Gone are the days of creating dozens of separate HubSpot instances to manage every branch of your business. HubSpot Business Units allow for better brand management by introducing segmented audiences, assets, and reporting — all within one accessible HubSpot portal.
This addition to the HubSpot universe is fairly new and raises lots of questions, so we did the research for you. Here, we’ll define a Business Unit, tell you about their benefits and best use cases, and determine whether or not this feature can benefit your organization.
What are HubSpot Business Units?
A HubSpot Business Unit is an add-on that allows companies to create multiple brands in a single shared HubSpot portal. HubSpot Business Units achieve a degree of separation within your HubSpot account without entirely breaking the instances apart.
Business units are an extension of brand domains in HubSpot, which allow users to connect an additional root domain to their instance. Having an additional brand domain connected allows for a few perks, such as segmented traffic analytics. Business units include these features and more, helping users achieve universal control over faceted operations and marketing efforts.
Like the majority of other HubSpot features, Business Units can be governed using team and user partitioning. Your administrative team can set up and manage Business Units under distinct permissions. Creating a Business Unit is as simple and intuitive as setting up a brand domain: Configuration exists in your portal settings. This feature is currently available to Marketing Hub Enterprise users.
Benefits of HubSpot Business Units
Now that we understand the purpose of a HubSpot Business Unit, let’s take a closer look at some of the benefits. Beyond brand segmentation, there are some valuable perks to these add-ons that provide a more seamless user experience.
Associating assets: With Business Units, marketing materials are faceted, which keeps your brands distinguished with domains, forms, pages, and emails. Separate subscription centers allow prospects to manage branded content preferences as opposed to unsubscribing from your entire parent company.
Cost savings: No need to create new HubSpot instances for each of your brands. With HubSpot Business Units, you’ll cut down on subscription costs with this simple and affordable add-on feature.
Separate brand performance: Reporting and performance tools can be segmented by Business Unit, allowing a comprehensive view of specific metrics.
Unlimited domain connection: If your marketing efforts overlap for several of your brands, you can connect as many domains as necessary under one Business Unit. This feature helps reduce the total number of Business Units needed to manage a complete brand identity.
Third party integrations: All of the integrations you know, love, and use in your HubSpot instance are functional within your Business Units. You are permitted to associate one account per Business Unit. For example, if you utilize Zoom to host branded webinars, you’ll be able to connect a separate Zoom account to each Business Unit.
Are Business Units right for your organization?
Use cases for HubSpot Business Units vary. Choosing the best solution to manage and organize your brands depends on how you prefer to use your marketing assets.
Some of the best use cases for a single HubSpot account featuring Business Units include:
- You cross-sell or upsell contacts across your brands;
- You share marketing campaigns, assets, or templates across brands;
- Your brands have shared products or services;
- The same marketers work across your brands.
While Business Units introduce a lot of benefits to asset management and business processes, they aren’t a perfect fit for everyone. If any of the following conditions apply to your business, you’ll need to keep your HubSpot operations on multiple portals:
- Needing to host brand data in different global regions;
- Having multiple independently owned companies or franchises;
- Wanting to receive separate bills;
- Having separate CRMs for your brands;
- Brands are subject to legal boundaries that shouldn’t be breached.
Getting started with HubSpot Business Units
Business Units are intuitive and easy to implement; however, preparation and communication with your teams is a must. Get everybody on the same page before you introduce Business Units to your HubSpot instance. Making the most out of Business Units means starting with a game plan to divide your assets accurately and efficiently.
Our team can help you analyze and understand what you need before you make that final decision. We’ll help you get the right HubSpot solution in place, whether it’s a Business Unit, separate accounts, or user permissions on your existing portal. As an Elite HubSpot Solutions Partner, you can count on our insight and expertise.
Need a hand with Business Units? Contact us today for a consultation.