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“So it begins.”

In the first few quiet days of 2024, Google began disabling cookies for 1% of users on its flagship browser, Chrome.

Considering that Chrome is the primary browser for 64.73% of global Internet users according to StatCounter, that’s no ordinary 1%.

The future has arrived. Not with a bang, but a whisper.

The Cookieless Future is Here

We’ve been talking openly about the cookieless-future for years now.

For this author, one of the first articles I wrote for NetLine dealt directly with this topic four years ago.

“What Google’s Cookie-Tracking News Means for B2B Marketers”

Despite nearly half a decade of lead time and discussion, many professionals and businesses find themselves unsure of what exactly wil happen.

You need look no further than LinkedIn to see how this is playing out.

What’s truly remarkable is just how little understanding there is of what’s to come at a macro level.

Why Now?

In October 2023, Search Engine Journal wrote the following about Google’s deprecation plans.

“Google wants to eliminate this tracking capability while introducing new standards that support key needs like fraud prevention and delivering relevant ads.

Google says this change will improve user privacy and security while providing website owners tools to sustain their businesses without third-party cookies.”

We can’t pretend that Google will do everything in its power to protect your privacy. But the move does align with the actions of its users.

Reject All Cookies

One of the biggest catalysts for this change has been the behavior of consumers.

Like millions of others, anytime I’m presented with the opportunity to reject all cookies like an unwelcome invitation to prom, I do it. 

Sorry, Marcy, but I don’t want you to follow me.

I’m sure your behavior has been quite similar to mine in recent months and years.

Because of this (long before Google announced its intention to disable cookies), businesses have had to pivot.

Finding New Ways to Reach Your Target Audience

The shift towards enhanced user privacy, while challenging, presents an opportunity for innovation in the greater marketing and advertising ecosystem.

It’s crucial for website owners, especially those in our field, to proactively audit their current use of cookies. 

This audit is the first step in preparing for the upcoming changes in 2024, ensuring that their services continue to operate effectively and efficiently in a post-third-party cookie environment.

From there, businesses have options for how to best carry forward.

Prioritizing First-Party Data in Today’s Privacy-Conscious World

What was written in 2019 still holds true today. When obstacles present themselves, so too do opportunities. 

Google’s actions affect millions of businesses and billions of consumers, but your marketing shouldn’t be limited by one organization’s decisions. 

Let’s review some of your options before the cookies continue to crumble.

Prioritizing First-Party Data in Today’s Privacy-Conscious World

In our increasingly privacy-conscious world, the importance of gathering first-party, fully-consented data cannot be overstated.

As established by CASL over a decade ago, consent is crucial for when building a marketing communications approach. With consent, your messages are not just delivered; they’re welcomed, enhancing the likelihood of acceptance with each interaction.

Re-evaluating Your Database
If your customer and audience data could talk, what stories would it tell?

Beyond the surface-level metrics, do you know what truly drives user engagement, lead generation, and sales conversions?

Understanding these narratives is key in applying a ‘first-party data-first’ approach effectively.

Examine your current data reserves and be honest with yourself and your team as to whether your database is healthy enough for the Privacy Present and Future.

Enhancing Acquisition Strategies
Historically, retargeting emerged as a solution to the limitations of traditional display advertising.

While retargeting can still be a valuable tactic, it cannot be the primary method of staying in front of your target buyer.

Instead, focus on investing in high-quality, content-driven marketing strategies that resonate and deliver value in the right contexts. 

NetLine’s Portal, for instance, presents a prime opportunity for B2B businesses seeking meaningful engagement. These buyers voluntarily share their first-party data as they engage with over 700,000 content pieces monthly, drawn from a pool of more than 125 million visitors.

A New Era of Data Transparency
Contrast our approach with the practices of numerous B2B ‘Intent’ players, who often trade consumer data without proper consent or disclosure, and the significance of this shift becomes clear.

Embracing transparent, consent-based data practices is vital not only for consumer trust but also for the credibility and future of the AdTech industry.”

Top 10 Tactics for Flourishing in a Post-Cookie Digital Landscape

Beyond recalibrating to focus on the needs of a more privacy-conscious public, there are a variety of methods you can use to get the buyer information you need.

1. Embrace User Empathy
   
   Always view your strategies through the user’s lens. Respecting and protecting user data as if it were your own is fundamental in today’s digital landscape. 
2. Embrace First-Party Data
   
   We might be approaching broken record territory, but we have good reason for stressing this.
   
   Implement effective data capture mechanisms within your organization.
   
   Maintain a streamlined CRM system, ensuring alignment between sales and marketing definitions, and conduct mixed-method research to refine your advertising efforts. 
3. Implement Contextual Advertising
   
   Align your digital content with your advertising messages. Develop SEO strategies that resonate with your users’ needs and their journey. 
4. Capitalize on Owned Media Channels
   
   Focus on building and controlling your own channels.
   
   This reduces dependence on external platforms and enhances direct engagement with your audience. 
5. Utilize Data Clean Rooms
   
   Employ data clean rooms to safely analyze and compare your first-party data with compliant third-party data, uncovering valuable insights and patterns. 
6. Optimize Your CRM
   
   Standardize KPIs and CRM management across your organization.
   
   A well-managed CRM leads to a deeper understanding of customer segments, enhancing the effectiveness of your campaigns. 
7. Develop Advanced Statistical Models
   
   Invest time in identifying or creating the most suitable marketing mix models for your business.
   
   Utilize a combination of models to accurately attribute success across various channels. 
8. Explore AI for Predictive Analysis
   
   Leverage AI tools for predictive modeling in marketing.
   
   Tools like Robyn or Google’s free models can significantly improve your marketing investment’s effectiveness. 
9. Adapt to a Privacy-First Digital World
   
   Accept the new normal of a privacy-focused internet with reduced tracking capabilities.
   
   Return to marketing basics, employing mixed-method research and robust statistical models. 
10. Stay Compliant with Data Privacy Laws
    
    Regularly update your knowledge and compliance with data privacy regulations.
    
    Neglecting this aspect can lead to legal penalties and damage trust between your brand and its users.

CONCLUSION

The days of third-party cookies are numbered. If you’re still basing your 2024 marketing and advertising plans around the capabilities they provide, you’re well behind the eight ball.

Take advantage of the new, private frontier and bolster your first-party and intent data strategies.

Without them, you’ll be left with nothing but crumbs.

And no one is ever happy with crumbs.

Whether you’re setting up a brand new Facebook Page for your brand, or just want to make the most of your existing one, it’s probably a smart move — Facebook is home to nearly 2 billion monthly active users.

It should be easy enough, right? Just slap together a photo, a couple of posts, and expect the leads and customers to roll on in, right?

Wrong.

If you’re not creating a Facebook Page with a comprehensive strategy to get noticed, Liked, and engaged with, the chances of actually generating leads and customers from it are pretty slim. For example, you can’t just choose any picture — you have to choose one that’s the right dimensions, high-resolution, and properly represents your brand.

But it doesn’t end there — so we compiled the tips below to make sure you’re creating an engaging page that takes full advantage of everything Facebook marketing has to offer.

