Blake Imperl

PSA to all new founders: Please don't buy HubSpot and then buy Apollo and dump 100K+ records into Hubspot 🫠 A very common client use case for us at RevenueHoop is undoing the mess created by these kinds of tactics. Your CRM is like your home. If you set your home on fire, you'll burn. Same goes for your CRM, if you set it on fire, your business burns. Bad CRM = Bad business Invest early on in a RevOps hire (whether that's an internal hire, or a fractional partner) otherwise, you’ll end up paying double later, in both time and money when you realize your CRM is blocking growth.

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SMS marketing isn't your opening act. It's your closer. Most brands use SMS wrong. They blast "SALE NOW!" messages and wonder why conversion rates tank. Here's the truth: SMS works best as a perfectly timed nudge, not the main pitch. Think of it this way: - Email builds desire - SMS creates urgency The highest-converting SMS messages: - "Your cart expires in 2 hours" - "Sale ends tonight" - "Back in stock (3 left)" - "Time to reorder" Real-world test: Send an email first, then hit engaged openers with a well-timed SMS. Watch your conversion rates jump. The strategy is simple: Email creates the intent. SMS pushes it over the edge. How are you using SMS today with your email marketing? Together or as separate channels?

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INBOUND had even more HubSpot updates this year than normal, so I spent my Sunday figuring out what really matters and what's just hype. For example, MANY of the features announced on the main stage are still locked up in private beta. And some of the most impactful new features didn't even get mentioned, like: ☎️ A built-in power dialer for Sales Hub 🚫 A way to prevent credit auto-upgrades and cap monthly credit use ℹ️ In-app process guides 👥 Buyer group management 💬 A new way to match people interacting on social with CRM contacts If you want to cut through the hype too, join me this Wednesday for a special edition of our monthly HubSpot updates webinar (link in comments) I'll break down the most impactful 37 updates, clarify their current status and what licensing they require, and explore some use cases for putting them into action! #HubSpotTipsAndTricks

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So you start selling [X] online through your own storefront. $1m in sales. Grow organically to $5m. Great. Add in TikTok as a selling channel. $25m. Get a deal with [retailer] and start selling in their stores. $50m. Bring on some investors and add advanced reporting. Add in another 3PL to get next day delivery on both costs. $75m. Add an ERP. $100m. Add a returns management solution. $125m. Open a few physical stores with POSes. $150m. Start fulfilling from store to get same day delivery. $200m. This is an extremely common setup for brands. At this point, you have four selling channels, two back office systems of record and two different 3PLs selling $200m GMV. Eight different systems needing real-time access to order-related data. Metcalfe's law says # of pathways = nodes (8)² = 64 unique bi-directional pathways between systems. Do an acquisition or two and you could have hundreds of bi-directional pathways between systems. At this point, brands have historically faced a decision - they can throw out the hacked together iPasS that's gotten them to this point, build a data model and rewrite it all from scratch - or they can "upgrade" to an OMS and rebuild all those point-to-point connections and then maintain them forever. We at Pipe17 have an entirely different approach to order management that starts with a *network*. Connectivity is the problem to solve in order management and we're the first and only product to build order management on top of a network. Some of our customers have > 25 individual systems that need order data. Plug in your API keys and we'll ingest your orders into our network, normalize to our canonical data model and allow full interoperability with any of the hundreds of selling channels, back office systems of record and fulfillment channels in our network. It's a categorically different approach to Order Management that's disrupting the legacy OMS market.

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Essential growth advice from Elena Verna, 🐐 B2B growth: "Prioritizing SEO, SEM, social is one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a growth team. Your #1 priority is to create your owned, or earned, channel. A channel that no one else can compete in other than you. For example, UGC, word of mouth, virality, content marketing." Full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gQ-aaKZD

