By Did you know that the first email marketing campaign, launched in 1978, yielded about $13 million in sales?
Thankfully, email marketing has not lost its mojo. Despite the emergence of a plethora of communication channels, email is still one of the most effective channels for attracting customers.
When done right, email marketing can help you attract leads and customers and boost your sales and bottom line.
So, how do you do email marketing right, or what are the secrets to effective email marketing? This detailed guide will explore how you can do email marketing right with HubSpot.
Is HubSpot effective for email marketing?
Features like email templates, workflows, A/B testing, analytics, and more make HubSpot an excellent platform for running email marketing campaigns that bring results.
Let’s explore how these features make HubSpot a powerful email marketing platform.
Drag-and-drop email builder
The simple drag-and-drop email editor allows users to create visually appealing emails easily. With the HubSpot email editor, even people with limited design experience can quickly produce professional-looking emails.
Email templates
HubSpot has a library of pre-designed email templates. If you experience writer’s block (not knowing how to develop the content of your marketing emails), these templates can be a lifesaver.
You simply need to go through the library, grab a suitable template, and customize it with specific branding and messaging requirements. HubSpot’s email templates make email creation easy.
Contact segmentation
It allows users to segment their contact list based on different criteria (including demographics, interests, engagement history, and more). This allows for highly targeted messaging that is more likely to convert.
Automated workflows
HubSpot has robust automation capabilities. You can set up automated email workflows that are triggered by specific actions such as form submission and website visits.
This automation ensures relevant and timely communication with contacts to nurture leads and move them down the sales funnel.
Analytics
The detailed analytics and reporting features can be used to track the performance of your email campaigns. These features allow you to track metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.
It helps you gauge how effective your emails are and identify areas for improvement to optimize future campaigns.
A/B testing
HubSpot has features that enable A/B testing of email elements like subject lines, content, and CTAs. This helps you determine the most effective strategies for your email campaigns.
Integration with CRM
The email marketing tools integrate with its CRM platform and other HubSpot products, allowing for seamless data flow between platforms. With this, you can track interaction with contacts in one place and manage relationships more effectively.
Effective email marketing strategy with HubSpot
HubSpot can be a powerful platform for conducting email marketing campaigns. However, it is only effective if used well.
In this section, we’ll look at how you can wield this tool properly to create impactful email campaigns.
Here are some of the best tips for creating effective email marketing campaigns with HubSpot:
1. Set clear goals
Remember Benjamin Franklin’s quote, “If you plan to fail, you are failing to plan”? So, before creating an email with HubSpot, it’s important to set clear goals—specify what you want to achieve with your email marketing efforts.
Clear goals provide direction and purpose for your email campaigns, serving as a roadmap for developing your email marketing strategy. They help you determine the types of emails to send, the audience to target, the content to share, and more.
So, before you jump into creating emails, take time to think about what you want to achieve. This could be to boost brand awareness, drive website traffic, generate leads, nurture leads through the sales funnel, increase sales, or improve customer retention.
Having a specific goal then informs your email content and design. For example, if your goal is to boost brand awareness, it will help if you regularly send educational and informative content to subscribers.
Pro Tip: Make goal SMART
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Ensure that your email marketing goals are:
- Specific: The goals should not be vague but be clear and well-defined.
- Measurable: The goals should be quantifiable. They should include specific criteria for measuring progress.
- Achievable: Don’t set unrealistic goals. Instead, goals should be realistic and attainable within the constraints of resources.
- Relevant: You should align your email campaign goals with your overall objectives and properties. The goals should be relevant to your organization’s mission and vision and lead to its overall success.
- Time-bound: You should have a timeframe or deadline for achieving your goals.
An example of a SMART goal is “Increase brand awareness by 15% by the next quarter.”
Note that the goal is specific and not vague, includes criteria for measuring progress (15%), is realistic and not an overly ambitious 200% increment goal, and has a deadline that helps the goal setter stay focused on achieving it within a specific period.
2. Get an email list
List building is one of the first steps in email marketing. However, list building isn’t adding every email address you find to your list. Email marketing is most impactful if you email people likely to be interested in your product or service offering.
