We have just been promoted into the Diamond tier of HubSpot partners!!  🎉🎉  This “badge” places us as one of the top 3% of HubSpot agencies globally.

It also recognises the innovative work we do, like the recently featured case study that HubSpot did of our work with the Royal Mint.  It is the result of a lot of hard work from the Attacat team and support from our clients.

Most importantly though, this also brings additional benefits that we can access on behalf of our clients including:

  • Earlier access to product releases and betas – it’s incredible how often we have been able to solve a thorny client challenge by using a beta feature (often in ways that HubSpot hadn’t necessarily foreseen)
  • Access to their highest support levels – we can access the teams that develop the products when needed
  • The ability for us to influence the product roadmap, and thus help us get the features you need to see being implemented

It obviously also opens up lots of opportunities for us as an agency. So a huge thank you to you, our clients, for supporting and trusting us to deliver your HubSpot onboardings and integrations over the last few years.

What are we up to?

Lots of growth strategies and the implementation of GA4 are keeping the teams really busy right now. As we’ll talk more about in our webinar, It has become clear that there are many benefits of the new analytics version but it requires careful consideration before implementation to get the best results.

Our other main focus is continuing to working with HubSpot and their sales teams. Having just come back from another visit to their HQ over in Dublin we’re consolidating our position as service implementation experts and are now seen as one of the top UK preferred partners.

David Bradshaw joins as Marketing Data Analyst

We’re delighted that Dave has joined as a marketing data analyst and to bring those skills to the Data & Insights team. Previously Dave worked as a team leader in a chemical analysis laboratory.

Dave opted for a change of tack and signed up for the CodeClan data analyst course and we snapped him up after that. Dave’s initial priority will be onboarding of GA4 clients.

Away from work, Dave enjoys football and golf.

Register for our GA4 Webinar on Friday 28 April

As we’re all aware, GA4 launches on 1 July 2023. It will stop recording any hits on Universal Analytics (UA) on the same day.

GA4 is a very different tool from UA as it is tracks user journeys that are event based and multi-platform. It doesn’t use cookies.

In this webinar, we explore the difference between existing Google Analytics (UA), the benefits of the new GA4 and the steps you need to take before implementation.

We are delighted to be working with the following new businesses

Asendia

Asendia combines the experience and expertise of La Poste and Swiss Post, to provide international mail, parcel and e-commerce solutions from 17 countries worldwide, and delivering to over 200 destinations.

We are assisting them in setting up uniform customer tracking across all their global websites, so that they can begin to get valuable and consistent insight into customer behaviour, which will in turn enable them to be more effective in their Sales and Marketing activity.

www.asendia.com

Roc Technologies

Roc is a UK technology business working with customers where security and the protection of sensitive data are critical.

We are working with them on a systems integration project, integrating data between NetSuite and HubSpot, and migrating their sales team away from Salesforce to bring greater efficiencies for the business.

roctechnologies.com

 

 

HubSpot introduce ChatSpot.ai

ChatSpot.ai launched at the beginning of March in public alpha. ChatSpot.ai helps HubSpot customers complete a variety of tasks using a natural language chat-based user experience. The tool helps users:

  • Add contacts and companies to the HubSpot CRM;
  • Create custom reports related to marketing, sales and customer service;
  • Draft professional, effective sales emails personalized to the recipient.

Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO of HubSpot, demonstrates the potential of this powerful new AI tool.

 

AI in general

ChatGPT is all the rage right now but we still need to be cautious

We’re spending time with our clients exploring the benefits and risks of embracing ChatGPT.  We have identified some of the the issues around duplicate content and lack of context if it is not managed. However, used well it can help create efficiency.

If you would like to discuss some of the issues to do with AI then please get in touch. Just click on the link.

 

 

 

Attacat holds its first internal conference

Which sounds a bit bizarre for a 20 year old business, but it is very much a reflection of today’s hybrid work environment. It’s increasingly difficult to get everyone in the same place on the same day, so by having a two day conference we had the chance to share some time together – both business and social.

We covered a wide range of topics including internal working practices to benefit our clients, what changes we expect to see from our technology partners such as Google and HubSpot and the business outlook for 2023.

We plan to hold a similar get-together every six months.

Steps to take before implementing GA4

As we’re all aware, the current Google Analytics is being retired in June and being replaced with GA4. We believe that this change is also a great opportunity to review cookies and consent policies as they will be impacted by this switch. Privacy and data measurement are going to change and we all need to understand and be able to communicate the consequences to our internal teams.

Having now got our collective heads around the pros and cons of GA4, we have put together a basic, intermediate and advanced package depending on your business requirements. To learn more and to organise a call to discuss, click on the button below.

