Episode 15 | HubSpot Unbound 2026 Recap & the Power of HubSpot User Groups

Todd Laire (00:39)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Married to Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Todd Laire. I'm the co-founder and CEO of LAIRE Digital. We're a marketing and technology agency, and I'm also the host of Married to Marketing's podcast. And I'm joined today by a very special guest. Her name is Mateah Kittle, and she is a senior marketer who oversees the HubSpot user group program at HubSpot. So welcome to the Married to Marketing podcast, Mateah.

Mateah (01:08)
Thank you, Todd. Very happy to be here.

Todd Laire (01:11)
Absolutely. So you are my chosen volunteer guest to help me

Mateah (01:15)
Ha ha.

Todd Laire (01:16)
get through the unbound HubSpot's annual marketing conference and all things happening in the HubSpot community, but then also just global trends and think it's customary for agency partners and influencers and whatnot to do an unbound recap. So I appreciate you coming on and helping me sift through all of the

announcements and takeaways and obviously the gosh sixteen product launches in three days that happened are right around unbound. So I appreciate you being willing to come on and and share more about what your takeaways were since we saw each other at Unbound.

Mateah (01:51)
Yeah, of course. I know. When you get into double digits of new things being released, I think it gets a little hefty. Also just really neat if everybody's doing their own unbound recaps, but it's so special to see other perspectives. And what you found interesting is different than what I may have. So I love that this is a topic.

Todd Laire (02:12)
Absolutely. Now, we've got a lot more to discuss with you after we get through that. And that is really around this concept of community building, which obviously isn't new in not only the marketing space, but just company building and of course community building, you know, in itself. And you've got quite the background in community building and community engagement. And so I'd love to dive into your role specifically at HubSpot.

but then also you know, what you're seeing, what you're overseeing, you know, where you've come from. I've got a story for you as well that I want to share about how I got plugged into the HubSpot community, specifically through the HubSpot user group or hugs as we all call it, that I'd love for you to to know more about and and then just you know, I'd just love to know more about you know how companies and

stakeholders and principals can leverage community to to grow their organization or their mission, I guess, from a high level.

Mateah (03:12)
Yeah. You want to jump into that now or you want to talk about unbound first? Perfect.

Todd Laire (03:15)
Let's get through Unbound. I let's get through the the yeah, that that that side first.

So yeah, and so with that, I think what's interesting to me is obviously a big focus as it was last year, is you know, obviously AI and how AI is is in HubSpot, but also how it's transforming you know, just everything that we're doing, you know, from a CRM perspective, but also from

outreach and messaging efficiency and content, ideation and whatnot. And I think, with HubSpot's lead on providing more context in the CRM. I know that was a big focus area. That was a big takeaway for me. And I'm seeing it now when I log into HubSpot and I'm seeing company and contact records being updated automatically based on what it's able to find, either

in the ether webs or just within my own CRM. know, it's it's

Mateah (04:11)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Laire (04:11)
piecing together context again, and updating records and cross-referencing, you know, conversations that have happened either with us with a particular company or or a contact within the company, the CRM contact record and company records being updated in real time, which is cool. And one kind of example is like for me on the sales side,

keeping track of points of contact LinkedIn, you know, and me me connecting with them on LinkedIn. And it's a field that I have, it's like one of the top five fields that I have for a particular prospect's record. And I used to make habit of if I make contact with somebody, I'd go to their LinkedIn and I would copy and paste their the LinkedIn URL into their contact

Mateah (04:55)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Laire (04:56)
record, save, you know, and then it would autosave and then there it would be. Well now it just goes and grabs it.

It goes and finds them and it grabs it and it pulls it in. And so seeing more of that, that you know, teams are able to cycle faster based on not having to do so much manual work. And so with that that smart CRM concept that HubSpot's really coining and and pushing, I'm seeing the benefits, you know, right away. And I'm sure you've probably heard the buzz around it too.

Mateah (05:25)
Yeah, and that's one of the biggest things I think that we heard consistently was the word context. And I don't think that that's gonna be going away every time you're prompting AI. If you're not giving it the right context, you're not getting what you want out of it. And people get frustrated, like, What do you mean? Why didn't you write this email correctly? Why would you assume this or that? so we knew that before Unbound, but then we came to Unbound and we said

Okay, well actually we can even help you with the context too and help you update it and have that fresh information. So we took the next level down. Not that we need to hold anybody's hand, but we're helping as much as possible to make sure that you all can do what matters. You're actually talking to your prospects or to your customers. You take care of that and we'll do all of the messy work.