Thus, for email marketing with HubSpot to be effective, it’s not enough to get an email list; it’s important to get the right one.
This is why you should build your own email list instead of buying one. Some people buy an email list from third parties, immediately giving them many email addresses to send marketing messages.
However, purchased email lists may include inactive subscribers or people not interested in your product or service offerings, leading to a high bounce rate and low engagement, respectively. Both damage your sender's reputation, leading to an ineffective campaign.
So, go through the marathon of building an email list to acquire a highly interested and engaged audience.
Some strategies for acquiring an email list include:
Offer gated high-quality content
Create valuable, high-quality content that resonates with your target audience and offer it in exchange for email signups. Relevant content to offer your audience can include guides, whitepapers, eBooks, templates, etc.
Opt-in forms
Place opt-in forms on your website, blogs, and landing pages and encourage visitors to subscribe to your email. Increase visibility for these forms and use compelling CTAs to encourage email signups.
Webinars and events
Organize webinars, workshops, or live events and require that interested persons register with their email addresses.
Contests and giveaways
Organize contests, sweepstakes, or giveaways. Ask people to provide their email addresses to be included as participants for a chance to win featured prizes.
Product pages and checkout pages
Promote email signup on your product pages and at checkout. Consider incentivizing email signups by offering a discount in exchange for it.
Social media promotion
Promote email signups on your social media pages. Share teasers of your valuable content and include a link to your email opt-in form or landing page.
3. Segment your audience
Contacts that make it into your email list are different individuals. For that reason, blasting the same email to them will not work. An email that is relevant to some will be irrelevant to others.
This is why email segmentation is an important strategy for running effective HubSpot email marketing. Email segmentation involves dividing your email audience into relatively smaller groups based on certain criteria such as demographics, purchase history, behavior, preferences, etc.
By segmenting your email audience, you group individuals with similar characteristics together. Then, you can send more relevant emails to each group, leading to higher engagement (such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates).
Follow these steps to effectively implement segmentation with HubSpot:
Understand your audience
Dividing your audience into smaller groups requires a deep understanding of the audience. This includes demographic information (such as age, gender, location, etc.) as well as information like the individuals’ interests, preferences, and buying behavior.
HubSpot’s CRM tools can help you gather various information about your contacts to understand them better.
Identify segmentation criteria
Once you have insight into your audience, the next step is to specify the criteria you’ll use for segmenting the individuals.
Common segmentation criteria include:
- Demographic information: You can segment your audience using age, gender, location, job title, company size, industry, etc. For example, you have a different marketing message for people in different locations.
- Behavioral data: You can segment your email contacts based on their interaction with your company. This can include the website pages they visited, the content they downloaded, the webinar they attended, etc.
- Preferences: You can segment your email contacts based on their preferences. This includes their product interest, their communication preferences (such as how often they like to be communicated), and more.
Create segments in HubSpot
After you have specified the segmentation criteria, the next step is to go to HubSpot to create your email segments. HubSpot offers powerful segmentation tools.
You can create static segments (which require you to group your contacts based on your criteria manually) or dynamic segments (which automatically update based on contact properties and behavior).
4. Compose compelling emails
When you have segmented your email list, the next step is to create emails that will resonate with each target group. The success of email campaigns is directly related to whether the emails are compelling enough to get recipients to act.
Some strategies for crafting compelling emails include:
Create captivating subject lines
Your subject line is the first thing your recipients see when they receive your marketing email in their mailbox. They use the subject line to decide whether or not to open the email or delete it.
Therefore, use a clear and compelling subject line to ensure your emails have high open rates. To make subject lines compelling, consider the following strategies:
Provide context
Let the subject line offer a glimpse into what the email is about. This entices the recipients to open the email to learn more. Consider how the subject line “Join Our Webinar on Boosting Sales Using HubSpot” is more enticing than “Join Our Webinar.”
Clear and brief
Keep the email subject line clear, concise, and to the point. Know that recipients may not quickly understand an overly long subject line.
Also, the later parts of an overly long subject line may be cut off when it appears in mailboxes, and recipients may be unable to tell what the email is about from the parts that appear.
And when a subject line does not sufficiently describe what an email is about, recipients are less likely to open the email.
