Value-First AI Daily - Jan 26, 2026

[00:03] **Introduction** Chris Carolan: Good morning HubSpot Nation. It is time to wake up customer platform with your number one unofficial HubSpot updates morning show, where we help you discover the platform value you already own. I'm Chris Carolan, joined by my co-host Casey Hawkins and George B. Thomas. We're here every weekday morning to make sure you're not sleeping on HubSpot's true capabilities. If you're joining live, drop a hello in the comments and let us know what you're building in HubSpot today. Happy Monday, George and Casey. How are we doing? Casey Hawkins: Happy Monday. We did not get two feet of snow, but we did get half a foot of snow. George B. Thomas: Yeah, we have a little bit of snow and a lot of ice, which makes it all sorts of not exciting. But I'm on the show, which means we have power and heat and I'll take that. I'll take that. Yeah. Casey Hawkins: Yeah. Saturday we were like charging everything, all like the backup chargers and everything. George B. Thomas: Yep, yep, same. Chris Carolan: Indeed, indeed. Um, a little cold down here, but uh again, lucky to uh not be dealing with much more than that. Casey Hawkins: Let's hit. speaking from Texas. Chris Carolan: I mean it's 25 in Houston. That's not normal. Casey Hawkins: And Cool. Oh, that is that's colder than I thought. I thought we were talking like 40. Chris Carolan: Yeah, no, things like that are have been known to shut down just the just the coldness. Yeah. Uh but luckily we we are up and running as well. Uh as is HubSpot and their continued updates. Uh before we dive in, be sure to check out the admin hug tomorrow. Goodbye data gaps. George B. Thomas: That sounds like it should be a song, right? Chris Carolan: Uh it may be by the end of the day. Maggie Mersky talking about all the recent updates to make HubSpot's data model more consistent. Chris Carolan: Uh and if I could add on the end there, more consistent with what businesses actually need. Um uh very cool. Uh may been doing some amazing things over there uh to make it easier to get your data into HubSpot. [03:31] **Custom Event Import** Chris Carolan: Uh first on our updates list today, custom event import now supports existing events and more object types. What is it? You can now import event data into existing custom event types for any supported object type, not just contacts. Casey Hawkins: Very nice. Why does this matter? Until now, imported events lived as separate event types that made trend analysis unreliable. This update lets you maintain a single source of truth for each event you're tracking, whether the data comes from HubSpot, another platform or offline interactions. Migrating from another platform, import past events into the event type you're currently using so your trend reports stay clean and continuous. Track offline interactions. For example, conference interactions, phone calls, direct mail responses alongside digital touch points for one unified view. And three, importing events against companies, deals or custom objects opens up analysis that wasn't available before, such as account level engagement or deal progression signals. George B. Thomas: I feel like this is going to be really important to a lot of humans that do things outside of the digital realm many times. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Casey Hawkins: Uh my friend Addison, who was on the calling show last week, their business model has is very event driven. Um their sales, I guess their sales are very event driven. And so this is something we especially that deal progression signals is like that was like for me. George B. Thomas: Yeah. That was uh that was uh you had like a mix of like ding ding ding and Yes. it was both a mix of both. I'm not I'm not sure uh what was what was happening there but for it. Chris Carolan: You need a pinball machine sound something. Right, right. Casey Hawkins: Yeah, there. Cuz I was like I was like you know then part of me was like ding ding ding ding I'm like George B. Thomas: all of it. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Uh uh yeah, I think humans that that do in person stuff, which by the way, like what you'll find is outside of SAS, I think, uh most businesses uh have event driven uh marketing activities. Um but also, you know, George, anybody that's trying to get to this one unified view, uh will benefit from this. [06:50] **AI Image Generation Model** George B. Thomas: Oh yeah. Number two, new AI image generation model G. 1.5 is in public beta, but scheduled for release in just a few days. Casey Hawkins: Join that beta. Chris Carolan: We've upgraded our AI image generation model in HubSpot from GPT image 1 to GPT image 1.5. This update brings noticeable improvements in image quality and opens the door to exciting new capabilities in the near future. Casey Hawkins: Ooh, okay. Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter for content marketers? High quality visuals can make or break engagement. The shift to GPT 1.5 significantly enhances the sharpness, realism, and overall consistency of generated images, helping you create more visual, visually appealing content directly within HubSpot. Whether you're crafting blog headers, social media graphics, or custom thumbnails, this upgrade ensures your visuals better match your brand and campaign goals. Beyond quality, GPT 1.5 also gives us a stronger foundation to build on. This model supports more advanced image capabilities like AI image editing, which we're planning to explore. George B. Thomas: Oh. Casey Hawkins: That means greater creative flexibility and less reliance on external tools. George B. Thomas: Oh my goodness. If they do what I think that little line means they might do. Do you guys remember back in the day when you could actually like edit images inside your HubSpot file manager and there were like the dumb things like the hat and sunglasses stickers and like it wasn't just crop and resize. Like you could actually do some basic editing like creative stuff. Do you guys remember that? It's been a long time. Casey Hawkins: I don't know if I've seen. George B. Thomas: Oh yeah, yeah, okay. So back back in the day you could. So now I look at this and I think about that and I think about how like now in GPT, you can literally like, I want to edit this