13 Facebook Business Page Tips

1) Don’t create a personal profile for your business.

We’ve come across many well-meaning marketers and entrepreneurs who create personal profiles for their brands, instead of an actual Facebook Business Page. That puts you at a huge disadvantage — you’re missing out on all of the content creation tools, paid promotional opportunities, and analytics/insights that come with a Facebook Business Page. Plus, a personal profile would require people to send you a friend request in order to engage with you, and the last thing you want to do is make that more difficult for customers.

And while you’re at it — don’t create an additional public, “professional” profile associated with your business. For example, I already have a personal profile on Facebook that I largely keep private; the practice I’m talking about would be if I created a second, public one under the name “AmandaZW HubSpot,” or something along those lines. People usually do that to connect with professional contacts on Facebook, without letting them see personal photos or other posts. But the fact of the matter is that creating more than one personal account goes against Facebook’s terms of service.

2) Avoid publishing mishaps with Page roles.

We’ve all heard those horror stories about folks who accidentally published personal content to their employers’ social media channels — a marketer’s worst nightmare. So to avoid publishing mishaps like those, assign Facebook Business Page roles only to the employees who absolutely need it for the work they do each day. And before you do that, be sure to provide adequate training to those who are new to social media management, so they aren’t confused about when they should be hitting publish, what they should be posting, if something should be scheduled first, who they should be posting it as.

To assign these, on your business page, click “Settings,” then click “Page Roles.”

Also, when sharing content on behalf of your brand, make sure your posting it as your brand, and not as yourself. You can check that by going into your settings and clicking “Page Attribution.”

3) Add a recognizable profile picture.

You’ll want to pick a profile picture that’s easy for your audience to recognize — anything from a company logo for a big brand, to a headshot of yourself if you’re a freelancer or consultant. Being recognizable is important to getting found and Liked, especially in Facebook Search. It’s what shows up in search results, pictured at the top of your Facebook Page, the thumbnail image that gets displayed next to your posts in people’s feeds … so choose wisely.

When choosing a photo, keep in mind that Facebook frequently changes its picture dimensions, which you can find at any given time here. As of publication, Page profile pictures display at 170×170 pixels on desktop, and 128×128 pixels on smartphones.

4) Choose an engaging cover photo.

Next, you’ll need to pick an attractive cover photo. Since your cover photo takes up the most real estate above the fold on your Facebook Page, make sure you’re choosing one that’s high-quality and engaging to your visitors, like this one from MYOB’s Facebook Page:

Keep in mind that, like profile images, Facebook Page cover photo dimensions also frequently change, so we advise keeping an eye on the official guidelines. As of publication, Page cover photos display at 820×312 pixels on computers, and 640×360 pixels on smartphones.

5) Add a call-to-action (CTA) button.

Since Facebook first launched the feature in December 2014, the options for brands to add call-to-action buttons to their Facebook Page’s have vastly expanded. These are things like “Watch Video,” “Sign Up,” or “Book Now” — and each can be customized with a destination URL or piece of content of their choosing.

It’s a great way for marketers to drive more traffic to their websites, or to get more eyeballs on the Facebook content they want to promote. This is a great way for marketers to drive traffic from their Facebook Business Page back to their website. Check out how Mandarin Oriental uses the “Book Now” button in this way, to make it easier for viewers to make reservations.

To add a call-to-action to your Page, click the blue “Add a Button” box.

You’ll then be able to choose which type of CTA you want to create, and which URL or existing content on your Facebook Page you want it to direct visitors to. To get data on how many people are clicking it, simply click the drop-down arrow on your button and select “View Insights.”

6) Fill out your ‘About’ section with basic information, and add company milestones.

We’ve arrived at one of the most important sections of your Facebook Page of all: the ‘About’ section.

Although visitors no longer see a preview of your “About” text when they land upon your page — instead, they have to click on the “About” option on the left-hand column next to your content — it’s still one of the first places they’ll look when trying to get more information about your page.

Even within the “About” section, however, there are many options for copy to add. Consider optimizing the section that best aligns with your brand — a general description, a mission, company information, or your story — with brief, yet descriptive copy. By doing so, your audience can get a sense of what your Page represents before they decide to Like it.

You might also want to populate sections that allow you to record milestones and awards — like when you launched popular products and services — as well as the day/year your company was founded, or when you hosted major events.

7) Post photos and videos to your Timeline.

Visual content has pretty much become a requirement of any online presence, including social media channels. After all, it’s 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.

And while photos are a wonderful way to capture moments and an actual look at your brand, you should probably invest a good amount of time and other resources into video. State of Inbound 2017 cited video as the “main disruptor,” with 24% of marketers naming it as a top priority.

“Watch video” is one of the CTAs that Facebook allows brands to add to their Pages for a reason — because it’s becoming one of the most popular ways to consume content. But it’s not just pre-recording videos. According to the social media channel’s newsroom, “People spend more than 3x more time watching a Facebook Live video on average compared to a video that’s no longer live.” So don’t be afraid to give viewers an in-the-moment look at what your organization does, but do make sure you’re prepared.

Not sure what your videos should look like? Here’s a fun one that we put together on business lingo.

8) Determine the ideal timing and frequency for your posts.

An important consideration in your Facebook content strategy should be how frequently you post, and when. If you don’t post frequently enough, you won’t look as reliable or authentic — after all, how much faith do you put in a brand that hasn’t updated its Facebook Page for several months? Post too often, however, and people might get sick of having their feeds flooded with your content.

Here’s where a social media editorial calendar can be particularly helpful. Like any other online content, it can you establish a schedule for when you share particular posts according to season or general popularity. You’ll probably have to adjust your calendar several times, especially in the earliest stages of setting up your Page, since you’ll want to check the performance of your updates in your Facebook Insights (which you can navigate to via the tab at the very top of your page). Once you’ve observed popular times and other analytics for your first several posts, you can tailor your posting frequency and strategy accordingly.

Wondering how to schedule posts? You can either use an external publishing tool like the Social Inbox in your HubSpot software, or through the Facebook interface itself. For the latter, click the arrow next to the “Publish” button and click “Schedule Post.”

9) Leverage Facebook’s targeting tools.

Facebook allows you to target certain audiences with specific updates — be it gender, relationship or educational status, age, location, language, or interests, you can segment individual page posts by these criteria.

Just click this small bullseye symbol on the bottom of the post you want to publish, and you can set metrics for both a preferred audience, and one you want think might not want to see your content.

10) Pin important posts to the top of your page.

When you post new content to your Facebook Page, older posts get pushed farther down your Timeline. But sometimes, you might want a specific post to stay at the top of your page for longer — even after you publish new updates.

To solve for this, Facebook offers the ability to “pin” one post at a time to the top of your page. You can use pinned posts as a way to promote things like new lead-gen offers, upcoming events, or important product announcements.

To pin a post, click on the drop-down arrow in the top right corner of a post on your page, and click ‘Pin to Top.’ It will then appear at the top of your page, flagged with a little bookmark. Just keep in mind that you can only have one pinned post at any given time.