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QUICK: name the top 3 influencers in the industry you serve. The trouble is, your competitors + other players in the space just thought of those same 3 people. The rise of influencer marketing in B2B isn't coming as a surprise. Partner with individuals who've built trust + credibility within your ICP and collaborate on content together. The problem is that once you get beyond the top 3-5 "influencers" in the space you serve (that everyone else also thinks of), you're stuck scratching your head at who else could be a great influencer partner. This isn't because they're unknown, it's because: 1) Sourcing creators on other platforms where your ICP spends a lot of their time (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, etc.) is much easier said than done 2) Micro-influencers (those who specialize in niches + don't have hundreds of thousands of followers) often have a better "ROI" for those of us in B2B than the mega-influencers With this being an area I'm brainstorming on how to incorporate into our GTM this year, Clay's integrations with Upfluence + Modash have caught my eye I'm going to be honest - at a company championing outbound recruitment (aka, proactively sourcing candidates), I've been geeking out with this in Clay as I get to use those same skills we empower recruiters with to empower myself as a marketer Like you, I can quickly rattle off 3 influencers in our space that would be cool to partner with, but everyone else is thinking the same thing OR they're already partnered with a competitor in our space And that's where this table in Clay has been beyond helpful for me - not just saving me time + mental bandwidth, but by allowing me to be highly tactical in WHO I pull into my shortlist to have partner with us So if you start seeing partner posts from influencers + thought leaders in the recruitment space later this year, you can take a good guess at where I found those creators 😉 #claypartner

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If you're an email marketer and you **** up the customer's first 30 days, you're done. 3 reasons why: 1. Repurchase rates fall off a cliff 2. Email & SMS engagement plummets 3. The customer determines the value of the product during this timeframe So what can you do about this? I believe there are 3 things we need to obsess over in the post-purchase journey 🧲 1. Upselling 2. Customer experience 3. Product activation Here's how & why you should do each: Upselling 🧲 How: Make an immediate bounceback offer to try to increase LTV Why: When a customer is "in the market", they're in buying mode so take advantage of it. Customer Experience 🧲 How: Provide timely shipping updates to drive customers back to the site and mitigate customer support tickets. Do proactive customer check-ins after the customer receives the product to make sure their experience is good. Why: Eliminates buyer's remorse and shows that you actually care about their experience. Helps to send a lot of traffic back to the website whereby a lot of customers will just go on to make additional purchases. Product Activation 🧲 How: Throw down a challenge, send tutorials and hold the customer accountable to getting results from your product. Why: A customer won't make a repeat purchase if they didn't extract value from what they purchased. Also helps to feed the social media strategy by harnessing UGC. ______ P.S. I’m offering a few FREE Klaviyo audits this month ($3K value). Book yours here 👉 https://lnkd.in/eEjPfGdJ #emailmarketing #ecommerce #klaviyo

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92% of people trust recommendations from individuals over brand messaging. (Even if that individual is a stranger.) That stat says everything about how SaaS decisions are made now. Not from cold ads. Not from your homepage copy. From someone saying: “I love this SaaS, it solved X for me”” For founders, that changes the whole growth playbook. Social proof isn’t decoration. It is "the" conversion strategy. Here’s what most teams miss: → Your customers are your real sales team. → Your credibility is your best ad spend. When someone researches your product (and they will), they need to hear: “This works. We recommend it.” So instead of scaling noise, Scale trust. - Turn wins into micro-case studies. - Build detailed testimonials, not fluffy ones. - Get active in the spaces where your customers already talk. Pipeline doesn’t just come from CTAs. It comes from people repeating your name. Curious to hear: What’s one trust asset that helped you close deals faster?

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Operations doesn't *actually* care about the marketing tech you're trying to implement. - Call tracking - CDP integration - Online booking They don't care about the tech. They DO care about what's going to make their jobs easier and more secure. So if you want to get alignment from operations explain why they should care: * Highlight the effect on day-to-day operations If ops understands that CDP integration will save hours of admin time and online scheduling will save hours for front-line staff > they won't just accept it. They'll be excited for it! * Explain how it supports business goals Siloed marketing teams work on random stuff that doesn't matter to ops. Don't let that be you > have the conversations and explain how good martech will drive the revenue that pays their salary. If Ops sees how proper lead tracking tech shows them call center efficiencies like agents that don't convert calls to leads very well or reasons patients aren't booking on aggregate by location they'll be pumped! * Skip the jargon You're not pitching a fellow marketing expert. You're talking to people in the trenches making the business run. So keep the convo focused on how you're going to make their life easier/better. NO ACROYNMS. #healthcaremarketing

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As an owner of a world-class retention agency, here's the truth: Retention channels won't save you when your: - Product sucks - Customer service is neglected - Tech stack is from 2020 Stop hiding supbar operations behind sending more emails and focus on improving the fundamentals of your business.

