Author Archives: i4lead

Enterprise data modeling is nothing new. This tactic has been around for years, but it is still relevant to modern businesses today.

It can feel like an abstract, complex concept at times, but it is an important part of data governance, which helps manage and secure a company’s data assets.

In today’s world, data security is important, as is boosting productivity and efficiency with up-to-date applications and digital processes.

Enterprise data modeling can help ensure company apps and data are standardized, secure and in-line with the business mission.

What is an Enterprise Data Model?

Simply put, an enterprise data model is a visual representation, or graph, of an enterprise business’ data. It focuses on high-level, more abstract components as it tries to define and standardize an entire enterprise business’ data.

That means enterprise data modeling can be a massive task, but it will be important to help reduce duplicates, inaccuracies, and errors in a business’ data.

Why Do You Need an Enterprise Data Model?

There are numerous reasons why you might need an enterprise data model. Let’s dive into four, now. 

1. Improve Data Quality

Even small companies handle a lot of data on a daily basis. Over time, this data can quickly become irrelevant. Errors can slip in unnoticed, as can redundancies. The more issues in the data, the less accurate it becomes. When companies revisit data to inform decisions, data riddled with errors and redundancies can impact company sales and growth. By taking an overarching, comprehensive look at the data and defining it via enterprise data modeling, these issues can be addressed appropriately.

2. Defining All Data

Enterprise data modeling is a massive task, but that’s because it addresses all of an enterprise business’ data. A company can clean up data and align applications, so everything is cohesive and running smoothly, with an enterprise data model.

3. Managing Data

Similarly, managing data is easier when it is all addressed and defined in one graph. The enterprise data model will be more high-level, so deeper dives and more intensive data modeling will be needed to define the specifics. But overall, a company can better manage all the data assets it has when they are all placed in one data model.

4. Data Governance

Businesses rely heavily on technology, as do consumers. The more we move online, the more regulations that need to be in place to maintain privacy and security. Businesses that do not protect consumer data will find themselves in hot water. An enterprise data model can help identify a business’ data, better manage it, and ensure the business is complying with data and privacy laws.

Benefits of an Enterprise Data Model

The benefits of an enterprise data model are similar to the reasons a business needs it.

First, if a company wants to ensure high-quality data, it must remove redundancies and errors, and also apply any business-specific rules regarding the data. This can all be done through the extensive enterprise data modeling process.

An enterprise data model can also help a business be more cohesive and standardized in its processes by aligning the various applications and technologies the company uses daily.

Finally, a huge benefit to enterprise data modeling is its ability to help a business align its data with data governance. For example, GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, addresses how companies use customer data and gives more privacy and data control to the consumer.

When this regulation was implemented, companies needed to ensure that they were properly handling data. This regulation is still in effect, so newer businesses also must comply. Not complying with government data policies can lead to legal implications, which is what makes an enterprise data model so invaluable.

How to Create an Enterprise Data Model

The enterprise data model consists of a few smaller models. Starting with the enterprise subject area model, you’ll move through each of the following steps to create the enterprise data model.

1. Enterprise Subject Area Model

The ESAM is a high-level model that defines the main subject areas of a business as well as the relationships among these subject areas. For example, this could include Accounts, IT, Billing, Finance, Sales.

2. Enterprise Conceptual Model

Next, each ESAM is broken down further into enterprise conceptual models, which consist of major business concepts and how these concepts are related.

3. Enterprise Entity Model

Finally, the enterprise entity model includes the main interests for each business concept and details their relationships with one another.

Enterprise Data Model Example

The enterprise data model can be visualized as a pyramid. The entire pyramid is the enterprise data model, which, let’s say, is a retail store with a brick-and-mortar location and an online shop.

The top of the pyramid is the enterprise subject area model, with 10-20 business subjects defined. Those could include Stores, Staff, Warehouses, Products, Payments, and Customers, to name a few. Arrows would show how these subjects relate to one another.

Below that, the middle of the pyramid is a slightly more fleshed out enterprise conceptual model, which defines eight-15 main business concepts per subject area model. For example, Products could be broken down by ID and type, or Payments could be broken down by credit cards, debit cards, and cash.

Finally, the base of the pyramid is the enterprise entity model, which would identify the main areas of interest for each conceptual model.

Enterprise Data Model Tools

Now that you have a better understanding of enterprise data modeling, you might be ready to dive into this project. These data model tools will help make this process less taxing on your team.

1. Lucidchart

Teams can work together on Lucidchart to create collaborative diagrams and data models. It meets international privacy and security standards, making it a safe option.

Drag-and-drop components allow team members to build data models with ease, and each person can select portions of the diagram and leave feedback comments. You can test it out for free, and prices range depending on business size.

2. Erwin Data Modeler

The Erwin Data Modeler is specifically tailored to visualizing and standardizing enterprise data assets.

All data, whether from a data warehouse or in the cloud, can be handled in one interface, and automated models can help reduce redundancies and errors to improve data quality. Pricing varies by business needs, but you can explore this modeling tool with a free trial before committing.

3. Diagrams.net

Diagrams.net (formerly draw.io) is a free data modeling tool that allows you to make flowcharts and graphs for your enterprise data. Drag-and-drop features make it easy to place shapes, lines and arrows exactly where you’d like on the gridded, blank diagram.

You can also draw free-hand shapes. Newly added in February 21, diagrams.net also offers data governance options, and you can store all data models on your enterprise-level storage platforms, like Dropbox or Google Drive.

4. ER/Studio

Ideal for enterprise businesses, ER/Studio handles company data with ease. This enterprise data modeling software allows for forward or reverse engineering, source and target mapping, naming standards and more. You can model data from various sources and define and enforce standards within this tool. This is a paid tool, and prices vary depending on needs; you can also request a demo.

5. Ab Initio

Another popular tool for enterprise businesses, Ab Initio incorporates self-service and automation into your data models to improve efficiency. Users can model and catalog data securely, complying with data governance. The tool will even generate automated operational data quality rules for data processing. Licensing rates vary.

Improve Data Management With an Enterprise Data Model

Sure, enterprise data models can be intimidating. But they are more important than ever in our data-driven world. Enterprise data modeling can help standardize data assets for a business and better manage and secure these assets.

Most importantly, an enterprise data model can help a company avoid legal troubles by complying with data governance. By using one of many tools for data modeling, this arduous but crucial task can be made simpler and more collaborative.

Troubleshooting an HTTP 500 internal server error is like solving a mystery.

You don’t know what exactly happened or why it happened — all you know is that something’s wrong and you need to fix it.

To guide you through the hassle of troubleshooting the dreaded HTTP 500 internal server error, let’s go over what it exactly means and its most common causes and solutions.

Here’s what your 500 error page might look like in your browser:

How to Fix a 500 Internal Server Error

Unlike other server-side errors like a 502 code or a 503 code, a 500 internal server error is it doesn’t immediately tell you what the problem is, nor does it tell you how to fix it. If the error persists for too long on your site, it could even negatively impact your SEO.

So, let’s dive into a few potential causes of the error. Then, we’ll present some solutions so you can try to fix the issue.

Potential Causes of a 500 Internal Server Error

A 500 internal server error is, as the name implies, a general problem with the website’s server. More than likely, this means there’s an issue or temporary glitch with the website’s programming.

Some potential causes of a 500 internal server error include:

• Corrupted or broken .htaccess file
• A permissions error
• Faulty third-party plugins or themes
• The PHP memory limit being exceeded

Fortunately, there are a few effective solutions for fixing most of these problems.

If You’re Trying to Load a Page with a 500 Internal Server Error:

1. Refresh the page.

This might seem obvious, but if it’s a temporary loading issue, you might find success if you refresh the page. Before trying anything else in this list, reload the page and see what happens.

2. Come back later.

Since the error is on the server side, I’m willing to bet the website owners are working as quickly as possible to resolve the issue. Give it a few minutes or up to an hour or so, and then reload the URL and see if the development team has fixed the issue.

3. Delete your browser’s cookies.

If clearing the browser history doesn’t work, you might try deleting your browser’s cookies. If the cookies are associated with the error-prone webpage, deleting the cookies might help reload the page.

