HubSpot’s recent data hack raises serious questions about the safety and security of our data. Mike and Hannah discuss the implications of this data breach and explore what it could mean for both marketers and businesses.

They also talk about the latest updates from Salesforce’s Summer 24 release, share their insights on effective strategies for lead conversion, and discuss the considerations marketers should keep in mind when deciding between marketing automation platforms and dedicated social media scheduling platforms.

Catch up with Napier’s latest on-demand webinar “Segmentation Secrets: 9 Ways to Target the Right Audience”: https://napier-partnership-limited.webinargeek.com/segmentation-secrets-9-ways-to-target-the-right-audience

Acton Webinar “Crafting A Modern Love Lead Story: Strategies for Effective Lead to Pipeline Conversion”: https://success.act-on.com/acton/fs/blocks/showLandingPage/a/9883/p/p-0c7b/t/page/fm/0

Listen to the podcast now via the links below:

About Napier

Napier is a PR-lead, full service marketing agency that specialises in the B2B technology sector. We work closely with our clients to build campaigns, focusing on achieving results that have a significant positive impact on their businesses and which, above all, ensure maximum return on their investment.

About Mike Maynard

Mike is the Managing Director/CEO of Napier, a PR and marketing agency for B2B technology companies. A self-confessed geek who loves talking about technology, he believes that combining the measurement, accountability and innovation that he learnt as an engineer with a passion for communicating ensures Napier delivers great campaigns and tangible return on investment.

About Hannah Wehrly

Hannah is the Head of Business Development and Marketing at Napier and leads on pitching, proposal writing, lead nurturing, email marketing, social media and content creation. Hannah joined the Napier team back in 2017 as a Marketing Specialist after completing her degree in Marketing and Communications, and her role focuses on developing new relationships with potential clients.

 Time Stamps

[00:53.4] – Mike and Hannah discuss the recent HubSpot hack and what this could mean for marketers.

[04:34.6] – Hannah talks about Salesforce’s Summer 24 releases, including the Einstein AI tool and their new large language model.

[10:17.6] – Mike and Hannah talk about a recent Acton webinar and strategies for lead conversion.

[13:13.1] – Insightful tip of the week: should marketers use their marketing automation for social media scheduling and analytics?

Follow Mike and Hannah:

Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/

Hannah Wehrly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-wehrly-b0706a107/

Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/

Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more discussions about the latest in Marketing Automation and connect with us on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes. We’d also appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform.

Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast – Marketing B2B Technology: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/marketing-b2b-technology/id1485417724

Transcript: Marketing Automation Moment Episode 17 – Is your data safe? HubSpot’s Hack Creates Concerns

Speakers: Mike Maynard, Hannah Wherly

Hannah: Welcome to the Marketing Automation Moment Podcast. I’m Hannah Kelly.

Mike: And I’m Mike Maynard. This is Napier’s podcast to tell you about the latest news from the world of marketing automation.

Hannah: Welcome to the Marketing Automation Moment Podcast. I’m Hannah Wehrly

Mike: and I’m Mike Maynard

Hannah: and today we talk about the HubSpot data hack.

Mike: I moan about the name of a new Salesforce feature,

Hannah:  we discuss act on the modern lead story webinar.

Mike: And finally, Hannah comes up with some great advice about using marketing automation platforms to post on social media.

Hannah:  Hi, Mike, welcome back to another episode of the market automation moment podcast. How you doing? It’s been a while since we chatted.

Mike: It’s great to chat to you again. I mean, obviously, we’re a little quieter with the podcast during the summer when this is happening. But I think actually, we got some interesting news this week.

Hannah: We absolutely do, Mike. And I’m going to dive straight in because we had an interesting bit of news come from HubSpot. And that’s that someone has attempted to hack their data. Now this is major because a big part of my automation platform is that your data is safe. You know everything sits on there. Should we as marketers be worried that our data isn’t as safe as they claim it to be?

