What HubSpot UNBOUND Taught Me About Using AI With Intention

In September, I was fortunate enough to attend the HubSpot UNBOUND conference in Boston. Throughout many of the sessions, I noticed one key theme: How do we work with AI so it can work for us? 

The answer? Good context. AI only knows as much as the information you give it, and in marketing, it’s more crucial than ever to give AI good context about you and your brand to generate impactful work.

AI is Only as Good as the Context You Give It

To kick things off, HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan shared a quote that set the tone for the rest of our sessions: “AI with bad context is worse than no AI at all.”  When it comes to using AI in a CRM like HubSpot, it’s important to take advantage of the AI features available, as they can create a more tailored experience for you and your audience.

Before heading to UNBOUND, we had started testing a new AI beta in HubSpot called the Lead Nurture Agent. This feature uses AI and information about your brand to turn general emails into more personalized messages for your audience. For example, it can incorporate a recipient’s job role and interests to make the content more relevant to them. This creates an experience where your audience feels like your brand understands them and their needs.

Before UNBOUND, we noticed that while the emails sent using the agent were personalized to each recipient, they didn’t always reflect our brand voice. At the conference, we learned we could improve this by adding more detail into our Brand Voice settings, giving AI a better understanding of how we want to communicate with our audience. After updating these settings, we saw our emails were more personalized to the recipient and more reflective of our brand.

The Nurture Agent was set to send the personalized emails to 25% of the full audience, allowing us to test how they performed compared to our previous emails. Once we updated the Brand Voice settings, we saw an 11% increase in open rate for Nurture Agent emails. This showed how adding more detail to our Brand Voice settings can help AI create emails that are more aligned with our brand while still providing a personalized experience for our audience. 

Newer Isn't Always Better

Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot’s co-founder, explained AI using a car analogy he calls the AI model, which has three key parts: horsepower, the harness, and the human. Horsepower is the AI model itself, or the engine. The harness is the software that supports and directs the AI, like the car. And the human is the person driving.

One of his main points of this analogy is that we already have more than enough horsepower to drive the car. We have some of the most powerful AI engines ever built, and they continue to improve every month. 

But not all engines work for all tasks at hand. Instead of always looking for the newest model, we should focus on choosing the one that best fits our needs. As the drivers of the car, we have to give AI the context, direction, and brand voice it needs to communicate in a way that actually benefits us.

This connects to another quote from Darmesh: “Don’t focus on the state of the art, focus on the practical.” Just because a newer model exists doesn’t mean we need to use it. What matters is how we apply the knowledge we already have to solve problems, as we did with the Nurture Agent Beta. 

Another example of this is HubSpot's Breeze Assistant, the platform’s own AI engine. The Breeze Assistant draws on HubSpot’s 20 years of experience developing and working within the platform, making it a great tool for finding settings, building workflows, and understanding how to use different features. By contrast, outside AI engines like ChatGPT frequently release new models but lack the experience and knowledge of HubSpot to help us effectively complete the tasks at hand.

The Bottom Line

My biggest takeaway from HubSpot UNBOUND is that AI is only as good as the context we give it. Having the most powerful model doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t understand our goals, preferences, or brand voice. AI with bad context is worse than no AI at all, so instead of chasing the newest tools, focus on giving AI the information it needs to create useful, relevant, and meaningful outcomes that speak not only to your audience, but to your brand as well.

Want to learn more from HubSpot UNBOUND 2026? Check out HubSpot UNBOUND 2026: 7 Takeaways for an AI-Ready CRM, a blog by CRM Strategist Brooke Hastings, for more key insights from the conference.