HubSpot adds 200 features to platform, much of it agentic AI

HubSpot deepened its foray into agentic AI with new features built for the SMBs that make up its customer base.

More than 20 Breeze generative AI agents, spread across marketing, sales and CRM, are among the 200 features previewed at its Inbound user conference in Las Vegas this week. Most are currently in public or private beta. The agents build on the more rudimentary Breeze agents released earlier this year.

For all three teams -- sales, service and marketing -- HubSpot previewed Data Agent, which scans a user's customer data and the web to research customers or prospects; Customer Agent, which summarizes customer conversations, answers their questions, and qualifies prospects; and Prospecting Agent, which monitors prospects for buying signals and performs outreach.

HubSpot's approach to AI is tactical and task-based, much like Salesforce used to be in its early days for AI deployment, said Liz Miller, an analyst at Constellation Research.

Everyone deploying agentic AI for CX right now -- regardless of vendor -- is trying to extract value from the technology, which has been difficult so far, Miller continued. Still, she added that HubSpot's approach enables line-of-business users to try AI automations without developers, which is exactly what fast-moving medium-sized businesses need right now.

"I'm not going to say it's like hitting the easy button, because nothing about AI is truly easy right now," Miller said. "But HubSpot is trying to make this as easy as possible … very accessible and practical."

Pretrained AI agents tailored to sales, marketing and service teams will also be included in the latest updates. Sales users will receive numerous agents that perform firmographic research, fill out requests for proposals and recap sales calls. Marketing users will receive agents that create landing pages for account-based management outreach, search video clips and draft blog and social media posts.

These will be available in the Breeze Marketplace, a site HubSpot plans to launch in public beta today. HubSpot also plans to release Breeze Studio, a platform that enables users to create custom AI agents for marketing to particular personas and segments, or managing sales processes specific to their companies.

Loop, HubSpot's new marketing playbook, will be unveiled today. It sticks to the company's traditional inbound marketing principles of customer education, creating value and building relationships. But it updates the company's suggested approach to marketing by considering new and different channels and methods HubSpot users use to reach customers, with the emergence of generative AI search and agentic AI for automation.

Loop calls for a combination of humans and AI tools to meet customers where they are, whether reading an AI summary on Google or on a call with customer service. Giving HubSpot users -- marketers, commerce leaders, service execs and content people -- new strategies to deal with realities such as Google AI summary killing web traffic to their sites will be well received, Miller predicted.

"Companies that are going to lead in this AI era are going to have the smartest hybrid teams," said Nicholas Holland, senior vice president of product and head of AI at HubSpot. "We're using that [idea] quite a bit when we talk internally. It's where humans lead, and the AI accelerates."

Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? Email him.