Mike: Well, I think we should be worried. And I’m not sure if you’re aware. This is not the first time HubSpot has been hacked a couple of years ago, there was a hack that targeted cryptocurrency clients of HubSpot. Oh, I wasn’t aware of that. So I think we should be concerned. And there’s a couple of reasons of concern. I mean, I think it’s fair to say that in terms of IT security, someone like a HubSpot is probably better than most of us marketers. But the problem is, is there’s so many people who can then get access into the data and particularly with HubSpot, because they have a very interactive approach to their customers. And they’re very supportive. They quite often have multiple internal HubSpot people with access to data. So I think that’s got to be a bit of a concern. Hopefully, they’re going to be much more secure than any of us marketers would be, but in reality, they’re a much bigger target as well, because you gain access to multiple accounts.

Hannah: I think that’s such a stark reminder, Mike about how vulnerable our data is. And I have to say, as well as a little bit disappointed, because I actually read the news first on TechCrunch. And they actually stated that until TechCrunch reached out to them. They hadn’t actually addressed that this was going on in HubSpot, you know, externally. And it’s a bit disappointing. Because if this is happening, then you also want to be aware.

Mike: I think absolutely. I mean, there were rumors on Twitter, I think prior to the TechCrunch article, let’s be generous. And let’s hope that actually what was happening was HubSpot was really focused on working with the companies that were affected, and trying to mitigate any effects before they spent time talking about it publicly. But I agree. I mean, I think openness is really important. You know, and it’s gonna worry, I think anyone who’s using the cloud, when we hear these stories, it does bring home the vulnerabilities.

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, has this changed your opinion on the cloud? Mike, do you use it?

Mike: Well, I don’t think it has. And I think, you know, it’s frustrating. It’s annoying, you know, the vendors should be the gold standard in terms of security. But the reality is, is that, you know, if we were all running our own market automation platforms and our own servers, we’d almost certainly be less good at security. So I think we’ve got to accept it’s a risk, I think we’ve got to be aware of it and concerned. But equally, you know, I think cloud still offers the best and probably the most secure solution for almost anybody in the industry. So for us marketers, I don’t think we should be changing our behavior. But obviously, you know, we should be looking. And hopefully HubSpot now is going to introduce things that are going to stop them being hacked in the future. And I think that’s a really important thing for them to learn lessons. Absolutely.

Hannah: And hopefully, they’ll share something externally soon. But you know, perhaps inside internally and with their customers, they’ve really worked on how they’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen again. So we’re definitely given the benefit the doubt, but I think it’s definitely a bit of a wake up call at the same time.

Mike: It is and you know, you always wonder whether there’s been other hacks and other vendors We’ve not heard about. So, you know, this transparency, I think is really important. So everyone knows what’s happening. And hopefully, what we’re seeing is one unlucky isolated incident, rather than something that’s going to be a trend.

Hannah: Definitely. Well, I want to move on to something a bit more positive now and that’s Salesforce because Salesforce have actually just announced their summer 24 releases. So they’ve announced a lot we won’t go through every feature, but there’s a few that are, you know, have gone live in June. There’s some going live in July, some going live in August, but there’s a couple that really stood out to me. I mean, one is ramping up on AI. I mean, this is no surprise. We’ve talked about my love for Einstein, the Thor, we’ve talked about it many times. This is the the one feature that they really push in. But what I really liked about it is that they’ve announced the release of large language models. And this is going to allow them to show the marketing team topics that are being brought up with the sales. So it’s helping that alignment is helping these marketing emails actually match what the sales teams are talking about. And I loved that as a feature. I think that’s going to be so helpful. Moving forward, what do you think?

