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Loop marketing: HubSpot buried the funnel. What comes next?

At INBOUND 2025 HubSpot announced that the funnel, the model it had itself monetised for two decades, is dead. The replacement is the Loop: Express, Tailor, Amplify, Evolve. We took it apart to see what is a genuine shift and what is simply HubSpot's own marketing.

Daniel Votruba · 6 July 2026 · 4 min read

From funnel through flywheel to loop

HubSpot has form when it comes to burying models: in 2018 it declared the funnel dead for the first time and replaced it with the flywheel. At INBOUND 2025 came the second revolution. "The old funnel assumed customers would come to you. That playbook is broken," said CMO Kipp Bodnar. Attention is fragmented, buying decisions happen in AI chats, communities and the dark funnel before anyone touches your website. The linear path from awareness to consideration to purchase matches that less and less. So far we agree; we have long written about the limits of linear models.

It is worth noting the context of the announcement too: HubSpot simultaneously renamed its flagship conference from INBOUND to UNBOUND and reoriented its whole portfolio around AI tools. The new methodology therefore comes not from an academic laboratory but from the marketing department of a company that needs to sell a new generation of products. That does not disqualify it, but it is worth knowing before you start quoting it in a meeting.

Four phases: Express, Tailor, Amplify, Evolve

  • Express: articulate the campaign's story and point of view. AI acts as a sparring partner for ideas and first assets, anchored in brand context.
  • Tailor: personalise the message by segment, meaning CRM data, on-site behaviour and intent signals. Not "Hello {first name}", but relevance of content.
  • Amplify: distribute across channels including AI search (answer engines), diversify formats, add ads and creators.
  • Evolve: measure in real time, experiment fast and feed the learning back to the start of the loop. Every campaign teaches the next one.

The Loop differs from the funnel in not being one-directional, and from the flywheel in describing the iteration rhythm of campaigns rather than how teams interlock. HubSpot prescribes three foundations for it: a customer guide (who the customer is and what hurts), a style guide (how the brand sounds, so AI does not dilute it) and a clean data layer. AI appears throughout as a collaborator in every phase: workshopping ideas, generating variants, predicting performance and proposing optimisations. HubSpot itself correctly adds, though, that modern growth does not start with AI but with you: without human judgement and an authentic brand, the loop just recycles the average faster.

A new model, or a rebrand?

Now the critical part. An iterative loop of create, personalise, distribute, learn is not a discovery of 2025; it describes what good teams have done since the A/B test was invented. Reviewers from Salesdorado to independent HubSpot partners agree the Loop is largely an elegant rebadging of the flywheel and the bowtie model, timed to sell the AI tools in HubSpot's portfolio. HubSpot itself backs away from its own headline: the Loop supposedly does not replace the flywheel, it just spins it faster. And the numbers quoted (129% more leads, 36% more closed deals among early adopters) are vendor case studies, not independent research. Treat them as advertising, not evidence.

There is an honest core in there, though: in an era when buyers decide beyond your view and anyone can generate content, speed of learning wins, not the length of the funnel.

What to take from it without HubSpot

Three things that make sense in any stack. First, those foundations: a written-down customer, a written-down brand, tidy data, without which AI merely manufactures generic noise faster. Second, campaigns as experiments with a memory, where every iteration has a hypothesis, measurement and a note on what will be done differently next time. Third, distribution that treats AI search engines as a full channel. None of this requires a HubSpot licence; it requires discipline, and discipline unfortunately does not come with an annual subscription. Our tip: before you hang a new diagram on the wall, work out how long it currently takes you to go round the whole loop from idea to evaluation. If the answer is a quarter, you have a problem no prettily named methodology will solve.

Want marketing built on learning loops instead of faith? This is how we build strategy. Or just write to us. The first opinion is free.

Key takeaways (TL;DR)

  • At INBOUND 2025 HubSpot declared the funnel dead and introduced the Loop: Express (story), Tailor (personalisation), Amplify (distribution including AI search), Evolve (learning from data).
  • The diagnosis holds: buying decisions moved into AI chats and the dark funnel, and linear models no longer describe them.
  • The model itself is largely a rebrand of the flywheel and bowtie; the 129% more leads figures are vendor marketing, not independent research.
  • The transferable core: a customer guide, a style guide and clean data as the condition for meaningful work with AI, plus campaigns run as experiments with a memory. That works without HubSpot too.

FAQ

What is Loop marketing?

A methodology HubSpot presented at INBOUND 2025 as the funnel's successor for the AI era: a loop of Express (articulate the brand story), Tailor (personalise using data), Amplify (distribute across channels including AI search) and Evolve (measure, experiment and learn for the next iteration).

Does the Loop replace the flywheel?

According to HubSpot no: the flywheel describes how marketing, sales and service interlock, while the Loop is a guide to working with AI in marketing so the flywheel spins faster. Critics counter that it is largely a rebadging of familiar iterative frameworks.

Do I need HubSpot for Loop marketing?

No. The three foundations, a customer guide, a style guide and clean data, make sense in any stack. The principle of a campaign as an experiment with a memory works in Pipedrive, Salesforce or a spreadsheet.

Sources: HubSpot, hubspot.com/loop-marketing · Mi3, interview with Kipp Bodnar (September 2025) · Salesdorado, Loop Marketing: review · Impulse Creative, Loop Marketing: Evolution, Not Revolution · Wheels Up Collective, HubSpot's Loop Is Here, Should You Care? · our own practice across 420+ projects.