4. Paste your URL into the website “Down for Everyone or Just Me.”

Head to downforeveryoneorjustme.com and paste in the URL where you’re seeing the internal server error. You’ll either be told that the website is only down for you, or that the website is down for everyone.

If it’s a problem with your server, this should help assuage any concerns that it’s an issue with your own computer.

If the 500 Internal Server Error is on Your Own Website:

1. Deactivate a plugin or theme.

Newly activated software, add-ons, or third-party scripts might be conflicting with your current server configuration. To determine this, try (carefully) deactivating or uninstalling your software add-ons one at a time to identify what exactly is causing the internal server error.

If you run a WordPress website, this is easy to do with plugins. From your dashboard, choose Plugins > Installed Plugins, then deactivate the first plugin. If the error resolves, you know this plugin is part of the issue. Reactivate the first plugin, then repeat this deactivate-reactivate process one at a time for all plugins to determine which ones are causing your error.

You might find that having fewer active plugins on your site helps things run more smoothly.

Alternatively, if you just upgraded your software, your current plugins or themes might not be compatible with the new upgrade. Deactivating plugins or themes one at a time until the error disappears is the best way to find the root cause of your problem.

2. Use a plugin like WP Debugging to identify the issue.

If your site is powered by WordPress and you’re comfortable with WordPress debugging processes, consider installing a plugin to help you identify the issue with your server.

The debug plugin WP Debugging, for instance, helps you figure out exactly what’s wrong with your site, which will result in a speedier fix.

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3. Ensure your PHP setup is configured correctly.

If the issue is related to a PHP timeout, consider creating timeout rules or error handling in your script to resolve the issue. Here’s a full list of php.ini directives to configure your PHP setup.

Additionally, wrong permissions on a file or folder that has a script, like a PHP or CGI script, won’t allow the script to run. Check your permissions and make sure you set them correctly on your server.

4. Check the code for your site’s .htaccess file.

Incorrect coding or improper structure with your .htaccess file could be the reason you’re seeing the 500 internal error. The .htaccess file helps you manage how long resources should be stored in a browser’s cache. Try editing the file if you’re seeing a 500 internal server error.

To locate your .htaccess file, access your website files through a file manager like cPanel or via FTP/SFTP. The file will probably be located in your public_html directory. There’s a good chance your server will hide this file from view by default and you’ll need to toggle hidden files on to see it.

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Coding errors in .htaccess and custom scripts can also cause an HTTP 500 internal server error.

5. Ensure your new software is installed correctly.

Finally, check to see if your recently installed or upgraded software actually failed to install or upgrade. To refresh your software, check the vendor’s website for instructions.

Last Resort: Ask a Server Administrator for Help

If troubleshooting popular software problems or debugging server-side scripts doesn’t fix your HTTP 500 internal server error, you should read about the most common causes for this type of issue in your server’s documentation — an HTTP 500 internal server error can occur in different operating systems for a multitude of reasons.

You can also ask your service provider to access your error logs and find evidence for the root cause of your problem.

Internal server errors are irritating because they’re unhelpful — it’s basically the web server’s way of saying, “Eh, I’m not sure.” Hopefully, one of the above steps will resolve the problem so you can get back to life as usual.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

If your website is like a house, then your website’s URL is like that house’s address. It defines where your website lives online, similar to how your home address determines where you live in a neighborhood, helping your visitors easily find your site. URLs also help Google understand what your website’s pages are about.

There are technically five elements of a URL, and they’re discreetly important for optimizing your site’s user experience (UX) and SEO. To help you develop a concrete understanding of every part of a URL, let’s explore each of them in detail.

Below is an illustration of the different parts of a URL. 

Let’s break down this URL structure below. 

URL Structure

Scheme

The scheme tells web servers which protocol to use when it accesses a page on your website.

Nowadays, HTTPS — which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure — is the most common scheme. It tells your web browser to encrypt any information you enter onto the page, like your passwords or credit card information, so cybercriminals can’t access it. This security protocol protects your website visitors and implementing it will help your site rank better on Google. That’s why implementing SSL is a must-do on any technical SEO guide. 

Other schemes you might see are mailto://, which can open your computer’s default email service provider to help you draft an email to the email address you entered in the URL, and ftp://, which is a standard protocol for transferring computer files between a client and server on a computer network.

Subdomain

If your website is like a house, your subdomains are like specific rooms in that house. A subdomain in a URL indicates which particular page of your website the web browser should serve up. For instance, subdomains like “blog” or “offers” will provide your website’s blog page or offers page.

Subdomains also bucket your website into its main content categories and shows Google and your visitors that there’s more information on your site than just a homepage.

Second-level Domain

Your second-level domain (SLD) is the name of your website. It helps people know they’re visiting a certain brand’s site. For instance, people who visit “mlb.com” know they’re on Major League Baseball’s website, without needing any more information.

Top-level Domain

The top-level domain (TLD) specifies what type of entity your organization registers as on the internet.

For example, “.com” is intended for commercial entities in the United States, so a lot of American businesses register with a top-level domain of “.com”. Similarly “.edu” is intended for academic institutions in the United States, so a lot of American colleges and universities register with a top-level domain of “.edu”.

Subdirectory

A subdirectory — also known as a subfolder — helps people as well as
web crawlers understand which particular section of a webpage they’re on. 

For instance, if you own an online store that sells t-shirts, hats, and mugs, one of your website’s URLs could look like “https://shop.yourstore.com/hats”. Notice that the subdomain is “shop” and the subdirectory is “hats.” That means this URL would serve up the “Hats” page, which is a subfolder of the “Shop” page. T-shirts and mugs would be other subfolders of this page.

URL Structure: Subtle Yet Essential

Even though URLs might seem simple and frivolous, they’re actually important for your website’s UX and SEO. And now that you understand the anatomy of a URL, check out the blog posts below to learn more about technical SEO.

A great way to share more about your background is to have a prepared document, like a professional bio.

A professional bio can be shared with prospective employers, shared with your colleagues, included in your social media profiles, used for speaking engagement announcements, or used as an author bio on a blog.

Writing about your professional background for the first time may feel challenging or awkward, but it doesn’t have to be.

Here, we’ll explore some tips to help you feel more comfortable when writing your own professional background. Let’s dive in.

Your professional background includes previous jobs you’ve had, successful projects you’ve worked on, significant accomplishments like promotions or awards, professional networking organizations you belong to, and anything else you’d share with someone who wants to know more about you professionally.

Not only is sharing more about your background a great way to tell more about yourself to others, it’s also an opportunity to wholly reflect on your professional journey and the goals you’ve achieved — plus, what you hope to achieve in the future.

Next, let’s dive into how you can get started.

1. Don’t start from scratch.

If you’re having trouble figuring out where to start, try using a professional bio template to guide you. Templates, like the ones featured below, make it easier for you to focus on your personal information and accomplishments, without having to worry as much about the structure.

Featured Resource: Professional Bio Templates and Examples

Download the Templates

2. Know your audience.

Take into consideration who will be reading your professional bio and cater to your reader.

You may also want to draft different versions of your document to best fit specific audiences. For example, the version you post on your LinkedIn may not be as detailed as the version you post on your personal website, and if your reader is a potential employer, it would help to include details that specifically highlight why you’re the best candidate for the role for which you’re applying.

HubSpot Founder Dharmesh Shah uses different bios for different platforms. On Twitter, for instance, Dharmesh’s bio is short and sweet, which is perfect for Twitter’s character limit.

Alternatively, on INBOUND’s website, Dharmesh’s bio is written in third-person for attendees. This bio makes Dharmesh’s current role clear while providing some key background information.

Finally, in his OnStartups bio, Dharmesh’s voice is personable since he’s speaking directly to the reader. This gives readers more insight into Dharmesh’s background directly from his perspective.

The best part about this approach is that you can create as many versions of your bio as you’d like, or simply recycle a general version whenever you need it.

3. Show professional progression.

As you’re writing, think about structuring your professional bio in a way that creates a timeline to show your progression. Explain what your different roles were like, and emphasize responsibilities that set you up for success in your latter roles.