Mike: I think it’s something that a lot of sales teams have really wanted is, you know, being able to look over a large sales team and see what people are talking about. I think that the question is going to be, how easy is it to actually take that information, and use it to make your marketing more effective. I think, for example, if you look across most sales teams, at some point, there’ll be issues about price. And you know, lots and lots of customers will talk about price, we know that we don’t need a large language model to troll masses of emails to find that out. So it’s going to be the little nifty things, the things you don’t expect, where I think it really going to add the value. But you know, be interesting to see people who use it, and how effective it is in terms of bridging the gap between, frankly, a marketing team that doesn’t really know what the customers are talking about. And the customers may be, you know, whilst AI is a great solution, perhaps another solution is to help the marketing team understand the customers better. Absolutely,

Hannah: Mike, and I think it offers opportunities. You know, you talked about pricing there. And that’s maybe an obvious one. But I think it gives marketers the chance to look at that and say, okay, look, pricing is really common at this stage of the funnel at this stage of the funnel, we need to put an offer in, we need to give some discount, we need to help you close this sale. And I think that will be interesting to help marketers maybe think of things they hadn’t thought about before. Because if they don’t know it’s a challenge for the sales team, then they haven’t been helping them. But having that data, I mean, I’m always biased. I’m a marketer. I’m like, give all the information. But I can just see maybe some solutions and some ideas market has been a bit more creative with having this data available to them.

Mike: I think you said something incredibly smart by hand. Because, you know, I was saying everybody knows that at some point, price becomes an issue. I think what you’re telling me is that quite often we don’t know exactly what stage of the customer journey, the customer thinks about price, those large language models can potentially start predicting, when customers are likely to raise price and let you address it before the customer even starts talking about it. That’s that’s absolutely a brilliant point. And I love that.

Hannah: I’m excited to see where it goes. I mean, another feature I want to talk about, and we won’t focus on the name too much, Mike, because I know you’re not a fan. But it is the waterfall segments. And this is also really great, you know, we’re talking about offers. And the waterfall segment really allows automations to be built that will provide one offer to the right customer at the right time. Now, I think it’s an interesting concept. But what are your views on it?

Mike: Well, I don’t like the name. But that’s a different issue. I think, you know, one of the interesting things that Salesforce is doing is it’s saying if you’ve got multiple offers, it’ll guarantee that each contact only gets one. I mean, I can see the benefits of that. But equally when you’re looking at you thinking maybe people haven’t segmented their database really well, if there’s big overlaps between different segments, what’s going on there, it seems like something that’s fairly easy in terms of technology to build, I wonder whether marketers should be in a position where they need all of that technology being built.

Hannah: That is a fantastic point, Mike. And I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t do a plug for our own webinar right now. But if you’re listening, we have actually just done a webinar on nine ways to submit your data. So if this is something that you’re struggling with, we’ll put it in the show notes. And please check it out. Because Mike actually covered some fantastic points of, of ways to segment your data and be more effective. And to go back to your point, Mike, I think that’s so valued, because why is it needed? And how are they not segmenting your data? And maybe it’s something that we need to have a little bit of a look into.

Mike: Salesforce will probably argue it’s making life easier for the marketer. And that’s true, you know, it’s making it simpler, but it kind of feels a bit like it’s papering over the cracks of a poorly segmented database, rather than necessarily really being a feature that we should all be wanting to use.

Hannah: Yeah, and arguably, as well, you know, we’ve discussed dynamic emails in the past and you know, we’ve used dynamic email for clients to already personalized offers. So Could also be argued if it’s actually offering anything new that wasn’t available already.

Mike: Exactly, I think I think it’s all to be seen, it’s obviously, you know, only being piloted at the moment. And I’m sure we’re not only seeing Salesforce, but also in other marketing automation platforms going forward as well.

Hannah: Absolutely. Moving on, Mike, I want to switch gears and I want to talk about an axon webinar. Now, I love to this webinar and the way they marketed it. And I love a cliche, and I’m always a little bit cheesy. And they marked it as the modern not love story, but the modern lead story. And it’s all about getting an effective strategy in place for lead conversion. So you go from lead conversion to your pipeline. And they basically walk through a six stage step of how you could do that. What I quite liked about it is, you know, this seems to be a topic of the podcast today is that it was very sales focused. So it’s very more, not the core marketing, but how marketing can help sales to go. And they talked about a couple of cool things. But they talked about, you know, there’s a marketing qualified lead, but they don’t actually look at that they’re looking at goals for each stage. And that’s something that we do as well, you know, everyone has a customer journey. And I think getting KPIs for each stage of this customer journey is something that’s maybe overlooked. What do you think?