Todd Laire (06:14)
Yeah, yeah. And speaking of messy work, um,

Mateah (06:17)
Yeah.

Todd Laire (06:18)
AI agents galore. you know, before

Mateah (06:20)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Laire (06:21)
it was, you know, Breeze Agents was the is the HubSpot product name for the AI assistant and agents within the the platform. but now we saw at Unbound they more compartmentalized, I guess, or centralized is the better word, the AI agent approach.

And so you still have Breeze Assistant as like this on call, on demand assistant with all things within HubSpot. I mean, it can help you, you know, find a customer record or it can help you craft an email address outreach to a prospect. I just did this recently and I was playing around with another little tool we'll talk about. But now there's actually a focused area on agent building. There's an an agent, you know, building home.

Within HubSpot, and you can use that and build agents for so many things from data to customer service to prospecting, like I mentioned, which I think is a really smart approach, you know, to be more proactive on the use of not only using agents, but helping teams build them and classify them for a specific need.

Mateah (07:26)
Telling you what you can do with them is one of the most important parts of anything with AI, but especially agents. I used to work in-house at a small company. I was the marketer, I was the expert, and by no means would classify myself in that category, but I was. And I think about myself going into HubSpot. I would never feel comfortable touching an agent and what that could

do to all of our systems and to our customers. But now seeing that I could go in and okay, I need to create a new campaign, well, let's try this campaign agent. And having something built for me and showing me why and what's the outcome, it just makes everything a lot more approachable. And that's the goal is

Todd Laire (08:13)
Yeah.

Mateah (08:14)
what that's what we're trying to do.

Todd Laire (08:16)
Yeah. And piecing that context together, you know, like I mentioned earlier,

Mateah (08:19)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Laire (08:20)
like now it's going and automatically grabbing and and connecting dots, I guess, is a great way to to think about how this this growth context plays into using the platform. but now like when you ask for help for a specific task or something, you know, I go back to like a a company or a contact within a company.

it's got that context to pull from and then make suggestions, which is so helpful. I'll give you an example. I was using Breeze to help me with an outreach strategy for a customer that we did work for an a year ago. And and so there's, you know, there's meeting notes, there's tasks, there's there's a deal pipeline for several projects we worked on. So I was able to just go and and scan all of that really like.

from a high level and then pull it in and it reminded me things that I totally forgot about to use towards that outreach. And this used to take so long and it was just maybe so high level vanilla when I would reach out, whereas now I can reach out specifically hey, I know you mentioned when we last talked that you were going to put this into action. How did that work out? Like, I don't even remember that. so so I think that's you know a new you know a new you know

new realm for us to to really embrace that it doesn't have to be as hard as it used to be.

Mateah (09:36)
Yep, exactly. And it's our own little memory palace.

Todd Laire (09:42)
Yeah, right. And one other tool that I wanted to to mention that was released is the marketing studio. And so,

Mateah (09:50)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Laire (09:51)
you know, one of my favorite views and and like probably like the for the longest time since I've been using HubSpot and offering it as a solution to companies is the marketing dashboard. Like when you log in and you look right away, like how are we doing on traffic, how are leads you know converting, how many new customers, what's the percentage

Conversion for each, and then how are our assets performing? And Marketing Studio takes all of that, the best bits of that, but then has actionable things like throughout its dashboard and a couple different tabs as well. And so where you can actually create a campaign based on signals that the studio is pulling. And with the newest release of the AEO visibility tool and the visibility score.

is also really cool. Cause I I think we've all done and dabbled in SEO in our in our time. and it was always great when we were able to get results for our companies through SEO, but we never really could see data on what actual organic search terms were being used to find us because Google or whoever kept that. We could just see we got organic search visits and we could do some searching on our own and see some generic examples, but nothing exactly.

pointed back to actual attribution where you can actually see that now in in AI through AI recommendations, but this AEO tool that Hubspot has and it's bolted onto the marketing studio is so, so powerful.

Mateah (11:16)
And one of the most challenging things about SEO and AEO is translating it. What does it mean

Todd Laire (11:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mateah (11:23)
for your leadership? What's the value in this? Should we be investing in it? Or they're doing a search in Chat GPT, best HubSpot Marketing Agency, and they're not coming up. And it's like, why? And you

Todd Laire (11:34)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mateah (11:36)
can go in and show them both what you're doing, but also how you're planning on improving your presence there.