with Photoshop or like the mini version or whatever you want to call it. Like where I think they might be going with this is almost to me going to be as important as like being able to say there's a full video editing flow inside of Hubspot. There might be an entire like can you imagine? Can you imagine? Yeah, can you imagine having a creative graphic flow that like, well, I don't really need Canva because I generate this thing and then I do these things and then I put it on social and I do that thing. I'm just saying like. Chris Carolan: Yeah. It's a new world. That's for sure. George B. Thomas: I need to get that song. It's a whole. Now we'll get canceled. We'll get canceled. [12:26] **Association Support for Campaign Public API** Chris Carolan: Number three. Okay, copyrighted. George B. Thomas: Yeah, for sure. Chris Carolan: Additional association support for campaign public API. What is it? Customers can now associate many new assets to HubSpot campaigns using the campaigns public API. There's a link to the dev docs here. With this release, we are adding support for the following 11 asset types: ads, blog posts, files, landing pages, marketing email, marketing events, SMS, social posts, video, website pages and workflows. Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? Previously, the campaign assets public API only supported a subset of campaign asset associations available in app. For example, customers could not add or remove a marketing email to from a campaign through the API and would need to do this within the HubSpot app. However, it was possible to add or remove a form to the campaign through the same API along with a selection of other assets. This mismatch caused confusion and reduced the API's usefulness for customers. Now, the association public API supports all the most important marketing assets customers want to tie to campaigns, making it simple to manage a campaign programmatically and mirroring the in app functionality. Note, up to now, the campaign association endpoint supported the following asset types: calls, case studies, CTAs, external website pages, feedback surveys, forms, knowledge-based articles, lists, meetings, playbooks, podcasts, sales documents, sales emails, sequences. George B. Thomas: That's a random list. Chris Carolan: 25. 25 assets now. George, asset types can be associated with the campaign. So and you're going to ask for 26 here. George B. Thomas: No, no, no. Actually my brain is going in a whole different direction because I want to test this. I I'm curious how many of these you can associate via API and how many of these you can create via API. Because wouldn't it be interesting if we were in a world where we could say, hey, chat assistant of choice, I want to create this campaign, here are the 26 assets that we're going to want to work on. By the way, can you please help me create any of these that you can create in Hubspot, hopefully in the future, all of them and associate them to this campaign so that we can then take it and run the next smile with it. Oh man, please tell me that's the world we're heading into. Chris Carolan: Full instructions can be found in the Hubspot developer documentation. Uh it looks like the world. Um yeah. Casey Hawkins: Very cool. George B. Thomas: Go check out those docs people. Hey, if you're not a nerd and you're watching this or listening to this, if you're not a nerd, quit saying you're not a nerd, become a nerd and go look at developer docs and especially look at developer docs with your AI assistant so they can break it down for you in simple ways. Yeah, that's or yeah, just tell Cloud Code to go to go look at those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Baby steps, Chris, baby steps. Yeah. Uh. [16:07] **Branded Email Templates** Chris Carolan: Branded email templates. Something you might want to associate to your campaigns. see before, but okay. Chris Carolan: What is it? The ability to apply your company's brand guidelines such as logos and colors. Yep, those are still important people. To Hubspot's default marketing email templates, making it easier and faster to send on brand emails. Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? Prior to this update, your options were to use generic templates that don't represent your brand or invest hours customizing every element to match your brand guidelines. With branded templates, you can now quickly create professional emails that match your brand identity, no manual customizations needed. Simply add your brand kit to any Hubspot template and start sending on brand emails in minutes. Casey Hawkins: This is uh we've seen it before. It is very nice though. Um I use this a lot in Canva. I have a couple different like brand setup and it's really nice to be able to just like select a template and then just like apply my brand. And then all the colors and the fonts are really nice. So I remember when I first did that in Canva thinking, I wish I could do this in Hubspot and here I am. George B. Thomas: And here you are. You know what would be nice too is if you had a portal that had multiple brands. Um because I don't know. It doesn't really talk about brands per se. It says brand kit, but if you have different brand kits, will this go across the different brand kits. Also by the way, what would really be nice is um if it did it with invoices and multiple brand kits. Oh, I'm sorry. that's not why we're here. I'll just be quiet. I'll be quiet. on. Casey Hawkins: It does look It does look like click that second um image. Yeah, that one. Thanks. In theory it looks like you if you had multiple brand kits, they would all be there. George B. Thomas: Maybe show up in that drop down. Yeah. I mean it's a drop down. It's not like a. Maybe the next time we see this. Actually, can I just make a section. Maybe the next time we see this or in other product updates, maybe it'd be nice to have a section that is how this works with brands. And like cuz that would be a valuable piece of information for anybody who has portals with multiple brands. I'm just saying. Again. Chris Carolan: Any hate mail goes to Chris. Meanwhile, I think the first step for most quote unquote brands is to set up your brand kit in the first place. George B. Thomas: Yeah. Chris Carolan: So let's go from zero to one first. How about