Unlocking HubSpot for SaaS

The software as a Service (SaaS) model’s flexibility means it has widespread applications within both B2B and B2C circles. If we take cloud software as one example, the market has experienced remarkable growth in recent times, more than doubling in size between 2015 and 2020 alone, while experts predict that by 2024, the SaaS market will be valued at around $232 billion (£182 billion). 

This remarkable surge can be attributed to several factors, including the widespread adoption of cloud computing, the surging demand for mobile applications, and the emergence of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

For SaaS companies themselves, managing this level of growth will become a key challenge, if it hasn’t already. The high volume of contacts in your systems, coupled with the importance of business processes critical to the SaaS model, such as renewal management, makes it vital that you adopt robust customer relationship management (CRM) software capable of handling these challenges and effectively managing the data you need to grow.

SaaS companies can greatly benefit from adopting HubSpot as their business platform. 

HubSpot offers an all-in-one solution that helps streamline and automate various key processes. Using it, you can effectively manage your leads, track customer interactions, and nurture relationships. HubSpot also provides valuable insights and analytics, allowing you to make data-driven decisions and optimise your marketing strategies. The platform offers smooth integration with other popular SaaS tools, vital for achieving a joined-up experience.

At the enterprise level in particular, where SaaS companies can be characterised by a huge volume of moving parts behind the scenes, HubSpot helps you keep everything connected.

By adopting HubSpot, you can not only manage your data and grow your customer base but keep your customers coming back, time and time again, when their subscription terms end.

1. Streamlined lead generation 

As you’d expect from any fast-growing industry, the SaaS scene is a competitive space. Through HubSpot’s lead generation tools, companies operating in this highly contested area can easily capture and qualify leads, ensuring that they’re targeting the right audience. 

• Leverage powerful lead capture forms, which allow you to easily create attractive and customisable forms to capture valuable information from your website visitors.
• The platform also offers lead scoring capabilities, enabling you to prioritise and focus on the most qualified leads and automatically disqualify those outside of your ideal customer profile.
• A detailed set of analytics and reporting tools gives you deep insights into your lead generation efforts, helping you optimise your strategies. 

Whether you're a growing start-up or an enterprise, HubSpot's lead generation tools can help you attract, engage, and convert more leads, driving your business towards success.

2. Enhanced customer segmentation and targeting

HubSpot also provides automation capabilities that enable personalised lead nurturing. In an industry that typically requires its customers to be locked into a contract for an extended period of time, the ability to engage your buyers with the right content at the right time is key.

This not only increases the chances of conversion but also conversation, keeping your company front of mind and helping to build lasting, long-term relationships with customers who might otherwise move away from the service when their contract terms come to an end. 

3. Improved sales, marketing, and service alignment

The other side of an effective renewals strategy is a strong internal process. Sales and marketing alignment is key to this, ensuring contract end dates are routinely monitored so that customers can be communicated with in a timely, specific manner. 

HubSpot’s intuitive interface allows SaaS companies to achieve this; by leveraging its powerful CRM, you can track and manage existing customers as effectively as you do new leads, ensuring that no potential renewal deal falls through the cracks. HubSpot's email marketing capabilities make lead nurturing and communication effortless, building relationships and helping you to retain more customers. With HubSpot, you can align your sales and marketing teams, ensuring that they’re working towards the same goal.

HubSpot offers a variety of standard objects — basic building blocks of information — such as contacts, companies, and deals. But what about when you need a non-standard object, for example customer subscriptions? 

Fortunately, you’re not limited to using HubSpot's out-of-the-box objects. The Custom Objects feature allows you to build a 'Subscriptions' object all of your own, which you can use to track where your customer is on their journey with you. (Find out how below.)

Custom Object records — such as a Subscription record — can be associated with other objects records within your database. For example, if it's a B2B subscription, you could associate the subscription record with the company and multiple individual users (contact records).

How to track subscriptions in Marketing Hub Enterprise

If you have Marketing Hub Enterprise and track subscriptions with a custom object:

1. Create your ‘Subscriptions’ object. At a basic level you might use fields like:
   1. Subscription type (if you have different levels)
   2. Start date/end date
   3. Subscription cost (may be different for each depending on types/discounts offered
2. Identify key milestones in the subscription lifecycle. These could be:
   1. First week of use
   2. Half way through the subscription
   3. One month before the renewal
   4. Activity-based
3. Create emails that speak to your customer at each different stage, and set up a workflow using triggers from your custom object’s start date, end date, subscription type or others to send the emails at the right time

Between its CRM capabilities and its tools for sending timely, relevant renewal reminders and other offers or incentives, HubSpot allows you to effectively manage and nurture your customer relationships, leading to increased renewals and customer satisfaction. 

How can you use HubSpot to achieve this?

How to create a targeted email nurturing campaign for customer retention

With HubSpot, you can easily segment your audience based on their interests, behaviour, and preferences. This allows you to create personalised and relevant content, for distribution via email or any other channel, that resonates with your customers. If you have HubSpot’s Enterprise subscription, you can be even more targeted in your email nurturing by tracking subscriptions with custom objects.