And what is performing well and kind of tell that story a little bit better and all of the data exists there.

Todd Laire (11:51)
Yeah, yeah. It's fascinating. So fascinating. so I think that that covers it, you know, for for product launches and obviously there were some great speakers and I think there's you know, future Hall of Famer that perhaps spoke the the last day that everybody loves that I won't mention.

Mateah (12:07)
Yeah.

Todd Laire (12:08)
'Cause he doesn't need any more attention than he already has, but it was a a fantastic event. I've been going, Mateah since twenty sixteen. And

Mateah (12:16)
Wow.

Todd Laire (12:17)
I can tell you this was probably the most heavily attended event that I've been at. And I know, you know, the pandemic kind of reset event expectations. And I know HubSpot kind of had to rebuild their audience and that attendance. but this this was like

record breaking, I think, in a lot of ways. it was, well over twenty thousand people, lines, for things. One thing I will say that was an improvement this year was the food truck lines. They had that dialed down. you you, you could just go and grab like they had finger food. So you didn't have to wait

Mateah (12:52)
Yeah.

Todd Laire (12:52)
in line per se. You could just get in line to to be served, in a just in a round robin way. And it was so efficient. but everywhere else, like the sessions were packed.

the the after hours things. so it was really great to see you know, I know Unbound's one of the more popular marketing conferences out there, but just to see the attendance and the demand for it was was exciting.

Mateah (13:13)
Mm-hmm.

We need to do something like at Disney World where it's like your first visit or like your tenth anniversary to get that

Todd Laire (13:20)
Yeah, yeah. Uh

Mateah (13:22)
for you that's been there for 10 years. and seeing all the different versions of Unbound and how it's come from twenty sixteen to now.

Todd Laire (13:33)
Yeah.

Mateah (13:35)
and I think what's neat too is it's a conference that covers so many roles. Like you've

Todd Laire (13:40)
Mm-hmm.

Mateah (13:40)
got

Marketers mixing in with salespeople, mixing in with

Todd Laire (13:44)
Yes.

Mateah (13:45)
presidents, mixing in with customer service. And there's something there for everybody, both to eat and also to learn. Um,

Todd Laire (13:52)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mateah (13:54)
and a lot of great companies that are showing up to to talk about

Todd Laire (13:57)
Mm-hmm.

Mateah (13:57)
what they can help you with, how it integrates into HubSpot or supports it, and lots of fun swag, of course.

Todd Laire (14:04)
Yes. yeah.

Of course. Yeah. And and things to do like scavenger hunts and um

Mateah (14:11)
Yeah.

Todd Laire (14:11)
you know, another thing that I thought too, and I'm I'm bordering on the edge of community building, you know. So but the meetups that they had, industry specific meetups, and not

Mateah (14:21)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Laire (14:22)
only that, but the the main trade show room floor was

divided up so smartly. there were living rooms, there was a sports bar, there was a full-on somebody's apartment that everybody gathered almost like a like a house meeting, like

Mateah (14:39)
Yeah.

Todd Laire (14:40)
you know, like having coffee hour in somebody's apartment and doing and passing the mic around and talking to different people. I went to a financial services meetup and it was hosted by a software company and an agency partner.

peer and and friend of ours. And they just they didn't really have a set agenda. It was more so like let's talk about what challenges y'all are facing. And what was cool about that, again back to like not only community building but support. You know, it takes a village too. Like somebody would say, hey, I'm running into this with HubSpot and compliance with my bank or whatever. And you know, it what's a great way to get around that in HubSpot. And like the the two hosts were like

looking around the room, does anybody want to help answer that? We can try to answer, but let's let's crowdsource this answer. And several people were like, yep, that this happened to us and this is what we did and here's what I recommend. There was so much sharing and people connecting not only like kind of mid-event, because you could walk away. It wasn't like in a room, you know, it was in the trade show. So you could walk in and out at any time and people kind of like left.

early or halfway through and we're talking to other people and at the end there was a lot of badge scanning and, you know, business card sharing or or LinkedIn connecting, which I thought was just really interesting and and really cool.

Mateah (15:56)
And if you take that and boil it down on a different scale, thus HubSpot user groups were born. Um,

Todd Laire (16:03)
Yes.

Mateah (16:04)
there was a really great collaboration opportunity there because of the different industry meetups. All of our hugs, our HubSpot user groups exist because somebody stepped up to lead it. They wanted to meet with people either in their local area or based on their industry or a topic, skill or identity and interest that

They just want to connect with other HubSpot users to do that exact thing on a regular

Todd Laire (16:29)
Yeah.

