Happy Friday! Welcome back to The Hypha Wire.

Hope your week has been productive and accessible! Speaking of accessibility (😉), did you know that approximately 15% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability? This includes at least 2.2 billion people with vision impairments, according to the WHO. That’s why making all our digital communications accessible isn’t just good practice—it’s essential.

With that in mind, I wanted to talk about creating screen reader-friendly email signatures. Often overlooked but incredibly important, your email signature might be creating unintended barriers.

Here are three quick tips to make your signature more accessible:

1. Add alt text to all images and logos. If you can’t add alt text to icons, use an aria-label with a description.
   
   
2. Format your links properly by, at minimum, underlining them, and ensure all links have correct destinations.
   
   
3. Choose accessible standard fonts like Arial, Tahoma, or Verdana with a minimum 14-point size, and maintain strong color contrast.

As accessibility evangelist Will Butler told our team, “The email inbox is the place where most blind and visually impaired people are most confident and productive.” Let’s keep it that way by being mindful of how we format our communications.

Want to learn more? Check out our full blog on creating accessible email signatures, or reach out for an accessibility consultation!

-Sage Levene, VP of Marketing, Hypha HubSpot Development

Open Mic

Search is Changing, But the Need to Be Found Isn’t

By Rebecca Albright, Senior Inbound Content Developer, Hypha HubSpot Development

Everyone’s searching for something. A customer service rep digs through databases to solve customer issues. A journalist sifts through interviews and archives to uncover the story. Shoppers hunt for the best deals and reviews before hitting “buy.” Heck, we’ve all been watching Mark S. search for the truth behind Lumon for nearly two seasons.

Where we search is constantly changing—Google, social platforms, AI-driven tools—but the need to find the right information at the right time never goes away. That’s where optimization comes in.

Search Will Always Need Optimization

These days, search goes by many names—digital discoverability, content optimization, search experience management—but the goal remains the same: making content findable. Even the most advanced AI models and search engines rely on structured, optimized content to deliver relevant results.

So without optimization, search—whether in a database, an algorithm, or a chatbot—becomes chaotic, inefficient, and frustrating.

Understanding Intent: The Key to Being Found

And it’s not just about what people search for but why they’re searching. Search engines, AI assistants, and recommendation algorithms now prioritize intent-driven results over simple keyword matching.

Whether someone is:

• Looking for answers (What’s with all the blue in Season 2 anyway?)
• Hunting for the best option (shoppers, job seekers, travelers)
• Trying to solve a problem (tech support, researchers, analysts)

Content that anticipates and aligns with user intent is the content that wins.

AI Search: SEO’s Next Challenge

AI-driven search isn’t replacing optimization—it’s making it even more essential. Google’s RankBrain, BERT, and AI Overviews favor well-structured, high-quality content over outdated keyword stuffing.

In short, to stay visible in AI-generated answers, featured snippets, and zero-click searches, businesses must:

• Use structured data to help AI interpret content
• Focus on entity-based optimization rather than just keywords
• Adapt to voice search and conversational queries

The Bottom Line

As far as we can tell, search will continue. People will always be looking for stuff online. So search isn’t disappearing, it’s just changing. 

Old tactics won’t be enough. Optimization now means keeping up with AI, voice search, and shifting user behaviors. It’s less about keywords and more about intent. The way people search is evolving, and the only way to stay visible is to evolve with it.

Second Hand News

SparkToro: How to Turn Audience Research Into Content Ideas ➜

A really great guide from SparkToro that comprehensively walks you through how to best utilize your audience research (a task that often feels as daunting as collecting the actual data).

TechCrunch: Gmail gains an ‘Add to calendar’ button, powered by Gemini ➜

A neat little feature that’s available in the U.S. from Google. See, AI doesn’t always take the form of groundbreaking developments and earth-shattering updates. Sometimes it’s just a kind little button to make your life easier.

Hypha Highlights

Private equity (PE) firms are facing challenging headwinds. With record amounts of dry powder sitting idle and increasingly difficult exit environments, the industry is under pressure to deliver results.

