5 min read  | HubSpot

HubSpot’s Business Units Unpacked - Chapter One

As Leading HubSpot consultants, we’re in step with the platform’s capabilities, latest features and updates. We’ve been keeping an eye on the chat stream and have decided to build a series of articles answering the most pressing questions.

This month, Leah Brandt – our platform and automation manager – looks into the HubSpot Business Units Beta, providing context on what it is, how it works and the improved functionality it offers Business with multiple divisions or sub-brands.

Chapter 1: Business Units Beta – What’s on Offer

In 2021, HubSpot launched a new feature into beta. Called “Business Units”, this addition to their offering allows businesses to operate multiple brands as separate entities under their existing HubSpot account.

This means businesses only need a single HubSpot account and one set of login details to manage up to 10 different brands. All information within that Business Unit is kept separate from the others but can still be viewed and analysed as overall reports by the business.

There are some restrictions that you need to know about, though. We’ve pulled together a clear breakdown of the pros and cons of using Business Units, so you can quickly see if it’s right for your organisation. But first, we’ll dive in-depth into what a Business Unit is.


Understanding Business Units and how they work


A Business Unit assigns individual brands within a company’s HubSpot account their own operational ‘swim lane’. Having business units allows you to customize your branding for each Unit and associate assets to keep your team(s) contents organized. These assets include brand domains, forms, web and landing pages, blogs and emails. Business Units also allow businesses to analyse and create reports on these Units and measure their performance individually and combined, depending on the kind of report you need.

Benefits of Business Units 

  • Contact Segmentation - Many marketers experience the daily frustrations of trying to keep contacts in their correct lists and ensuring they only receive the communications they’ve requested. Business Units let you assign contacts to one (or several) Units, meaning you no longer need to rely on lists to segment your customers. Each Business Unit has its own set of contacts.  
  • Cross-sell and up-sell opportunities - Many of our clients approach us with the problem of not being able to accurately identify potential cross-sell or up-sell opportunities. But with Business Units, you can clearly see all your customers in their individual swim lanes and monitor their engagement without any confusion.  
    We’ve seen first-hand how implementing Business Units for our customers has shown success in gaining deeper visibility into potential opportunities. In my opinion, this is one of the most exciting and rewarding benefits of Business Units.
  • Custom contact properties - The ability to create custom contact properties that are relevant to specific Business Units can help you keep these organised and relevant. This allows you to add custom fields to each Unit, so you can have different details for the same contact, depending on the service or goods that Unit provides them.
    For instance, if you had one Unit that dealt in clothing and another in shoes, you’d want different information from a contact in regards to sizes. Business Units allows you to keep this information separate, meaning you will only see the fields associated with that Business Unit when viewing that contact.
  • Customised email preferences - Another huge benefit of having Business Units is the ability to create customised subscription types for each Unit. This enables subscribers to opt-in and out of communications within single Business Units. If they’re on multiple Business Unit subscriptions, and opt out of one, the details will still be on those other lists.  
    When you manage multiple brands with multiple subscription types, having Business Units will ensure that subscribers have a clear understanding of what they are subscribing/unsubscribing to/from. It also allows you to publish custom cookie policies for each brand. 
  • Marketing assets assigned to specific Business Units  - With Business Units, you can organise your assets under a specified Business Unit and all emails, landing pages, web pages, blogs and form submissions will sit within that Business Unit. If a lead fills out a form that sits within a specific Unit, that lead will be assigned to that Business Unit.  
    For email comms, contacts within a particular Business Unit will only receive emails that were created in that Unit. Additionally, with each Business Unit, you can create a brand kit unique for that brand. These brand kits allow you to add a brand logo, brand favicon, and brand colours.  
    Having all your assets organised under specific Business Units ensures brand consistency and removes the risk of leads and customers receiving information that was not intended for them.  
    This also helps to clean up your CRM data, organise marketing assets and provide confidence that your contacts are being communicated to according to their specific brand interests and purchase history.  
  • Reporting and analysis - With Business Units, you are now able to confidently report on individual brand performance as well as how well the overall company is performing. For Business Unit customers, HubSpot provides a Business Unit Overview Template which helps you create a customised dashboard to monitor performance.

Knowing if Business Units are right for you

When you consider both the benefits and limitations of HubSpot’s new Business Units, it is a feature that shows a lot of promise and will continue to evolve. Current limitations will most likely be addressed, turning them from problems to solutions.

By investing in HubSpot Business Units now, you could see immediate benefits to your organisation while also being set to scale up as needed. They can grow with your organisation and provide the tools necessary to manage complex business CRM, marketing, and sales systems.  

Next Steps

If you are considering whether to add Business Units to your HubSpot platform or have purchased Business Units but aren’t sure what to do next, we are here to help. Contact us

 

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