Mateah (16:30)
basis. How are you solving these problems? What have you learned from Unbound? How is anybody using this segment feature to do XYZ? And how you're using it in a financial industry is different than how a nonprofit's using it. And that's different than how a SaaS company is using it. And

I love that the conversations were happening live in person at Unbound and Hugs takes that both globally, because you can host virtual events and meetups, or go in person and have

Todd Laire (17:02)
Yeah.

Mateah (17:03)
that human connection point in real life. And it makes it so special at scale that

Todd Laire (17:09)
Yeah.

Mateah (17:10)
Hugs can provide that to any customer that anybody that's using HubSpot.

Todd Laire (17:15)
Yeah, yeah. And so let let's dive into that. And I think as a precursor to diving into the HubSpot User Group program, which I it's pretty near and dear to my heart and like how I got introduced to the HubSpot community and then just also kind of as at the movement and and the movement of inbound at the time. but but let's talk more about your background too. Like you you're not new to community building and in an engagement, you've had several other

roles where that was what you did. And so I'd love to hear more about your background. Why why are you interested in it? You know,

Mateah (17:50)
Yeah.

Todd Laire (17:51)
what what's the possibility and potential that you see that's kind of brought you this far in your career?

Mateah (17:57)
I have while I've always worked in a version of community and people, I haven't always worked in this version of it and running a user groups program at scale. I started out in digital marketing. I worked for an agency and I was helping with creating strategies for SEO, building websites, what are we gonna do for your Google ads? And that really opened my eyes into all of the different types of businesses, how everybody's different.

How they're marketing differently, they have different competition, their value add is different than everybody else's. And then once working in an agency after that, I went in house and was running the marketing for a company. And that's where I was the quote unquote expert. and the community building there was different because you through social and other marketing aspects.

you're building a company's community. You're building a single connection point for people that need that service, for example. And then after that, I went remote and started working in social and community at another uh software company. I was working at SEMrush, recently acquired by Adobe, and there for almost four years was running the online reputation and social community program.

That means we were I was can talking with all people that were using Simrush or interacting with our brand on socials. And that community is a little bit more transactional. it's everybody that's commenting on our socials or wanting to engage with our brand at events. And you see some of the same people and you start to build this ambassador program, and I know who they are, they don't know who I am because we're the brand.

And it it keeps the brand personal and human, but it doesn't go very far past that. So then when I saw the opportunity at HubSpot to come on and actually like build a program full of people, I'm working with the leaders, our hug leaders that are building and nourishing these communities of people. You know, we're reaching thousands of people every single month, which is just

a scale that you can't reach really through many other programs or

I can't even say the at cost too. I mean,

Todd Laire (20:27)
Yeah.

Mateah (20:27)
the cost of having an unbound in thirty-five

Todd Laire (20:30)
Sure.

Mateah (20:31)
different countries, not gonna happen. So,

Todd Laire (20:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mateah (20:36)
our community builders like you are the ones that are making this possible. And it's pretty incredible to see the value of these small meetups and these events and these conversations that happen naturally.

just with other humans. And that I think is the true definition of community that re regardless of AI and all of the agents that

Todd Laire (20:59)
Yeah.

Mateah (20:59)
we're using, we always have people at the center stone of it all. No one's gonna hit start on an agent. Todd's gonna be hitting start on an agent. We can't have

Todd Laire (21:10)
Yeah.

Mateah (21:11)
AI doing everything. And we're still the ones that are solving problems, no matter how much context we have. So

It's really special to be watching this happen and watching people build these communities and nourish them. And ultimately my job is to make it easy for them and remove any blockers and guardrails in order for them to do that and reach people that are using Hubspot in this example and use it better because how much time can we save? How many problems can we solve? And what the heck is an agent? How do I use

Todd Laire (21:42)
Yeah.

Mateah (21:42)
it?

how do I get more out of HubSpot? and we're touching all different types of people. So it's I'm kind of getting, I feel like, on a tangent about both hugs, both leaders, but it's just a really it's a unique place to meet up with other people and figure out how to problem solve. And I'm happy that I can be the one that's leading the charge on that.