that? Yeah, true true, true. Chris Carolan: Number five today. Uh do we really want to wake the brands versus business units beast, George. George B. Thomas: I mean, no. Chris Carolan: Backdate effective date on billing disabled quotes. George B. Thomas: Wow, that's a lot of words right there. Chris Carolan: Uh what is it? Users can now set the effective date of a quote to a date in the past when billing is disabled. Previously, users were blocked from back dating because the expiration date was required to be later than the effective date. As is everybody with me? Everybody following. George B. Thomas: Any anybody else like what? I'm like what first of all, my first brain goes, what? And then my second part of my brain goes, why? Anyway, I'm sure there's a good reason. Casey, why does this matter? Casey Hawkins: This update allows users to reflect the actual start date of services that have already been provided while still sending a quote and collecting agreement. Casey Hawkins: So I think it just means like, you know, I don't know people like me. Chris Carolan: Let's get some help here. Uh how does it work? On quotes where billing is disabled, users can set the effective date to a past date. The expiration date no longer has to be later than the effective date. The buyer can still sign the quote at any time before the expiration date. To change the effective date, click on the summary section, change the effective dropdown to a custom date and select a date in the past. George B. Thomas: Is this is this like so, I don't. Okay, so and I'm usually not uh I usually don't have a hard time with my words. Is this because somebody historically like started doing work but didn't get a quote signed and now they need to get a quote signed or is it because there's like people who want to see the original quote, but you can't find the original quote so then you're like recreating the quote and so therefore like you're putting the effective date of when you actually started the work versus like how typically I like make sure there's a quote signed before we actually start even doing it. Like is that what we're talking about here or am I completely off? Casey Hawkins: I I thought it was like the first one that you said, but it could also be the second example. Chris Carolan: Yep. All I know is they are building this concept of effective date uh into the system uh and uh yeah, I guess we're learning how that works. George B. Thomas: I wish we could roll over the eye. I wish we could roll over the eye in a screenshot and it actually worked because that would have been fantastic right now. [22:55] **Account Cleanup Tool** Chris Carolan: Uh last on the list today, new preview, experience and customization in account cleanup. What is it? The account cleanup tool now has enhanced visibility and customization for managing unused assets. Casey Hawkins: Why does this matter? This update addresses key challenges for admins managing accounts with a large amount with a large amount of assets. You can now see exactly how many and which assets will be affected before enabling cleanup, allowing you to make faster and more informed decisions. Customizable cleanup periods now extend to three years. This helps you tailor the policy to your specific needs. Chris Carolan: Have you guys uh oh, this feature is available for enterprise customers. Um, curious if anybody's leveraging this yet. Casey Hawkins: I have used it. I have a couple portals that I work in that are in that classic scenario where like passed down and passed down and passed down and passed down. And so there is a lot of spare equipment in the garage. Um, and Chris Carolan: So I have used this. I don't know. George B. Thomas: I'll be the other guy. I'll be the other guy in this conversation. I have multiple clients who ran as fast as they could to shut this off. I'm just saying like it's both sides, Chris, both sides. Yeah, to be honest with you. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Depends. Yeah. Can I just get an example real quick, Casey of of some of that equipment in the garage? Casey Hawkins: Uh. Chris Carolan: Lawnmower. Weed whacker. Like forms? Shovel. Or Casey Hawkins: forms, but also landing pages from events that were six years ago, or even campaigns that, you know, you build a landing page for, but for whatever reason it gets deprioritized and never takes off, um, things like that. Chris Carolan: Yeah, fair enough. Casey Hawkins: Landing pages are one that like come to mind for me for some reason when I'm thinking of this spare equipment. Chris Carolan: Yeah. I see lists lists lists is a part of it? Is lists a part of it? Because that would be I would think there's some spare equipment in lists area. Casey Hawkins: I don't think it is, but I have a client that is approaching their list limit and it's kind of like a hot potato on who should like deal with it. They've asked me to, but I'm like, I don't know. Chris Carolan: You're definitely the best person to. I don't know what these lists from six years ago mean. like I don't. George B. Thomas: Yeah. Send send them a send them a link to the uh here's how you upgrade to more lists. That's fixed now. You have 500 more. We're good to go for a while. Tada. George B. Thomas: No, I'm just kidding. Don't do that. Um but yeah, you probably aren't the best person, at least by yourself to figure out which lists need to go. But I'm sure you could figure out if there's any lists that aren't part of anything. If they're not part of a workflow, if they're not part of a then maybe, but if it's basic segmentation, maybe not. No, you're not the best person to take care of that. Chris Carolan: Ah indeed. The best person to maybe help them set up this tool sounds like uh remember folks, you probably already own the solution you're looking for in Hubspot. Sometimes you just need to wake up to it. Join us tomorrow morning live at 7:30 a.m. Central or catch us anytime on Spotify, Apple Music and the profoundly HubSpot updates blog. Drop your biggest takeaway in the comments and let us know what capabilities you want to wake up to next. Until then, I'm Chris Carolan. Casey Hawkins: I'm Casey Hawkins. George B. Thomas: And I'm George B. Thomas. Chris Carolan: And this has been wake up customer platform. Now go build something amazing. Have a great day everybody.