11) Decide whether you want Facebook fans to message you privately.

If you want your Facebook fans to be able to privately message you directly through your page, definitely enable the messages feature. You can do so by going to your settings, clicking on “General” on the left-hand column, and then looking for “Messages” on the list of results.

We recommend enabling messaging on your page to make it as easy as possible for your fans to reach out to you — but only do so if you have the time monitor and respond to your messages. Facebook Pages now have a section that indicates how quickly a brand responds to messages, so if you don’t want that section saying that you’re slow to answer, you might just want to skip enabling that feature.

12) Monitor and respond to comments on your page.

Speaking of monitoring the interactions your fans have with your page, don’t forget about comments. You can monitor and respond to comments via the ‘Notifications’ tab at the very top of your page. While it may not be necessary to respond to every single comment you receive, you should definitely monitor the conversations happening there (especially to stay on top of potential social media crises.

12) Promote your page to generate more followers.

Now that you’ve filled your page with content, it’s time to promote the heck out of it.

One of the first things you can do is to create an ad promoting your Page. To do that, click the three dots at the top menu bar above your posts and select “Create Ad.” From there, Facebook will let you start creating an ad from scratched based on your goals — things like reach, traffic, or general brand awareness. Choose yours, then scroll down and click “continue.”

After that, you can choose your targeted audience (similarly to what you did with your promoted posts above), where on Facebook you want it to be placed, and your budget — you can learn more about paying for Facebook Ads here.

You’ll probably also be asked to add some creative assets or copy. Remember, you’re paying for this, so choose something that’s going to grab attention, but also has high quality and represents your brand well.

13) Measure the success of your Facebook efforts.

There are a couple of ways to execute this step. You can use something like the social media reports tool in your HubSpot software, and you can dig into your Page’s Insights, which allow you to track Facebook-specific engagement metrics. Here, you’ll be able to analyze things like the demographics of your Page audience and, if you reach a certain threshold, the demographics of people engaging with your page and posts. As we mentioned earlier, the latter is especially helpful to modify your Facebook content strategy to publish more of what works, and less of what doesn’t. You can access your Facebook Page Insights via the tab at the top of your page.

How have you set up top-notch Facebook Pages? Let us know in the comments.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in December 2013 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

Dry January. It sounds like the next scary impact of climate change. In reality, it’s part personal challenge and part social movement.

Dry January refers to the growing trend of taking the month off from drinking alcohol. Consider it a four-week vacay for your liver.

But it’s not meant to be a detox. Instead, the creators say the goal is to reframe your relationship with alcohol as “a conscious choice, not a default.”

It might seem like bad news for alcohol sales– already reeling from the post-holiday slump– but actually, Dry January is one way booze sellers can tap into a half-billion-dollar market.

Why ask why? Try going dry.

Though the Dry January trend is currently having a moment, it’s actually existed in some form for decades. In 1942, Finland promoted “Raitus Tammikuu” or “Sober January” as a way to ration resources.

It took its current shape in 2013 when the London-based charity Alcohol Change UK launched it as a personal challenge.

Since then, searches for “Dry January” have grown exponentially to an average of 18,000 per month. Although, in a sign that people are as bad at planning as me, the searches only appear around January.

And that seasonality is masking the popularity by dragging the monthly average down. Take a look at these screenshots from the SEO tool Ahrefs, and you’ll see that there were over 140,000 searches in January of 2023.

But are those searches turning into participants? According to a survey by the business intelligence firm Morning Consult, 21% of Americans over 21 will be trying Dry January this year.

A different survey by NielsenIQ puts that closer to a whopping 44% of American adults.

That’s a buttload of buyers bailing on the booze!

So, what does that mean for alcohol makers and sellers?

Businesses and Participants Turn to Non-Alcoholic Alternatives

A common complaint you’ll hear from participants is finding a replacement for the sense of community and ritual that comes with having a drink.

People still want to meet co-workers at a bar. They still want that ceremonial first sip that transitions from work to play.

And so, the rise of Dry January also brings a rise in demand for non-alcoholic alternatives.

This makes the movement a great introduction for new consumers into the non-alcoholic beverage market that topped $510 Million in annual domestic sales, according to Nielsen.

That represents a 31% increase in sales year-over-year.

Globally, the IWSR puts retail sales for low- and non-alcoholic beverages at $13 Billion annually.

That’s enough to make some major brands sit up and take notice. White Claw, Tanqueray, Guinness, and even Budweiser have all started serving up non-alcoholic versions of their products.

Even celebs are getting in on the action. Blake Lively, Katy Perry, Kylie Minogue, and Bella Hadid have all recently launched lines of alcohol-free wines or spirits.

And the data shows that this trend isn’t likely to go away. A Gallup poll from 2023 found that the percentage of young adults (18 to 34) who drink alcohol – ever – has fallen from 72% to just 62% over the last two decades.

But if you’re too late to jump in on Dry January, don’t panic. You’ve got plenty of time to plan your Sober October.

Every time I think I have this whole marketing thing down to a science, something changes in the blink of an eye. And if you’re a marketer like myself, you’ve probably experienced the same feeling of whiplash as marketing trends continue to shift.

Keeping up with the latest marketing trends isn’t always easy. But, to succeed in the fast-paced marketing world — and maintain a sense of relevance with your audience — it’s vital to stay ahead of them.

Fortunately, I gathered all the information you need on the latest marketing trends — straight from industry experts and HubSpot’s survey of 1,400+ global marketing professionals — and crafted this guide just for you.

Let’s take a deep dive into marketing trends for 2024, shall we?

1. Short-form Video Content (TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts, etc.) will continue to rule.

Who hasn‘t spent way too much time scrolling through TikTok? I’m not afraid to admit I‘ve bought clothes, pet supplies, and other products after watching a few too many reels, TikToks, and YouTube Shorts. And I’m not alone.

According to a recent survey, 56% of U.S. consumers said they bought something based on an ad they saw on TikTok, and 36% said they were willing to.

“Video creates a deeper connection with your potential customer base, and it is easy for brands to repurpose video content into podcasts and text-based content,” Neil Patel, CMO and Co-Founder of NP Digital says.

So, it‘s no surprise our survey found that 53% of marketers are leveraging short-form videos like TikToks, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts in 2024, and 38% are continuing to invest the same as in previous years.

Only 8% say they’ll decrease their investment.

Long-form videos can offer depth and large amounts of information about a product, brand, or service to audiences.

However, both B2C and B2B marketers have learned that getting to the point with short-form videos can actually be much more effective.

Not only does it take less bandwidth to create a short-form video, but this type of format aligns well with the fast-paced attention spans of online audiences in a variety of demographics.

This is likely why platforms like TikTok, Reels, and — in previous years — Snapchat have gained quick growth and marketing interest.

“Our company, Jotform, has been ramping up our video efforts on YouTube. We have over 16,000 subscribers and have seen a huge increase in site traffic and signups from investing in video on this platform,” says Aytekin Tank, Founder & CEO of Jotform.