It’s important to note that your timeline doesn’t have to be linear.

“Look for a theme that runs throughout several of the jobs you’ve held, and present your choices in a way that shows common threads running through each of your career decisions,” explains career strategist Jenny Foss.

The goal is to clearly show your audience the different roles you’ve had, and how all of your experiences have contributed to your overall professional development.

4. Highlight your accomplishments.

One of the best things about writing your professional background is that it’s the perfect opportunity to brag about yourself — and I don’t mean humble brag.

Think of the most successful projects you’ve been part of, the strategies you’ve helped develop and execute, the deals you’ve closed, the revenue you’ve generated, and anything else that stands out as a major accomplishment.

“A former manager once told me to keep a ‘brag sheet’ in a document on my computer. The idea was to create a running list of noteworthy accomplishments, media mentions, awards, and letters of recommendation that I could reference to make it easier to write about myself. It also doesn’t hurt to open up this document whenever you’re having a tough day to remind yourself what you’re capable of,” Carly Stec, HubSpot’s Team Manager of Content Conversion, told me.

It’s also important to consider how success was measured in your previous roles — and how that might shape the way you write about it.

If success for you tends to be measured in quantifiable metrics, include strong statistics. It might look something like this:

• “In my first six months, I was able to sign up X amount of customers that generated an average monthly recurring revenue of $X.”

• “I helped boost customer retention by X percentage.”

• “With the strategy I developed, my team was able to lower customer acquisition costs by X percentage.”

If your role is primarily measured through qualitative goals, share a highlight that speaks to skills you excel at. For example:

• “I successfully executed a major project using strong time management skills and communicated the results to C-suite stakeholders.”

• “I was able to complete a project that was projected to take an entire quarter in half the time because of my organizational skills.”

• “I was selected to lead a database cleanup project due to my attention to detail and strong team collaboration skills.”

5. Be personable.

Timelines and accomplishments are great, but being personable is even better.

Readers should feel like they’re getting some sense of who you are from your professional background. This gives readers the opportunity to know more about you beyond a professional scope. If you have any cool niche hobbies that you enjoy outside of work, this would be the time to share.

Here’s a list of prompts to help you brainstorm the right “fun facts” to highlight:

• What TV show are you currently binging?
• Do you have any pets?
• What’s something most people don’t know about you?
• What languages do you speak?
• What are you most proud of yourself for?
• What’s something you’ve done that’s bucket-list worthy?
• What do you do to relax?
• What are three of your must-have apps?
• What would your favorite colleague say about you?
• What’s the best advice you’ve ever received and how do you apply it to your life?

Being personable is also a great opportunity to address any unconventional moments in your professional background. For example, maybe you’ve made a drastic shift in your career path, or you took a sabbatical at some point.

These types of stories can make you more relatable to your audience, and you never know who you may end up connecting with over one of your hobbies or more personal moments.

6. Ask for feedback.

Constructive feedback is key when you’re writing about yourself. While many choose to source feedback after completing a draft of their bio, it’s just as beneficial to get feedback from your peers at earlier stages of your drafting process.

Oftentimes, our peers can help identify our strengths and where we have opportunities to improve. If you’re having trouble developing a clear timeline or pinpointing which highlights you should mention, get together with a peer to brainstorm ideas.

Reflect on successful assignments that you’ve collaborated on and ask your peer to provide honest feedback about what you did best — and include that feedback in your bio.

If you need help getting started, here’s a list of discussion questions to use with your peers to uncover professional strengths you might be overlooking in your own self-assessment:

• What role do you think I tend to play in group work?
• How have I helped you be more successful?
• What do you think my most impressive project has been?
• What was your first impression of me?
• What do you think my strengths are?

If you’re feeling stuck, don’t be afraid to leverage our free professional bio templates to help you get started.

Next, let’s go over professional background examples from both tenured and early-career professionals.

Professional Background Examples

1. Bozoma Saint John

Bozoma Saint John opens her biography by covering her most recent role at Netflix, then goes all the way back to the beginning of her career. From there, she provides a detailed overview of her accomplishments, inserting the names of the most notable organizations she has worked with.

Notice how she familiarizes us with her by using her nickname, “Boz,” throughout her professional background. In the same way, you can use your nickname throughout your bio (if you’re writing it in third person).

We’d recommend writing a background like Saint John’s if you’re seeking speaking or presenting opportunities.

2. Jim Kowalski

Jim Kowalski walks us through his passions before describing his work experience and accomplishments. He makes it a point to connect his love of the automotive industry to his ethos in his work. Another notable feature of his professional background is that he mentions a brand he invigorated (it was “almost dead,” he asserts). He closes with his fascinating adventures around the world, including building a home in Thailand.

Mention ways that you’ve prevented clients and other companies from failing. If you’ve had noteworthy adventures, consider bringing them into your professional background as well. A background bio doesn’t have to be wooden; it can be fun, too, as long as you remain within reason. Plus, it gives the reader a chance to connect with you.

3. Katherine Gundlach

If you’re a college student, you might not have a long list of professional accomplishments, but you can take note from Katherine Gundlach’s example and write about what you love to do — and why you love to do it.

Katherine Gundlach opens her professional background with her current status as a college student, then goes into an anecdote that describes why she became a photographer. In the latter half of the bio, she describes her mission when photographing others. In your own bio, describe the purpose of what you do (or the reason why you want to pursue a certain field).

She also says where she’s from. Mentioning personal information in your professional bio can be a way for readers, hiring managers, and colleagues to relate to you.

4. Erick Rheam

Erick Rheam’s professional background effectively outlines his path to becoming a motivational speaker. He also cements his expertise by stating that he speaks regularly across the U.S. After, he outlines his vision and purpose for doing what he does. Like some of the other examples on this list, he includes personal information about himself: that he’s a runner.

This professional background is done well because it’s succinct and balances professionalism, expertise, and personality. Consider achieving a similar balance in your own background document by dedicating 1-2 sentences to each aspect of your professional and personal life.

5. Dr. Houyuan Luo

Dr. Houyuan Luo’s professional background is a classic example of a bio that’s inspirational, professional, and persuasive.

In the medical industry, education is immensely important — how long you studied can determine your level of expertise. Dr. Luo immediately lists his academic background, then details how passionate he is for his field. He emphasizes his humanitarian values most, cementing him as an excellent candidate for clinical training and speaking opportunities.

If you work in the healthcare, non-profit, legal, educational, or environmental industries, consider emphasizing your values and ethos in your professional background. Like Dr. Luo, you can leave mention of your current position for the last sentence.

6. Claire Buswell

Claire Buswell immediately establishes herself as a relatable persona by going over her personal history first — then connecting that to her role today. Because she was once in the same position as her clients, Buswell is better prepared to help them professionally. She makes that clear in her professional background and is vulnerable about how hard it was to find a job.

If you’ve created a business that solves a problem that you experienced, consider bringing that into your professional background. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. In fact, being vulnerable can make you more relatable, and your level of success now will be testament to your methods’ effectiveness. 

Ready to start writing?

Keep these tips and examples in mind as you’re writing about your professional bio. Your final product should be a written statement that boasts your most notable skills and achievements. As you continue to progress in your career, take time to update your bio like you would your resume, and continue to impress your readers.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

When I first began my marketing career, I was envious of emails.

While this sounds like an interesting quirk, I’m pretty sure most marketers can agree: some emails are hard not to envy.

From sparkling campaigns to flawless design, sometimes I open a newsletter and I’m surprised at how brands segment me into a list that’s so accurate.

Email lists are an essential aspect of any marketing strategy since they enable marketers to target the right subscribers and grow leads.

An example of this would be segmenting blog subscribers and only sending specific blog posts to that list based on criteria you establish such as their interests or past purchases.

To personalize marketing emails and improve ROI, email list management is a crucial step in marketing efforts. It can help your team generate leads while simultaneously creating a more delightful and personalized customer experience.

