Hubspot Joining The Rest of Us

Posted on May 18, 2012 by | 2 Comments |

Hubspot has spent the last several years promoting “inbound marketing” and vilifying “interruption marketing” (their catch-all phrase for magazine ads, billboards, TV ads, email marketing, telemarketing, pushy salespeople at WalMart and just about every form of traditional marketing).

All this preaching has resulted in an exalted position for Hubspot in the marketing automation pantheon.  After all, how can anyone dislike a company that seems to be saying that TV commercials are annoying?

For the record, I have always found Hubspot’s position to be a bit disingenuous. For a long time now, I have been getting a daily email from them about some thing or the other. How is that not interruption marketing?

Now we have the spectacle of Hubspot rolling out e-mail marketing and other evil weapons of interruption marketing (Webinar: “An Insider’s Sneak Peek into HubSpot’s New Email Marketing & Lead Nurturing Software”). This feels a lot like Mitt Romney explaining why ObamaCare is bad and the essentially identical RomneyCare is good.

Hmmm!

While no one can deny the value of having great content, the dangers of a pure inbound marketing strategy have become painfully clear to many small companies.

An article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (“As Google Tweaks Searches, Some Get Lost in the Web”) details the devastating impact of Google’s notorious algorithm changes on small companies that rely solely on being found in Google search results.

As with all things, a balanced approach free of doctrinaire pronouncements works best.


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  • http://Www.demandgen.com John sweeney

    Hi raghu

    I spend a lot of time working with B2B Teams responsible for Demand Generation initiatives across EMEA. I know I would be shown the door quickly if I espoused the outbound is dead mantra of the inbound posse. In enterprise companies the cost of maintaining web-pages and content in every language is high. In many cases too high. Marketers then look to outbound tactics that offer a decent ROI. A well written message to a well maintained database will give a good return.
    I support the view that an inbound only strategy is not viable. This view becomes stronger the further away you are from SIlicon Valley.

  • http://www.ryanaxford.com Ryan Axford

    My experience with HubSpot and their educational materials have been slightly different. I suppose that the definition of “interruption marketing” is relative to the individual, however if you are opting in to get these emails, then it’s no more interrupting than subscribing to a blog then having it show up in your reader.

    HubSpot’s teachings suggest that email marketing should be used tactfully. Best practices are to use email for specified engagement with a specified audience. If you are getting emails that you don’t want about content you’re not interested in, it sounds as though their lead management for you is a little off – which may be their fault, but that doesn’t mean they are being hypocritical.

    As for the webinars, this is another example just like the others. They’re not mailing you a notice that it’s happening, then follow up with a phone call to see if you’ll be attending. It’s like being invited to a party, then showing up and being annoyed that the host is there. I don’t ever recall receiving multiple emails about webinars either. If the title of the email gets me then great, if not then I move on with my life.

    What would be really great to see in a post like this is a contrast to how your company tackles these issues. You may not even need to preach about yourself but rather throw in anchor tags to link to your own stuff.

    I think it’s great to see controversial articles to draw in more traffic, but back up your disappointments with facts about yourself. If you introduce me with a problem, show me your solution. This way, when I do disagree with you, you may throw it right back in my face and prove that you are right.

About Raghu Raghavan

CEO, Act-On Software, Inc.

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