 

Say hello to Kate

Kate Riddoch joins as project manager

We’re delighted that Kate has joined the team as project manager. Previously Kate worked for Smart Data Foundry, a not-for-profit, fintech start-up out of Edinburgh University that focused on synthetic data, data privacy and open finance.

As project manager, Kate will be focussing on HubSpot onboarding and GA4 projects for our clients.

Away from work, Kate enjoys cooking, eating out and does Pilates to keep fit.

 

Use HubSpot Custom Reports to inform your marketing strategy

HubSpot is a fantastic tool for gaining business insight that can help inform your marketing efforts. Since onboarding clients on to HubSpot we have been able to open up their customer and sales data using HubSpot custom reporting to help both us and them understand what is really working for their business and where planned marketing efforts should focus.

The easiest way to demonstrate the true value of custom reporting for gaining business insight is to take you through a real example of where we applied this for a client. We also have another post on the process you can run through if you want to try this for yourself:  Our process for gaining valuable business insight from HubSpot Custom Reports

 

 

More insights

There’s a lot more information, insights and “how to” articles in the Attacat Brain section of our website. Here’s our most recent:

 

1% for sustainable growth™ – Kenya project

We had a video call update from Matthew Norton of the Memusi Foundation at our recent conference about the co-working space in Magadi in Kenya that we are having built.

Matthew advised that the building is very nearly ready to be commissioned and that interviews are currently taking place with people who want to make use of the space for their business projects.

For more information about our 1% for sustainable growth™  initiative:

 

Career opportunity – Marketing Data Analyst

Full-time | Edinburgh Based/Hybrid Working | Competitive Salary

The immediate opportunity we can offer is the chance for you to help our clients move to Google Analytics 4 which offers an exciting new world in customer data collection and analysis. Attacat has already developed considerable expertise in GA4 but needs to expand the team to deal with a huge demand.

 

 

 

Google are ramping up “visual”

Rather than a mini-budget, Google had a mini-I/O* in the form of their “Search on 22” event.  They showed off lots of changes coming to search including Shopping, but the key take-away is Google is becoming more and more visual both in terms of its inputs (e.g. search for a product using a photo) and outputs (more visual results). It’s time to really invest in developing and organising your visual assets.

*I/O is their annual developer event where they normally showcase all their shiny new stuff.

Hi Liam

Liam Gate has joined us as our PPC Growth Manager. Liam has spent the last three and half years working on SEO and PPC for the global healthcare market and also brings a design & build and training background to the team. With all that experience, Liam has hit the ground running and is already working on new strategies with our clients.

Liam is also a keen musician playing both guitar and keyboards. Any other downtime is spent looking after their young family and when the chance permits, enjoys playing snooker..

What’s your communication style?

Our team’s communications training program continues. This month we have been looking at how different people like to be communicated with.

The starting point is finding out your own communication style which we have all been doing. However you can have a go too! Fill out this 2 min questionnaire (courtesy of the company training us) and see how you are most like on our team!

Do tell us your style to help us adapt to the way you want to be communicated to!

HubSpot Inbound 2022

It’s been a busy month with HubSpot’s INBOUND conference and many new product update announcements. Here’s one that we feel is significant.

Add Date Delays in Workflows

HubSpot is introducing a new type of workflow delay that lets you delay a workflow until a specific calendar date or until the date value in a date property, in any object type workflow. [Read More]

Why do we care? It means you can make your marketing workflows much smarter by aligning actions with dates that are important to your business e.g. business events or to date-focused data you are collecting e.g. customer birthdays.

*for Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise users.

For the full list of the updates announced at Inbound 2022

How to reduce the negative impacts of postal losses for customer service teams

Research from Citizens Advice found that over a single year, five and a half million (one in ten people in the UK) had a parcel lost or stolen.

At a time where creating long-lasting customer relationships has never been more important, ensuring the buying journey is seamless from when a customer lands on your website to when they open the parcel in their homes must be a priority for ecommerce companies.

In this video, Hannah Porter, Senior Inbound Marketing Manager at Attacat, shows you how HubSpot can help to increase the visibility of postal loss information for your company, and enable you to make data-driven decisions to save your customer service team time, money and to avoid a lot of frustrated customers.



More insights

There’s a lot more information, insights and “how to” articles in the Attacat Brain section of our website. Here’s our most recent:

 

1% for sustainable growth™

Our first project to build a environmentally friendly coworking location that facilities self-learning and business start-ups using the power of the internet at Magadi in Kenya is progressing well. Work started on the 17th August and the building work was completed on 15th September.