Mailing List Software

Using mailing list software or other email management tools is an easy way to segment your audience, send targeted emails, and analyze email metrics that matter most to your team (CTR, subscriber count, etc.). Often, mailing list and email management tools provide robust insights and suggestions on how to improve ROI through email.

To save you the hassle of researching the best software tools for email list management, we’ve done the heavy lifting for you. Take a look at the best email list management software tools below.

1. HubSpot Email Marketing Tools

Price: Free; $45/mo (Starter), $800/mo (Professional), $3,200/mo (Enterprise)

With HubSpot’s Email Marketing Tools, you’ll be able to create, personalize, and optimize all of your marketing emails without the need for code, designers, IT, or other technical support.

With HubSpot, it’s easy to increase ROI because the tool helps you create and automate personalized emails for each individual recipient.HubSpot’s Email Marketing Tools are also powered by your all-in-one CRM platform, meaning the data that you need to customize your emails are at your fingertips and up-to-date.

A/B test different versions of your emails to determine which convert the most recipients and then analyze all email campaign data to continually improve upon your email marketing strategy.

Use HubSpot’s Email Marketing Tools to manage your mailing list and create, personalize, and optimize your marketing emails without waiting on designers or IT.

2. Zapier

Price: Free, $19.99/ mo (Starter), $49/ mo (Professional), $299/ mo (Team), $599/ mo (Company)

With Zapier, you can easily build and create email workflows — which sync to apps such as Dropbox and Gmail — to automate your email marketing strategy and campaigns.

Zapier lets you import your subscriber list from Facebook, Eventbrite, or Google Sheets so you can quickly send your emails to the right group of people. Lastly, share and back up Zapier data to Google Sheets to analyze your email campaigns and collaborate with your team.

3. OptinMonster

Price: $14/mo (Basic), $30/mo (Plus), $47/mo (Pro), $49/mo (Growth)

OptinMonster offers an email form template that lets you decide how to set up your emails for different customer segments. The tool supports multiple campaign structures and has different toggles for the metrics you choose to track and analyze. OptinMonster makes it easy to ensure you’re establishing a workflow that works with the type of campaign you’re rolling out.

4. Campaign Monitor

Price: $9/mo (Basic), $29/mo (Unlimited), $149/mo (Premier)

Campaign Monitor is ideal for creative professionals who handle email campaigns — it makes the process of managing email marketing from multiple accounts easy. The tool also offers email personalization, email template builders, RSS email, A/B testing, and analytics so you can handle all aspects of your email marketing strategy from a single tool.

5. Mailchimp

Price: Free, $9.99/mo (Essentials), $14.99/mo (Standard), $299 (Premium)

Mailchimp is a marketing platform with a variety of email, ecommerce, marketing campaign, audience management, and marketing automation tools. The software makes it easy to brand, design, and customize all of your emails.

The pre-made templates and the drag-and-drop builder make the process of creating your emails easy and efficient. You can set up automations so that your emails are triggered and sent based on when certain criteria are met (e.g. when someone subscribes to your blog). There are transactional email options that you can have Mailchimp automatically send after a purchase, sign up, and more.

Mailchimp also tracks and visualizes the success of your email campaigns in real-time via the internal dashboard so you can keep an eye on the metrics that matter most to your team.

6. Constant Contact

Price: $10/mo (Website Builder), $20/mo (Email), $45/mo (Email Plus), $195/mo (Ecommerce Plus)

Constant Contact offers customizable email templates — you can edit the templates with one click, making email creation and design easy. The tool comes with open-rate tracking, click-rate tracking, and social media integration (so your email and social campaigns and contacts are integrated).

7. ActiveCampaign

Price: $9/mo (Lite), $49/mo (Plus), $129/mo (Professional), $229/mo (Enterprise)

ActiveCampaign helps you create customized emails, customer segments and lists, and campaign reports so you can analyze your results. You can create broadcast emails, trigger emails, targeted emails, and email funnels.

Automate the process of sending emails by scheduling them in advance. The tool also lets you test emails before you send them as well as sets up auto-response emails based on criteria that you establish.

8. Mad Mimi

Price: $10/mo (Basic), $42/mo (Pro), $199/mo (Silver), $1,049/mo (Gold)

Mad Mimi makes it easy to create, send, and track email newsletters. All of your emails are automatically mobile-friendly and the user interface makes it simple to design emails no matter your technical background.

In fact, the tool is a great choice for beginners who are interested in diving into the specifics of email creation because it provides walkthroughs of some features that might be difficult to understand, like RSS to email and drip campaigns.

19. AdRoll

Price: Free, $19/mo (Growth)

AdRroll blends email marketing, display advertising, and social media planning — meaning, the tool enables you to establish and maintain a holistic view of your email marketing strategy. Subscriber lists from other platforms can be uploaded onto the platform seamlessly so all of your data is centrally stored.

Start Using Mailing List Software

Identify the right mailing list software for your team and start creating, customizing, sending, tracking, and analyzing your business’s marketing emails.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Educator and computer pioneer Alan Kay once said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

If you work for a growing company, be it a startup or scale-up, you’ll know that attempting to “invent” the future isn’t a matter of waiting around for flashes of inspiration and eureka moments — rather, it requires proactive planning, excellent execution, and awesome alignment. You’ll also know that these ingredients aren’t easy to come by. Not by a long shot.

That’s why I swear by a simple, unique framework to help me and my team at HubSpot prepare for the future. It’s called ‘rhythm of the business,’ and it involves visually mapping out the key events, milestones, and activities scheduled across the business year and ensuring that every team is intimately familiar with the plan — or rhythm — for the months ahead.

As a member of HubSpot’s revenue operations team, understanding the ‘rhythm of the business’ is critical for our success. Our team’s north-star goal is to remove friction for our customer-facing teams and help them to pass that friction-free experience on to customers.

The RevOps model sets us up for success because it breaks down silos between operations professionals, unifies them as a central team, and allows them to work collaboratively on the systems and processes that power a business.

As a result, duplicative work gets weeded out, repeatable tasks get automated, and time is spent proactively improving the customer experience, not frantically reacting to glitches in the system.

As the RevOps model aligns teams around the customer, the ‘rhythm of the business’ framework aligns the entire company around key events in the business year — those moments where outsized impact is possible and execution is everything.

Together, RevOps and ‘rhythm of the business’ are greater than the sum of their parts; a combination of mindset and method that enables growing continually to delight customers, even as their internal operating model becomes more complex.

How I Became a ‘Rhythm of the Business’ Believer

It was during my time working for Amazon that I first embraced ‘rhythm of the business.’ I picked up the habit of keeping a record of important milestones throughout the year, noting on my calendar the “fire drills” that occurred during the year and color-coded them.

Annual kick-offs were highlighted in blue, big customer events were orange. I used a printed wall calendar, which I know is “old school,” but it allowed me to visualize the entire year in a nanosecond.

Later in my time at Amazon, when I was in charge of planning, strategy, and enablement, I looked at the previous year’s calendar and noticed that some events had gone well for my team while others should have been given more preparation time. In short, I realized that we needed to plan better for the next 12 months.

So, when the time came to map out our calendar for the year ahead, I was able to take the learnings from the past 12 months and provide some informed structure to what otherwise would have been, in essence, an act of guesswork.

By structuring my team’s year in this way, not only were we able to kick off earlier than most teams, we gained the time needed to develop and refine our hypotheses, test them, and lay out a defensible data-driven strategy for the future.

This in turn enabled us to pursue better investments, see greater returns on those investments, and then be in a position to make greater investments going forward. The process took the form of a flywheel, feeding off its own momentum.

When I joined HubSpot in 2018, I brought the ‘rhythm of the business’ approach with me. Although the company had been growing well, it was about to hit a new phase of scale and we had the opportunity to improve our operating model by taking a step back from the whiteboard and considering the ebb and flow of the year.

This enabled us to kick off planning at the right time and be prepared for major milestones throughout the course of the year.

3 Ways ‘Rhythm of the Business’ Helps HubSpot Scale Better

At HubSpot, we have an annual planning cycle, and we recently observed that there were some areas of misalignment between teams. That was causing internal friction, and where there’s internal friction, it’s never too long before that friction seeps into the customer experience.

