Inbound 2019: Occam is back with news!

We have landed from Inbound Marketing's most important annual event, Inbound19. Now, jet lag free and having sorted out all the ideas, we are ready to share our concentrated experience over four days at the Convention & Exhibition Center in Boston.

Beyond the big names that filled the main stage, this event brings together inbounders from around the world to soak up the technology landscape and the new trends emerging from the Inbound methodology to create great customer experiences. Along with sales and marketing professionals and business and agency owners, on September 3, 4, 5 and 6, we attended brilliant sessions, discussed the future of the industry and learned about HubSpot's product advancements and updates.

Featured Inbound19 education sessions: what do we have to tell?

want to find out a little more about the sessions we attended? The nooks and crannies that mark the new developments in the Inbound Marketing path? Join us as we take a closer look at this methodology directly from the mouths of professionals in the sector with a short recap of the following eight sessions:

How to grow (your organic traffic) better
How to grow (your organic traffic) better
(Victor Pan and Braden Becker - HubSpot)

El tráfico orgánico es muy volátil, es fácil ganarlo y perderlo muy rápido. Para mantenerlo o mejorarlo es necesario estar donde el usuario nos necesita, empatizar con la audiencia. Para ello, resulta importante conocer de dónde proviene el tráfico actual y estar en constante búsqueda de nuevas tendencias del sector. Sin embargo, no solo hay que tener en cuenta lo último del mercado, también debemos pararnos y reflexionar sobre el contenido generado anteriormente. Como dato, el 89% del tráfico orgánico mensual de HubSpot proviene de contenido con una antigüedad de seis meses en adelante. Por consecuencia, las empresas deben estar un constante proceso de optimización histórica. Es decir, deben reoptimizar el contenido antiguo para el SEO y la relevancia actual. Si el tráfico de un contenido de un mes a otro cae en un 5%, esa pieza debe ser revisada y optimizada, ya sea para mejorar la experiencia del usuario o para facilitar el trabajo a la araña de Google.

500 apps to grow your business: a grand tour of HubSpot's platform ecosystem
500 apps to grow your business: a grand tourof HubSpot'splatformecosystem
(Scott Brinker - VP, Platform Ecosystem)

HubSpot has more than 150 apps that have integrated their specialties with the platform. During this session, Scott Brinker shared with the audience this wide and varied range of apps. Did you know that many of them can make your day-to-day tasks easier? Aspects such as internal and external communication, social media management, content planning or dashboard creation can be optimised with tools like Slack, Aircall, Sakari, Oktopost, SnapApp or Databox. And all of them can be integrated with HubSpot! Isn't it great?

How to write newsletters people actually want to read
Howtowrite a newsletterpeople actually wantto read
(Margo Aaron - Founder, That Seems Important)

A todos los marketeros y marketeras nos ha pasado alguna vez: hay un cliente con un servicio técnico, ¿cómo dirijo este mail promocional? ¿Estoy usando un tono demasiado serio? Pero… tampoco puedo dejar la formalidad de lado. Margo Aaron lo tiene claro, no hay que caer en dirigirte a las masas. Construye la newsletter de humano a humano, de tú a tú sin perder el tono marcado por la empresa o por tu misma agencia. ¿Y el remitente? ¿Pongo el nombre de marca o lo humanizo como si lo enviara un empleado? Siempre da más confianza y genera más intimidad entre empresa – cliente/prospecto presentarte como una persona. ¿Sobre la longitud? Lo necesario para contar lo que se quiere decir de manera clara y sin aburrir. ¿Mucho texto? Las listas y la separación de párrafos te pueden ayudar a hacer del correo un contenido más ameno y mantener la atención de tus destinatarios hasta el final.

Build a content-analytics feedback loop to maximize lead generation & close more deals
Build acontent-analyticsfeedback loop to maximize lead generation & close moredeals
(Clarice Lin - Content Analytics Expert, BaselineLabs)

A maxim for Clarice Lin is that "when performance is measured, performance improves". But what does that process look like? First, you have to set quantifiable goals, in numbers. Then you track all those processes and run them through the power of analytics. Once the data is analysed it is time to act. See what has worked and what can be improved, evaluating the results and giving feedback on each action taken to start the process all over again and continue to optimise the feedback loop between content and analytics.

From theory to practice: 10 lessons from implementing HubSpot's flywheel
From theory to practice: 10 lessons from implementing HubSpot's flywheel
(Jon Dick - VP, Marketing, HubSpot)

The shift that was communicated last Inbound 2018 from funnel to flywheel has transformed the way businesses operate. Jon Dick shared 10 tips for making that shift and tactics that can be implemented to keep the flywheel frictionless and keep it spinning:

1. Give your consumers a variety of choices.
2. Talk to your customers and be an active listener. Time is friction, reduce it with conversational marketing.
3. Give your customers better communication than your competition. Focus on scalability.
4. Doing it all by yourself is expensive in the end. Empower your customers with self-service.
5. Experience what your customers experience when it comes to hiring or buying your products or services.
6. Prioritise delight over demand.
7. Turn your thinking from quantitative to qualitative.
8. Really align the whole functioning of the company with the service team.
9. Change the role of each department.
10. Organise the structure of the company to keep the customer in focus.