It has still to be painted and then work starts on adding the solar panels, furniture, workstations and access to the internet.

We’ll keep you posted throughout the project, but if you would like to learn more about this project and 1% for sustainable growth™ then please click on the link below:

 

 

 

Welcome to Sofia

Sofia Ignatiadi has joined us as a Junior Software Engineer. Sofia recently completed CodeClan’s 3 month intensive Software Development course and is currently learning all about integrations and HubSpot.

Before that, Sofia worked in business banking at TSB as a Know Your Business analyst.

Away from work Sofia has an thirst for learning; already a Greek, Russian and English speaker, Sofia is now learning Spanish….and how to play the bass guitar!

1% for sustainable growth™

Since 2019 we have put aside 1% of our turnover to support initiatives that will deliver “sustainable growth”. By sustainable we mean both environmentally and financially. And we’re now embarking on our first project:

A co-working space in Africa

The idea was to establish an environmentally friendly coworking location that facilities self-learning and business start-ups using the power of the internet.

We knew we needed a partner and in 2021, Attacat’s Hannah Porter introduced us to the Memusi Foundation which leads educational development programmes with schools in Kenya and Tanzania and is led by the incredible Matthew Norton.

The building will be located in Magadi in Kenya which is just over 110 km south west of Nairobi.

Building key features:
  • Natural ventilation system reducing temperatures by an average of 10°C
  • Walls constructed from stones collected by community locally – previously building materials had to be bought in from Niarobi with associated environmental and financial cost

Work started on 17 August 2022

We’ll keep you posted throughout the project, but if you would like to learn more about this project and 1% for sustainable growth™ then please click on the link below:

App integrations

Digitally transform with powerful integrations

If you find yourself having to manually copy data from one system to another, or have to switch between multiple different pieces of software to get a particular task done, you’ll know how time-consuming (and boring!) this work can be.

In this article we look at the following integrations to save you time and money:

  1. Ecommerce integrations
  2. Email integrations
  3. Sales integrations
  4. Customer service integrations
  5. Call integrations

If you would like to discover how integrations can help your business, click on the link.

More insights:

There’s a lot more information, insights and “how to” articles on our site. Here’s our most recent:

Watercooler Day July 2022

This year’s Watercooler Day took place in Gladhouse reservoir in Midlothian. Water was still the theme this year as we tried our hands at paddle boarding. Partners and children were welcome too, followed by a highly enjoyable BBQ and drinks party.

Here’s a taste of what we got up to.



 

Recession or new norm? Either way, let’s find the opportunities!

 

We’ve all got rather used to change over the last couple of years and it seems that change is on the way again. But with every threat comes opportunity.

In the latest article on the Attacat Brain, we discuss how “digital” has a key role to play in leveraging those opportunities and navigating any choppy waters that may be coming our way.

Team training this month: conflict resolution

Our agency-wide training programme continues and in the last month we have been focusing on conflict resolution and finding the win-win even when a win-lose is possible.

We all take away slightly different tips and tricks from the course, so here are my particular don’ts and dos!

Don’t
– attempt to resolve conflict via email (always get on a video call or meet in person instead)
– present opinions as facts (say “I think”, “I feel” instead)

Do
– recognise the effort and challenges of the person you are talking to
– (really) listen to understand what they are saying vs listening to work out what to say!
– end comments with (open) questions (“what do you think?” being as good as any)
– be prepared to take a break if things are going badly
– celebrate success when you achieve a win-win

What tips do you have for getting a win-win outcome?

 

We’re pleased to welcome the following new clients

Zing Performance (an innovative education support provider) – we are running Facebook and Google campaigns and combining them with nurture programs via their HubSpot CRM to drive new customers.

Chevron Traffic Management (a work-zone safety company) – We’ve installed the HubSpot Sales & Operational Hubs and have customised it around their business development process.

 

Graph showing profit

Improve your lead quality and generate more profit with lead scoring

Joan Lavery, Senior Inbound Marketing Manager looks at how lead scoring can help prioritise sales opportunities resulting in better conversion rates.

Lead scoring is a powerful tool that enables you to sort your hottest leads from your coldest ones so that your sales team can focus on nurturing the leads most likely to convert and stop wasting time on those that won’t.

In our experience, there’s no standard approach to lead scoring as priorities differ for each individual client, but one of the most common ways to assign points is to use data from past leads to create a value system.

In this article we show how lead scoring can be an effective tool for your business and help to generate more profit for you.

More insights

There’s a lot more information, insights and “how to” articles on our site. Here’s our most recent:

We’re still looking!

