM blips from around the web

Nimble CRM partners with PhoneBurner. Nimble CRM now integrates with PhoneBurner,  offering in-app outbound calling tools for quicker, more streamlined phone-related workflows.

Clazar raises $10 Million in Series A funding. The cloud go-to-market (GTM) vendor says it will use the funds to expand its offerings, better linking cloud GTM with “source of truth” tools like CRM and helping companies find value/grow revenue via cloud marketplaces.

Call management CRM Runo gains $1.5 million in pre-Series A funding. The India-based startup aims to expand and hire in product and development. One of their goals is implementing CRM at the level of the SIM card.

HubSpot expands to India, opening a new office in Bengaluru. HubSpot says it has 1,000+ customers in India already, and aims to boost this figure with a strategic local presence. 

Salesforce announces Zero Copy Partner Network. The initiative seeks to provide bidirectional zero copy integrations with Salesforce Data Cloud. It includes new integrations with Microsoft, and makes zero copy integration available to customers of Salesforce industry partners.

Astronomical Assets

Significant Stock Moves from Last Week

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