HubSpot New Feature Roundup: Smart AI Tools & Enhanced Lead Intelligence

At the INBOUND conference last year, HubSpot unveiled several new product updates – from new lead scoring capabilities to their suite of AI-powered tools, also known as Breeze.

Now that we’ve had some time to vet and test these tools in real-world applications, it’s clear which updates are truly impactful and where businesses should focus their attention. Taken together, these upgrades add meaningful new value for HubSpot customers and should encourage a larger segment of SMBs to make the investment.

In this article, we will cover the most important updates, why they matter, and practical applications for each.

HubSpot Copilot: AI-Powered Assistance

HubSpot’s Copilot represents a significant step forward in AI integration within the CRM space. Available across all subscription tiers, Copilot serves as an AI assistant embedded directly in your existing workflows.

While most of us are familiar with AI assistants, an important distinction is that Copilot is fully integrated with your CRM data, providing context for understanding your contacts, companies, and historical interactions. This integration enables it to assist with various tasks, like:

• Content creation and optimization
• Email personalization and response drafting
• Data analysis and reporting
• Company research and prospect intelligence

For example, when drafting prospect outreach messaging, Copilot can reference past interactions, company details, and recent engagements to generate relevant, personalized content – significantly reducing the time spent on initial drafts while maintaining quality.

While Copilot’s reporting capabilities still have a way to go before it is useful for most customers, it’s very useful for drafting content, emails, and social media posts, coming up with topics for articles, and researching companies or market trends.

Enhanced Buyer Intent Tracking

Go deeper: How to Start Leveraging HubSpot Copilot.

In 2023, HubSpot acquired the data provider Clearbit. Last year, we learned that this acquisition was part of their plan to deliver more data enrichment and tracking, including buyer intent.

The new buyer intent features provide deeper insight into prospect behavior and purchasing signals. Rather than relying on basic engagement metrics, HubSpot now analyzes a comprehensive set of indicators:

• Page-level engagement patterns
• Content consumption behaviors
• Search intent signals
• Cross-channel interaction history

Buyer intent leverages a more powerful reverse IP look-up and data enrichment than previously available in HubSpot. This allows the software to identify anonymous visitors on your website so you can see what accounts are engaging before they fill out a form.

If your business has a clearly defined target market and you’re struggling to measure and visualize how your sales and marketing efforts engage and move target accounts through your sales funnel, buyer intent will help you fill those gaps.

Fit & Engagement Scoring: A Dual-Metric Approach

HubSpot has had a lead-scoring feature for years, but most of us felt there was room for improvement. With the updated lead scoring system, HubSpot introduces a more sophisticated approach to lead qualification.

The dual-metric system evaluates both fit and engagement, providing a more complete view of prospect potential.

Fit scoring considers:

• Company attributes
• Industry alignment
• Technical compatibility
• Resource indicators

Engagement scoring tracks:

• Interaction recency and frequency
• Depth of content engagement
• Sales touchpoints
• Response patterns

This two-pronged approach allows teams to make more informed decisions about prospect prioritization and engagement strategies. It also helps identify misalignments between targeting and actual engagement, enabling more effective resource allocation.

Finally, you can select which contacts and companies you want your lead scoring to apply to, giving you extra flexibility to score only the leads that need scoring.

Practical Implementation

On their own, each of these updates can help growing businesses improve their sales and marketing operations. The real value of these features emerges when they’re implemented together as part of a cohesive strategy.

Consider this sales scenario: Copilot assists with initial research and outreach, intent tracking identifies key decision points, and scoring helps prioritize follow-up actions, which can be accelerated with its help.

This integration streamlines the sales process, enabling small businesses to compete with much larger companies by maintaining personalization and relevance at scale. Teams can concentrate on high-potential opportunities while engaging with prospects in earlier stages.

Just the Beginning

While these features significantly advance HubSpot’s AI capabilities, it’s important to remember these are still early innings.

AI technology is evolving at an unimaginable speed that can be hard to keep pace with but, by leveraging a CRM like HubSpot that’s invested in staying at the forefront, customers get the benefit of access and early adoption of these tools that are already built, tested and fully integrated with their own data.

For businesses that have yet to start testing these tools, the best time to start is today.

Written by Charlie Nadler,
Chief Strategy Officer,
Simple Machines Marketing