How to become a thought leader on LinkedIn
How to become a thought leader on LinkedIn
(Ty Heath - Global Leader, The B2B Institute, LinkedIn)

Digital platforms provide the ability to proactively interact and express different points of view. LinkedIn is the world's largest professional social network, where relevant conversations take place that can make a person a thought leader in their industry. For Ty Heath, a profile with this ability can increase team or community engagement, boost a company's marketing and recruitment processes or generate sales. What does it take to become a thought leader? Build a simple structure, provide different points of view to keep your profile interesting, distinguish yourself in the community, replicate the format of valuable content, become an industry expert, and finally, and most importantly, remain authentic to yourself.

Do this, not that! 20 best practices for email marketing campaigns that drive customer engagement
do this, not that! 20 best practices for email marketing campaigns that drive customer engagement
(Jay Schwedelson - President and CEO, Worldata)

Jay Schwedelson shared interesting ideas to keep in mind when preparing email marketing campaigns. From his point of view, the secret of a good email lies in its relevance. Once the email is relevant, we have to focus on engaging people with our brand. Want to become an expert in email subject lines? Check out the following points:

• Emails with subject lines such as 'limited', 'exclusive', 'today', 'last chance', 'don't miss out', 'run' or 'for you' increase your open rate.
• do the words 'free' go to the spam folder? Not any more. These filters are now based on the sender's reputation.
• Beware of putting more than 50% of the subject in capital letters, it will go to the spam folder.
• Subject lines with unfinished sentences have a 37% higher open rate in B2C and 31% higher open rate in B2B than complete sentences.
• Using parentheses or brackets in the subject line increases open rates by 31%.
• Subject lines that begin with a number receive 21% more opens.

YouTube video marketing: content strategy for discovery and conversion
YouTube video marketing: content strategy for discovery and conversion
(Roberto Blake - Founder, Create Awesome Media)

YouTube has positioned itself as the most powerful online video tool and Roberto Blake shared 10 steps to make the most of it:

1. Focus your content on a specific niche.
2. Analyse your audience.
3. Write an attractive title.
4. Don't forget the main image, it's what attracts the click.
5. Create quality content.
6. Follow a good content strategy. Plan.
7. Optimise your video for search.
8. Publish to impact and inspire the audience.
9. Study the analytics and then work with them.
10. Monetise the channel.

This online video guru didn't stop there, in a 50-minute session, he went further and sent us a personalised message once the event was over.

Inspirationalspotlights from Inbound19 with a vision for the future

Between sessions, a number of familiar faces strolled the aisles of the Convention & Exhibition Center. The names below will probably ring a bell, but beyond the surface, these people, with backgrounds from different disciplines, had something to say, themes to develop in depth and ideas to share to inspire the audience with a view to the future.

• Elizabeth Gilbert, writer. This American author of novels, essays, biographies and memoirs opened the Inbound19 spotlight sessions. She shared with the audience a vision of life: being relaxed is the secret to living the best life possible, it is the mantra for a creative life. But how can it be achieved? She gave us three simple steps: setting priorities and protecting them, identifying your barriers and learning to defend them, "mysticism" or believing that there is a power within you. With these tips, Elizabeth Gilbert left the audience in love with the creative life and the power of being relaxed, focusing on what you can control and letting the rest fly.

• Katie Couric, periodista. Conocida por ser copresentadora del programa estadounidense Today de la NBC, Katie Couric habló sobre su vida, su carrera como mujer en el mundo del periodismo y su difunto esposo Jay, quien falleció solo nueve meses después de ser diagnosticado de cáncer, lo que le empujó a ser la cofundadora de Stand Up to Cancer, recaudando más de 623 millones de dólares para la investigación de la enfermedad. De su discurso nos quedamos con la frase: “The key to staying vibrant is to keep asking questions. Being interested makes you interesting." (“La clave para mantenerse vibrante es seguir haciendo preguntas. Estar interesado te hace interesante.”) Además, cabe señalar que Katie Couric fue entrevistada por Sacha Pfeiffer, periodista de investigación galardonada Premio Pulitzer y conocida por su trabajo con el equipo de Spotlight dirigido por el periódico The Boston Globe, destapando el caso de la pederastia en la Iglesia Católica.