Todd Laire (22:04)
Yeah, that's awesome. and I mean specifically too, like with the HubSpot user group program. when, you know, so quick story of my own. I was introduced to HubSpot through a a client that we already had on our books. And

They had another agency partner that they used for media buying. And they asked for a meeting with us and this other agency. And that's kind of that can kind of be a little awkward and weird, you know, because we're kind of like, how can we take business from each other? But so we met them and the owner was like, Hey, we just invested quite a bit in this tool called HubSpot. We want you to start scheduling your emails and your social through that tool. And we were like, What? Like, where?

We're going to use our tool. I'm like, what's HubSpot? I had no idea. And so I look it up and dig into it. I got a log into it and looked at, you know, I was like, my gosh, this is amazing. Actually, I could think of a few other customers that could use this. And long story short, kind of, you know, got introduced to the partner program as an agency and went down that track and then discovered that there I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina at the time, and there was an established HubSpot user group.

in Charlotte. And so I was like, Well, that's cool.

I still don't know what this is. I just like

Mateah (23:18)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Laire (23:19)
it's it's a platform and but there's a partner program and then there's all kinds of other stuff that I need to be aware of. And I just don't know. And I really need to talk to somebody that does not work at HubSpot, you know? And

Mateah (23:30)
Yes, exactly.

Todd Laire (23:32)
and yeah, and so I went and met George B. Thomas, who's an unbound speaker regular. he's local to Charlotte, got to meet him, met some other agencies who were very similar to to me.

and in my journey and I just I was like, what is this? And they were like, this is the best thing ever. And it starts here with community. And so we have events, every other month or or whatever it was at the time. And I went to everything and I and I asked them like, how can I use HubSpot in my business? And then how can I actually use it? And I've got these questions. And they were so helpful, you know, outside of just the regular ongoing, you know, hug topic for for that

Mateah (24:11)
Yeah.

Todd Laire (24:11)
quarter.

and and so I'm a huge fan of it because I there was n there was n no amount of online blogs or videos I could have watched that that could replace sitting across the table from somebody and, you know, s hearing what they had to say and and then looking at a computer screen together on something and being able to, you know

stop and reflect and then ask a follow-up question and and feel like, I wasn't alone in it. And so that was

Mateah (24:39)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Laire (24:39)
a huge thing for me. And then a few years later I find myself leading the Charlotte Hubspi user

Mateah (24:44)
Ha ha.

Todd Laire (24:45)
group as we developed as a partner. but but yeah with with

Mateah (24:47)
Full circle

moment.

Todd Laire (24:49)
Yeah, yeah, it was, it was. And then even more full circle, I moved away from Charlotte to Charleston, South Carolina and been here f several years now and got

some inquiry and and outreach from you about starting a HubSpot user group in Charleston, which I think is so timely. and you know, we're all busy doing things, and it wasn't like the top of my list, but it was in the back of my mind. And then you reached out and were like, hey, this is a target city, and I agree it should be uh lots of opportunity here. And we just had our first inaugural first ever HubSpot user group in Charleston, South Carolina a few weeks

Mateah (25:23)
Yay.

Todd Laire (25:24)
ago. And back to community building, our topic was on the

prospecting agent in HubSpot and it wasn't just a sit back and watch this PowerPoint speaker. it was an actual live workshop where we built agents and everybody that came built an agent and worked in their HubSpot portal. And it was so cool. And back to appealing to different backgrounds and and diversity, it was mostly all salespeople that came. so you think of

HubSpot and the tool, you think of marketing and marketers, we had, I think, 12 or 13 people there and 11 of them were in sales or had some type of sales role, which was so cool. Um,

Mateah (26:05)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Laire (26:06)
since I do a lot of sales for our agency, I was really able to to connect and build rapport with a lot of them because my my focus is to build that community up and invite them back and have them invite their friends and you know, so it was really exciting to see that, you know, in my own backyard.

Mateah (26:22)
Yeah, and it's incredible that you took it with you from Charlotte to Charleston

Todd Laire (26:25)
Yeah, yeah.

Mateah (26:26)
and are building we see clearly even from your first event, there's people there using HubSpot that might be remote, might not have anyone else at their company that's using it the same way they do. And they get to come learn from you, a HubSpot expert, they get to come learn from HubSpot peers. And it's also really great to see the balance that can happen with hug events.

between let's come, let's meet up, let's chit chat, let's have a drink, let's eat some food, and naturally talk about some HubSpot and what we do. And then the alternate is true where they can come and set up their prospecting agent. Let's have our laptops out. Let's go through this step by step together. It's a carved out time for them to do something to improve

Todd Laire (27:10)
Yeah.

