We Went to an AI Conference and Came Back Talking About Humans: Our HubSpot UNBOUND 2026 Recap
Let’s set the scene. The team rolls up to Thomas M. Menino Convention & Exhibition Center (rolls right off the tongue, right?). We’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed like the other 13,000 marketers there. Notebooks in hand, minds wide open, excited for the crush of marketing information to come. Immediately upon entering the conference hall, we were met with approximately 11 million uses of the word “agentic” (don’t quote us, we’ve got no reference) and a buzz of enthusiasm from others keen to adapt their marketing systems to today’s rapidly evolving AI world.
We spent three days at HubSpot UNBOUND (yes, yes, we know it used to be called INBOUND, now it’s UNBOUND, it had a glow-up, and we’re all very happy for it) listening to smart people talk about marketing. Well, let’s be real. They were talking about AI. Did we get a little exhausted from it? Sure. Were they singularly focused on it because it’s incredibly important that we all learn how AI fits into marketing systems? FOR SURE.
And the whole time, one thought wouldn’t leave my head: humanity is what got us here.
Think about why LLMs took off in the first place. We want conversations, and LLMs let us have them instead of Googling search terms that lead to endless scrolling. We're impatient, and LLMs let us be. AI didn't win because it's a robot. It won because it's shaped around very human wants. So no, this isn't a "humans vs. AI" cage match. It's a "put AI where it belongs and keep humans where they belong" situation.
Here's the highlight of what we learned.
The TL;DR (for the skimmers, also the AI…we know you like bullet lists, more on that below)
Taste and context came up in every single talk.
AI without them is a very confident intern who has never met your customers. Oh, you didn’t know that all that judgment you have is called “taste”? Well, put that pinky up! You got taste!Governance > The Wild West.
Evaluate your systems and decide where AI fits. Don't just let everyone download whatever tool they saw on the UNBOUND floor. Governance is what allows you to build systems and ensure the AI is managed.AEO is not a blog-only game.
If you're only blogging, you're going to miss it. And if you’re not focused on AEO, you need to get on it, now.AI reads your emails before your prospects do.
We've got a whole section of email stats you can put to work tomorrow morning. Quick actionable stuff.Trust is the last unfair advantage.
Speed, honesty, and real relationships win. You know, the stuff that requires quality humans that can’t be easily replicated.HubSpot shipped a lot.
Scroll to the bottom for the full launch list with links. Gotta be real, the level of innovation was impressive.
Houston, We Need to Think Bigger
One of the keynotes was an actual astronaut. Suni Williams, who spent a very unplanned amount of time in space. If that isn't a sign to stop tweaking button colors and think bigger, we don't know what is. The lessons she brought (from my point of view at least):
Humans are amazing and resilient, and we can do anything.
Change is inevitable; adapt, take control, and have a good attitude.
Don’t be afraid. Unexpected change has to be handled one step at a time, checklist-style.
The message across sessions is that marketing is fundamentally evolving. The work we do is different. How people find our products is different. And change is good. Now is the time to be curious, try things, and stay flexible. The people who wait for the dust to settle will be the ones sweeping it up. AI isn’t coming for your job; it’s a partner in crime that can give us all something back that we so badly need: the room for deep critical thinking.
Taste + Context: The Peanut Butter and Jelly of AI
Every session came back to these two words. Gotta be real, I’ve been in marketing a long time, and we’ve never talked about taste and context. Probably because they are very human things that we just have. Here's why.
Context is everything AI knows about your business, your customers, and how you actually work. Without it, AI is running the Dory from Finding Nemo playbook. It’s enthusiastic, friendly, loves to agree with you…and has literally no idea what just happened. HubSpot's Smart CRM session put it bluntly: CRMs don't need more data, they need more context. AI is generic by default. Feed it your processes, your sales call transcripts, and your proprietary data (if you can, we know this isn’t an option in every case), or it will guess. And guessing is how you get an email addressed to "Hi [FIRST NAME]."
Taste is knowing what good looks like. AI can produce infinite content. It cannot tell you whether that content is any good. That's your job, ya know, the fun part.
