Subscription Types

[KGolke]

Hello there, 

The company I work for is starting to use email marketing via hubspot. We're adding our historic contacts into hubspt (past customers and deals that have recieved communications from us in the past) and also new inquiries that have been added to our CRM via an intake form they filled out to get an estimate more info...etc. 

As we ramp up for email marekting campaigns, I'm curious what the best rule of thumb is for subscription types...goal is to avoid unsubscribes all together.

Hubspot looks pretty sophisticated in the subscription types, but I'm a little unsure how to tailor it to our needs. 

For example, we offer quite a few services....

•  residential
• commercial (which can be businesses, nonprofits, schools, farms, and governmental customers)
• Storage 
• EV - Charging installation
• Heatpump installation
• Incentive and Grant info / financing - this is something that comes up for both residential and commercial customers (but the info varies greatly based on customer type)
• General energy monitoring / smart energy tools (like egauges and SMART panels)
• and then we also use HubSpot automations for responding to request estimate forms
• one-one emails from sales reps to inquiries to close deals schedule site visits etc..
• Newsletter (sent every other month) - just starting to launch

I'm stuck on how segmented I should get in my Subscription Types, how these show up in the CRM, and what information I should put in with the subscription type....

(also if anyone has a subscription type HubSpot Academy course that I can dive into, please send my way) 

THANKS in advance for your help!

Kaitlyn

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @KGolke,

There doesn't seem to be a good academy piece of content but this would be the main documentation which I recommend reviewing: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/marketing-email/set-up-email-subscription-types

Here are some rules of thumb for subscription types:

• You want your list of subscription types to be as short as possible. Each additional subscription type that needs to be managed increases complexity and also requires more training for everyone involved as the concept is not clear to all.
• You would often only use a subscription type when you want to give a recipient the ability to unsubscribe from one stream of communication while still receiving others. For anything else, segmentation should simply happen through lists in HubSpot. For example, if a contact identifies themselves as coming from a specific industry and you had multiple industry newsletters planned, it's unlikely that they will ever be interested in multiple ones and make decisions to unsubscribe from their original industry newsletter while subscribing to others. This would be a case, in my opinion, of using one subscription type and simply building multiple recipient lists that filter by one subscription type and the industry chosen/selected by a contact.
• Unless you have regular email communication that would be sent under a subscription type, you probably shouldn't have a subscription type for that. For example, if I subscribe to 'EV - Charging installation', but then I never receive a dedicated email for that, that shouldn't be a subscription type but probably consolidated with another bigger subscription type.
• Whenever a subscription has its own mini-brand, e.g. Atlassian's "Work Life by Atlassian" newsletter, and contacts exactly what they'll be receiving, that's a sign it should be a dedicated newsletter.

So in your case it depends on your target group. If contacts would typically not be both interested in residential and commercial, that's a sign you shouldn't use subscription types for that. But if you want to give contacts the ability to tune in or out of storage, EV, and heatpump emails individually, those are likely separate subscription types.

Let me know if the above makes sense to you. Happy to answer any follow-up questions.

Best regards

[KGolke]

Thank you, this is helpful. I think for now, maybe I should start with Northwind Newsletter. Here are the other types I've got in the mix; some were already there and tied to workflows we have set up (see image below) any feedback on this configuration as it stands could probably remove one-one emails?  (I'll create segments for interest-based marketing emails) Hopefully no one will want to click the unsubscribe or subscription preferences 🙂

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

@KGolke happy to help!

One-to-one emails can be archived but will typically unarchive themselves. It's a good idea to still give it a proper name and description because there's a good chance contacts will still see it.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @KGolke,

There doesn't seem to be a good academy piece of content but this would be the main documentation which I recommend reviewing: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/marketing-email/set-up-email-subscription-types

Here are some rules of thumb for subscription types:

• You want your list of subscription types to be as short as possible. Each additional subscription type that needs to be managed increases complexity and also requires more training for everyone involved as the concept is not clear to all.
• You would often only use a subscription type when you want to give a recipient the ability to unsubscribe from one stream of communication while still receiving others. For anything else, segmentation should simply happen through lists in HubSpot. For example, if a contact identifies themselves as coming from a specific industry and you had multiple industry newsletters planned, it's unlikely that they will ever be interested in multiple ones and make decisions to unsubscribe from their original industry newsletter while subscribing to others. This would be a case, in my opinion, of using one subscription type and simply building multiple recipient lists that filter by one subscription type and the industry chosen/selected by a contact.
• Unless you have regular email communication that would be sent under a subscription type, you probably shouldn't have a subscription type for that. For example, if I subscribe to 'EV - Charging installation', but then I never receive a dedicated email for that, that shouldn't be a subscription type but probably consolidated with another bigger subscription type.
• Whenever a subscription has its own mini-brand, e.g. Atlassian's "Work Life by Atlassian" newsletter, and contacts exactly what they'll be receiving, that's a sign it should be a dedicated newsletter.

So in your case it depends on your target group. If contacts would typically not be both interested in residential and commercial, that's a sign you shouldn't use subscription types for that. But if you want to give contacts the ability to tune in or out of storage, EV, and heatpump emails individually, those are likely separate subscription types.

Let me know if the above makes sense to you. Happy to answer any follow-up questions.

Best regards