The marketing field is constantly evolving and to stay relevant, marketers need to frequently learn new platforms, tools and tactics. To keep myself updated, I often invest in marketing classes. But I sometimes experience long and pricey training sessions that have left me disappointed. That’s why I was pleased to learn about Hubspot Academy. I have been using Hubspot as my main CRM and email marketing tool for years. Recently, I enrolled in their free Hubspot Email Marketing Certification Course. It provided quick and practical strategies to improve email marketing campaigns. Here are my key insights from the virtual learning session.
Segmentation Strategy
The Hubspot Email Marketing Course emphasizes segmentation of the target audience. This is done by defining your buyer personas. These are the personification of your ideal prospects. Segmentation allows you to create messages that resonate with your readers. Some of the criteria used in segmentation include demographics, psychographics, buyer motivation and purchasing behaviors. Segmentation helps you understand who your most valuable customers are and where to spend more of your time in building relationships. One core tenet in email marketing is to create messaging that addresses the different pain points and challenges of each segment.
Email Layout and Design
Emails need to be concise. You usually only have a few seconds to grab a reader’s attention long enough to get your message through, otherwise it will just be glossed over. Give the reader only the information they need without drowning them in too much details. Show them that you respect their time and value the attention they gave your material.
One important lesson I got from the Hubspot Email Marketing Course is the use of the inverted pyramid layout. Because attention spans are getting shorter, the inverted pyramid model works by funneling the messaging towards a single call to action, thereby eliminating other distractions. The idea is to structure your email body so that all elements work together towards delivering one key message. This starts with a succinct headline followed by a value proposition, and end with a prominent call to action. Create a layout that is organized and scannable without unnecessary images or fluff.
Improve Deliverability
Spamming has become such a common practice that reaching your target’s inbox has become more difficult. High email deliverability takes hard work. Your company’s reputation determines whether your email will be delivered, blocked, or sent into the junk folder. Email engagements such as clicks, opens, and spam complaints also influence your email deliverability. The greater the positive engagements, the higher your chances are of getting into the inbox. Other factors include send volume or the number of emails sent and send frequency as well as percentages of bounce or undeliverable emails.
The HubSpot Email Marketing Course does not recommend sending bulk emails to thousands of subscribers. It is best to send customized and personalized emails to your identified segments. More so if you have a new domain name. Keep your emails to a maximum of 50 emails a day so as not to appear suspicious.
Another thing to watch out for is graymail. These are emails that a recipient may have opted into but are no longer interested in and thus are never opened. Hubspot has a suppression feature that allows you to exclude contacts who have never opened your email or have not opened the last 11 emails you have sent. Doing so will significantly improve your email deliverability.
Lead Nurturing Techniques
People buy from people. Nurturing is all about building relationships by humanizing your Hubspot email marketing campaigns. Provide value by helping your customers find solutions to their challenges.
Often, marketers resort to email workflows to improve efficiency and save time. Email workflows are a series of emails that are triggered based on a subscriber’s information or actions. Instead of replying to individual emails, automation allows you to pre-program the process. To create an effective workflow, you have to understand the buyer’s journey. But be careful when using email automation workflows. If not done correctly, it can result in a poor customer experience.
It is best to develop pieces of content that will provide valuable information to your audience depending on the persona you have established. Always ask yourself, “How can my content meet my customer’s needs?” Good examples of educational content include product guides, FAQs, and case studies.
Analyze the Success of Your Campaign
Without looking into metrics, you wont be able to able to determine if you are progressing towards your goals. Here are key metrics that you should pay attention to:
Open Rate – pertains to the number of emails opened compared to the total number of emails sent. The message is considered open once the images load in or when the reader clicks your links without the image loading.
Click Rate – is number of people who clicked through your links as opposed to the number of emails received.
Deliverability – is an overall assessment of your email’s performance based on parameters such as successful deliveries, bounces, unsubscribes, and spam reports.
HTML Click Map – Shows visually the links clicked in your email. Hovering over a link will show statistics of the link in detail.
Top Clicked Links – is a record of the most clicked links in the email. It can be viewed as HTML, plain text, or combined links.
Top Engaged Contacts – are readers who have shown the most engagement with your emails.
I highly recommend Hubspot Academy to marketing professionals. The sessions are well paced and the instructors are knowledgeable and engaging. The courses are free and your only investment is your time.
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