Employ personalization
Use the recipient’s name or other personal information. This makes the email feel more tailored to them. An example is, “Hey John, This is Why you should Implement HubSpot.”
Pique curiosity
Since humans are naturally curious, piquing recipients' curiosity can entice them to open an email. Use teasers, cliffhangers, or questions that pique their interest. An example is “The Secret to Boosting Productivity Revealed.”
Create a sense of urgency
Use subject lines that invoke feelings that the recipient will miss out on something if they do not act immediately. This fear of missing out (FOMO) may make them open the email. See FOMO in action in the subject line “Last Chance to Claim Your 30% Off Offer.”
Craft a persuasive email body
The subject line can get recipients to open and read your emails. However, when you run an email campaign, you want recipients to do more than read your emails. You’ll also want them to take a specific action (such as go to your site and make a purchase).
It is your email body that can get recipients to take the desired action. So, to run effective HubSpot email marketing, it is also important to create a compelling email body.
Strategies for creating compelling email bodies include:
Make it simple and clear
The email should be clear and easy to understand. When creating emails, the goal is not to come across as a literary genius but to write clear content that your audience can easily digest. Thus, use simple language.
Also, use bullet points and numbered lists to highlight key points, making it easy for recipients to scan the email and digest the most important information.
Use compelling language
The email body should persuade the recipients to take the action you want them to take. Use persuasive language and storytelling that help you connect emotionally with your readers and keep them engaged throughout the email.
Align with your subject line
Your email body should deliver the expectations set by the subject line. When recipients get to your email body, they should not feel that the subject line tricked them into opening the mail. The email’s content should provide the value or answer the questions hinted in the subject line.
Provide value
The email body should clearly state the message's value proposition. It should highlight the benefits or solutions offered by your content, product, or service.
Keep it relevant and targeted
Tailor your email body to your audience's interests and needs. Deliver targeted and personalized content that addresses recipients’ specific pain points or challenges. This makes your email resonate better with recipients, making them more likely to take the desired action.
Include visual elements
Incorporate visuals (such as images and graphics) strategically. This enhances the visual appeal of the email and breaks up walls of text.
Use a compelling Call to Action (CTA)
The call to action is a prompt that tells the reader the next action to take. Include a clear CTA in your emails to nudge recipients to take the desired action. Keep the CTA short and make it stand out in the email. Also, consider creating a sense of urgency and using action-oriented language (like “Download Now” or “Buy Now”).
5. Automate email workflows
Email automation is pivotal to engaging subscribers with the right message at the right time. And that is crucial for driving conversions and strengthening customer relationships. Thus, automating email workflows is a critical step when running HubSpot email marketing.
Email automation involves sending targeted emails to subscribers automatically based on predefined triggers or actions. It allows you to set up workflows or sequences that automatically send specific emails to subscribers when they take specific action.
For example, you may need to send welcome emails to people who subscribe to your email list or send additional resources to people who download an ebook.
Instead of manually sending individual emails, the automation automatically sends the right email to subscribers when they take the required action.
Thus, email automation eliminates the need for manual email sending and follow-ups. Since automated emails are sent immediately the subscribers take the required action, email automation also ensures you reach subscribers with the right emails at the right time.
Thankfully, email automation is one of HubSpot’s most powerful features. You can use HubSpot to set up automated workflows that send different emails in response to specific triggers or actions.
6. Optimize for mobile
An important tip for effective email marketing is to ensure your emails are mobile-friendly. Today, over 81% of all emails are opened on mobile devices. Given this stat, it’s not hard to see that neglecting mobile optimization risks alienating a large segment of your audience and reducing the effectiveness of your campaign.
To optimize emails for mobile devices, use responsive design techniques that ensure your emails display correctly on devices with different screen sizes.
Some of these techniques include:
Simple and clear layout
Do not overcrowd your email with too much content or multiple columns, as that can make it difficult to display properly on smaller screens. Instead, keep things simple and use a single-column layout.
Use legible font and font sizes
Use font size and formatting that are easier to read on mobile devices’ smaller screens. For example, use a minimum of 14px for body text and ensure your headlines and important elements are appropriately sized and formatted for mobile viewing.