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One of the most common mistakes I see with HubSpot setup is skipping domain customization of meeting links. And, I get it - you go straight to your meeting tool, spin up a link, and you're off to the races. Here’s the problem, though: 👉 It breaks brand consistency. 👉 It quietly erodes trust. 👉 It screams “template,” “generic,” “not quite buttoned up.” 👉 It can be tracked in HubSpot analytics, but it won't be in third-party tools like Google Analytics. And, it won't be seen in saved brand views in HubSpot either. So, do yourself a favor, head over to Settings>General>Calendar>Meeting Domains and update to your branded domain. *Note, you do need a paid seat for this to work.

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Marketing can’t fix a broken business. In broken businesses ... Churn isn’t a marketing problem. It’s a product problem. Bad reviews aren’t a messaging issue. They’re a customer experience issue. CAC isn’t high because of the ad copy. It’s high because no one wants what you’re selling. Stop blaming marketing for the symptoms. Start fixing the root causes. ___ ♻️ Repost this if you found it useful 🧐 Follow me (@LizWillits) for more posts 💌 Get VIP insights in my email newsletter

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HubSpot's acquisition of The Hustle just over 4 years ago was a build move. And it worked. Q2 2025 was the company’s best-ever quarter for both YouTube and newsletter-driven leads, respectively up 98% and 50% year over year. Jonathan Hunt is the VP of HubSpot media, bringing experience from a murderer's row of media brands to the software giant's thriving and growing internal media arm. Consider this a companion episode to our feature on Adam Biddlecombe this spring, whose AI-editorial newsletter Mindstream was recently acquired by HubSpot. Find our conversation on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Just search "The Creator Spotlight Podcast." Find Natalia's writeup — including Jonathan's background and his approach to audience development — in your inbox (or on our website if you somehow are not subscribed yet).

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We’re thrilled to share another successful HubSpot implementation for the fine folks at StickerYou. 🌟 StickerYou is a leading custom sticker platform targeting business and prosumers across North America. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: StickerYou’s sales, customer service, and marketing teams were bogged down with time-consuming and manual processes in multiple standalone, disconnected systems. You might say they were a bit 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘤𝘬. The StickerYou team engaged Inflectiv to architect and implement a solution that had two purposes: 🗝️ Improve team efficiency and ROI by consolidating legacy tools including Salesforce, HelpScout, Zoom, Briskine, SnapEngage into HubSpot Service Hub. 📊 Improve business intelligence through real-time activity and reporting dashboards for different teams. Inflectiv built a new, powerful and streamlined HubSpot Service Hub solution to become the 𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩 for StickerYou’s growth data. The StickerYou team was trained on updated processes they will all (ahem) 𝘢𝘥𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐬: Following the implementation, team performance has improved, reporting is more accurate, and employee morale has improved significantly. 🙂🙂🙂 Congratulations and hats off to the entire StickerYou team, specifically the wonderful Claudia Lona Durazo and Patrick Heffron. They were positive and excellent collaborative partners with our team. Here’s what Patrick had to say: “𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐚𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐅𝐔𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐮𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐲. 𝐃𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐝. 𝐀 𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬!” Also: This project was the first time we ever saw clients high five each other during training sessions!  Congratulations to the team for their hard work.

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80%+ of my career meetings have been booked by email. Contrary to voices that sell dialers on this platform, email is not dead. Your emails just suck. You talk about product over pain. Reach out to whoever, instead of niching down your list. Write like a buyer. Know how they actually felt when dealing with their problem and spoke in their language. In its simplest form, outbound is the right person at the right company with the right message. Layer in cold calls and social touches, and you’re meeting buyers in their preferred channel. P.S. - 41 meetings booked on the month so far... Shall I get to 60? 👀

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This one HubSpot feature helped a founder finally sleep at night. Last month, I spoke with a founder who was completely overwhelmed by incoming leads. Their ads were performing. The contact form was filling up. But the sales pipeline? Total chaos. Every night, they were manually assigning leads, checking on follow-ups, and worrying about who might have slipped through the cracks. It wasn’t scalable. It wasn’t sustainable. So we made one simple change: We set up a round-robin lead assignment workflow in HubSpot. Here’s what changed immediately: -Every new lead is automatically assigned to a rep -Reps are notified instantly via Slack -Follow-up tasks are created automatically -No more ghosted leads -No more late-night Slack messages asking, “Did we follow up?” The founder told me: "This workflow alone was worth switching to HubSpot. I actually slept through the night last week." Sometimes, it's not about adding more tools, just using one the right way. Want this set up for your team? Let’s talk, happy to walk you through the setup to get started.

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