Mike: Well, you sent this to me, and I’d have to say, I think you’ve found a really useful, interesting webinar. I think what the webinar does by splitting it into the steps other than giving a framework and we all like a good six step or four step processes, as we have at Napier, it definitely helps things. But what they’re trying to do is they’re actually trying to avoid a really a direct linear path. And they’re trying to say there’s different stages. And I particularly liked when they talked about, you know, things like engage when they talk about surrounding your contacts, with content from all sorts of different channels. And to me, I think what they’ve done is they’ve really tried to say, it’s not three emails, and it’s done, which is that you know, the classic kind of marketing automation, email, step by step process, it’s much more complicated that you can break it up into these simple categories. I really enjoyed it. I agree. And I think their focus on, you know, business outcomes, so things that move the needle in terms of sales, rather than, you know, a blind focus on an artificial metric like MQL. Again, as you say, they made really great points around that.

Hannah: I think, you know, just building on that, Mike, one of the things they said was speaking to the sales team, so actually having conversations and getting feedback that way, have it in a conversation, rather than just doing it based on the system. And I think often when we have this technology in front of us, we forget sometimes the most basic human conversations that will go a long way to making a difference. Absolutely.

Mike: Although the one thing with the webinar, I did think was they qualified for cheese’s slide of the year with their slide for the marketing sales handoff, but we’ll leave that for people to go and have a look at. And I’m sure the link will be in the show notes.

Hannah: Absolutely. We’re coming up to the end of our time for the podcast. And I want to end on our insightful Tip of the Week. Now, this isn’t something that we’ve talked about before. But Mark automation platforms have different capabilities. And some of them not all of them, but most of them have the capability to track post and do analytics of your social media posts. Now, my question is, should people should marketers be using his mouth animation platforms for the social media capabilities? Or should they be sticking with the tools that they’re perhaps using already? So platforms like amplify are, you know, we use amplifier and APR, or perhaps something like HootSuite? I really think it depends on the monitor automation capabilities of what you can do. But what do you think?

Mike: So I think you’ve got a really great question there. And as you know, I’ve written a few blogs recently for martec.org, talking about the difficulty of sharing data between platforms. So to me, you know, one of the biggest challenges is where do you need the data you’re going to generate. So if you need that in your marketing automation platform to trigger further campaigns, then using the marketing automation platform, probably is the right thing to do, because you’re gathering data you’re gonna use. In reality, though, a lot of people when they’re running social, they’re not gathering data necessarily that they use in marketing automation. And then maybe the answer is, you know, perhaps, and amplify is a better platform, because it will give you much more detailed analytics, and it will help you really build your social presence. So you’ve got two things there, you know, are you going to move outside of social with the next step of the campaign and pull data from that social campaign? Or is it really all about focusing on building your social presence? Now I’m sure a lot of people are sat there and probably you Hana thinking, well, we want to do both. And of course, we do really want to do both. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to pick one. And I think the thing that drives the selection should as much be the data, as it should be the feature the package, what do you think?

Hannah: I think that’s such a good point, Mike. And I would argue as well, that it comes down to how big you want your Mar tech stack to be, you know, marketers can fall into the trap that they have all these different platforms. And so my advice would be is check out what your mark automation platform can do. See what analytics you can pull, find out if it is the right fit for you. If it isn’t, if it not gonna provide what you need to present to the board, what you want to track to know that you’re being successful, then look at platforms outside of the market automation. But the ideal scenario really, for me personally, my point of view is that you want it all in one place. And so if you can do that you can save money where you don’t have to invest in another platform, then do but I think it will be on a case by case basis.

Mike: I think that’s really insightful, Hannah. And you know, as everyone who listens to the podcast regularly knows, you’re the one who does all the work here. And he really are the experts. So I think that’s great advice.

Hannah: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for another chat night. It’s been great.

Mike: It’s been great to talk to you and thank you for all your insights, Hannah.

Hannah: Thanks for listening to the Marketing Automation Moment podcast.

Mike: Don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast application. And we’ll see you next time.

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