2. Creating content reflecting the brand’s values will be key to retaining your customers.

According to Consumer Goods Technology, 82% of shoppers want a consumer brand’s values to align with their own. Furthermore, 75% of shoppers say they’ve cut ties with a brand over a conflict in values.

To keep on the good side of their target audience, brands will make a point of showcasing their values and stances on topics that are relevant to their audience.

Our survey shows 45% of marketers will increase their investment in creating content that shows their brand’s values, and 43% will invest as much as they did in 2023. Only 9% will decrease their investment.

3. Native advertising/sponsored content is still valuable.

More than a third (36%) of marketers plan to increase their investment in native advertising in 2024, and 56% plan to continue investing the same amount. Only 9% say they’ll decrease their investment.

These numbers don’t surprise me at all, considering the value of native advertising.

When your brand pays to feature content on a third-party website, you’re investing in native advertising.

Unlike traditional advertising, which is designed to interrupt and stand out, native advertising is designed to blend in and promote your brand to a new audience who might otherwise never learn about you.

Because native ads don’t “feel” like traditional ads, consumers are more likely to consume them — in fact, consumers view native ads over 50% more than banner ads.

Examples of native advertising can be found on social media, through search engine results, content recommendation platforms, or in campaigns.

For example, Instagram is a popular social media network that routinely partners with brands for native advertising.

By taking advantage of the Instagram Story or Shop features, brands are able to share posts that look similar to the average user’s followers’ posting style, while subtly advertising a product.

4. Influencer marketing is still crucial.

Influencers were everywhere in 2023. I couldn’t scroll through social media without seeing influencers promoting all kinds of products. One of my favorite influencer marketing campaigns in 2023 came from skincare brand La Roche-Posay.

The brand partnered with influencers like Jae Gurley to promote its sunscreen products at the US Open, where attendees would be out in the sun to watch the matches.

I don’t see this trend slowing down in 2024, and neither do the marketers in our survey. 84% of marketers in our survey (48%) say they will increase their investment in influencer marketing in 2024, almost as many as last year (89%).

When marketers collaborate with influencers and industry thought leaders in their industry, they can expand brand awareness and gain fans from the influencer’s own audience.

Are you worried collaborating with a famous influencer could break the bank? No problem!

Micro-influencers with 10,000 to 100,000 followers are a more affordable solution and often yield more success than if a brand were to work with celebrities or macro-influencers.

Of the marketers who worked with influencers and creators in 2023, 64% worked with micro-influencers, making them the most popular choice for influencer marketers.

5. Leveraging AI will only increase into the new year.

Of course, I’d be a fool to exclude the giant waves artificial intelligence made in 2023 and the changes it will bring in 2024.

In 2023, 48% of marketers we surveyed reported using AI for content creation, such as writing blog articles, website, and social media copy, as well as landing page CTAs and product descriptions.

Amazon even started using AI to summarize key points from consumer reviews, definitely saving me from a few questionable purchases.

Image source

Fast forward to 2024, and 88% of marketers plan on investing the same amount or more into leveraging AI this year, and 15% plan to leverage it for the first time.

AI is especially popular among marketers for its ability to streamline processes and allow marketers time to pursue other tasks or projects.

Though there are concerns surrounding the use of AI, if you want your company to remain competitive in 2024 and keep up with demand, you‘ll likely want to look into leveraging different AI tools if you haven’t already.

I recently tried using AI to create a TikTok video, and it was surprisingly quick and easy. So, I‘d say it’s worth a shot.

6. VR and AR could be making a comeback.

It looks like virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) could make a comeback in 2024. Back in 2021, 35% of marketers were leveraging AR or VR in their strategies, and of those marketers, almost half planned to increase their investment in 2022.

But by 2023, more than a quarter (27%) of marketers planned to stop using VR and AR altogether.

However, only 13% of marketers plan on decreasing their investment in VR and AR in 2024, and 84% plan to invest as much as the previous year or more.

Generally speaking, this is a trend marketers may have been slower to adopt due to pricey equipment and bulky headsets. But, as VR glasses and AR apps became more accessible, the trend is experiencing a turnaround.

Content Marketing Trends

At least 47% of buyers view three to five pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep, and most expect brands to create content to gain their interest. That’s why brands worldwide have only grown their investments in content marketing.

But what content strategies are brands investing in? Below are just a few trends you’ll want to follow in 2024.

Featured Resources

• 386+ Content Creation Templates
• 5 Free Blog Post Templates

7. Podcasts and other audio content are still on the rise.

2023 was an excellent year for podcasts. According to a 2023 report by Edison Research, 42% of Americans ages 12 and older have listened to a podcast in the past month — up 5% from 2020 and 30% from 2013.

Furthermore, 75% of Americans ages 12 and older have listened to online audio in the past month, while 70% have listened in the past week, according to the same report.

So, of course, marketers are taking note.

In our survey, 82% of marketers plan to either increase or maintain their investment in podcasts and audio content in 2024.

8. Blogging isn’t going anywhere.

Yes, the professional blogger is telling you that blogging isn‘t going anywhere, but I promise I’m not being biased. 92% of marketers in our survey plan to maintain or boost their investment in blogging in 2024.

Blogging has been a common marketing strategy since brands started building their websites. But the age of this tactic shouldn‘t be a sign that it’s out-of-date.

In fact, blogging has been used for so long simply because it works. So much so one in three marketers leverage their blog or website.

On top of that, our research suggested that most consumers read 1-4 blog posts a month and have purchased something from a brand after reading the company’s blog.

Aside from providing consumer engagement and potential conversion, blogs also offer a crucial benefit to your website or online pages: search discoverability.

Ultimately, sites with robust blogs have more search potential and can implement SEO strategies much easier than sites that don’t.

Think about it this way. Suppose a prospective client wants to hire a virtual accountant, and your firm’s site has a blog post highlighting tax tips or strategies your accountants use.

In that case, this person might find your post or website via Google search, read your post, explore your website, and then decide that they want to contact you for a consultation or accounting assistance.

If you haven’t considered a blog by this point but are intrigued by this data, check out these resources to help you build out your strategy:

9. Case studies will continue to drive leads and brand credibility.

More than a quarter of marketers (26%) leverage case studies as part of their content strategy, according to our survey.

Case studies help establish transparency and trust between brand and consumer. They also offer prospects an incredibly deep and exclusive look into how people or brands benefit from a product, service, or strategy.

Some businesses place them publicly on their web pages to persuade a potential buyer as quickly as possible. Others might gate them as free PDFs that require a lead conversion to be downloaded.

No matter how it’s done, marketers will still see the value of case studies in 2024. Our survey found that 87% of marketers will maintain or increase their investment in case studies in the new year.

10. Marketers will continue to leverage infographics.

If a picture paints a thousand words, infographics could paint at least double.

Infographics have the shareability and visual appeal of a nice photo and are packed with helpful data and informative information. This makes them incredibly engaging to web visitors and social media audiences alike.

88% of marketers say they will increase or maintain their investment in infographics in 2024.

Credible data can help marketers, bloggers, and content creators tell compelling and persuasive stories. Why else do you think we surveyed hundreds of marketing professionals to create this content?