How HubSpot's email team actually did it
Ari Echt-Wilson, HubSpot's Director of Email Marketing, called AI marketing's "photography moment" and walked us through a four-step playbook that doubled baseline email conversion:
Taste: Get your team in a room. Everyone brings their best email from the last year. Debate. Pick one champion (this is supposed to be hard). Turn what made it great into a rubric covering length, voice, banned phrases, and must-have content. That rubric is the brief you hand to AI: "This is great. Build this."
Research: Personalization needs contact data (job title, persona), company data (size, industry, news), and context (page views, form fills, chats).
Coach: Prompt with CRAFT: Context, Role, Action, Format, Tone. Then add examples of what good looks like.
Experiment: Run 5+ rounds of prompt iteration, test with 20+ contacts, review the outputs, then launch a live A/B test.
The results HubSpot saw were not subtle:
Personalizing by job title: +52% conversion rate. Directors and up care about ROI and strategy. Everyone else cares about "will this make my Tuesday less awful?"
Personalizing using a company's AEO Grader score: +85% conversion rate
Mirroring each rep's formality style: +50% meetings booked
Using chat transcripts as prompt input: +200% conversion rate
Pro Tip: The biggest jump in their test came when they added examples of great emails to the prompt. Not a longer prompt. Examples. Show, don't tell. Your high school English teacher was right.
Put AI Where It Belongs (and Nowhere Else)
The "You're doing AI wrong (so were we)" session was the most honest 45 minutes of the week. They put it at the end of the day, and it was an interesting re-grounding (no astronaut pun intended) after 8 consecutive hours of AI “look at our perfect implementation” kittens-and-rainbows talks. Their first rule: don't automate broken processes. Slapping AI on a bad workflow is like putting a spoiler on a minivan (unless we’re talking about a Plymouth Voyager, that can probably rock it). It's still a minivan, now it's just attracting the wrong kind of attention, like your boss, asking hard questions.
Where AI really earns its keep right now is organization and coordination:
Meeting notetakers that capture action items
Tracking project dependencies
Automating follow-ups with internal teammates
Sales rep conversation tracking that actually updates the CRM
The more data integrations you connect, the more AI goes from "fun toy" to "useful teammate." That's the difference between casual use and deep integration.
But, governance. Right? Right?
AI is a draft-maker. Humans are decision-makers. Match the level of human review to the risk: customer-facing copy needs a human in the loop, internal docs can get lighter oversight. Watch out for "shadow AI" (tools your team is using that nobody approved). And keep your own expertise sharp, because you can't review what you can't do.
Why does this matter? Nejc Skoberne of Sellestial shared some sobering math: an AI that's 98% accurate on each step of a 25-step task ends up wrong about 40% of the time. Compounding errors are the "Telephone" game of AI. Meanwhile, Salted Stone's Tony Eades shared that 95% of generative AI pilots show zero measurable results. It's not the tools. It's the lack of a system around them.
Pro Tip: AI isn't reducing working hours. It's intensifying them, and it burns out your best early adopters first. The speakers at the conference advised organizations to decide on purpose what they'll do with “reclaimed time”.
Hot take, though. Maybe an unpopular take. We heard the AI likes a polarizing point of view, so here goes. We’ve been adopting AI in thoughtful ways just like every other marketer on the planet, and I don’t have the feeling that I’ve “reclaimed” any time. Nor does my team appear to have “reclaimed time”. I think there’s this misconception that marketing folks are automating their jobs and sitting back, having all the extra time for pumpkin spice lattes. It’s not happening. We’re learning new skills, it’s opening new doors for innovations we can bring to marketing strategies, it’s incredibly fun, but it’s not what people think. The time is different. More deep thinking. More critical eyes on messaging. The prospect of burnout is real. Talk to your team and make sure they’re getting what they need. This AI change is not simple.
AEO: If You're Only Blogging, You'll Miss It
Answer Engine Optimization was everywhere. The big lesson: to be the authority AI cites, you need to be referenced across lots of channels, not just your blog. LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, podcasts, PR, review sites, all of it. AI builds its opinion of you from everywhere. Think of it like a reference check where AI calls every co-worker you've ever had (even the ones that didn’t like you).
Nuggets from our notes:
Listicles are the #1 most-cited content format (32% of AI citations). Yes, really. Yes, you're reading one. We're not sorry. They may seem cheesy, but they’re working REALLY well. Don’t let your pride get in the way of a good citation.