Make buttons and links finger-friendly
Ensure that any button or link in your email is large enough and spaced out to be easily tapped with a finger.
Optimize images for mobile
Large files that are slow to load negatively affect the mobile viewing experience. So, compress images and other media files to reduce their sizes and improve loading times on mobile devices.
Note: HubSpot provides many responsive email templates that can help you create emails that are displayed well on different devices, including mobile ones.
Also, the HubSpot email editor allows users to create mobile-friendly emails. The editor has various tools to help you optimize your emails for mobile devices.
For example, you can quickly create mobile-friendly layouts by stacking elements vertically. You can customize the style and size of buttons to make them more mobile-friendly. Also, you can resize and optimize images directly within the editor to make them mobile-friendly.
HubSpot also has preview and testing tools that let you view how your email will appear on different mobile devices and email clients. These tools can help you identify formatting problems and make adjustments before sending the emails.
How to get started with email marketing on HubSpot
Now that we know the tips for effective email marketing with HubSpot let’s discuss how to initiate your email marketing efforts using the platform.
Here are a few key steps to get started with email marketing on HubSpot:
Step 1: Set up your HubSpot account
Before anything else, you’ll need to sign up for a HubSpot account. If you haven’t already, sign up for an account on the HubSpot website.
HubSpot offers a free plan with basic email marketing features. However, to experience its full power, you’ll need the paid plan, which is packed with functionalities.
Provide the required information to complete the account signup process. The next thing is to set up your email-sending domain, which involves verifying ownership of your domain and configuring the necessary DNS records to authorize HubSpot to send emails on your behalf.
Need help setting up your HubSpot account? Contact Peddle for help!
To learn more, read: Choosing the Best HubSpot Plan for Your Business in 2024: A Comprehensive Guide.
Step 2: Import your contacts
After setting up your account, the next step is to transfer your contacts to the HubSpot contact database. You can do this by uploading a CSV file or integrating HubSpot with other platforms, such as CRM systems or email providers.
Step 3: Create an email list
When you have your contacts in HubSpot, the next step is to use HubSpot segmentation tools to organize them into segmented lists based on specific criteria (such as demographics, interest, and engagement level).
Segmenting your email audience allows you to send more relevant and targeted emails.
You can create your email lists in HubSpot’s Lists dashboard. Once in the dashboard, click “Create List,” define the list criteria, set the list property, and add contact to the list.
Step 4: Design email templates
When you have organized your email list, you can begin crafting the email you’ll send.
Use HubSpot’s drag-and-drop email editor to design visually appealing templates. You can also choose from HubSpot’s scores of pre-designed templates. Ensure you customize your template with your brand colors and logo to maintain consistent brand identity across your email campaigns.
Step 5: Craft compelling content
After creating beautiful email designs for your campaigns, proceed to create your email content.
Follow the guidelines for creating compelling email content—include an attention-grabbing subject line, develop valuable content that resonates with your audience’s interests and needs, and use relevant CTAs.
Step 6: Set up workflows
When you have your template and email content ready, the next step is to create automation workflows to automate your email marketing processes. Define the specific actions by the subscribers that can trigger the workflows.
Step 7: Schedule and send emails
HubSpot email marketing features allow you to send emails immediately or schedule them for delivery at a later time when they’re more likely to be opened.
There are optimal times for email delivery. Once your email templates, content, and workflows are set up, use HubSpot's email schedule feature to schedule your emails for delivery.
Conduct successful email marketing campaigns with HubSpot
With features like a drag-and-drop email editor, email templates, contact segmentation, email automation, A/B testing, and analytics, HubSpot is a powerful platform for running effective email marketing campaigns.
The effective HubSpot marketing strategies discussed in this blog post can help you revolutionize your email campaign using the HubSpot platform.
However, it all starts with successfully implementing HubSpot. This is where Peddle comes in!
Peddle is your trusted partner for accelerating business growth in the digital age. As a HubSpot Gold Solution Partner, we specialize in helping businesses leverage HubSpot to grow radically by streamlining operations and automating marketing efforts.
Want to harness the power of HubSpot to unlock your full potential and drive sustainable growth? Contact Peddle today!