Best way to deliver downloadable content with 100's of resources

[MattG2]

Hi all, 

Hoping someone has some experience here. Our scenario: 

We are pushing our downloadable content strategy, and will have literally 100's and 100's. 

We use Wordpress for our templates and downloadable content, each piece of content will have its own unique page on Wordpress. Here comes the tricky part. 

We want the user to navigate to the template, and then action our CTA to download - we capture their info. We then want to redirect them to a 'Thank you' page, with a CTA to download the content. We'll also follow up with an email with the link to the thank you page. 

What is the best way to deliver literally 100's of unique resources utilizing Hubspot? At this stage, I can only think that it would require for each unique downloadable resource: 

1x Unique Resource page on Wordpress

1 x Unique Hubspot Form

1 x Unique Hubspot Landing Page (Thank You page with the 'Download' CTA which then triggers the download)

1 x Unique Hubspot CTA Button 

1 x Unique Email Sequence & Workflow

The goal here is not to cut corners, but to map out the strategy in the most efficient way first, before proceeding. 

E.g. we have thought of using the smart content feature on a HS LP to change the HS CTA Download Buttons based on a referrer string or something, but not sure on the possibility of this or other strategies. 

I appreciate any advice in advance!

Matt

[MFrankJohnson · Accepted solution]

We'll use HubSpot for ...Love it when smart planning questions hit the community. Congratz on that!

The single best takeaway from this insanely long post will be our recommendation that you have an EXPERIENCED HUBSPOT person at the table for every stage of your planning and initial implementation. Once you get the hang of the implementation strategy, they can move on to later stages while you 'get your clone on' building "One Million Forms!" 😉

Various HubSpotters in the community may chime in here, so we'll limit our response to planning plus one other specific item in your scenario -- Unique HubSpot Forms.

PLANNING
Based on your definition, you will have HUNDREDS of pages and CTAs. And while, yes, there are excellent ways to leverage Smart CTAs based on referrers, nothing we've seen will lessen the burden of managing the large volume of page assets you face. Including smart content. (in your use case)

Sorta like spending 30% of the blog-writing timeline on the TITLE, maybe consider spending a considerable percentage of your time on planning. This will not only help in HubSpot, but also in Google Analytics. Both your SEO AND your analyst may actually give you a hug if you do this. 🙂

Examples:
Weak page URL strategy -- Not scalable.

www.domain.com/specific-deliverable

Strong page URL strategy -- Both scalable and allows for wild-card references that actually make sense.

www.domain.com/broad-topic-specific-topic-specific-deliverable

[Some HubSpot tools have limitations around how we refer to URLs, so you'll want to do your homework on that before proceeding. Can anyone say Pop-up Forms? (head shaking) This typically doesn't come into play on small sites, but in your case ... enough said.]

Important Note: Your topic-specific naming conventions should also apply to ALL of your HubSpot assets -- e.g., LPs, TYPs, CTAs, Forms, Workflows, Lists, Campaigns, Reports, etc..

UNIQUE HUBSPOT FORMS
As part of your planning, you'll want to reduce the volume of HubSpot forms to the extent possible. This is especially critical when using HubSpot forms to trigger content delivery at scale.

But like Dirty Harry once said, "A man's gotta know his limitations." 😐 HubSpot forms are not Gravity Forms are not Typeforms. They're just not.

However, hidden fields on HubSpot forms can easily be pre-populated with URL parameters. This can go a long way to reduce the number of UNIQUE HubSpot forms needed when delivering downloadables around a similar topic.

- see Auto-populate form fields with a query string

Example:
www.domain.com/broad-topic-specific-topic-ebook1/?deliverable=ebook1

That URL will feed the hidden form field (a custom Contact Property labeled "Deliverable" with an internal name 'deliverable') with the value 'ebook1'.

For a real-world example, take a look at this page. Then click on any ebook CTA.

The resulting URL will include a parameter something like ...

?zebook_pdf_request=hs-features-n-integrations

That parameter tells the form on the page which asset you're requesting by pre-populating a hidden HubSpot custom contact property. (as described in the example above)

Now, this works just fine for a few deliverables. He11, you could probably even get away with 50 deliverables on a single form. (not recommended)

However, the problem becomes the form builder itself. It's just not manageable to use the HubSpot form builder to hide a field with so many options unless you use a dropdown which introduces other problems. AND, using a single form to manage multiple deliverables means that every single deliverable must be re-tested every time you make a change to that form. Trust -- testing forms isn't something to skip! haha

Anyway, ... to wrap up. HubSpot was designed to do exactly what you're envisioning. That being said, it does have it's limitations at scale.

If you plan your work and you work your plan, you'll get through it with a good HubSpot person at the table. The biggest problem you'll have after planning is getting all the humans to align with your newly crafted evil HubSpot manifesto. muhahahaha (evil laugh) 😉

Hope that helps. Have fun.

Help answer your question? If so, remember to accept this solution now.

Best,
Frank

Chief HubSpot Consultant

---

MFrankJohnson.com | Perfect HubSpot Series | Connect on LinkedIn

Help find posts quickly ... accept this solution now.

[MattG2]

Hi Frank, 

Thank you for your reply - much appreciated! 

I'm still not clear, on how we can use say 1 HS Form, to deliver 100 different eBooks for example. 

I understand hidden fields etc. - but how will a HS Form know which resource exactly to deliver right at that moment? Noting this form will be on an external page, not a HS Landing Page. 

E.g. .com/resource1  com/resource2  com/resource3

We use the same HS Form for each page. The user visits each page to download each resource. How do I ensure that HS knows to deliver Resourc3, or 2, or 1 when it's the same form? AND, if we can do download on-submit instead of redirecting, even better!

[MFrankJohnson]

Ok, so 1st of all we're talking "ONE MILLION FORMS!" Get it straight. haha 😉

When using a single HubSpot form across multiple pages to trigger delivery of different digital assets, we are limited to using EMAIL as the delivery method. This is because HubSpot forms do not have the built-in functionality to redirect to different TYPs (housing the different digital assets) based on selections made in the form -- a clear distinction from a comprehensive forms engines like Gravity Forms (GF).

This means, the digital assets will be auto-delivered via HubSpot Workflows that send the emails based on the digital asset selected.

So that kills the "download on-submit instead of redirecting" idea totally. And, redirecting to a TYP is best practice for a litany of reasons not the least of which is clean analytics tracking.

Bottom line?

If you MUST HAVE "download on-submit instead of redirecting", you'll want to use a separate form for each deliverable, OR consider using GF instead.

++

Incidentally, a little unclear on your response since your original post said,

What is the best way to deliver literally 100's of unique resources utilizing Hubspot? At this stage, I can only think that it would require for each unique downloadable resource:

1x Unique Resource page on Wordpress
1 x Unique Hubspot Form
1 x Unique HUBSPOT LANDING PAGE (Thank You page with the 'Download' CTA which then triggers the download)
1 x Unique Hubspot CTA Button
1 x Unique Email Sequence & Workflow

If you're now not using HubSpot for the resource pages OR the LPs, why wouldn't you just use the HubSpot for Gravity Forms WordPress plugin from the guys over at Big Sea for your forms capture? That way, you can redirect to your heart's content using GF (possibly the world's greatest forms engine IMHO).

Problem solved!