How HubSpot's INBOUND 2025 updates are changing marketing

If you’re a marketer, you’ve probably noticed an elephant in the room, and it’s trampling your traffic reports. That feeling of watching your organic search traffic dip, despite doing everything "right," is becoming all too common. At INBOUND 2025, HubSpot addressed this collective worry head-on as part of its brand evolution to modernise and elevate its identity.

On stage, HubSpot’s CEO Yamini Rangan acknowledged the mood, joking that many "marketing subreddits have become a pretty dark place," before giving our shared problem a name: the 'traffic apocalypse'.

But this wasn't a message of doom, it was a call to action. HubSpot has launched an AI-powered playbook along with over 200 new products and updates to help users navigate it.. The new focus is to stop chasing clicks and start building trust.

Here’s our breakdown of the key takeaways from INBOUND 2025 and what they mean for your business.

A new playbook for growth

For years, the marketing playbook was straightforward: create content, optimise for search engines and drive traffic. That playbook has now been updated.

The 'traffic apocalypse' is here

The death of traditional organic traffic is upon us. AI-powered search results provide users with direct answers on the search page, reducing the need to visit websites. 

This signals the dawn of a new era: AEO, or AI Engine Optimisation. Keywords matter, but now the focus is on helping AI models find, understand and accurately represent your brand's information. This represents a fundamental shift in strategy, evolving traditional SEO into what many now call Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).

And this isn't just a theoretical challenge. Rangan was upfront about HubSpot's own experience, admitting their blog traffic has also been down. 

But that's only half the story. 

While traffic dipped, they doubled down on channels that foster direct connection and community: podcasts, newsletters and social media. The result was a significant boost in engagement. As Rangan put it, "We did not chase clicks, we built trust."

Introducing 'The Loop', a human-AI partnership

This philosophy is the foundation of HubSpot’s new growth playbook, 'The Loop'. It’s a dynamic partnership designed to combine human authenticity with AI efficiency. The concept is simple: with amazing AI tech, we can now feed data from a campaign back into the AI to make adjustments on the go, creating a continuous improvement loop.

The goal isn’t to replace people with bots. It’s to help your team with AI team members that do the hard work. This lets your people focus on what they do best: connect, strategise and create.

The Loop consists of three simple steps: 

1. Connect all your data: Centralise your customer information to give your AI a single source of truth. 
2. Build your AI team: Implement HubSpot's innovative agents and assistants throughout your organisation. 
3. Enable your people: Equip your team to work alongside AI, leveraging its power to deliver personalised experiences at scale.

Meet Breeze, the AI engine powering The Loop

To bring 'The Loop' to life, HubSpot has launched a powerful new lineup of AI tools, now unified under the brand name Breeze. This move clarifies the AI product line, officially sunsetting older names like Breeze Intelligence (as of 3 September, 2025), with its features being incorporated into other products.

These new tools are all built upon a smarter, more connected CRM. Karen Ng, HubSpot's EVP of Product, stated that AI is here to stay, and these tools can help you get ahead. 

HubSpot has launched Breeze Studio. It is a central workspace for managing and customising AI Agents and Assistants, both pre-built and custom.

The core of this new approach involves Breeze Agents, which handle work for you by automating work end-to-end. To be truly effective, these agents must sound like your brand and understand your customers. They need one source of truth: clean and connected data from the smart CRM.

That’s why HubSpot’s most important updates are foundational. They have worked on making it easier to get your data into the platform. This helps train the AI with your specific information. 

Let's take a look at what HubSpot has unveiled at INBOUND 2025, hub-by-hub.

A hub-by-hub deep dive

While the high-level vision is exciting, the real magic is in the details. Let's break down the most impactful changes.

Data Hub takes over

Introducing the new Operations Hub. 

This hub aims to eliminate data silos and features AI tools for automatic data quality monitoring and enhancement.

Marketing Hub

Smarter campaigns and cleaner data

The new AI-powered campaign goals tracker improves reporting on business outcomes and offers better insights into your campaigns.

A new campaigns API has been launched to connect HubSpot with other systems and integrate data with external sources.. 

HubSpot is adding object property snapshots for marketing events, allowing for better historical analysis and trend insights.

Cleaner data, less admin 

As spammers become smarter, even using AI for better spam, HubSpot is adding automatic spam filtering for forms. 

This greatly improves your quality of life. It stops spammers from using marketing contact seats in your database. This helps you avoid unnecessary costs with HubSpot.

A new way to manage projects 

In a quiet but significant update, HubSpot has upgraded its task system and introduced a new projects object. 

While it's not a full-blown Asana alternative yet, it appears to be laying the groundwork to turn HubSpot into a basic project management system, which is a big step forward.