Dates in titles matter. Content with a recent date or time period in the title is 50%+ more likely to show up in ChatGPT and other LLMs. "The State of HR Laws" loses to "The State of HR Laws — Q3 2026." (Notice our title? Wink.)
Stale pages get skipped. Pages not updated in a year are 2x less likely to be cited. Yes, that includes your dusty Resources page.
Schema is not magic. Ahrefs tracked 1,885 pages that added JSON-LD schema and found no citation boost. Stop trying to make fetch happen. Make the page more useful instead.
Be the original source. Adding real stats, quotes, and sources raised AI visibility by 40%. Keyword stuffing made it worse.
Build a reviews hub. AI can't read your Google reviews, so put an HTML-readable page on your site that pulls reviews from every platform.
Build pages for robots too. Traffic from AI tools led to nearly 700% more conversions, but most product pages scored only 66/100 on AI-readiness. Answer the question in the first 100 words, write facts as text (not images), and build comparison pages.
And speaking of robots reading things...
The Inbox Has a New Gatekeeper: Email Stats You Can Use Tomorrow Morning
This session was the Moneyball of the conference. I’m going to say this with love, Jay Schwedelson, if you are here, reading this…I’m in awe of the speed at which you can talk. I’m from Philly, and we talk fast, but we got nothing on you. At one point, Jay looked over and saw the sign language interpreter trying to keep up and said, “Oh my god, you have to sign this? I’m going to think about this all night.” I gotta be real, I’m still thinking about her too. She nailed it.
This session was no fluff. Well, except for the million asides that Jay puts in, but that’s not really fluff, nor is it an ADD-fueled accident; he’s smart and doing neuromarketing voodoo to give your brain a break to retain all the knowledge bombs and to build human rapport. Jay’s rapid-fire slide deck full of numbers that made every email marketer in the room pull out their cell phones and start furiously snapping pics.
Meet your new first reader: the AI summary
Your email's first reader isn't your prospect anymore. It's Gmail, Apple Mail, or Microsoft Copilot writing a one-line summary before anyone clicks. And that robot is everywhere:
Microsoft reports 30M+ paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats, up 100% in 90 days
90%+ of the Fortune 500 use Microsoft 365 Copilot
Copilot usage in Outlook is up 65% in the last 90 days
If you sell B2B, your buyers' inboxes are Copilot territory. And here's the kicker: 64% of AI email summaries misrepresented the original message. That's not a gatekeeper, that's a game of Telephone with your email open rates.
Can you count on people turning it off? Nope. According to Validity's Summer 2026 Consumer Survey, only 27% of people are uncomfortable with AI reading their email and have turned it off. The rest are completely comfortable (17%), somewhat comfortable (33%), or uncomfortable but letting it happen anyway (23%). That's nearly three out of four inboxes with a robot on the door.
Live text, or it didn't happen
If your offer lives inside a pretty JPG, the AI summary can't see it. Neither can anyone whose images didn't load. This has always been the hill we die on at Red Brick, any employee on the team since circa 2021 will tell you that I have yelled at them at least 10 times, “NO text in image! It’s the hill I will die on!”.
Live text is: headlines, paragraph copy, and button copy that's actually typed into the email.
Live text is NOT: words baked into your hero image, text inside image buttons, your logo, or a beautiful graphic that just looks like text. And alt text? As the slide put it, that ain't live text.
The test: your message should still make sense if every image breaks. Put the offer, amounts, deadline, and CTA in real, selectable text.
The first 200 characters are the new subject line
Email click-throughs rose 19% when action + product + deadline appeared in the first 200 characters of live text. Here's what that looks like:
"Register for the Q4 Pipeline Workshop by Friday to see the three plays our clients are running right now."
"Download the 2027 B2B Benchmark Report by October 15 to see how your numbers stack up."
The first 200 characters should not be "We're excited to share..." Nobody is excited. Get to the point. Also, if you’re talking about you, then you’re already doing it wrong. Why does your prospect care? If you’re trying to make them excited, probably don’t tell them to be excited; give them the information that authentically does make them excited.