• Recent analysis from PwC (based on data from alternative investment data provider Preqin) shows that 28% of limited partners note investment performance has fallen below expectations.

• Executives share similar concerns, with 70% reporting in the October 2024 PwC Pulse survey that uncertain macroeconomic conditions present either moderate or serious risk to their business operations.

In response, forward-thinking PE firms are reimagining traditional business processes and diversifying their investment opportunities to better distribute risk. However, a more varied product mix will always add complexity, making it even harder to manage a diverse portfolio with traditional methods.

This moment presents the perfect opportunity to boost portfolio efficiency by replacing manual processes with smarter, technology-driven solutions, starting with three critical areas outlined below.

Read: 3 Critical Manual Processes Undermining PE Portfolio Performance (and How to Automate Them) ➜

5 Star Review

Hypha has been playing a key role for our company, refreshing our website, helping us with our communication and content strategy, and our CRM process. Since the very beginning of our collaboration, the Hypha team showed a proactive attitude in learning the fundamentals of our industry and understanding the true nature of our company. In spite of the time difference (we are based in Spain, and they are in the U.S.), they have always supported us promptly and timely in every single step of our journey together. It’s been a pleasure working with them. -Rosa, D.

Industry: Technology - Software

Services provided: Search Engine Optimization, Website Migration, Website Development, Email Marketing, Content Creation, Custom API Integrations, and Website Design

HubSpot Hacks

Our Senior Platform Specialist, Kevin Campbell, is back with some HubSpot Beta breakdowns!

Property Control in Record Merges. Where are my control freaks at? Because this one is for you! Previously when merging records, you would choose which record takes priority during a merge. Now teams can identify specific properties that take priority from each record.

Enroll Contacts in a Workflow from their record. Tired of going through the forest of workflows just to find the right one, spending minutes searching for the “manual enroll” option? No more! Now using the Workflows card on the sides of records, teams can easily and quickly enroll objects in your automated workflows!

Updated Content Remix UI. We all love a good remix. Personally, I think that Steve Albini’s 30th-anniversary remix of Nirvana’s In Utero is the best one, and breathed new life into what I felt at the time was a well-mixed record—but didn’t know what I was missing until I heard it! I digress. That’s what HubSpot has done with their Remix UI! Now, users can enjoy all the tools that they love, arranged in a more engaging way.

Today’s Insight Feeds. Managing a support team isn’t easy. Managers rely on reams of reports to figure out what’s going on every day. But don’t worry support managers; HubSpot sees you! Now with “Today’s Insights,” managers can get the quick and dirty rundown on what exactly is going on across the board with simple, easy-to-read summaries.

Helpdesk Ticket Timeline. Do you ever look at a Customer Journey report and say “Why don’t they have this for Tickets?” Well, now they do! Teams can see what went down on a ticket in an easy-to-use timeline format!

HubSpot Home Page. To quote Dorothy, “There’s no place like home,” and I couldn’t agree more. Now, HubSpot has added the ability to build your own, personalized homepage! This gives each user the ability to see and access exactly what is most important to them. No more choosing just the closest thing.

⭐ To enable these betas, log into your HubSpot account, click your profile picture in the top right-hand corner, and navigate to ‘Product Updates.’ If you run into any trouble, just give your friends at Hypha a call!

AI in Action

News, updates and tools from the AI industry.

Cover to Cover

This new release is making quite an impact, with Meta attempting to stop its release. I haven’t read it yet, but I’m eager to get a copy.

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams

“An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.”

How can we help you?

Industry: Healthcare and Information Technology

Qsource is a healthcare quality improvement and information technology consultancy that provides services to healthcare providers, patients, and payers. When Qsource sought to revolutionize its digital approach, it enlisted the expertise of Hypha HubSpot Development to meet and exceed its ambitious business objectives: an enhanced online presence, a seamless user experience & engagement strategy, and an increase in lead generation & conversions.

Hypha’s Solution

Thanks for reading. Catch you next week! -Team Hypha