Featured Resources

• How to Start a Successful Blog [Free eBook]
• The Complete Collection of Content Marketing Templates
• Free Editorial Calendar Templates

Social Media Marketing Trends

In the U.S. alone, 90% of the population actively uses social media.

This is why social media marketing is a popular channel that’s become a part of almost every business’s greater marketing strategy.

Social media marketing allows you to authentically connect with your audience on a personal level, humanizing your brand.

11. Selling on social media will be even more normalized.

Many social media platforms are vying to become the next go-to shopping destination. Instagram has Instagram Shopping; Facebook has Facebook Shops; and TikTok is testing new e-commerce and partnership features.

This shift is already impacting consumer shopping habits. For instance, 71% of Gen Z-ers prefer discovering new products on social media. The same is true for 51% of Millennials.

So, it‘s safe to say social media shopping will continue to become the new norm this year. Still don’t believe me? Well, almost half of the marketers in our survey (47%) will increase their investment in social media shopping tools.

40% will keep investing the same as last year.

12. TikTok will continue to gain brand interest.

TikTok will experience even more growth in 2024, as 56% of marketers who currently leverage the platform plan to increase their investment this year, the highest of any social media app.

Moreover, almost a quarter of marketers in our survey (24%) say TikTok yields the highest ROI compared to other social media channels.

Brands have been trying to tap into the true power of TikTok since it first began to go viral four years ago. With well over 1 billion global users, TikTok has positioned itself as an app for various audiences and marketers.

Of course, if you think TikTok is just for younger demographics, think again. 50% of Millennials report visiting TikTok in the last three months, along with 38% of Gen X-ers, according to HubSpot’s 2022 Consumers Trends Report.

We predict these numbers will continue to rise as TikTok becomes more mainstream.

13. Most marketers will focus on three to five social media platforms.

On average, marketers leverage four social media platforms in their roles. Facebook is the most used social media platform, operated by 57% of marketers, followed by Instagram (55%), YouTube (52%), X (39%), and TikTok (42%).

Managing three to five platforms is realistic.

This range allows brands of all sizes to expand their reach to different audiences while also giving social media marketers a realistic list of platforms to master without stretching their bandwidth during the workweek.

Here are a few questions that can help you determine how many platforms you should be on:

• How many social media marketers are on your team?
• Which social media platforms have audiences that best align with your targets?
• How long will it take to master a strategy on each platform you’re targeting?
• Are there platforms that won’t benefit your overall marketing strategy right now?
• Are there any platforms you can easily repurpose engaging content between? (such as TikTok and YouTube Shorts)

By asking yourself some of the questions above, you can determine how much time your social team and brand will need to build an effective and engaging strategy on each platform and prioritize which platforms you should focus on.

Featured Resources

• How to Use Twitter for Business (+ Follower Growth Tracking Template)
• 30 Days of Instagram: A Guide for Businesses
• How to Attract Customers With Facebook

Search Engine Optimization Marketing Trends

92% of marketers plan on maintaining or increasing their investment in search engine optimization in 2024, according to our survey.

Are you one of these marketers? Have you figured out how exactly you plan to improve your SEO and organic presence? When you optimize for specific types of consumer behavior, you’ll help your business become more discoverable online.

14. Web teams won’t forget about video and image SEO.

SEO doesn’t just involve changing the text on a page. It can also include choosing and optimizing suitable videos or images for a page to help it rank in Google images or search engine video carousels.

While optimizing images involves compressing files to increase page speed and adding keyword-optimized alt text to an image, video optimization strategies involve embedding a video with a similar topic or keyword into a blog post.

Currently, 53% of marketers who leverage SEO have a strategy for optimizing videos and images. Of those marketers, 49% say image and video optimization is their most effective SEO tactic.

15. Link-building will help brands grow authority — and search rankings.

When sites with solid rankings begin to link to yours, Google’s crawlers note that your site might be credible and also have solid authority in your space. This can then trick your Google ranking to go up.

This, ultimately, is the goal of link-building — or getting other sites to link to yours.

Although writing highly shareable content, reaching out to share it with other websites, or ensuring that your post gets links can be time-consuming and challenging, research shows that this time and effort pays off.

Of the 48% of SEO marketers that use backlinking and link building, 63% say it‘s their brand’s most effective SEO tactic,

16. Historical optimization will help old web pages get new traffic.

Instead of developing new ideas, marketers will take what’s worked in the past and optimize it for the present.

In SEO, keeping your content up to date and full of rich, engaging content will outweigh older work that needs keyword relevancy with old statistics and links.

Not only that, but taking existing content and repurposing it for a new podcast, webinar, or blog post can be an efficient way to keep it relevant in search engines.

While one in four SEO marketers leverage historical optimization in their strategy, 29% say that those marketers use it as an effective SEO strategy.

17. Voice search optimization could become more of a priority.

41% of marketers plan to increase their investments in voice search optimization in 2024, and I predict it could become more of a priority in 2024.

Over a quarter (28%) of marketers say they will stop leveraging voice search optimization in 2023. However, that number has dropped to 14% regarding their 2024 plans.

You may be wondering, “How can I leverage voice search optimization?” The answer is simple: by framing your content around questions.

Think about it: these digital assistants answer short, informational queries such as “Who is the actor in Mission: Impossible?” or “What’s the weather in Boston today?” they’ve also started to process more local, conversational, and customized searches.

These may sound like, “Where’s a nearby coffee shop I can work from today?” “How late is it open?” and “Do they serve iced coffee?”

Aja Frost, Director of Global Growth at HubSpot, says:

“Businesses should look at a topic and say, ‘What questions could users ask about this?’ Then, they should plan sub-topics accordingly and look for opportunities to insert questions as headers.

This will allow voice assistants to easily grab questions and recognize content as solutions.”

Featured Resource

• Complete SEO Starter Pack
• How to Conduct a Technical SEO Audit
• 22 SEO Myths to Leave Behind in 2019

18. Chatbots will continue to streamline conversational marketing.

As much as I am a marketer, I’m also a consumer. And, like most consumers, I hate waiting. In a report from Tidio, 53% of respondents said waiting too long for replies is the most frustrating part of interacting with a business.

That same report shows 62% would rather speak to chatbot than wait 15 minutes for a response.

So, I think it’s safe to say chatbots will be leveraged more in 2024 to keep up with consumer demands. The majority of marketers in our survey (58%) say they will increase their investment in chatbots in 2024.

Bots are powered by a computer program that automates specific tasks, typically by chatting with a user through a conversational interface.

Artificial intelligence makes bots possible, which helps them understand complex requests, personalize responses, and improve interactions over time.

Bots provide the perception and dedication of a 1:1 service experience while working with hundreds of customers — something that no customer service representative or team would ever be able to do.

To the consumers who hate repeating themselves to multiple sales or service representatives, listen up — chatbots are and will continue making your lives easier.

If used correctly, they manage conversations at scale and aggregate data from multiple data sources, from calendars to knowledge bases to blog posts and videos.

Jon Dick, SVP of Marketing at HubSpot, says: “It’s on you to make things as easy as possible.”