For example, at times our engineering team and product team were at advanced stages of their annual planning before other teams had fully defined what they needed from them.

At best, this type of disconnect can lead to a lot of lost time in meetings trying to re-assess plans, and at worst it can lead to ineffective, disjointed strategic execution — a thought that would keep most operations professionals I know up at night.

We turned to the ‘rhythm of the business’ model to root out this misalignment and implemented it with three straightforward steps that are easy for growing companies of any size to replicate.

1. Map the milestones.

The first thing my team at HubSpot did when adopting the ‘rhythm of the business’ was to note on our physical calendar when other teams were doing their annual planning and when their key milestones were due to occur.

We worked backward from those dates to set deadlines for the deliverables we owned for other teams’ key milestones, and once finalized, we distributed the calendar digitally across the company.

That allowed us to align our activities and priorities with those of other teams, giving us a tightly knit strategy for the year ahead.

2. Look long-term.

As important as it is to have the rhythm of the forthcoming year mapped out, it’s just as important to have a long-term plan in place.

At HubSpot, we recently mapped out a three-to-five-year plan, which is critically helpful from a systems perspective — it enables us to build a business strategy that is consistent, coherent, and clear. It also gives us the opportunity to ensure we’re making investments in the right systems at the right times.

Without this foresight, each team would likely pursue its own agenda and strategy, leading to different departments pointing in different directions, fractured investments, and potentially a clunky, cobbled-together tech stack — something that’s deeply detrimental to the customer experience.

3. Be a theme player.

With the key milestones for the year mapped out, it’s helpful to group them together under certain themes or seasons. This makes it easier for teams to organize their work mentally and remain focused on the overarching business purpose of their activities at any time of the year.

Here’s an example of how we at HubSpot group milestones by theme:

Q1: Kickoff Season

We kick the year off, set targets, and make sure that people have a clear understanding of their goals and feel motivated by them.

Q2: Think-big Season

We step back from the business and explore big opportunities and plan long-term. We look at what’s working well, we think about the future that’s not yet illuminated, and we assess the external factors that could impact our business.

It’s one of my favorite seasons because we consider the trends that might emerge three to five years from now. And that thinking helps inform the company in Q3.

Q3: Compass Season

We plan for the next year and identify the big plays we want to make, as well as the opportunities we will omit.

These choices are made with the learnings from Q2’s “think-big” season fresh in our minds, helping us to make decisions in the short term that will set us up for success in the long term.

Q4: Planning Season

You wrap up the year, finalizing the subsequent years’ targets, goals, investments, and divestments…and take some time to recharge!

Alignment Over Strategy

The ‘rhythm of the business’ framework has allowed the revenue operations team at HubSpot ensure that all teams are aligned on not only our priorities for the year ahead but also our vision of the future.

This in turn allows us to effectively create processes, construct systems, and organize data for our customer-facing teams, setting them up to successfully deliver a friction-free experience to our customers.

As our Chief Customer Officer Yamini Rangan often says, “Alignment eats strategy for breakfast.” This has become a mantra for us RevOps professionals at HubSpot as we ride the rhythm of the year.

After all, a strategy is only as good as its execution, and execution is entirely dependent on alignment, particularly at a scaling company.

To get started with “rhythm of the business” in your organization, start by looking back through your calendar — whether print, digital or memory-based — and mark down when key milestones occurred over the course of the previous year.

Then earmark when you began planning for each milestone and assess whether your team’s preparation was adequate or if it would benefit from more time, information, or support next year.

Once you’ve constructed this simple plan, you’ll be able to give your team a clear sense of the rhythm of your business for the next year. And in doing so, you’ll not only be able to prepare for the future, you’ll be able to invent it.

Final Thoughts

If you’d like to look into visualizing the future with the “rhythm of business” model, explore whether your company has rhythm or how to create a rhythm of business model. I also recommend a book we use at HubSpot, “Playing to Win,” which helped us ensure that we were all using similar nomenclature and frameworks.

Ultimately, the specific nomenclature or framework doesn’t matter. What matters is that everyone is on the same page and uses it – this speeds up communication, decision-making, and results.

If you’re anything like me, you probably mainly consider Wikipedia a good source for a behind-the-scenes look at the production of Game of Thrones, or a collection of random facts on Zebras.

In short, you likely haven’t given it much thought as a channel for brand awareness.

But, if you think about it, Wikipedia is one of the best third-party sources for ranking on page one of Google. Typically, when you search an intended keyword, you don’t have to scroll far before you see its accompanying Wikipedia page:

Additionally, it’s a recognizable website, so it’s often one of the first pages someone will click on if they want to learn more about what your business does.

If you want to boost your business’s visibility online, take a look at this quick guide so you can create a Wikipedia page for your company, today.

1. Create an account.

Go to Wikipedia’s homepage and click “Create account” in the top right.

Enter the necessary information, including username and password, then click “Create your account”.

2. Get promoted to an autoconfirmed user.

When you first join Wikipedia, you’ll see a box pop-up that reads, “Help improve Wikipedia” with a link to start editing an article:

Before creating your page, you’ll need to become an autoconfirmed user.

These are Wikipedia’s typical guidelines for an autoconfirmed user: “Although the precise requirements for autoconfirmed status vary according to circumstances, most English Wikipedia user accounts that are more than four days old and have made at least 10 edits (including deleted ones) are considered autoconfirmed.”

Here, you’ll need to practice patience — spend the first couple days once you open an account editing other people’s pages. Once you click “Edit a page”, there are links on the top right of every paragraph with the word “Edit”, so it shouldn’t be too time-consuming.

Once you’re autoconfirmed, proceed to the next step.

3. Create the page.

Now we’ve reached the most challenging part — creating the page.

First, go to Wikipedia’s “Writing an article” page. As you scroll down the page, you’ll see a blue button that reads, “Article wizard: an easy way to create articles.” Click this button (as long as you’re autoconfirmed):

Next, you’ll be redirected to Wikipedia’s Article Wizard. Here, you have two options — immediately begin creating your page by clicking “Next”, or practicing editing your page in Wikipedia’s sandbox, first.

For our purposes, we’ll click “Next”:

It’s important to note — since there’s likely no Wikipedia page already available for your company, you can include as much or as little information as you want. Additionally, you’ll want to structure the page for easy readability, featuring some of the most important and basic information (like what your company does), first.

For instance, take a look at how HubSpot’s Wikipedia page is structured:

The page starts with a two sentence overview of what HubSpot does, followed by a table of contents on the left, and a “fact sheet” on the right. Below the table of contents you’ll first find HubSpot’s history, followed by a description of HubSpot’s software and services.

On HubSpot’s Wikipedia page, the information that is above-the-fold is likely most useful for a new visitor who hasn’t heard of HubSpot before — a quick glance at the page can tell her, for instance, what HubSpot does, how much revenue HubSpot makes, what third-party sources such as Forbes say about HubSpot, and who HubSpot’s founders are.

While readers can continue scrolling for more product-specific information, it’s critical Wikipedia is mainly used as a broad brand awareness platform.

We’ll look at more examples later on.

4. Provide citations.

Wikipedia is ultimately an encyclopedia, so to prove the validity of your topic, you must include citations to various articles and third-party sources.

Before you begin creating your page, Wikipedia warns you of this, stating — “the topic of an article must already be covered in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. These include journals, books, newspapers, magazines, and websites with a reputation for fact checking. Social media, press releases, or corporate/professional profiles do not qualify”:

Ultimately, citations give your business credibility and allow the reader to trust your company is real. Look for magazine or newspaper articles that mention your company, other websites that backlink to your website as a resource, or directories that link to your company’s profile.

5. Submit the page for review.

When you’re finished with your page, submit it for review. Once Wikipedia deems it a credible source, it will be uploaded as an official Wikipedia page.

6. Update it regularly.

Remember — the hard work isn’t over, just yet. As your Wikipedia page begins ranking on page one of Google for your company name, it’s vital you regularly update it to ensure it provides the most up-to-date information regarding your products or services.

