Introduction

[roisinkirby]

Hi 👋

Welcome to the HubSpot community! We are thrilled to have you here!❤️

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We can't say this enough, but we are thrilled that you have joined this space, and we look forward to seeing you in the forums.

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HubSpot Community team 

[Syeda_Fatima]

Hey @OOyinlusi, Welcome to HubSpot!

There are lots of great resources on HubSpot to help you learn more about email marketing. You can start by browsing our email marketing blog, which is full of helpful tips and advice.

Additionally, HubSpot Academy offers free online courses that can help you get started with email marketing.

They also have a number of live and on-demand webinars that you can watch to learn more.

Good luck on your email marketing journey!

[JCrozier]

Hi Community

My name is Jenn and I work in the UK for an independent healthcare services provider.

We're looking to utilise HubSpot to help nurture prospects and stay at the forefront of the buyer's mind ready for tenders coming out which we can bid for.

Does anyone have any best practice tips in this area that have worked well for their businesses? 🙂

[jolle]

Welcome, @JCrozier! And thanks for the mention, @kvlschaefer!

This is a great question — I don't know much about your business and team specifically, but I can offer some general HubSpot best practices! First up, here are some tips I wish I had as I was getting started with HubSpot:

1. Set up some sort of a "Contact Type" (and "Company Type," if applicable) property so you can clearly categorize contacts as prospect, customer, and any other relevant type. You should know who every single person in your database is and who's safe to market to
2. In that vein, consider using some sort of a "Lead status" property as well to identify leads that haven't been touched yet, leads that are showing some engagement, and leads that have dropped off. You can then develop contextual marketing and sales outreach
3. Keep an eye on your marketing contact count. Remember that HubSpot will immediately increase your contact tier (and bill) as soon as you exceed your marketing contact limit. Also keep in mind that a contact can immediately be changed from a non-marketing contact to a marketing contact, but marketing contacts that you change to non-marketing will not take effect until the first of the next calendar month. Unsubscribed/bounced contacts are not automatically set as non-marketing contacts, so be sure to keep an eye on those
4. Gather and store data in a standardized format whenever possible. Unless you're collecting unique values (like contact name, company name, message, etc.), use dropdown select or multi-select properties whenever you can. Doing so makes it so much easier to collect segmentable data and eliminate human error. It also creates for a better user experience when filling out forms and such
5. Leverage exclusion lists. It can be nerve-wracking sending out a big email (or turning on a workflow) in HubSpot and making sure that only the right contacts receive it. If anyone shouldn't be receiving marketing emails, be sure to group them in their own list (and set them as non-marketing contacts) so they aren't accidentally sent something

Next up, here are some general email marketing tips:

1. Always put yourself in your readers' shoes. What's valuable to them? What do they care about? What's the best way to easily share information with them in their preferred format? Your emails should be addressing all of these questions before you get into your sales pitch
2. Leverage secondary CTAs. If the only offer in every email is to schedule a call or talk to a sales rep, you're catering to the small group of leads that are ready to talk to you as soon as they enter HubSpot. You should always make direct contact available (i.e., footer CTA button, HubSpot Meetings link/callout in the email signature), but don't force it. The lead will come to you when they're ready to talk — you just need to make sure that the offer is always on the table alongside the other helpful content and offers you're sharing
3. In that vein, you will see pretty quick email fatigue if every email is a push to do the same thing. Like you said, you're looking to stay at the forefront of the buyer's mind. That means that some ongoing email outreach will be short, others will be longer, and the offers should vary for each (i.e., read this blog, download this eBook, sign up for this webinar, complete this survey, fill out this email preferences form, schedule a meeting, watch this video)
4. Let the leads determine the content and email strategy, not you. It's easy to think of a buyer journey linearly where the lead flows through the awareness, consideration, and decision stages in that order. However, most leads jump around! If your ongoing email strategy is designed to serve everything in a logical order (i.e., the assumed awareness contacts only get awareness-stage content or you assume someone is in the decision stage 30 days after their contact is created), you better hope that you and your target audience think the same way. Pay attention to their email engagement and the types of content that seem to help move them along
5. Keep an open feedback loop with the sales team. Since the sales team should be hearing feedback/reservations/wants from the leads, they're a great source of inspiration for new content (or the positioning of existing content). Remember that content used for marketing purposes doesn't need to stay with marketing. If the sales team knows that marketing wrote a blog addresses one of the biggest reservations typically seen in leads, they should know to leverage it during sales activities. And if the sales team uncovers a content gap, that's a great opportunity to address it through a blog/eBook/video and incorpoate it into your email nurturing

I know this is pretty general, but hopefully it helps as you're getting HubSpot configured and rolling out this lead nurturing plan! Best of luck to you, and Happy HubSpotting!

[christopher-RVO]

@kvlschaefer  Thanks for tagging me in this one!

@JCrozier This is a fantastic question for the community. I would recommend leveraging HubSpot workflows to nurture your users via email. 