“Do your buyers want to use live chat? You should give it to them. They’ve had the same problem three times in the last month? You should already know and have a plan to fix it,” Dick concludes.

Featured Resource

• How to Stay Current on Emerging Technology Trends
• 10 Affordable AI Tools for Businesses (+ How to Implement Affordable AI)
• Supercharge Your Clients’ Growth With Chatbots
  

Privacy Marketing Trends

19. Brands will need to give customers more control over their data.

In the marketing world, data is highly valuable — and not just valuable to you as a marketer or business owner.

Whether it’s an email address, credit card information, or smartphone location, consumers also view their data as precious and privileged — and it’s your responsibility to take care of it.

Every business operates using data, whether a software company, bank, government agency, or lemonade stand. It’s the lifeblood of marketing, sales, service, and more.

But, when precious information is misused or siphoned into the wrong hands, it leads to a strong distrust in businesses and potentially exploited consumers.

That’s why the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was enacted.

GDPR is an effort by the EU to give greater control to consumers over their data.

Under the GDPR, organizations must ensure that their data is collected legally and safely and that those who collect and manage said data will protect it and respect consumers’ rights.

Following the GDPR guidelines might seem like a burden, but being fined for non-compliance will feel much heavier; fines range from 10 million euros to 4% of a company’s annual global revenue.

And — GDPR isn’t the only entity enforcing privacy mandates in 2022. In fact, companies like Google and Apple are now taking stands for user data as well.

In 2021, an Apple IOS launch enabled iPhone and iPad users to determine which apps could track their third-party data, which is often used for hyper-targeted ads.

In 2022, Apple finished rolling out another IOS update with additional email privacy protection features for Apple Mail users.

Meanwhile, Google will discontinue using third-party cookies on Chrome while encouraging advertisers to leverage its Privacy Sandbox instead.

Ultimately, brands and governing bodies are increasingly aiming to give users more choices when it comes to releasing their data.

And, while it is great for the consumer, businesses who leverage personal data to run campaigns will need to create alternative strategies and pivot plans in case they lose access to crucial data points.

With all that said, is it really surprise that 87% of marketers in our survey plan to maintain or increase their investment in giving consumers greater control over their data?

Use Marketing Trends to Grow Better

You’re up to speed… for now. And, as long as you’re keeping a thumb on the pulse of marketing trends — and always remain open to change — your business won’t fall behind.

But, if you‘re feeling overwhelmed by the idea of keeping up with all these insights, don’t worry.

The HubSpot Blog will be publishing regular Marketing Strategy research pieces with data from hundreds of marketing professionals in the coming months and will continue to update this post as new trends emerge.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August 2019 and was updated in November 2024 with updated HubSpot Blog trends data.

In my experience, sales and marketing Excel templates can help you expedite your data analysis and reporting.

To help those of you looking for a way to sharpen your Microsoft Excel skills, I’ve put together a detailed list of templates you can start using to simplify your sales and marketing tasks.

Know what’s even better? You can download a kit of Excel templates in one fell swoop.

Jump ahead:

• Marketing Excel Templates
• Sales Excel Templates
• Project Management Excel Templates

Why use sales and marketing Excel templates?

Many of us can recall a time in high school when we were sitting in math class and thinking, “When am I ever going to use this stuff in the real world?”

And then we suddenly find ourselves in the real world, only to realize that numbers do play a pivotal role in what we do. At least that’s true for me when it comes to digital marketing and sales.

The trouble is, many Excel templates and spreadsheets are riddled with numbers and formulas that aren’t all that inviting. And making them from scratch can be especially intimidating.

While I won’t argue with that, I will say that the advantages of using Excel to organize information and streamline tasks are unparalleled.

Benefits of Microsoft Excel Templates

Microsoft Excel has many capabilities, formulas, and shortcuts:

• It stores data and has tools for data analysis.
• It performs calculations and allows you to use code for automation.
• It allows you to create social media schedules, editorial calendars, campaign trackers, and more.

Before I start talking about all things Excel templates, now’s your chance to refresh your knowledge with this helpful crash course on Microsoft Excel fundamentals.

Marketing Excel Templates

Whether you need a source-of-truth for stakeholders to look at or a way to track the progress on a specific marketing plan or campaign, here’s a list of my favorite Excel templates to help get the job done.

1. Marketing Planner Excel Template

Download Your Free Excel Marketing Planner Template

This marketing planner template for Excel contains everything you need to plan a wide variety of email marketing campaigns. It contains specific columns for the emails’ topic, owner, status, and subject line.

You can supplement this template with a full-on marketing plan, written in Word or Google Docs format.

What I like: You can easily use this template to plan any other progressive marketing effort, such as blogging, content writing, or social media marketing. Simply change the titles of the columns to fit your specific marketing plan, and use the column to the left to track the dates of implementation.

Featured Resource: Microsoft Word Marketing Plan Template

Download Now

2. Excel Marketing Budget Templates

Download Free Marketing Budget Templates for Excel

If you want to avoid a budgeting mess at the end of the month or quarter, take a look at this collection of marketing budget templates designed to help you better organize your marketing spend.

Check out the master marketing budget template which allows you to generate a high-level visualization of your monthly and quarterly marketing budget.

What I like: From product marketing and website redesign to content marketing and events, these templates serve as a guide for marketers to visualize and track their expenses to avoid overspending.

3. Marketing Dashboard for Excel

Download Your Free Excel Marketing Dashboard

This particular tool allows you to enter metrics by campaign to auto-populate visual and easy-to-read charts. As a result, you can visualize the effectiveness of spending and activity across multiple initiatives.

You can also track the progress of different campaigns and marketing efforts, such as website content and email marketing, as well as ad spend and sales by platform.

What I like: There is no shortage of data to monitor when it comes to marketing. This template makes it easy to understand your marketing ROI and prove the effectiveness of your campaigns to stakeholders and leaders at your company.

4. Excel Monthly Marketing Reporting Template

Download Free Excel Marketing Reporting Templates

To simplify your reporting, check out these monthly marketing metrics templates and the corresponding PowerPoint template. Each month, you can update them quickly and easily to reflect your monthly visits, leads, customers, and conversion rates.

From there, you’ll have everything you need to track and report on which channels are performing best.

What I like: I mean, come on — is there a feeling sweeter than hitting all of your goals for the month? Leadership loves to see ROI, and these spreadsheets can prepare comprehensive reports of your marketing metrics to send to your boss.

5. SMART Goal Excel Marketing Template

Download Your Free Excel SMART Goal Template

Whether you’re planning for a new year, quarter, or month, defining a clear set of goals is critical for driving the direction of your marketing efforts..

Start with these SMART goal planning templates. Rooted in specificity, measurability, attainability, relevancy, and timeliness, these templates will help you set your team up for success.

What I like: Its user-friendly and readable format makes it one of the most shareable options on this list. You can easily send it over to your stakeholders without worrying about formatting.

6. Excel On-Page SEO Template

Download Your Free Excel SEO Marketing Template

When it comes to SEO, there‘s a lot for marketers to remember to see results.If you’re looking for the light at the end of the tunnel, pull up this handy SEO template created in Excel.