Bullets are AI catnip, yeah, we snuck a VetMed reference in, pretty good, ay?
AI summaries love a bulleted list. Here's how often each platform pulled bulleted content into its summary:
Microsoft Copilot: 92%
Apple Mail: 84%
Gmail: 77%
If there's something you need the summary to say, put it in a bullet.
Pro Tip: Jay provided an inbox summary prompt. Paste your email into your AI tool and ask it to pretend it's Gmail, Apple Mail, and Outlook Copilot. Have it write the one-sentence summary each would show, then score whether the offer, audience, benefit, deadline, and CTA all survived. Rewrite only the first 200 characters until they do. The goal isn't prettier copy. It's copy that's impossible to misunderstand.
Bye-bye robot words
One slide listed 20 words that tank engagement when they show up in the first three words of your copy. Some of the worst offenders:
"Game-changing": -24% email opens, -33% webinar registrations
"Revolutionary": -22% email opens, -31% webinar registrations
"Effortless": -21% email opens, -29% webinar registrations
"Next generation": -20% email opens, -28% webinar registrations
"Transform": -19% email opens, -28% webinar registrations
Also on the naughty list: unlock, leverage, harness, maximize, optimize, streamline, seamless, elevate, innovative, powerful, cutting-edge, and ultimate. Even "exclusive" (-13% opens) and "limited time" (-12% opens) take a hit. If your copy reads like a LinkedIn bot's fever dream, it's time for a rewrite.
Pro Tip: Try the speaker's "Un-AI the copy" prompt. Ask your AI tool to strip every phrase that sounds statistically AI-generated, then add one specific observation, one opinion someone could disagree with, one oddly precise detail, and one sentence under six words.
Small design tweaks, real results
Show the play button. Emails that show a play button for video content got 34% higher click-through rates than emails that just talk about the video. Don't describe the trailer. Show the trailer. Feel like we already talked about show and tell once in this recap but we’re back at it again.
Point at your CTA. CTAs paired with directional visual cues (arrows, motion cues, visual anchors) got 14% more clicks than standalone buttons. Apparently, we're all just golden retrievers following a pointing finger.
Get a little messy
Behind-the-scenes emails feel human, and humans click on humans. The speaker showed an example from a creator whose entire business (over $100 million) is built on webinars. Her launch emails lean into "cringe confessions" and share the setup, the imperfect work, and what happened off camera. Polished is fine. Real is better.
Name your offers like they have an expiration date
Just like with AEO, put a date on it. "Lead Nurture Benchmarks" becomes "2026 Lead Nurture Benchmarks (Fresh Data Drop)." Add timestamps right in your copy, like "As of September 2026..." or "Based on 2026 data..." Recency signals trust to buyers and to AI.
October 1st is different (and it took us so long to dig out from UNBOUND that wow…it’s October now)
First, sorry for the delay. This recap was a labor of love. Between digging out from UNBOUND and making sure this thing was worth reading it’s been a TIME. Anyway, back to the blog. According to Jay, planning season is when B2B buyers go shopping for content (and products). From October through January, these five content types beat standard content on downloads:
2027 industry calendars (key dates, events, and opportunities): +128%
Executive checklists (marketing, sales, AI, budget): +62%
Benchmark reports (what top companies are doing): +55%
Annual planning worksheets (goal planners, KPI trackers, Q1 templates): +48%
Prediction + action guides (what's coming and what to do about it): +37%
If you don't have a 2027 planning asset in the works yet, consider this your Paul Revere moment. The planners are coming. Get it? Boston joke?
Trust Is the Last Unfair Advantage
Career coach and pro athlete Shana Sumers said it best: when everyone has AI, trust is the last unfair advantage. She also shared that 94% of people want a human to confirm what AI told them. So here's how you earn trust in 2026.
Be fast
Marcus Sheridan (the "They Ask, You Answer" guy) shared that calling a lead within 24 hours raises conversion 17%. Within an hour, 72%. Within one minute? 391%. Buyers now compare your speed to Amazon's. Yikes, no pressure, that brings new meaning to speed to lead!