Mateah (27:10)
their portal and improve their results ultimately. And it's up to the hug leader to decide that. And a lot of it is on

you and your experience and what do you think the local market is interested in? Uh Charlson,

Todd Laire (27:22)
Yeah.

Mateah (27:23)
who knew we had so an X number of salespeople there wanting to use prospecting agent, whereas we think about maybe in Belgium, they're more interested in the customer agent and using it

Todd Laire (27:33)
Mm-hmm.

Mateah (27:34)
for support. and you can get local and regionalized that way. And you just met 12 new people and those 12 new people hopefully start coming back.

for other conversations and topics and that becomes their go-to community and they're like, I have this issue with HubSpot. Todd, let me go ask Todd and let me talk to him.

Todd Laire (27:53)
Mm.

Mateah (27:55)
Or Mattie that I met at the meetup, I can go ask her and get some help that way.

Todd Laire (28:03)
Yeah, absolutely. And I you know, I think what a an important delineation between the HubSpot Academy, which is like the university of HubSpot,

Mateah (28:15)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Laire (28:15)
where you can take quick little five minute refresher.

courses and videos and then there's full-on like half day, you know, certifications to get, you know, really in depth with the tool or a particular focus area. The user group is different in a way where like the academy's on demand. You can go and watch videos, there's materials and all that. The user group really is there's the definitely recordings and things, but it it kind of is based off of

a live format and a and an interactive format, whether it be in person and there's also virtual hugs. And, you know, really that spawned I saw post pandemic where there needed to be, you know, user groups still happening, but they needed to happen kind of virtually, you know, initially. And then that kind of caught on and is now popular and it's sidelined. It's a it's a companion to the live in-person groups. There's also virtual hugs that anybody anywhere can plug into based on

what it is. And beyond that, there are particular focus areas, industry specific user groups. There's uh

Mateah (29:22)
Mm-hmm.

Todd Laire (29:23)
career or you know background or expertise level HubSpot user groups, you know, focused on, a particular subject matter like coding or or or what have you.

Talk a little bit more about that. the Academy's phenomenal. There's so much there, but then

Mateah (29:38)
Yes.

Todd Laire (29:39)
the user group really isn't in competition with it and isn't below or above it. It's just this perfect companion where you can get more interaction, I think, which is the big difference between the academy.

Mateah (29:49)
Yeah.

I think it fills a gap because in a way where you trust other reviews and you trust what people are saying in word of mouth, you want the same for tools that you're using. And that's what hugs are all about. And like you said, hugs has been around for over ten years. It has seen a lot of different versions of itself. It

used to all be in person. It was those local meetups, happy hours, and then COVID happened and everything was virtual. And now we're in this Neapolitan mix of all of the above. We've got in-person, we have hybrid events, and we have virtual. Most of our location-based hugs, which would be Charleston, South Carolina, for example, Melbourne, Australia, Belgium, Boston, those

Typically are meeting up in person because that's who you're connecting with. That's your common denominator between all of those HubSpot users. And then we wanted to continue on offering those virtual opportunities and remove the geographic boundary there and talk to people in industries. Like at Unbound, you've got all these finance people in a room and how they're going to use the customer agents a lot different than how,

telecom company is going to use the customer agent. And so we have those industry-specific hugs with those as examples. Home builders, banking, B2B SaaS, all of those use HubSpot differently. So we want them to be able to connect and talk to each other that way. And then we've also been leaning more into

The community community aspect of hugs where we have identity and interest-based groups. So we've got women of HubSpot where you can get together in this safe supportive environment and learn about HubSpot, but also just have an open floor to speak with each other about what you're going through as professionals and learn from each

Todd Laire (31:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mateah (31:52)
other. we have LGBTQIA plus and the spot. So there's pretty much an opportunity for everybody to find.

an event for them. And through those events, they're going to find a community that they want to keep coming back to. These aren't just like one-off webinars or one-off happy hours and meetups, but an opportunity to find a group of people that become your people and who you're going to to learn more about HubSpot and how you're using it. And it's a it's a good mix too for the different levels of people that can be there. You as a founder,

You're going to those HubSpot User Group meetups, people that are in sales or customer support, they're going to HubSpot User Groups meetup. We can all learn something. and you're learning from other people doing the work. It's the practitioners. Whereas the academy, you're learning, it's more polished, I would say. Whereas Hugs is like, we're just people, you know, we're

Todd Laire (32:51)
Yeah. Scripted. Yeah. Yeah.

