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When I first started with Boom in 2017, I was ready to do something that would challenge me – something in which I could become an “expert” but still always have loads to learn. So when I started working for what was at the time a startup agency using HubSpot, I knew very quickly I had found the right fit.
Fast forward two and a half years, and I’m now an inbound specialist. My role revolves around HubSpot, creating amazing results for clients and training their teams on how to use the software effectively. I’m learning and growing every day, and I get to help other people discover and get excited about HubSpot, which I love.
My days are generally quite varied, so I thought I’d share one of my recent days with you:
6:45 – leave the house
Our office is in Bournemouth town centre, but I live in the heart of the New Forest just to the east. It’s absolutely beautiful, and my drive is lovely, but it does take me 45 minutes to get into town. Normally I wouldn’t leave until about 7:30, but today I have to be in early for a training, so I leave at 6:45. I park just a 5 minute walk from the office, drop my stuff off at my desk, and go straight for my morning coffee – just a splash of milk.
7:30 – answer emails
While I’m not on the client success team, my role as an inbound specialist means I do get client emails, either from the CS team or from the clients themselves, about HubSpot recommendations and best practices. I answer a few of these before getting ready for the training.
8:00 – sales training
Today I’m in early so I can train some sales reps in Australia. It’s 7pm for them, so I try to keep things as succinct yet valuable as I can.
9:00 – HubSpot community forums
The sales training ends, and I jump into the HubSpot community forums, which is one of my favourite things to do. I answer questions from other HubSpot users about technical snags or best practices. A surprising number of them are about Design Tools, as not many HubSpot users are coders or have them in-house. I’m no developer, but I know my way around Design Tools well enough to answer most of these questions.
9:30 – HubSpot audit
Audits require a lot of focus and concentration. When you’re checking workflows and personas and pipelines, you need to be incredibly focused so you don’t get muddled. So I lock myself in a meeting room and focus on a client portal for a couple of hours, trying to help them figure out what they could be doing better to make the most of their investment.
11:30 – content help
I’ll have to come back to the audit tomorrow as they tend to take a full day, but for now I’ve got to help our content specialist/Client Success Manager Sam with some technical content. We’re writing an ebook about nurture sequences, and I’m checking to make sure the recommended workflows are in line with best practices.
12:00 – more emails
12:15 – lunch
We’re lucky enough to work right in the centre of Bournemouth, with loads of great cafes and takeaways nearby. That’s why I always go to…. Tesco. I know. But what can I say, I’m a creature of habit. It’s always a chicken sandwich (usually the pesto and mozzarella one), salt and vinegar crisps, and a peach iced tea. I walk down with a couple of other people from the team, and we eat together in the common area outside our office.
1:00 – onboarding
I’ve got just an hour to focus on some more work before my afternoon meetings. We’re onboarding a new HubSpot client onto the sales and marketing software, so I take our statement of work, put it into the scoping document, and assign tasks to the team to complete over the next 60 days. The client will then need to fill in the scoping document so our team knows how to apply the different deliverables – for example, I know from our kickoff meeting that this client wants to use their allotted custom fields to align to their CRM so they can build a custom integration with it.
2:00 – team training
As an inbound specialist, one of my jobs is to make sure the rest of the team learns about relevant product and best practice updates. The agency founders and I learn about these in webinars and regular meetings with HubSpot, but the rest of the team needs training in these features in order to use them well for clients. So this afternoon I’m walking everyone through some new Sales Hub features, as well as going through some new best practices for lead nurturing.
3:00 – user journey strategy meeting
A well-timed follow-up to the training, this meeting is all about strategising with our Client Success Director about how to create a user journey for a client that will nurture leads and deliver content appropriate to their lifecycle stage and persona. We’re combining chatbots, pop-ups, email sequences and smart content to create nuanced, tailored experiences for the different audiences. We’ve booked out the largest meeting room for just the two of us just so we can use the whiteboard covering one wall. By the end of the meeting, we’ve filled every square inch with ideas and processes.
4:00 – lead scoring updates
Now it’s time to review lead scoring for our existing clients. Often when we’re onboarding someone they don’t have very many leads yet, so the lead score thresholds for changing lifecycle stages can be quite low. Over time, as the volume starts to build and we see who is best qualified, we can raise that threshold and adjust the lead scoring to make it better fit the client. I go through and send reports for three different clients, and then I set up the lead scoring for a fourth.
4:45 – campaign review
At the end of the day, I go through the campaigns the Inbound Executives have set up during the day and check them. I don’t often find much, but all of our campaigns go through at least 3 rounds of testing before going to the client for approval, so we’re meticulous about checking them.
5:15 – emails
Time for just a few more emails before the end of the day.
5:30 – hit the gym
At the end of every workday, I like to go to the gym, even if it’s just for a bit. It helps me loosen up and transition out of work mode and into a more relaxed mindset. Even if I’m only there for a few minutes, it’s a nice bookend to my day.
And there you have it! That’s my day. Tomorrow I’m spending half the day on that audit and half the day on a HubSpot certification course, so this one was far more interesting to show you, and it’s a better illustration of an average day for me.
A day in the life of an Inbound Specialist is incredibly varied, and that’s one of the reasons I love my job. There’s enough variety to keep things interesting, but I’m also working in my area of expertise at all times, and I’m learning along the way. Next time we’ll be joining Emma Lynch, one of our agency’s founders, to find out what a day in her work life is like.