Let buyers help themselves
75% of B2B buyers would rather buy without talking to a sales rep. We know that doens’t work in every situation, but you should know they are digging DEEP on their own research before calling you, because…they don’t wanna call you. It’s not personal, it’s just the reality of the way things work now. Offer calculators, configurators, comparison tools, and self-scheduling. Keep a human available, but if you have a product that can be bought without one, consider making that an option. And be honest about what your product isn't good for. Self-disqualification builds trust faster than a perfect pitch.
Get weird (but kind), but also like not too weird…idk maybe you had to be there for this one
Beth Dunn made the case that being different boosts engagement about 7%. AI has accelerated the “samenss” that we’re all becoming blind to. But weird alone can scare off buyers. The formula: Weird + Memorable + Warmth. Weird should be about who you help, not about you. If you want to talk about this it’s more of a conversation about differentation and we’re here for it.
Show your face
Video is the most human form of digital communication, and HubSpot's own team predicted that every company will be a video-first company. It also gives you an AEO edge by making you look authentic, not generated. Behind-the-scenes content earned 2x engagement on Meta compared to polished content, and walking selfie videos had 49% higher completion rates on LinkedIn. Your hallway walk-and-talk is content. Your messy whiteboard is content. Go.
A note from our author (me, Amanda, a human): While the “walk-and-talk” is popular I don’t like it at all. The drive and talk is even worse, like don’t get into an accident brah! But I think the point of authentic videos is the real take home. If you walk and talk…well look where you’re going I guess, I won’t be rewarding it with a “like” but even my lizard brain can’t bear to look away. Maybe I’m hoping to see an epic “trip-and-fall”.
Build relationship capital, not a contact list
Skip the AI-generated cold pitch. Warm introductions still open doors AI can't. Ask yourself how you create value beyond technical skills. Relationships are currency.
Treat your event like it has a nervous system
From the "Vibe by Design" session: map every pre-event touchpoint and make sure the emotions tied to each one are consistent. Your audience wants an experience, not an agenda.
And for the "marketing is dead" crowd, Portia Obeng had a response at the All Black Collective meeting: marketing has turned into outbound, sales, growth roles, and revenue audits... but it is not dead. It's evolving, and hybrid, human-centric strategy is the backbone.
Your Chatbot Is Not a Bouncer
Scott Thomas of SalesAi had a line we'll be quoting for months: deflection isn't a win, resolution is. A chatbot that makes people go away isn't doing its job. It's playing hard to get, and nobody likes that in a customer service scenario.
Trust in AI to handle service sits around 44%, but jumps to ~90% when it resolves an issue on the first try.
Customers forgive mistakes. They don't forgive dead ends.
A good bot-to-human handoff needs four things: Trigger, Context, Catcher, and Speed. Miss one and it's not a handoff, it's a cliff.
Give every AI agent a one-page job description: Job, Boundaries, Manager, Handshake, Scorecard, Review.
Also: companies can be legally responsible for what their chatbot says. "The chatbot is a separate legal entity" did not hold up in court. Shocking, we know.
Your Email List Is Quietly Going Bad
All those inbox tips don't matter if your emails never reach the inbox. ZeroBounce's Brian Minick shared that 28% of email lists decay within a year. Delivered doesn't mean it hit the inbox. Marie Kondo your list:
Engaged (0–90 days): Email normally
Warm (91–180 days): 1–2x a month
Cold (181+ days): Re-engage on another channel or let them go
Clean your list at least yearly. Quarterly if you're an overachiever. (HubSpot workflows can automate a lot of this.)
Everything HubSpot Launched at UNBOUND 2026
HubSpot called this its most foundational product release, and nearly all of it is built on one idea: Growth Context. HubSpot's pitch is that when AI runs on high-quality context in its platform, businesses create 3.6x more MQLs, win 3.2x more deals, and close over 2x more tickets. Start with the official Fall 2026 Spotlight announcement, then dig in below.
Keep in mind that some of these tools require the use of “credits” in HubSpot. Pretty much anything with the word “Agent” in it requires credits. They’re not super expensive, but you’ll want to know that before you convince your boss to go all-in on something that requires a budget.
Smart CRM / Platform-Wide
Growth Context: The foundation for everything. It's everything the platform knows about your business, team, and customers, pulled together so AI can act on how your company specifically sells, markets, and supports.