Mateah (32:56)
we're all trying to learn from each other.

And you'll see that across other webinars. you can find an event pretty much every day in the HubSpot ecosystem, but Hugs is different because you're learning from Mateah, who was in a roofing company

Todd Laire (33:09)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mateah (33:12)
using segments to follow up on closed leads. Terrible example, but um

Todd Laire (33:18)
Yeah. Yeah. But works.

Mateah (33:22)
yes, exactly. So there's there's really something for everybody, and if there isn't

That's where other people come in. If you want to run a hug in Bridgeport, West Virginia, you can do that. You can start that local community. You might have five people in the room, you might have 20, you might have 50. Regardless of how many people are showing up, you're making a space and having good conversations and reminding each other that we're humans. and like in layer digital space.

post about Unbound. I really liked this quote. Let me pull it up. And it's similar to this. You're you want to build for machine readable research, but with human led decisions. And you humans got to talk to other humans. So you've got to be able to find a space for that.

Todd Laire (34:11)
That's great. I wrote that by the way. Just kidding. I just kidding. I didn't write that. No, somebody much smarter than me at our agency

Mateah (34:13)
I love it. Did your machine write it? No. Oh.

Todd Laire (34:20)
wrote it. Another smart human, more smart than than me. Smarter human than me. Yes. Oh, yes. There

Mateah (34:24)
Yes. Not I wouldn't say smarter, but a human is the key aspect there.

Todd Laire (34:28)
you go. Yeah. Yeah.

that that that's great. I w one out of curiosity too, unscripted, what's been some magic moments for you, Mateah, other than the Charleston, South Carolina hugs starting for the first time ever? What

Mateah (34:40)
Course.

Todd Laire (34:42)
just shameless plug there. but what you know, since you've taken this role on, you know, it's it's a coveted and celebrated offering that HubSpot has.

because you said it impacts at such a deep level. But what's been some personal experience that you've had magic moment wise taking this on and hearing from those that have been doing it a while or n first timers setting up something or maybe pulling something out of the ashes that you know died post pandemic and and didn't come back. Would love to hear some experiences.

Mateah (35:12)
Yeah.

I feel like there's probably 15 things we could touch on. So let me weed through my thoughts and stream of consciousness to find a couple. The first one that comes to my mind is program specific. Like I said, the program

Todd Laire (35:28)
Hm. Yeah.

Mateah (35:29)
has been around forever and has been around the block. It's been in a lot of different hands through the years of people working at HubSpot and

It's absolutely no shade to anybody, but it was not thriving, I will say. I think leaders were feeling a little unsupported because when you take a user group, you can start your own group in Charleston. It doesn't have to be about HubSpot. But because

Todd Laire (35:58)
Yeah.

Mateah (35:59)
it is a HubSpot user group, we want to make sure you feel that and that our customers see it and that it feels like something that HubSpot is

investing in and we're also putting in our eggs in that basket with you. And so starting on this program over a year ago now, it's incredible to have met some of our returning hug leaders at Unbound and hear from them the difference that the program has, the support that they have from us, both in terms of promoting it, telling customers about it, what are hugs?

What in the world

Todd Laire (36:36)
Yeah.

Mateah (36:36)
is that? Getting internal enablement going and talking more to our CSMs and our c salespeople, our customer-facing teams, growing our chapter base, finding people like you, Todd, that are in Charleston, are in a place where we want to allow the opportunity for customers to gather and learn from each other. We're also giving topic ideas in HubSpot speakers, mate, like with

your event in Charleston. Can we send somebody there? like

Todd Laire (37:06)
Yeah.

Mateah (37:07)
can we get HubSpot more involved to provide a different perspective? and so that's been really rewarding from a program manager perspective is that a lot of the things that we're doing are making the load easier for our leaders who are volunteers who just want communities to build

near them or in their same market. And I want to make that a job that they like to do and that they want to do.

Todd Laire (37:37)
Yeah.

Mateah (37:38)
And then from a community perspective, we for many of our events start tracking confidence level. How did you feel about the prospecting agent before the event versus after the event? And

Todd Laire (37:50)
Mm. I love that.

Mateah (37:53)
we're seeing 90% of our customers increasing their product confidence.

Todd Laire (37:58)
Wow.

Mateah (37:59)
I don't know any other program or events that can say that, which is a huge kudos to our hug leaders, of course, and the knowledge that they're bringing and just also the almost like the structure of the program as well and how crucial it is to be learning from your peers and from each other and that live learning environment and how this does impact.

how they're using the product and also just how confident they're feeling in the work that they're doing.