While we’ve had some recent success in recruiting some great new people we’re  still looking for talented individuals with digital experience for these roles:

Senior PPC Account Director  We are looking for an experienced Senior PPC Account Director to lead the day-to-day operations and contribute to the growth of the Attacat PPC team.

PPC Growth Manager to join the team and contribute to client and team growth.

And generally we are on the lookout for anyone with experience of (and a passion for) HubSpot.

For more information on any of the above please visit https://www.attacat.co.uk/jobs

 

Say hello to Kirsten

Kirsten McVey joins as our latest Inbound Marketing Manager. Previously Kirsten worked for the creative agency maclean, the digital agency Yard and on the client side, the online tyre company Blackcircles as their digital campaigns manager.

Kirsten joins Jenny, Hannah and Joan to strengthen the inbound marketing team. She’s currently fast tracking her HubSpot training.

Away from work, she has recently moved house and spends all her spare time turning it into a home. Please say hello.

 

What you need to be investing in following Google Marketing Live 2022

Once a year Google holds an annual jamboree for marketing professionals and agencies. It has now evolved into a global hybrid online/offline event.

There are product announcements galore to excite any digital marketing geek, but for me it’s a must watch event as it gives an important insight into not only what is new but also the likely future direction of travel. For this reason we always forensically digest each session whilst reading the tea leaves so we can advise clients on what they need to be investing in.

What were the key themes?

Privacy (aka measurement and personalised advertising in a post-cookie world), Ad Automation (both of targeting and creative) and search becoming a more visual and sticky experience.

So what does that mean about where you should be investing?

Returns process HubSpot

How to get out of an endless cycle of unprofitable returns

Your email pings and you have a notification of an unhappy customer review: they’re not happy with your returns process. They’ll never shop with you again and recommend no-one else does either.

Sound familiar?

A poorly managed return policy can affect profitability, due to lower customer loyalty and satisfaction. Conversely, an effective and efficient returns policy can improve customer lifetime value and retain revenue.

By adding Returns as a separate entity (better known as a “custom object”) within your HubSpot account – alongside your contacts, deals and support tickets – you can start to leverage your returns process as a way to improve your profitability.

Here’s 5 ways that using a HubSpot custom object to manage your returns can save you both time and money.

 

More insights

There’s a lot more information, insights and “how to” articles on our site. Here’s our most recent:

 

We’re still looking!

While we’ve had some recent success in recruiting some great new people we’re  still looking for talented individuals with digital experience for these roles:

Senior PPC Account Director  We are looking for an experienced Senior PPC Account Director to lead the day-to-day operations and contribute to the growth of the Attacat PPC team.

PPC Growth Manager to join the team and contribute to client and team growth.

And generally we are on the lookout for anyone with experience of (and a passion for) HubSpot.

For more information on any of the above please visit https://www.attacat.co.uk/jobs

 

Welcome to Ezra

We’re delighted to welcome Ezra Wilson who joins us Head of Project Delivery. Ezra will head up the digital transformation team of Austin, Zach, Pete and Lee.

Ezra’s background has been leading project delivery teams on the client-side. He will take overall responsibility for delivering all technical projects.

“I’m going to be focusing on ensuring that all our clients get the same level of service and that that it is delivered as quickly and effectively as possible.

Internally I’ll be looking at continuous improvement and seeing what we can do to build on our internal processes when it comes to digital transformation.”

 

GA4 – what’s the rush?

The current version of Google Analytics (UA) that most people rely on is being retired at the end of June 2023. The newer Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will become the only option at that point.

This represents a major change in the way measurement is done and importantly the new system is not backward compatible with the old one.  This means that historical comparisons will not be possible.

Our recommendation, therefore, is to get GA4 installed as soon as possible so you start collecting historical data ahead of the changeover.  Getting it done by the end of June will ensure you are able to do year-on-year comparisons.  It will also give a period to get used to the new ways of working as the two tools are very different.

If you are an existing Attacat client, we’ll be in touch. Or if you would like to learn more about GA4 and the implications of switching over get in touch now to set up a meeting.

 

HubSpot Features

We have created a number of 2 minute videos on some of HubSpot’s features that we think are particularly useful. If you’d like to know more, please sign up.

Here’s a taster from Hannah about HubSpot’s email features.

If you would like to see more of our HubSpot Features videos then just click on the button and sign up.

 

Attacat goes curling

Hot on the success on the Olympic Gold and Silver Medals in curling, and keen to see if there were any future stars in the making, we had a go at curling. The afternoon was a great success and while you might not see any Attacats at the next Winter Olympics, one or two might be tempted to take up the sport!

Curling is only played for 6 months of the year and is now closed until September, but if you fancy giving it a go later in the year then we can highly recommend Edinburgh’s Try Curling.

