Inbound marketing software maker HubSpot Inc. today is adding generative artificial intelligence capabilities to its flagship platform along with predictive analytics features that improve forecasting and visibility into pending sales.

The company will use its Inbound 2023 conference (pictured) to unveil a set of platform-wide AI-powered products called HubSpot AI that are aimed at boosting sales productivity and improving customer relationships.

The enhancements are led by AI Assistants, which are generative AI tools that work across the HubSpot platform to assist in drafting content, creating images, generating ideas for blog posts, building websites and developing reports. Also new are AI Agents, which help small and midsized businesses automate, respond to and improve customer service across live chat and email. The first Agents are set to launch in early 2024.

“AI Agents are products that help [small and midsized businesses] automate, respond to and elevate their marketing, sales and customer service across live chat and email,” said Michael Walton, HubSpot’s vice president of product, in emailed comments. “You could think of one aspect of them as AI-powered bots that are trained on company data including knowledgebase articles, blog articles and pricing information.”

AI Insights are predictive AI features that improve recommendations and forecasting. The company’s ChatSpot conversation bot now also combines Open AI LLC’s ChatGPT platform with dozens of unique data sources that include customer relationship management data, HubSpot’s Knowledge Base, enriched company data, funding data, company news data and search engine optimization data.

HubSpot also said it has overhauled its Sales Hub sales automation platform with new capabilities that include a dedicated workspace for sales representatives that consolidates prospecting activities into a single place to help them organize, focus and identify urgent tasks. The feature is currently in public beta test.

“In the workspace, prospecting reps can see their schedule, identify urgent and important leads, manage their sales activities [from multiple sources] and see their progress against goals all in one view,” Walton said. There’s also a set of advanced lead management capabilities to capture information such as where leads come from, what activities drive them, their pipeline status and qualification information.

Advanced lead management and reporting capabilities enable sales representatives to better organize, track and prioritize leads as well as get a clearer picture of pipeline efficiency and prospecting effectiveness. New lead contact rate reports show how salespeople are engaging with quality leads and the reasons why they convert and lead source reports let sales teams see how inbound, sales or product-qualified lead sources perform.

AI-enabled forecasting

New AI-powered features for deal management and forecasting enable sales teams to better prioritize efforts and predict outcomes. AI Forecasting, which is currently in private beta, uses predictive AI and historical sales data to project future sales with claimed accuracy improvements of up to 95%. Deal insights help representatives prioritize deals with contextual insights into the health of their pipeline and sales process.

Deal tags programmatically categorize deals through colored labels and presets, enabling representatives to focus on the most promising deals. Representatives can also now book meetings on behalf of others and streamline handoffs between the sales development and sales organization.

“When investigating a specific deal, users can open a preview panel that shows critical information about a deal, including its worth, primary contacts, recent activities and upcoming events,” Walton said. “Pipeline-level insights on the deal board summarize key metrics like the total value of the pipeline, closed amount, the forecasted amount and the value of all deals in specific stages of the pipeline.”

New lead form routing capabilities ensure that website leads are automatically qualified and routed to the right representatives. HubSpot has also expanded its relationship with Microsoft Corp.’s LinkedIn with features currently in private beta test that enhance prospecting, relationship building and deal closure by syncing HubSpot’s Smart CRM with LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Additionally, HubSpot said its U.S. customers will soon be able to use its Commerce Hub to get paid faster and save time with payment links, quotes and native or integrated invoicing with their choice of processor. Commerce Hub is the latest iteration of HubSpot Payments.

New mobile messaging capabilities enable marketers to personalize communications with customers from a single platform. Users can also now model, configure, and extend data with greater flexibility using HubSpot’s Smart CRM.

Most features are currently in testing and will be available by early next year.

Photo: HubSpot