Better segmentation and email health 

You may have noticed in your portal that ‘Lists’ are now officially called ‘Segments’. To ease the transition, the UI shows “Segments (lists)”. 

You can now add active segments (formerly active lists) to campaigns, which was a major pain point in the past. 

A new email health dashboard helps you find your best and worst lists. It uses engagement and deliverability metrics to improve deliverability.

More powerful reporting and ads 

The custom report builder now features AI-driven formula recommendations. This is a big advantage. It removes the need to export data from HubSpot. You won't have to use a spreadsheet for complex calculations. 

The builder also distinguishes between formula fields (in reports) and calculated fields (on objects).

You can now use form submissions as a data source in the report builder (currently in public beta).

Advertisers can now sync segments directly from the list tool to LinkedIn, Google and Facebook as ad audiences. This is great for retargeting based on a contact's sales stage, especially with an audience of 1,000 to 2,000 people.

More flexibility and control 

Admin users can now rename the default HubSpot objects across all subscription tiers. This is great for not-for-profits. They can now change "Deals" to "Fundraising Campaigns." They can also rename "Companies" to "Families" to fit their model better. 

You can now use Shared Users and Team Properties on more objects. This includes custom objects and standard ones like courses or listings. This change improves permission control. You can also assign team owners instead of just individuals.

Use Content to create, manage and personalise at scale

Integrated video editor 

Content hub (previously known as CMS Hub, and COS before that) already allows you to create podcasts. It now has a built-in video editor. You can upload custom audio tracks and add image overlays. 

It's not as powerful as a tool like Canva, but it's a good choice if you don't have separate software licenses.

AI-powered content creation 

The new Breeze tools are focused on speed, but their success depends on how you train the AI. If you properly populate the new brand functionality, you can clone landing pages with reasonable AI-generated content, remix a Google Drive file into multiple different assets and create more targeted, list-based personalised content for your different segments.

Enhanced tools and governance 

The landing pages tool now has a better way to choose templates. You can find templates in the marketplace, create one with AI, or use a template you already have. 

The new domains activity log offers a complete record of all changes for those managing multiple domains, enhancing security and team management.

Sales Hub is empowering reps with AI and efficiency

A new quoting and payment tool 

HubSpot has also introduced HubSpot CPQ, a fast, easy-to-use quoting tool that helps sales teams close deals faster. The solution brings quote creation, approvals, CPQ, billing and payments together on one unified platform.

Proactive conversation intelligence 

This is a massive leap beyond gut feelings. AI now analyses call recordings from tools like HubSpot's meeting recorder. It automatically finds deal risks and buyer goals in the deal record. It will even tell you why it thinks a deal is at risk. 

For example, it might say, "last week, this deal was at 80%. We've decreased the score by 20% because no one has spoken to this prospect in a week".

AI that helps with paperwork 

The system delivers conversation-driven summaries within the Recent Activities card. This helps with a sales rep's least favorite job: paperwork! It pulls key details from conversations recorded in HubSpot Calling or integrated tools like Zoom, Aircall, or Dialpad.

Smarter prospecting and selling 

The upgraded Breeze prospecting agent is capable of performing comprehensive, strategic research on your behalf. Its biggest advantage is that it works within HubSpot. This gives it context about existing relationships that external tools do not have. 

HubSpot has improved transparency in lead scoring, making it easier to understand how AI-generated scores are calculated.

Quality-of-life improvements 

The sales workspace is now easier to use and looks better. It also supports multiple customisable dashboards. 

A handy new call remote feature (also known by its nerdy name, the CLI) lets you start a call from HubSpot but take it on your mobile phone. 

You can also now add associations as columns in the deals table to make pulling in context faster and easier.

Service Hub: from reactive support to proactive success

A true command centre 

The help desk workspace now has a "Today’s Insights" card. This card shows real-time trends in rep availability and ticket volume. This data is helping create future AI-powered ticket routing. The system can assign a ticket based on an agent's skills and their current workload. 

For example, the system will see if your top expert is too busy to handle a ticket. It will then suggest giving it to someone else. 

The workspace now has a board view for the customer tab. This helps map the customer success journey. It also features a cleaner ticket timeline and better options for customising views.

Better internal communication 

A small but exciting update is the new ability to create and view Notes in the help desk. This feature replaces the old comment system. 

This keeps team talks separate from customer-facing replies. It stops reps from accidentally sending internal comments to customers.

Connecting service to the business 

You can now add Average Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) cards directly to contact and company records. This allows your whole team to see crucial context. 