Designed to make the process of managing your SEO efforts a whole lot easier, marketers can use this template to guide their strategy step-by-step or pass it off to their webmaster to serve as a helpful guide.

What I like: This template focuses on keywords and SEO best practices, while also providing tips and tricks to identify nuances and increase productivity.

7. Google Ads Campaign Excel Tracker

Download Your Free Excel PPC Campaign Tracker

If you’re doing your Google Ads campaigns right, they probably aren’t “walks in the park.” This Google Ads tracking template is a marketing campaign template that can keep you on top of your Google Ads game.

It‘ll help you catch mistakes and implement best practices across all the different campaigns and ad groups you’re running — for the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel.

What I like: It’s a perfect complement to that SEO template you’ve started using. Plus, this tracker will help you get the most bang for your buck from all of those ad campaigns you’re running.

8. Excel Lead Tracker Template

Download Your Free Excel Marketing Template for Lead Tracking

It’s no secret that sales and marketing have a pretty rocky relationship history.

With this customizable lead tracking template in your toolbox, you’ll have the information you need to reduce tension and define a concrete monthly lead generation goal. You’ll also be able to track and measure the success of specific lead generation channels and keep close tabs on your current sales close rates.

What I like: You can easily supplement this lead tracker with a marketing-sales SLA template to better align your sales and marketing teams — and get one step closer to crushing your goals.

Featured Resource: Microsoft Word SLA Template for Marketing & Sales

Download Now

9. Excel Sales Conversion and Close Rate Calculator

Download Your Free Excel Conversion Calculator

You have to set a conversion goal, but you don’t know where to start. It sounds like you could use a hand in calculating your leads and traffic goals. Luckily, there’s an Excel template for that.

What I like: You won’t have to sort through these numbers on your own. This template will take care of the math and give you a clear picture of what you need to accomplish to achieve your conversion goals.

10. Excel KPI Dashboard Template

Download Your Free Excel KPI Dashboard

If you’re a fan of the monthly metrics template, you might want to grab a copy of this template as well. The essential KPI tracker, shown above, takes the metrics your marketing team has agreed to track and describes them in more detail.

What I like: Using this template, you can assign specific employees to each KPI, define the frequency at which you’ll monitor each KPI’s performance, and assign each KPI a color that reflects the quality of that KPI’s performance.

For example: Let’s say one of my company’s KPIs is organic traffic. I could set up my template such that 100 page views per month are red (poor performance), 500 page views per month are yellow (stable performance), and 1000 page views per month are green (great performance).

Sales Excel Templates

Sales is a number-heavy field. Whether we’re talking about sales goals or closed-won ratios, here are a few of my top templates to help expedite the process.

11. Excel Ecommerce Planning Template

Download Your Free Excel Ecommerce Planner Template

Ecommerce stores come with many moving parts. This template, which also includes an ecommerce sales plan and go-to-market template, includes dedicated space for each of your ecommerce vendors.

The kit also includes a marketing plan that guides you through market research, target market analysis, channels and vendors, and more.

What I like: Once your ecommerce store is live and running, you can use the conversion template to track performance across vendors and platforms where products are listed to give you a holistic view of your efforts.

12. Excel Contact List Template

Download Your Free Excel Contact List Template

In a business, the most important people are your customer or client base. Although your current customers constantly need to be nurtured, focusing on your contact or prospect list is also essential.

The information needed to build a prospect list is elementary. You can use this template to start building this list with the person’s name, title and company, location, and contact information. Additional information could include their industry, employee size, company description, and pain points.

What I like: Once you’ve used a template like this one, you’re ready to upgrade to a CRM, which stores the same information in a more user-friendly format.

13. Excel Sales Forecasting Template

Download Your Free Excel Template for Sales Forecasting

Sales forecasting is similar to weather forecasting. Without the proper tools, it’s impossible to get an accurate idea of what’s ahead.

Excel sales forecasting helps with business planning, budgeting, and risk management. Using this template will help you track business sales, accurately predict your sales revenue, and plan for future growth.

What I like: Sales forecasting is challenging, but this spreadsheet formula makes the process easier. Ultimately, it helps strengthen the sales strategy that you build for your company.

14. Excel Sales Metrics Calculator Template

Download Your Free Excel Sales Metrics Calculator

Sales are complex. Once you add sales metrics into the picture, the complications increase.

Not only does this template help you keep track of sales, but it keeps track of your salespeople too. With the sales metrics calculator template, you can calculate customer retention rate, win rates, product revenue, and employee turnover rate.

What I like: I know there are many numbers and figures to calculate, track, record, and document when it comes to sales. This interactive Excel spreadsheet will help you get the job done.

Project Management Excel Templates

Specific projects require a specific setup, but sometimes, the setup itself can be the most exhausting part. I’ve compiled the following templates to help you manage general projects and track your progress for specific tasks.

15. Excel Social Media Planning Template

Download Your Free Excel Social Media Planner

You might already use a social media scheduler to manage and publish your posts every week, but you still need a place to draft your social copy and decide which posts will go to which social networks.

This social media posting schedule allows you to draft each social post — the time it will post, the message you want to publish, and any link you want to accompany your message (blog post, registration page, an ebook landing page, etc).

What I like: Most social media schedulers allow you to upload social post copy in bulk from a spreadsheet. Once you’ve drafted all of your social posts for the week, month, or quarter, you can easily sort them by social network and import them into your social media platform of choice.

16. Excel Blog Editorial Calendar Template

Download Your Free Excel Editorial Calendar Template

Blogging plays a significant role in your ability to attract visitors and leads to your website. But managing a blog is one of those responsibilities that’s easier said than done.

Use this editorial calendar template as the starting point for keeping track of all of your business‘ content. It’ll help you be more mindful of topic selection, buyer personas, keyword inclusions, and CTA alignment.

What I like: When I’m struggling with ideation, consistency, or simply just lacking organization, an editorial calendar helps me refocus my blogging efforts to generate even more traffic and leads.

17. Excel Work Log Template

Download Your Free Excel Work Log Template

How do you keep track of the day-to-day progress of your company, especially when there are people, tasks, and timelines to monitor? A work log template is essential to keeping track.

This template provides you with a project overview that makes tracking easier than ever. The work log template tracks tasks, time, status, and comments.

What I like: If you’re not ready to commit to a project management software, you can still monitor the life cycle and progress of your projects with this spreadsheet.

18. Excel Social Media Content Calendar Template

Download Your Free Excel Social Media Calendar

Since you’re probably generating tons of clicks from your Google Ads campaigns and writing amazing content, I’d imagine you’ll need some help figuring out how to spread the love on social media.

The social media calendar template is the perfect resource for helping you scale and streamline your social media marketing.

What I like: When you use Excel to break out separate worksheets for each social network you‘re using, you’ll be able to keep a repository of content ideas, so you‘re never struck by writer’s block and always have something to post.