Additionally, by updating it regularly with company developments, you’re maintaining transparency, which is comforting for both your customers and leads.

Examples of Company Pages on Wikipedia

There are over 6 million articles in the English Wikipedia. A good chunk of those are company pages. The best company pages share the following characteristics:

• adequately describe the company
• maintain a neutral point of view
• include references to notable, independent sources
• includes a link to company website

Below we’ll take a look at two examples of company pages that can inspire your own. 

World Wide Technology

World Wide Technology’s wikipedia page is an excellent example of a company page. First, it offers a brief overview describing what type of company it is, how much revenue it earns, and how many people it employs. It then offers a timeline of notable events, starting with when it was founded and ending with its latest recognition in TIME magazine in 2021. 

The page ends with a comprehensive list of independent reliable sources, which have been published about the organization. Such a list helps Wikipedia understand why the organization is notable and avoids the appearance of a conflict of interest. Without such a list of references, your company page could be deleted. 

Urban One

Urban One’s wikipedia page is another excellent example of a company page. It begins by describing what the company is, who its primary audience is, and how large it is. While details like the fact that it’s the largest African-American-owned broadcasting company and one of the highest-earning African-American-owned businesses in the United States are impressive, they are stated objectively and cited properly to avoid the appearance of self-promotion. 

Wikipedia requires significant coverage in multiple independent sources for articles on organizations to be considered noticeable — a requirement which Urban One has easily met. Towards the bottom of the page you’ll find a references section with over 54 entries.

Getting Your Company on Wikipedia

Nowadays, a quick Google search provides us with an abundance of information — including social media profiles, directories, and press releases — on a given subject. By ensuring you have an up-to-date Wikipedia page, you’re covering your bases and giving viewers a trustworthy source of information related to your business or brand.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The digital-first world has arrived. Survey data from McKinsey shows that decision-makers now prefer digital interactions over ones occurring face-to-face. As this change unfolds, however, the opportunities to build connections with the same strength as face-to-face interactions dwindle. But that doesn’t change the fact that the world has shifted and now companies of all sizes need to know how to accommodate it. 

How can businesses evolve and take on this brave new world?

The answer: To provide digital experiences that are so compelling that audiences are drawn in to engage.

What Your Digital Experiences Need to Truly Engage Your Audience

Together with our friends at ON24, we compiled a lookbook detailing 10 inspiring and award-winning digital experiences that will help you better understand what consumers are expecting and how you can incorporate it into your B2B strategy. Inside 10 Outstanding Digital Experiences That Marketers Can Use you’ll find some of the hottest tips and latest trends to accelerate engagement thanks to first-party data from NetLine and ON24.

Let’s take a look at two examples of the 10 this guide includes.

Webinars: The Digital Experience Hub

At the heart of the digital-first approach are webinars—one of the most powerful channels for engaging an audience. ON24’s updated Webinar Benchmarks Report shows that in April 2020, audiences consumed nearly 170,000 hours of webinar content each day—almost 3x what was consumed in 2019. While other formats like eBooks and blogs might get more registrations, webinars offer the ability to create two-way conversations (like social media) all while providing the content and information audiences need.

But while webinars are increasing in popularity, it comes with a caveat: Audiences will not glom on to irrelevant or poorly conceived webinar topics like they may with other formats. What ON24 has found is that in order to build and strengthen worthwhile connections that last into the future, B2B organizations need to create webinar series worth investing in. 

How Zendesk Used Digital Experiences to Double Their Bookings

Zendesk is synonymous with customer service. Ultimately, what customer service is all about is connection and making sure there’s always an avenue for said connection to occur. When Zendesk wanted to find a way to interact with its own clients at scale and at any time, all without compromising on quality; the ON24 platform turned out to be the perfect solution. Using the platform ended up elevating the company’s, ‘What’s New at Zendesk’ from a single webinar that played a supporting role to the company’s major in-person event, to a standalone premier event experience. 

Using the ON24 console’s media player, Zendesk was able to webcast content that was highly engaging and sophisticated for viewers, but simple to execute, with speakers webcasting from home webcams. Rather than just providing technical product information,  Zendesk focused on providing real solutions to their clients by answering audience questions in real-time with up to 20 product experts. 

All of these digital experience executions paid off big time for Zendesk, as pipeline and bookings attribution more than doubled from the previous quarter. It also saw an increase in registrations by 42% and attendance by 36% quarter-over-quarter. 

Creating Fully-Integrated Digital Experiences

Photo by Stephen Dawson on Unsplash

While webinars are perfectly suited for creating excellent digital experiences, there are ways to get even more out of them. One particularly good example of how great webinars, personalized Target pages, and a rich Engagement Hub can work together to create a compelling digital experience is from omnichannel customer engagement platform Emarsys.

How Emarsys Used Digital Experiences to Support Its Customer Base

In September of 2020, Emarsys knew that its customers were facing a time of great change. As customer behaviors shifted rapidly and the retail industry turned upside down, digital and eCommerce professionals needed a place to unify, learn, and inspire each other en masse. Emarsys responded, creating ‘Retail Renaissance 2020’, using the ON24 platform. The experience combined ON24 webinars, Engagement Hub, and Target pages for a three-day festival, bringing together 50+ hours of webinar content in a range of formats. 

Inspired by the alternative context of a virtual experience versus a live conference, Emarsys developed a round-the-clock agenda, with 24-hour content in a range of languages adapted to suit attendees across the world, in any time zone. Through the ON24 platform, Retail Renaissance was explorable via tracks and themes, leading attendees to live Q&As with keynote speakers, panel sessions, and breakout sessions in their native language. Emarsys labeled this digital experience their biggest demand driver of 2020, and that value continues to be generated today with recyclable, evergreen content.

Download 10 Outstanding Digital Experiences That Marketers Can Use

By featuring examples that stand out from the others, this lookbook aims to show a different path forward. From best-in-class webinars to fully integrated digital experiences, we hope you’ll be inspired to provide opportunities that your audiences cannot resist. 

Beyond the two examples we walked through in detail, by downloading this lookbook you’ll learn:

• The basic building blocks of modern digital experiences
• What makes a comprehensive digital experience work and why
• How to combine webinars, personalized landing pages, and engagement hubs into an experience
• Discover what it takes to go from simple webinars to complex, fully integrated digital experiences.

Find out how you can take your digital experiences to the next level. The future has arrived.

Download your copy of 10 Outstanding Digital Experiences That Marketers Can Use.

One of the best ways to deliver valve to and engage with your subscribers — those who already like, know, and trust your brand — is through an email newsletter. With the strategy in place, newsletters help you keep your contacts engaged with your business, establish your brand authority and trustworthiness, and ultimately drive more leads.

Once you have an email marketing plan for engaging your subscribers, the next step is choosing newsletter software to support your efforts.

Newsletter software is essential since it allows you to beautifully design a newsletter email and deliver the email to your subscribers with features such as:

• A/B testing
• Smart content
• Templates and customizability
• Analytics

However, not all email newsletter tools are created equal.

What’s the best newsletter software?

There’s no one reigning champion of email newsletter tools. Ultimately, you’ll need to make the best decision for your unique needs based on the following criteria:

• Price – This one goes without saying, but if you want ROI from your email efforts, you’ll need to choose a solution that fits your budget.
• Features – If you’re new to email marketing, you’ll want a solution with a simple interface and easy-to-use features (like drag-and-drop email design). More advanced users may require more robust functionality.
• Subscriber Limits – Many solutions will base their pricing around the size of the database or the number of monthly email sends. Consider the size of your current audience and the rate at which you want to grow to choose a provider that offers plans to accommodate that.

With differences in features, pricing, and availability, choosing an email newsletter can be hard — especially with the number of options available. Additionally, newsletter tools differ in how much of the customer journey they can cover.

Ultimately, when choosing your email newsletter tool, you’ll want to ensure the tool matches your business’s goals — which is why we wanted to take out the guesswork and highlight the top email newsletters out there for your business.