Todd Laire (38:29)
Yeah, that's awesome. that's so great. And

Mateah (38:32)
Yeah.

Todd Laire (38:32)
y like like you said, like there's just no other that's a great KPI too, by the way, to like

Mateah (38:38)
Yeah.

Todd Laire (38:39)
see confidence, you know. Like of course they get in room a room with other people that are also aren't sure. And then they're learning from them maybe more so than what's on the screen or what's on their screen in front of them. Like somebody leans

Mateah (38:52)
Yeah.

Todd Laire (38:52)
over and says, No, do this. This is what I did, and they're like, and then the light bulb comes on.

Mateah (38:57)
Yeah.

Todd Laire (38:58)
Um

so that's I you just can't replicate that, right?

Mateah (39:01)
Right.

And this the the learning opportunity in environment impacts it a lot as well. But of course, from a business perspective, we can't just say like, hey, we had fifteen people in the room, that's great, but like, okay, no, what does this mean for the product? Which

Todd Laire (39:18)
Yeah.

Mateah (39:19)
is why I am such a strong advocate for community and for connecting with other people, both as a business.

we can see it helps with feature confidence that's gonna turn into usage and that might even turn into retention. But then from a personal like perspective, if I'm going to a user group, I'm gonna get value from that. I'm gonna be able to do my job better. And then I can take those results back to my leaders and say, look what I've done recently in HubSpot. So there's thankfully a mutually beneficial reason to be running this program.

But of course, selfishly I'm like, no, what did the customers get from it? And what's the value they're seeing from it? And that's the lens and the story that I always want to be reading because that's why we're doing this.

Todd Laire (40:06)
Yeah, that's awesome. How do people find a HubSpot user group in their area?

Mateah (40:12)
We have our events.hubspot.com where they can go and search for their town, their state, their country in some cases, or even their industry if they want to go virtual. So that's how they can find it themselves. Also an opportunity if you have a contact here at HubSpot, you can ask them about it and say, hey, I'm located in San Antonio, Texas. Is there a group here? And they can put you in the right direction.

Todd Laire (40:38)
Yeah, and there is a group there. I just saw your post and someone commented, yeah.

Mateah (40:40)
There it is. Exactly.

Todd Laire (40:45)
Yeah. And in Charleston, South Carolina too. Yes.

Mateah (40:47)
Correct.

Todd Laire (40:48)
Yeah. And aside from that, say if somebody's seasoned with HubSpot and there is a need in their area, how do they how do they start one?

Mateah (40:57)
We have an application process. We are opening it typically a couple of times a year. Right now you can submit an interest form. Let us know that you want to do this. They can tell us a little bit about yourself, why you want to do it, and what type of hug you want to run, whether it's local like Charleston, or if you want to run some an industry based one, you can let us know that and we can then notify you whenever applications are open in early 2027.

Todd Laire (41:25)
Awesome. Great. Mateah Kittle, thank you so much

Mateah (41:28)
Yes.

Todd Laire (41:29)
for coming on the Married to Marketing podcast. This was fun. We'll have to do it again uh sometime. Yeah, sometime in

Mateah (41:34)
I would love that. Yeah.

Todd Laire (41:36)
the future. And as I get some more events under our belt, we'll have to have you come to Charleston and do one of our Hub Spot user groups. uh

Mateah (41:44)
You do not have to twist my arm for that. I would love to be able to do that and

appreciate the conversation and the perspective and thanks for everything that you do for your HubSpot community, both globally through LAIRE Digital and also now in Charleston.

Todd Laire (41:59)
Awesome. Well, thank you. And you're welcome and excited to

Mateah (42:02)
Ha ha.

Todd Laire (42:02)
work with you for the rest of the year and then into 2027. So good good things

Mateah (42:06)
Incredible.

Todd Laire (42:07)
bound to happen. So all right. Well thanks

Mateah (42:09)
Great.

Todd Laire (42:09)
again. Yeah, and look out for the podcast wherever you get podcasts. We'll we'll get the episode up and out and excited to continue the journey.

Mateah (42:18)
Sounds great. Always happy to answer any questions.

Todd Laire (42:21)
Awesome. All right. Take care. See you soon. Thank

Mateah (42:23)
Thanks, Todd. Bye.

Todd Laire (42:24)
you. Bye.