Current Vacancies…we’re still looking

While we’ve had some recent success in recruiting some great new people we’re  still looking for talented individuals with digital experience for these roles:

SEO Manager to indulge in their passion for SEO and play a key role in delivering growth for our clients.

PPC Growth Manager to join the team and contribute to client and team growth.

HubSpot Solutions Architect to help solve complex challenges and as a key role as part of the digital transformation team

Technical Implementation Specialist to bolster the transformation team

And generally we are on the lookout for anyone with experience of (and a passion for) HubSpot.

For more information on any of the above please visit https://www.attacat.co.uk/jobs

 

Google is discontinuing its existing Universal Analytics (UA) on 1st July 2023. UA has been with us since 2005 and the majority of the world’s websites use it. There have been many iterations of Google Analytics over the last 17 years, but they have always allowed us to retain the historical data. Not this time however. This time it’s a standing start from the point you have the new system in place.

So why the change?

As data privacy has become central to the future of the internet, then UA’s reliance on cookies means that the current measurement methodology is becoming obsolete. In addition, today’s user journey is more complex and multi-platform compared to the desktop single sessions that UA was set up to measure.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) has been built to deal with this new world. Crucially though, it’s not a like for like replacement. Don’t expect to leave UA and pick-up from where you left off. Expect a new way of doing things where a fair bit of the old way is no longer a possibility.

What are the benefits of GA4?

Google believe that there are a number of key benefits to GA4:

  • Understand your customers across touchpoints
    This will deliver a view of the customer lifecycle with event-based measurement across multiple sessions and platforms.
    Our view: don’t expect perfection but do expect new insights and a tool that is at least attempting to answer the questions modern marketers have.
  • Improve ROI with data-driven attribution
    This will allow the measurement of marketing activities and help understand how they influence conversions.
    Our view: ROI data itself will, in many ways, be less accurate and comprehensive than what we are used to. However that doesn’t mean there won’t be good new insights in this new way of working.
  • Measure engagement and conversions with business and compliance in mind
    This will allow businesses to manage and minimise the collection of user-level data while still preserving measurement functionality.
    Our view: GDPR regulators may not be fully onboard here. It is undoubtedly “better” from a compliance point of view but consent issues don’t just disappear overnight.
  • Get greater value from your data
    The use of machine learning will generate sophisticated predictive insights about user behaviour and conversions.
    Our view: this is life now, so let’s enjoy it! (Even if much of it is about providing educated guesses about insights we used to get anyway)
  • Easily activate your insights
    GA4 will easily integrate with other Google products like Google Ads to allow for better measure and understand campaign performance.
    Our view: no surprises here. GA is ultimately just a very nice piece of content marketing for Google Ads but never the less is one I’m very grateful for!

So what’s the rush?

There are three main reasons why this should be a priority for organisations.

Firstly, if you want to be able to have a year on year comparison, then you need to start using GA4 from the 1st July in 2022. Otherwise, it will not be possible to compare like with like after 2023.

Secondly, GA4 is very different from UA and so will require a lot of re-training on how to get the best out of it. There will not be a 1-to-1 report replacement.  Having UA and GA4 running alongside each other for a year will give time to assess what you rely on currently. You can then find the closest alternative, or in the case of no alternative, come to terms with the new mindset. UA has been around for so long and become so familiar to so many, that it would be unwise to underestimate the resistance and effort to make the change.

Thirdly, starting now will re-risk the transition and allow for any unforeseen problems that can be dealt with well ahead of the changeover date. For most, this will not just be the flicking of a switch.

Next steps?

At Attacat, we believe that a transition process will be required to successfully move from UA to GA4. It will vary from client to client but here’s an outline of what needs to be done.

  1. Requirements discovery
    1. Analysis of current analytics and tag management configurations
    2. Identify any desired changes to your current analytics strategy
    3. Formulate a configuration plan covering:
      1. Pageviews
      2. Events and goals
      3. Ecommerce
      4. Cross domain tracking
      5. Product links e.g. Google Ads
      6. Default attribution model
      7. Filters/IP blocking/Referral Exclusions
      8. Data retention window
      9. Users and access levels
      10. Reports
  2. Configuration build and testing
    1. Execute configuration plan
    2. Confirm all data flows are working as expected
    3. Start sending data to production GA4 property
  3. Data validation
    1. Data accuracy tests

 

As you can see, we believe that there is a lot to be done, especially if you want to be able to have a year’s comparative data. The above needs to be done by 1st July this year. So if you would like to know more then please click on the link to arrange a meeting to discuss.

 

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