For example, a salesperson might see that one person often gives low CSAT ratings. However, the company's overall score is still high. That context enables a more strategic conversation.

Empowering agents and managers 

The innovative dynamic reply editor offers historical context from the sidebar, enabling representatives to respond faster. The help desk coaching tab provides managers with the metrics they need for contextual coaching. 

For data hygiene, you can now also set up automation to manage the close date for service records. You can also now set a default email address for different teams in the help desk.

Commerce Hub: connecting payments and experience

Commerce Hub is now its own hub, with an ongoing fee associated with it.

Streamlined financial operations 

You can now handle chargebacks and disputes directly in HubSpot, which uses Stripe as the payment gateway in Australia. 

The hub also supports more complex billing scenarios, such as automatic billing after the first subscription invoice payment.

A more connected experience 

A new feature lets you create personalised thank you pages. You can do this by linking the buyer's email to payment redirects. 

Additionally, granular user permissions give you full control over who can manage your products, quotes and invoices.

App marketplace and integrations

HubSpot's integration ecosystem has undergone a significant refresh. The main App Marketplace has a new design. It now includes integrations to sync Microsoft Teams meeting recordings and transcripts directly into the CRM.

HubSpot has also launched the Breeze Marketplace. Here, you can find AI agents and custom assistants to help automate tasks.

Enhanced ad and analytics tools 

You can now create Google Performance Max campaigns directly from within HubSpot, which comes with improved reporting. 

A new LinkedIn audience insights integration (currently in public beta) helps you better understand the characteristics of your contacts.

Important AI connector updates 

The HubSpot connector for the AI tool Claude has been enhanced to access a wider range of objects within your portal. However, both Claude and ChatGPT now default to using your data for training their models unless you choose to opt out.

Check your settings or consult your IT team to disable this before connecting your CRM to prevent your data from being reproduced for someone else.

Salesforce integration 

For businesses using both platforms, you can now perform bidirectional association syncs between HubSpot and Salesforce.

A smarter CRM and platform-wide improvements

HubSpot has launched a set of updates. These updates make the whole CRM platform smarter, more connected, and easier to manage.

An upgraded AI customer agent 

The AI customer agent is now twice as smart. It uses advanced models like GPT-5 to solve problems at a human level. For it to be effective, it needs to be trained on your data; if your organisation has a knowledge base for your service hub, that's an excellent place to start feeding it information. 

You can now assign a customer agent to an email inbox. This will help get quicker initial responses to support tickets, helping customers receive faster replies.

To help with adoption, there is a new testing experience. You can see how the agent will respond before you make it live.

More powerful and flexible properties 

Rollup properties have been enhanced with support for multiple conditions, allowing for complex calculations and business logic. 

This helps you provide only the necessary information to others at a specific time, without overwhelming them.

Better multi-portal management 

For businesses that run multiple HubSpot portals, the multi-account data mirroring feature is now live. You can mirror contact and company objects across different portals, which is incredibly useful for organisations that work closely with partners or find that a couple of pro-tier accounts sharing data is a better fit than a single enterprise instance.

AI-powered automation and workflow builders 

The Breeze Assistant (formerly Breeze Copilot) helps you work smarter. You can use it to create workflows with natural language. The automation overview also provides AI-powered recommendations to help you get started. 

In our experience, this is great for basic automations, but as workflows become more complex, it may not be very helpful. Don't expect it to handle highly advanced use cases well.

A cleaner and more secure portal 

The Account Cleanup tool, formerly known as Account Insights, has been updated. It now helps you find unused assets and identify opportunities to optimise your portal, leading to cost savings and a more secure account.

The future is here so lean into it

The message from INBOUND 2025 is clear: marketing as know it has fundamentally changed. The 'traffic apocalypse' created new rules that demand a strategy focused on building genuine trust, not just chasing clicks.

HubSpot offers a strong partnership between human authenticity and AI efficiency. The new Breeze suite drives this partnership. But, as we know, this engine is useless without a human driver. Your brand's unique voice, your team's creativity and your genuine connection with your audience are the fuel.

Navigating these updates can be overwhelming and turning these tools into a genuine growth strategy is the real challenge. 

That's where Refuel Creative comes in. As certified HubSpot Partners, we can help you use the right tools. We will create a strategy to turn this challenge into a big growth opportunity.

Check out what our CEO, Ryan Jones, had to say about all the latest updates in our recent HubSpot User Group event, “From hype to how to”. 

The final message at INBOUND 2025 came from HubSpot co-founder Brian Halligan. He shared a great closing thought during a hilarious Hot Ones-style interview: "Lean into the future!"

Get in touch with us today to discuss how we can leverage these powerful updates for your business.