HubSpot Acquires Motion AI, One of the Top Visual Chatbot Builders
As consumer preferences shift to more personal, always-on communication, messaging and chatbots represent powerful new tools to engage and delight customers
Sep 20, 2017, 08:00 ET
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- HubSpot, a leading inbound marketing, sales, and CRM growth stack, announced today that it has acquired Motion AI, one of the top visual chatbot builders. The company's industry-leading cross-platform technology enables anyone to create a chatbot for their site, via SMS, on Facebook Messenger, Slack, and more – no programming skills required.
Facebook recently announced that Messenger now has more than 1.3 billion monthly users, and according to Facebook's own research, 53% of people are more likely to shop with a business they can contact via a chat app. Today's consumers want to be able to engage with a company when and where it's personally convenient for them, meaning that businesses that are unable to respond quickly are leaving money on the table. In fact, a recent report from HubSpot Research found that 40% of respondents don't care if they're serviced by a person or an AI tool, as long as they get help quickly and easily. Chatbots make it easy for customers to engage with a brand, whenever and wherever they prefer – whether that's on Facebook Messenger, on a company's website, or in a messaging app. Because of their ability to deliver always-on, one-to-one experiences, chatbots are becoming more prevalent for companies and consumers alike.
"It's impossible to ignore the impact of chat and messaging, not just on the way B2B companies operate, but on society as a whole. We're in the midst of a massive shift as businesses embrace this new platform and consumers come to expect more immediate, always-on communication from brands," said Brian Halligan, co-founder and CEO of HubSpot. "HubSpot's mission has always been to build technology that helps SMBs grow and evolve with changing consumer behaviors, and acquiring Motion AI is another great step in that direction."
Motion AI's powerful technology enables users to build, train, and deploy AI robots to do almost anything imaginable – from booking meetings and qualifying leads, to running customer service chats and diagnosing problems, all without needing technical skills. The company originally launched on Product Hunt in November 2015, where it was voted the number one chatbot builder. Motion AI has facilitated more than 40 million total messages since May 2016, with over 80,000 bots built to date.
Prior to the acquisition, HubSpot was a customer of Motion AI, having fully integrated it with the HubSpot Free CRM. The integration deploys Motion AI bots to take CRM contacts through a journey specifically built for them, offering a more personalized, always-on buying experience than what consumers would typically see in traditional email communication. The team has generated six times the number of marketing qualified leads using Motion AI bots as it has using email. Being able to experience the power of Motion AI's technology first-hand was a key factor in HubSpot's decision to acquire the company.
"Motion AI was born out of the idea that anyone, regardless of their level of tech knowledge, should be able to build a chatbot. We believe that this aligns well with HubSpot's mission of creating technology that helps businesses address and adapt to the latest trends," said David Nelson, founder and CEO of Motion AI. "We're excited to be joining the HubSpot team, and can't wait to get to work on some really innovative AI tools."
The Motion AI technology will be incorporated into the HubSpot platform over the next several months, with the team working to create tools that help users automate important tasks, scale conversations, and proactively engage and acquire new customers. HubSpot VP of Product Christopher O'Donnell will provide more information about the vision for how the technology will be integrated into the product during his spotlight at INBOUND 2017, which will be livestreamed at hubspot.com/new starting at 4:15 p.m. ET on Tuesday, September 26.
To learn more about HubSpot's work with AI and bots, please visit hubspot.com/artificial-intelligence. See one of Motion AI's chatbots in action at hubspot.com/artificial-intelligence/bots.
About HubSpot
HubSpot (NYSE: HUBS) is a leading inbound marketing, sales, and CRM growth stack. Since 2006, HubSpot has been on a mission to make the world more inbound. Today, over 34,000 customers in more than 90 countries use HubSpot's award-winning software, services, and support to transform the way they attract, engage, and delight customers. HubSpot Marketing includes social media publishing and monitoring, blogging, SEO, website content management, email marketing, marketing automation, and reporting and analytics. HubSpot Sales enables sales and service teams to have more effective conversations with leads, prospects, and customers. HubSpot CRM helps sales teams organize, track, and grow their pipeline. All three platforms integrate right out of the box and are available for free to start. HubSpot has been named a top place to work by Glassdoor, Fortune, The Boston Globe, and The Boston Business Journal.
The company is headquartered in Cambridge, MA with offices in Dublin, Ireland (EMEA HQ); Singapore; Sydney, Australia; Tokyo, Japan; Berlin, Germany; and Portsmouth, NH.
SOURCE HubSpot