1. HubSpot’s Email Marketing Tool

Pricing: Starts Free

Designing, sending, and analyzing email newsletters has never been easier with the HubSpot Email tool. HubSpot offers a drag-and-drop email editor so you can easily create a polished email newsletter that you can personalize to fit your brand’s design without needing a designer or IT professional.

Additionally, you can experiment with smart content rules, personalization, A/B testing, and advanced reporting — ensuring your email newsletters are optimized for your business. You can also see who’s engaging with each newsletter email and when, what device they’re using, the most popular links and documents, and more. You can use these insights to design tests that will take conversion rates to new heights for your business.

Ultimately, what makes HubSpot’s Email tool so exceptional is its ability to pair with HubSpot’s free forms tool to easily collect email leads, as well as HubSpot’s free CRM to give you insight into how your marketing emails are performing.

For example, you can use an email subscriber’s lifecycle stage, list membership, or any information in their contact records to automatically serve up the most relevant subject lines, content, links, attachments, and calls-to-action.

Best of all, it can grow with you as you grow.

2. Moosend

Pricing: Free up to 2,000 subscribers

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Moosend is a well-rounded email marketing newsletter tool that requires no technical skill whatsoever. Through Moosend’s email editor, you can easily build personalized email newsletters using interactive elements like videos and images. Alternatively, you can get started immediately by picking one of the ready-made templates available in the platform’s template library.

The tool also comes with landing pages and subscription forms to boost your lead generation efforts. You also get detailed reporting and analytics that allow you to make data-driven decisions.

Finally, to top it off, Moosend’s platform allows you to create or use some ready-made automation recipes to boost conversion.

3. Benchmark

Pricing: Free up to 250 emails per month

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Benchmark offers the ability to easily create email newsletters via drag-and-drop functionality, giving non-technical marketers the power to create beautiful newsletters. There’s also a good selection of newsletter templates that you can choose from in the Benchmark template library.

Some of Benchmark’s most valuable features include detailed analytics on how each email campaign performs, A/B split testing to ensure you’re sending the best emails, spam testing tools that ensure your emails get to inboxes, responsive designs and templates, list segmentation tools, and auto-responders.

4. SendInBlue

Pricing: Free up to 300 emails per day

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With SendInBlue, you don’t need technical skills to create well-designed email newsletters. The drag-and-drop functionality, HTML editor, and expansive template gallery gives you the tools you need to create stunning emails.

You can personalize the design of your newsletters with easy builders, choose the form fields for your subscription form, and design many ways for your visitors to opt-in. SendInBlue has a robust automation pipeline, allowing you to send different emails based on specific actions taken by your contacts. However, SendInBlue does not have a CRM, so it’s not the best option for scaling teams.

5. Stripo

Pricing: Starts free

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Stripo is an email template builder that allows you to design HTML email templates and export them to your email newsletter software of choice. If you’re not a fan of working in HTML, you also have the option to use the drag-and-drop editor, or even combine the two editing formats, depending on your preference. With Stripo, you’ll have access to interactive elements (such as rollover effects on buttons and images) and features for embedded dynamic content and personalization.

Stripo also offers over 350 prebuilt templates with over 100,000 free stock images and 1,000 prebuilt modules that you can use across your campaigns.

You can use the embedded email testing tool so you know how your newsletters will render across your contacts’ email clients.

Additionally, Stripo has a native integration with HubSpot, which allows you to push all your emails from Stripo to HubSpot with just a few clicks.

6. GetResponse

Pricing: Starts at $15 per month

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GetResponse offers features that become available as you need them, from a range of starter features all the way to enterprise features such as webinars and landing pages. Hosting landing pages in GetResponse will further enable you to capture email subscribers for your newsletter.

GetResponse also allows you to create well-designed email newsletters with their drag-and-drop email editor, segment contacts tool, campaigns creator, and A/B testing tool. With a ton of templates to choose from, you can create an email to match your brand, and send emails more efficiently.

7. Mailjet

Pricing: Free up to 6,000 email sends per month

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Mailjet offers email solutions for fast-moving teams, especially in Europe, and great scaling opportunities for larger companies. The service is keen on being developer-friendly with a powerful API solution for engineers to build on their email platform. One appealing feature of Mailjet is the ability to create dynamic content that is personalized for each recipient based on data such as name and location.

If your team demands email newsletters are built together and reviewed often before sending, Mailjet’s collaborative tools make it easy for teams to work together on emails. For example, you can create a draft of your newsletter in Mailjet, and your teammates can suggest edits before it’s sent — all within the app.

8. Pabbly Email Marketing

Pricing: Starts free

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Pabbly Email Marketing is a powerful bulk emailing tool that provides features like built-in email templates, auto-followups, custom fields, subscription forms, integrations, all included in the basic plan.

Pabbly provides the ability to choose from more than 50 SMTPs for sending emails. Using the SMTP routing feature, you can divide your email campaign into smaller segments of subscribers and use different SMTPs for each segment. Sending emails using different SMTPs can improve the deliverability of your emails.

9. MailChimp

Pricing: Free up to 2,000 subscribers

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MailChimp offers a free email marketing service with a large selection of templates to choose from for newsletters. MailChimp is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses looking to get their feet wet in email marketing but is not suited for scaling teams since it lacks powerful automation and segmenting features.

MailChimp is a valuable tool nonetheless, especially since its free plan generously offers up to 12,000 free email sends per month. You’ll also like the variety of newsletter templates that MailChimp offers, and the drag-and-drop builder that lets you rework the designs.

10. Constant Contact

Pricing: Starts at $20 per month

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Constant Contact provides a reliable email newsletter solution for small to large businesses. Constant Contact provides a helpful user onboarding for anyone looking to get started quickly and offers easy-to-use features. If you think you’ll be running into complexity with the email marketing tool, you’ll be happy to know that Constant Contact’s multi-channel support system can help walk you through most issues.

In Constant Contact, you can use their email builder to create newsletters that match your brand, select from a variety of templates, and edit to ensure it looks exactly how you want it — although I’m not a big fan of the templates since most of the templates look outdated. Additionally, if you need sophisticated automation features and workflows, I would advise staying away from Constant Contact because it lacks a strong automation system.

11. MailUp

Pricing: 470 € per year

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MailUp offers plenty of the same functionality as what you’d expect from an email marketing service, including a drag-and-drop email builder, beautifully designed templates, and an HTML editor.

However, it’s critical to note — you get more value from MailUp if you choose to send out emails at a slower pace since the price varies depending on delivery speed. So, if your business has a specific number of contacts and doesn’t mind sending newsletters slower, you could save money by using MailUp. If you use WordPress, MailUp also offers a WordPress plugin that you can use to capture newsletter subscribers on your website.

12. Zoho Campaigns

Pricing: Starts at $3 per month

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Zoho offers a great email solution for marketers looking to utilize automation features, including auto-responders and workflows. If you’re already a Zoho CRM customer, it might be worth checking out Zoho Campaigns for an email newsletter tool, since they work better together.

Zoho includes many modern and well-designed templates to choose from. If you’re worried about how your newsletter will look on different mobile devices or browsers, Zoho gives you the ability to check to see how your newsletters look on various devices to ensure your newsletter is optimized for mobile, tablet, and desktop.

13. AWeber

Pricing: Free up to 500 subscribers

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AWeber delivers a well-established email marketing newsletter tool with an array of features for your business, including email designs, list segmentation, automation tools, and detailed reporting. To make design easier, AWeber has more than 6,000 royalty-free stock photos to include in your emails. Of course, you can also upload your own images and gifs.

AWeber is a great solution if your business uses WordPress since AWeber easily integrates with WordPress. However, it’s important to note you can’t specify multiple segments at once when sending an email newsletter — plus, AWeber lacks some powerful automation features.

14. Campaigner

Pricing: $59 per month up to 5,000 subscribers

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Campaigner is a good option if you work for a growing team since the tool offers robust automation and workflow features available at the enterprise tier. You can set up systems that send email newsletters when contacts fill out specific forms, make a purchase, or engage with a previous email.

As with most of the email newsletter tools in this list, Campaigner offers easy-to-use email builders and a large selection of templates to get you started. If you run into trouble, their support is noted as being helpful at solving technical challenges.