• Jennifer Garner y John Foraker, cofundadores de Once Upon a Farm. Quizá el nombre que más te suene de esta lista sea el de Jennifer Garner, actriz y productora estadounidense de cine y televisión. Sin embargo, sin la ayuda de John Foraker, cofundador de Once Upon a Farm, esta empresa no hubiera sido posible y no se hubiera podido cumplir la misión de proporcionar alimentos orgánicos, nutritivos y deliciosos a niños de todas las edades de familias de distintos niveles económicos. Jennifer Garner pronunció una frase que remarca el motivo por el que muchas compañías deben apostar por el lado social del sector empresarial, orientando su misión para impactar en las personas: “It’s businesses who can really turn things around for us - for a state, a community - it’s businesses who can really make a change for us.” (“Son las empresas las que realmente pueden cambiar las cosas – para un estado, para una comunidad – son las empresas las que realmente pueden hacer un cambio por nosotros.”)

• Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and Initialized Capital. If you're a tennis fan, you've probably seen him at the US Open matches supporting his wife, Serena Willians. From his speech we highlight his treatment of balancing family life with work life, with special emphasis on the difficulty of being a working mother."It's a farce for companies to think there's family life over here and work life over there. The culture of corporate value and paid family leave can start to change right now," said Alexis Ohanian

• Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative: "Proximity will teach us what we don't understand. Communities will teach you what you need to know about justice and health." This lawyer left us with lessons that push for social change, talking about inclusion, racial inequalities and how to improve society through proximity to those in the most disadvantaged situations

• Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, co-founders of HubSpot. A video on business growth introduced Hubspot CEO and co-founder Brian Halligan to the stage. Brian underlined the importance of "experience disruptors", the new technology that has been able to acquire five adaptations to become successful: focus your business on the experience and not the product or service; remove friction to keep the flywheel turning; personalise every action on your customers; sell through them, not just to them; destroy and reinvent the more traditional business model. As Brian says,"how you sell is why you'll win"
  Dharmesh Shah opened his speech by sharing five fears that need to be faced in order to keep growing better: of commitment (we fear unwavering commitment, but really we should fear uninspired commitment); of differences (we fear the discomfort of differences, we should fear giving in to sameness); of change (we should instead fear stagnation); of disappointment (we fear disappointing a few, we should fear not delighting many); of inferiority (we fear feeling inferior, but we should fear not being trustworthy). Fears can be overcome in small steps. The magic happens when you face them and combine different but complementary things, bringing inequalities together in harmony.

Other notable people who filled the main stage were Jason Blum (award-winning producer), Rachel Botsman (writer), Sharah Harden (CEO of Hello Sunshine) or Janelle Monáe (actress and singer), among others. As you can see, the main stage of Inbound19 was not only a place to learn from business leaders, but also a space to raise your head, look ahead, and think about relevant aspects of life, outside the more business-oriented day-to-day. A maxim? BE HUMAN.

what's new, HubSpot?

During Partner Day at Inbound 2019, HubSpot announced some updates to transform their Partner Program. If you're not too familiar with HubSpot, the previous plans included: Free, Starter, Professional and Enterprise. However, in order to create a business model that promotes growth and makes it easier for agencies to adjust to HubSpot, they have planned to change the tier structure and recalibrate their goals. How?

1. New tier: Like the old Starter tier, this new tier grants the ability to train customers on HubSpot tools, service, sales and pricing for $50. Solution providers" will not be certified to implement HubSpot at the customer, and the customer will have to onboard with HubSpot or a certified partner. This low-commitment partnership is intended to help some agencies get started with servicing the platform.
2. New tier above Diamond: ELITE. This tier will be the new target for agencies and is expected to initially be available by invitation only to Diamond partners who have developed a deeper engagement with HubSpot.
3. Farewell to the silver tier: HubSpot plans to eliminate thesilver tier in order to make gold more accessible by lowering the managed MRR target.
4. New goals for partners: Starting January 2020, HubSpot will increase the sold MRR goal for gold, platinum and diamond and lower the managed MRR for gold and platinum.

HubSpot is also working to distribute commissions differently to partners when selling new product lines to existing HubSpot customers. Until now, no commissions were received for cross-selling, depending on the origin of each customer.

And how can HubSpot ensure that each customer is treated by a partner tailored to their needs? By giving them the opportunity to demonstrate their expertise with specialised credentials, HubSpot is launching the Advanced Implementation Certification, which allows partners who specialise in CRM implementation, software integration and migration to earn a credential beyond the standards previously set.

want to know more about other HubSpot innovations presented at Inbound 2019? Ana Isabel Sordo from HubSpot tells us: from improvements in social networks, to the native creation of ads for leads, to new workflow folders and much more!

We conclude to keep on spinning

There is no excuse for not putting the customer at the centre of all processes. We no longer talk about B2C or B2B. Successful new business models focus on "person-to-person", from me to you and from you to me. The main goal? To reduce friction in the customer experience so that the flywheel keeps turning. In this way, customers can enjoy better processes and strengthen their trust in our brand, thus becoming our own promoters.

In short... We have experienced four days full of a special essence that we cannot convey in as many words as we would like, but that we will try to transform into progress to help our customers grow better.