When you first dig into HubSpot and start building campaigns, the sense of power you get is incredibly liberating. What once took you hours to do manually now takes minutes to set up once, then no time at all after the work is done. Your social followers find their way to landing pages, which sign them up for email lists, which keep them engaged and inching ever closer to a purchase decision.
It’s a beautiful thing.
But that is just the beginning of the power you have in HubSpot. You can go deeper, tap into even more impressive capabilities, and take your inbound marketing game to the next level. These three HubSpot automation tricks can increase your sales conversions, better target your content, and collect more useful information from every lead.
According to HubSpot itself, the best time for someone to call a new inbound lead is within 5 minutes of capture. After that window closes, conversion rates start falling fast. So while your run-of-the-mill lead gen form is going to do wonders in sending your sales team qualified leads, it’s absolutely critical that you’re doing everything you can to connect your sales team with prospects at that exact moment a person is most likely to buy.
If your sales team is using the HubSpot CRM (which is completely free, so they totally should be), you can assign a sales rep to each user who fills out a lead gen form on your website. Then, you can create a workflow that notifies the sales rep whenever that contact visits any page at the bottom of the funnel a certain number of times, which indicates they’re close to making a purchase.
For example, let’s say a contact checks out the pricing page on your website three times. Clearly they’re trying to make a purchase decision. HubSpot notifies a sales rep, who can then call that prospect immediately, opening the door for a personal conversation and a good chance for a conversion.
On average, email subscribers will get up to 416 marketing emails a month in their inbox. You need to make sure that every single one you send offers something new and valuable.
Most standard automated email workflows are set up chronologically; once a lead is captured, the system will send an email on day one, then another a couple days later, and so on. That’s helpful for users who are engaging with your content, but what about contacts that stall at a certain point in your workflow?
Using if/then branches within HubSpot email workflows, you can change your email messaging based on specific actions your leads take.
For example, let’s say a contact has filled out a capture form, and you are now sending them emails as part of a standard workflow. First day, they receive your first email.
But if a lead hasn’t even opened your first email, do you want to send them emails further along in your workflow? Instead, an if/then branch allows you to send the user a slightly reworked version of your first email in the event that they never opened it.
Because maybe the first time you sent them that email, the subject line just didn’t connect. Or maybe it just was sent at the wrong time of day. By introducing this branch to your workflow, you’re able to test slightly different messaging, or even a different time of day, to see if you can intrigue your contact enough to open the email.
Clearly, it’s key that email content be relevant, targeted, and personalized. The more specific you can get with any message you send, the more likely it is to make a genuine connection with your intended reader at any stage in the funnel. The data backs this up; companies that segment their email lists typically see 39% higher open rates and 28% lower unsubscribe rates than those who do not.
One surprisingly easy way to make sure you’re giving your readers content that’s right for them is to ask about their role or position on the same form that collects contact info. Refer to your buyer personas and think about them on a job title or corporate ladder level, and provide a few options for your reader to classify themselves:
“I’d classify myself as…” with a few options, like: Content Specialist, Marketing Director, VP of Sales, COO.
If you’ve done your heavy lifting in figuring out how your products or services specifically relate to each of those different positions, you can confidently trigger campaigns that will speak directly to each lead that comes in. The whole thing might happen automatically, but the message within should always be specific and genuine.