If you have Marketing Hub Starter or Pro:

1. Start by identifying your target audience and their pain points. Then, create a series of emails that address these pain points and provide valuable solutions. 
2. To schedule and send these emails to the right audience, at the right time, start by logging in to your HubSpot account and navigate to the email tool. From there, you can create a new email or choose from a range of professionally designed templates. 
3. Once you've crafted your message, it's time to personalise it. HubSpot allows you to add custom contact properties, such as the recipient's name or company, directly into the email content. This personal touch helps to create a connection with your audience and increase engagement. 
4. Next, set up a workflow to automate the email sending process. HubSpot offers a user-friendly visual editor that allows you to define the triggers and actions for your email automation. You can segment your contacts based on various criteria, such as their engagement level or specific behaviours on your website. 
5. Finally, schedule the email to be sent at the optimal time for your audience. HubSpot's email automation tools enable you to choose the date and time when your message will land in your recipients' inboxes.

By making use of these features, you can streamline your email marketing efforts and deliver personalised content that resonates with your audience, boosting customer retention.

How to use HubSpot's customer feedback tool for customer satisfaction

HubSpot's customer feedback tool is a game-changer in the SaaS space. The step-by-step process of using this tool is simple and effective for enhancing customer experience. 

1. In HubSpot, navigate to the "Service" tab and select "Feedback Surveys" from the dropdown menu. 
2. Next, click on the "Create Survey" button to start creating your feedback survey. Here, you can customise the survey by adding fields, choosing question types, and even incorporating your brand's logo and colours. 
3. After customising the survey, save and publish it to generate an automated email or a unique feedback link. Now, you can distribute this link to your customers through various channels like email, social media, or embedding it on your website. 
4. As customers start providing feedback, you can view and manage all the responses in the "Feedback" section. HubSpot's customer feedback tool also provides insightful analytics, allowing you to measure sentiment, track trends, and identify areas for improvement. 

With this comprehensive tool, you can effectively gather, analyse, and act upon customer feedback, giving you clear insights into what your customers value about your service, how much they might be willing to pay, and other invaluable details.

In today's competitive SaaS landscape, it's crucial for businesses to have an effective sales targeting strategy. One tool that can significantly enhance sales targeting accuracy is HubSpot's predictive lead scoring.

This innovative feature leverages advanced algorithms and machine learning to analyse a wide range of data points, including lead demographics, behaviour, and engagement history. By using this predictive lead scoring system, businesses can better understand and prioritise their leads based on their likelihood to convert. This means that sales teams can focus their efforts on the most promising prospects and tailor their messaging and approach accordingly.

Sales targeting is crucial for SaaS companies as it helps them identify and reach their ideal customers effectively. By focusing on specific market segments, you can tailor your marketing messages to address the pain points and needs of their target audience. This enables you to stand out in a crowded market and attract customers who are most likely to benefit from your software solution. By using HubSpot’s predictive lead scoring to hone in on your target market, you can increase your conversion rates, drive revenue growth, and improve your retention rates. 

If you have the resources and the know-how in-house to get your teams up and running with HubSpot, you might just need guided onboarding (our hands-off service). If you want us to do it all for you and create a HubSpot setup that aligns exactly with your business, you might need an advanced implementation. As the name probably suggests, this is more hands-on.

Guided onboarding

You tell us what your goals are for the Hubs you are buying, and we’ll build an onboarding plan just for you. We’ll guide you through the setup, and if you need extra advice on anything from integrations and data to merging portals, we can add on some extra consulting.

To get started, book a call.

Advanced implementations

We’ll scope and build for you the HubSpot portal that will transform your business. That might be a multi-country unit setup like we created for GlobeEducate, entirely customised functionality like for VFE, or setting up HubSpot to work across different business units like CEG. Whatever your requirements, your portal will be expertly configured to work for you.

You need a CRM expert or someone to help you with a tricky integration. Maybe you’re migrating or building a new process automation framework. Whatever the particulars of your requirements, we’ll get your HubSpot platform to deliver exactly what it is you want.

We’re yet to tackle a project where we haven’t found a shortcut or an exciting new approach to a problem. Where we haven’t given our client a new lens to see a HubSpot solution through, or spotted something that hadn’t been considered.

Crucially, as we focus on the big picture, we’ll make sure your system is perfectly aligned across your business, with data flowing from sales to marketing to customer service.

There are well over 6,000 HubSpot solutions partners out there. Before you decide, you’ll want to make sure your HubSpot partner is qualified to handle the technical build. You’ll need an Elite HubSpot partner that’s Advanced Implementation Certified. We’re both.

We’ve demonstrated our skills to HubSpot and are experts when it comes to complex builds. Our consultants spend half a day each week sharpening their HubSpot skills. They test new tools, earn certificates, and take part in global events. That means every expert you work with spends more than 150 hours a year learning things that help you get the most from your HubSpot investment.

As an Elite Solutions partner, we give you a service guarantee only one in a hundred global partners can offer.