In addition to this, monitoring activities from the user by using properties such as: Last activity date, last marketing email open date, last marketing email send date, and more! These datapoints will allow you to analyze who has been engaged with marketing and sales efforts in real time. 

The phrase 'stay at the forefront of the buyer's mind' sounds a lot like content to me. A solid content strategy that includes blog posts, case studies, high value offerings, etc is a great way to stay relevant in the buyer's mind. These free offerings are a great strategy to do two things: stay relevant in the buyer's mind and qualify your organization as a leader/expert in the field. 

Hope this helps.

[danmoyle]

Welcome to HubSpot and the HubSpot Community, @JCrozier! Thanks for the tag @kvlschaefer. 

A few resources for content marketing strategy I would suggest include: 

• HubSpot Academy Content Marketing Course 
• Developing a Content Marketing Strategy (CMI) 
• The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing Strategy (SEMRush) 
• The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing 
• Email Marketing Course: Get Certified in Email Marketing 
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): 8 Ways To Get Started (this is important, as you want to convert once your marketing is working)

Finally, I want to encourage you to keep doing what you're doing right now - lean on the Community for ideas, resrources, questions, and insights. It's a very smart, creative, and generous Community! (Which you'll see as others offer their tips and insights here.)

[Jnix284]

Thanks for the tag @kvlschaefer  and welcome to the community @JCrozier !

@danmoyle am I just allowed to say ditto? I think you covered it, your resource links are 🔥

[danmoyle]

😊 you got it @Jnix284 !

[kvlschaefer]

Hi @JCrozier,

Welcome to the Community and HubSpot! We're happy to have you here 😊 

I moved your reply to a new post to make sure it gets visibility among our community members.

I would like to invite our experts to this conversation to see if they have advice.

Hi @danmoyle, @jolle, @Jnix284, @christopher-RVO, @Phil_Vallender - Do you have any best practices or tips for @JCrozier?

Thank you!

Best,

Kristen

[SAkpene]

Hello everyone, 

My name is Seraphina Akpene and I am excited to join the hubspot community. I deal in gift packages and creating content for my business is so hard and I get stuck along the way. I am hoping to learn from everyone in the community.

Thank you,

Fina

[TitiCuisset]

Hi @SAkpene 

Welcome to the community, we're glad to have you here! 🙂 you may be interested in joining the Content Marketing Study Group 🙂

Best

Tiphaine

[Nidal]

Hello everyone! I hope you all are having a great day. My name is Nidal and I'm from Pakistan. Just super excited to be part of this awesome community and can't wait to interact with like-minded individuals. 

[Nidal]

Hello, RKhan1. Everybody starts somewhere, take some time reading the guide on how to engage in the community.  Join conversations pertaining to CRM, ask questions, and help others along your journey. 

[RKhan1]

Hi I'm also a newbie at this forum, hope for learning new things related to CRM, etc. Site

[TitiCuisset]

Hi @Nidal 

Welcome to the Community we're very glad to have you! 🙂

[Nidal]

Thanks for the warm welcome. Appreciate it. ❤️

[KAlexander12345]

Hello Everyone, just stopping by to say hello. I am coming aboard to HubSpot as a new superuser for my company, so I am looking forward to collaboration. Cheers!

[TitiCuisset]

Hi @KAlexander12345 

Welcome to the Community and to HubSpot! We're glad to have you here 🙂

Best

Tiphaine

[William_RC]

Hi HubFans,

My name William and I am happy to be a new HubFan. I am just getting started in my journey as a digital marketer.

I am currently in the HubSpot Academy (Inbound Marketing) course.

-->If anyone can give me any recommendations or guidance how to start my digital marketing journey, I would appreciate your advice!

Thanks,

William

[danmoyle]

Welcome to the Community @William_RC!  

As @JenBergren mentioned, the answer is "it depends." 

In general, I'd start with HubSpot Academy, and courses like Inbound, Inbound Marketing, Digital Marketing, and since you're just atrating off, Revenue Operations (it's a good one to center us all on RevOps). 

I'd also look outside of HubSpot at resources like LinkedIn learning, MasterClass, and some podcasts. One of my favorite is Marketing Book Podcast with Douglas Burdett. It's like reading a marketing book every week. 

Speaking of books, are you reading some of the top marketing books? There are a lot. But I'd find some that resonate (David Meerman Scott's New Rules of Marketing and PR is a great one, along with Mark Schaefer's Marketing Rebellion) and dig in. 

And of course, keep engaged in this Community. Lots of folks to connect with, learn from, and possibly work with! 

[William_RC]

Thank you for your insightful advice. I am definitely going to follow it. 👍

It is truly invaluable to me and I appreciate it greatly!

Thank you,

William

[JenBergren]

Hi @William_RC !

Is there a specific area of digital marketing that you're working in, or would like to work in?

It is such a vast subject and HubSpot has so many great resources, that will help us narrow down the recommendations for you!