15. Drip

Pricing: Starts at $19 per month up to 500 contacts

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Drip is ideal for more experienced email marketers since it’s not as intuitive and easy to use as some of the others in the list. For example, there’s a limited email template library, so you’ll have to spend time designing your email newsletter. With that said, Drip comes packed with automation features that could be beneficial for your business, particularly if you work in e-commerce.

With Drip’s “ECRM”, you can run personalized email newsletter campaigns that work with information gathered from contact purchases and checkout information, like abandoned cart details. One thing to note — Drip does not offer phone support, so you won’t have that added peace of mind.

16. Postcards

Pricing: Starts free

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Used by major brands like Nike, Disney, and T Mobile, Postcards is a drag-and-drop email builder that enables you to create impressive email newsletters. The tool features a “modular system”, meaning you can stack and re-arrange pre-made designs to create a custom newsletter that fits your brand. Customizable modules include a header and footer, CTA, and menu options.

Additionally, the tool enables you to collaborate with teammates to ensure the newsletter is up to everyone’s standards and gives you a 30-day version history if you decide to revert to an older format. Plus, you’ll get unlimited exports.

17. Campaign Monitor

Pricing: Starts at $9 per month

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Campaign Monitor’s email marketing tool enables you to create an engaging and high-quality email newsletter with a simple drag-and-drop interface. Additionally, the tool includes sign-up forms you can embed on your blog pages to encourage new readers to sign-up for daily content delivered to their inboxes.

Along with unique and customizable templates, Campaign Monitor provides a full analytics suite to help you track the performance of your newsletters over time. You can measure engagement to improve the content you include in your newsletters for the long haul.

18. BEE Pro

Pricing: Starts free

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If you’re a freelance designer or work at an email agency, this tool could be a good fit for you. BEE Pro lets you create mobile-ready emails quickly with smart design tools — plus, you can save custom templates, and even assign projects to specific clients’ to ensure an easy workflow if you’re using this one email tool for multiple brands. Additionally, the tool enables you to invite clients or colleagues to review and make comments on email newsletter drafts to get approval faster.

19. MailerLite

Pricing: Free up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 sends per month

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MailerLite is a great free option for starting a newsletter. Its newsletter editor features pre-built design blocks and drag-and-drop functionality, allowing you to build attractive and mobile-friendly emails quickly and easily. To top things off, you get built-in photo editing to help you create without leaving the platform. Mailerlite also has the capability to segment audiences, add personalization, and create dynamic content so you can continually deliver a great experience.

Premium plans include unlimited sends, a custom HTML editor, and the removal of the MailerLite logo. You can also get a Stripe integration for monetizing your newsletter with digital products.

20. ConvertKit

Pricing: Free up to 1,000 subscribers

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ConvertKit offers a whole suite of products for building and growing an email newsletter. With the free version, you’ll be able to create unlimited landing pages and forms to build your subscriber list. You’ll also be able to draw from a library of templates for email creation.

One interesting thing about ConvertKit is that you can sell digital products and memberships without an integration or added premium, giving you monetization capability out of the gate.

Premium plans include automation, subscriber scoring, and even a referral system through SparkLoop.

Growing Your Newsletter

That’s it! These are the best email newsletter tools that I recommend. You can’t go wrong with any of these tools since they all offer similar features, but there will be one that’s best suited for your business. The great thing about HubSpot is that we offer a free solution to get you started — and then, once your business grows, we have plenty of advanced features you’ll need in order to deliver a successful newsletter marketing strategy down the road.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

When you begin implementing a social media strategy for your business, one of the first questions you’ll ask yourself is this one — Should my business be on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram?

Those three social media sites offer considerable opportunities to connect and engage with a network, increase brand awareness, and drive traffic to your site. But they’re also incredibly different in terms of purpose.

Ultimately, Facebook’s purpose is to connect people with their personal networks including friends and family. People use Facebook to share photos, videos, and general updates on their lives.

Twitter, on the other hand, is used to share ideas, real-time information, and trending news. While people may also use Twitter to connect with friends and family, they largely use it for a bigger purpose — to connect to the wider world and discover what’s happening (in 140 characters or less).

Instagram is used to share photos and videos. People mainly use this app to post their “highlight reel” and follow friends as well as influencers. This is how users become a part of a social media community.

Of course, this still begs the question — where does your business fit into all this? To explore the pros and cons of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, we’ve created a comprehensive breakdown of the three platforms.

Keep reading to figure out which platform is a better business investment for your company.

And what about Instagram?

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Users

Let’s start by taking a look at Twitter versus Facebook versus Instagram users.

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Demographics

To start, let’s consider the potential demographic your business could reach on each platform.

Here are some quick and informative facts:

Twitter Demographic Facts:

• 24% of U.S. adults are on Twitter.
• 40% of Twitter users are between the ages of 18-29.
• Less than 20% of people ages 50 and up use Twitter.

Facebook Demographic Facts:

• 70% of U.S. adults are on Facebook.
• 80% of Facebook users are between the ages of 18-29.
• 65% of people ages 50 and up use Facebook.

Instagram Demographic Facts:

• 37% of U.S. adults are on Instagram.
• 75% of Instagram users are 18-24.

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Engagement

It’s equally critical you determine quality over quantity — how long does each site’s audience stay on the platform? Or, alternatively, how many minutes per day do they spend on each?

Twitter Engagement Facts:

• As of Q1 2019, Twitter averaged 330 million monthly active users.
• About 71% of Twitter users say they use the platform to get news. 
• You have no choice but to engage users with quickly digestible content since the platform has a 140-character limit. 

Facebook Engagement Facts:

• Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide. 
• As of Q1 of 2021, Facebook reported nearly 1.88 billion daily active users. 
• In the U.S., Facebook accounts for over 60% of monthly social media visits. 

Instagram Engagement Facts:

• 59% of Instagram users visit the app daily.

• Accounts with 1,000-5,000 followers typically have a 5.6% engagement rate. On the other hand, accounts with over 1 million followers, average a 1.97% engagement rate.

With all of the above stats in mind, no matter how many followers you have, if you can appeal to your audience with the right content, you’ll likely have the best engagement rates on Facebook. Here’s some research by Statista to prove it. This is a look at the most popular mobile social networking apps in the U.S., as of September 2019, by user engagement (in minutes/ month). Facebook wins by a substantial amount. 

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Usage

Here are some points to consider while choosing the right platform for your business to use:

• With less than 140 characters to convey your brand’s message, you might think of Twitter as your business’ “elevator pitch”. What do you want to get across to your audience quickly and succinctly?
• Facebook is your opportunity to engage more in-depth with an audience. You can create full business pages, share videos, and images, and further incentivize prospects to engage with your brand (by offering 10% off if they “like” your business page, for instance).
• With Instagram, you can create an interactive community. This is the platform where users are more likely to engage. People go to Instagram and expect to see influencers and follow brands they like.

Twitter Ads vs Facebook vs Instagram Ads

In general, advertising on Facebook and Instagram allows you to reach a larger audience. Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, they offer similar ad tools. Additionally, Facebook ads come with some impressive targeting tools, so you’re able to narrow down salary, purchase behavior, hobbies, Facebook communities, and more.

Facebook advertising’s interface is relatively easy and intuitive for the user. Facebook ads can be relatively cheap, as well — in fact, Facebook points out that, “Some people spend more on coffee each day than they do on their ad campaigns”. While it depends on the campaign you’re running, you can often set a budget as little as $2 to $3 per day.

Twitter also offers targeting capabilities, including purchase behavior, language, interest, and followers. However, Twitter advertising is typically more expensive than Facebook.

It may be worth the extra money, though — engagement rates for Twitter ads can be as high as 1-3%, much higher than Facebook’s average CTR of 0.119%.

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram for Business

Ultimately, it’s likely best to try Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for a while if you’re unsure which one works better for your brand. Over time, you’ll gain valuable insights into how well your posts perform on these sites, enabling you to dedicate more time to one over the other. Since they’re free to use, there’s no harm in initially trying all three.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in February 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.