Self-updating Smart CRM: Calls, emails, and meetings get captured and synced automatically. Your reps will finally stop "forgetting" to log activity. Learn more
Context Home: A score showing how complete your context foundation is and where the gaps are. It's also where you correct what HubSpot thinks about your business, and values you edit are locked so automation can't overwrite them.
Expanded HubSpot connector for ChatGPT: The updated connector lets you run email campaigns, build ad landing pages, analyze closed-won deals, optimize for AEO, and track lead progress without leaving ChatGPT. Read the OpenAI partnership announcement
Breeze / Agent Hub
All-new Breeze Assistant: It doesn't just answer questions anymore. You tell it what you need, it assigns the right agents, and it delivers proposals, reports, and campaign plans grounded in your CRM. Breeze Assistant
Agent orchestration through Breeze Assistant: New features include Projects for persistent context, voice on mobile, Slack integration, @mentioning any agent from the chat, and generated documents built from CRM data. Agent Hub
Marketing Hub
Marketing Studio: It opens with insights like your AEO visibility score, underperforming segments, or leads that never got followed up, then brings in agents to plan the campaign, create content, and personalize nurture. HubSpot says early customers create 81% more campaigns.
Content Agent and Campaign Agent: Campaign Agent turns sales call transcripts into briefs and assets, and Content Agent writes from answer-engine visibility recommendations. Content Agent is in public beta. Pairs nicely with HubSpot AEO and the free AEO Grader.
ChatGPT Ads integration: HubSpot is the first CRM to integrate with ChatGPT Ads. Traffic goes to a HubSpot landing page, and every contact gets enrolled in workflows and attributed alongside your other channels. Details here
Microsoft Advertising integration: Reach audiences like verified LinkedIn accounts across Bing, Copilot, MSN, and Outlook, and see which ads drive pipeline without leaving HubSpot.
Sales Hub
Updated Prospecting Agent: Monitors 40+ buying signals, assembles a buying group, and drafts personalized outreach. Prospecting Agent
Buying-group identification: Because B2B deals involve roughly as many decision-makers as a Succession board meeting. Built into the Prospecting Agent.
Mobile Notetaker: Captures everything in real time, whether you're on a call or in the room.
Revamped Deal Progression: Takes the transcript, surfaces CRM updates, drafts follow-ups, and keeps deal plans current, all with one-click approval.
Revenue Hub
Automated quote generation: HubSpot automatically generates a quote using the full deal context the moment a prospect is ready to move.
Quote-to-cash management: Revenue Hub brings quoting, contracts, billing, and payments into HubSpot, so revenue context sits with everything else you know about customers. Introducing Revenue Hub
Post-sale revenue management: Contracts, upgrades, renewals, and amendments flow automatically into billing. Workleap went from quote to signature in under 15 minutes.
Pro Tip: Before you buy another shiny tool, make sure you're using HubSpot's built-in AI to the max. Most portals we see are driving a Ferrari in a school zone, take that thing to the track and let it free!
WOW. THAT WAS A LOT. So... What Now?
AI gave everyone the same superpowers on the same day, congrats, you’re Batman. But hey, so is your competitor, so really, the playing field is level…again. What sets you apart now is the stuff that can't be downloaded: your experience, your creativity, your relationships, and your taste. We’ve been blogging about this stuff since AI entered the scene in our industry, so nothing new and groundbreaking here.
What our biggest takeaways, NOT in order of importance:
AI is a tool, you need to start using it and deciding where in your marketing system it fits and can provide your team with the most utility.
The pace of change is incredible. Keep up to date or you’ll be left behind with a chisel and a stone tablet.
Dont’ forget about the humans. You didn’t think we could bring all this back to humans did you? Well we did!!! Ultimately, all these tools are designed to help us connect to other humans in more efficient ways that actually feel more human. Asking ChatGPT where the best sushi is in your area based on your spouse having a shellfish allergy is much more human than saying “sushi near me” to Google and then spending countless hours evaluating the shellfish-free options on the menu. Yeah, that one is personal. At the end of the day all roads lead back to humans. Consider what they want, how you can bring value, and how the tool can surface all of that easier.
Need help figuring out where AI fits in your HubSpot portal or marketing strategy in general?