19. Excel Product Launch Plan Template

Download Your Free Excel Product Launch Plan Template

A well-executed product launch can be a key differentiator for successful marketing and early adoption. This product launch plan can help you organize your thoughts around competitive analysis, positioning, and product strategy.

What I like: This template even goes so far as to help you brainstorm pains, proof points, and key messaging for campaigns. That’s a huge win in my book.

Excel your marketing process.

Data is any marketer‘s friend. Even though spreadsheets seem like they’ve been around forever, Microsoft Excel has so many capabilities that still make it an amazing resource for displaying, organizing, analyzing, and parsing data.

With a little bit of Excel magic, you can streamline your workflow and arrive at some a-ha moments from data insights.

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

Determining which of your marketing efforts are driving conversions and sales can be challenging — but it’s critical if you want to increase ROI, revenue, brand awareness, conversions, campaign success, and more.

That’s why marketing attribution software is so important.

In this blog post, we’ll explain what marketing attribution software is and why these tools are so powerful. Then, we’ll explore the three main types of marketing attribution tools as well as 18 top marketing attribution software tools for 2024.

There are several benefits of marketing attribution. These tools can help you:

1. Determine the most effective areas to focus your marketing efforts and budget
2. Understand your target audience and their needs
3. Improve your chances of reaching and resonating with your audience through personalized experiences
4. Increase ROI

Three Types of Marketing Attribution Software

Of course, there’s more than one approach to marketing attribution.

So when you’re setting your attribution goals and deciding which software solution is best for you, you’ll want to consider the following three types of marketing attribution software.

1. Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA)

Multi-touch attribution identifies which of many possible customer touchpoints is responsible for a sale. It’s important to realize that while most MTA tools include some channel data, they’re designed to test specific touchpoints.

For instance, a multi-touch marketing attribution tool may evaluate your touchpoints in the following ways:

• First-Touch Model: A first-touch model assigns all of the credit to the first webpage or digital asset that led a customer to your site. This model is great for understanding what brings people to your door.
• Last-Touch Model: Last-touch attribution is the opposite of first-touch. It gives 100% of the credit to the last asset a customer sees before making a purchase. This model is great for evaluating bottom-of-the-funnel content like CTAs and landing pages, but it’s not much help when it comes to the top or the middle.
• Last-Interaction Model: The last-interaction model is similar to the last-touch model, but it differs in an important way: Last-interaction modeling gives all the credit to the last touchpoint that produces a conversion. For instance, in the last-touch model, the final blog post a customer viewed would get the credit — while in the last-interaction model, it would not.
• First-and-Last Model: Unlike the three prior models, the first-and-last attribution framework splits the credit. Automation platform Ontraport recommends this model because the first and last touch points tend to stick out the most in a customer’s mind.
• Simple-Decay Model: This model gives the most credit to the last touch point and progressively less to prior ones. With this model, you’ll need to think about whether those weights correspond accurately to the customer’s experience.

Any attribution model is better than none, but MTA models can sometimes have substantial gaps or rely on flawed assumptions.

For example, a customer might have seen a television ad or received a friend’s recommendation, and digital tracking tools wouldn’t be able to account for that.

Multi-touch attribution is also getting more difficult thanks to platform restrictions. Google, Amazon, and Facebook — the three largest ad networks — have placed limitations on cross-platform tagging.

Pixel-based solutions face similar limitations due to browser updates from leaders like Mozilla and Apple, which have eliminated tracking pixels due to speed and security concerns.

2. Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM)

Marketing (or media) mix modeling takes a more complex approach than MTA.

Rather than using a tag or pixel to follow individual users around the web, MMM uses multivariate regressions to predict how much of an impact certain sales and marketing tactics had on customer behavior.

A top-down model, MMM looks at historical data from both online and offline sources. It also attempts to account for external influences, such as seasonality, pricing data, and broader economic conditions.

This type of attribution is most popular among enterprise companies, and because it requires a large amount of data and complex algorithms, the MMM space is somewhat dominated by enterprise vendors with roots outside of marketing.

3. Multi-Channel Attribution (MCA)

Multi-channel (sometimes called cross-channel) attribution is a blend of the MTA and MMM approaches. Multi-channel attribution uses individual-level data, but it attempts to evaluate the impact of certain tactics similarly to marketing mix modeling.

MCA seeks to paint a full picture of how a consumer’s online and offline activities lead to the sale. In the simplest MCA model, any channel that the customer accessed en route to the sale gets credit.

If a customer searches for a product via desktop, reads a blog post on mobile, visits a physical store, and then finally purchases after a social media referral, each channel gets weighted credit depending on the amount of time that user spent on it.

Tools like tracking pixels allow marketers to evaluate channels like search, social media, and ad retargeting. Additionally, people-based attribution techniques tie channel and touchpoint data to individual customers.

Today, the main challenge is connecting customers’ online and offline behavior, but there are several techniques that can help you address this:

• Foot Traffic: Mobile marketing companies use beacon technology to determine where smartphone users are. Mobile device IDs are then matched with customer profile data to give credit to certain campaigns.
• Point-of-Sale Data: When a user makes a credit card purchase at a physical location, the credit provider works with data companies to attribute the purchase to prior channels.
• Customer Panels: Some companies ask users to opt-in via an app that transmits data about their location or offline behaviors to the marketing team.
• Multi-Source Matching: Simply looking at a purchase, a location, or declared data won‘t tell you the whole story. That’s why companies that invest in MCA cross-check data for an accurate picture of which offline channels a customer might have engaged with. For example, companies can use point-of-sale data to begin tracking customer behavior and then use those numbers to influence future campaigns.

Clearly, there are lots of ways to approach marketing attribution. Below, we’ll dive into 18 leading examples of marketing attribution software tools that can help you with attribution reporting, analysis, and more.

18 Marketing Attribution Software Tools for 2024

1. HubSpot Marketing Analytics Software & Dashboard

Get started with marketing automation.

HubSpot’s Marketing Analytics & Dashboard software measures and analyzes the performance of your campaigns and marketing efforts with built-in analytics, reports, and dashboards.

With HubSpot, all of your CRM data and Marketing Software data are located in one place, at your fingertips — no SQL or coding required. This allows you to easily identify, review, organize, and share your marketing attribution data (among many other types of data) directly on your all-in-one CRM platform.

HubSpot offers granular Attribution Reporting for Contact Attribution and Revenue Attribution.

In terms of Contact Attribution Reporting, each customer interaction, and any revenue generated from that interaction, is recorded in that contact’s record. This is also helpful because it helps ensure everyone is getting credit for their work.

As for Revenue Attribution Reporting, you can pinpoint the specific channels that are hitting or surpassing their goals, and which channels need improvement. This way, you can identify the areas where you should focus your attention and budget.

In addition, HubSpot offers some other notable features that have the power to simplify marketing attribution reporting.

What we like:

• The Custom Report Builder brings together all of your data so you can access contact, company, and deal data plus your landing page, blog, and email data, all in one place.
• Custom Objects provide data that’s unique to your business in order to create new segments and create custom reports, campaigns, and workflows.
• Reporting dashboards are customizable and flexible — they have pre-built, drag-and-drop templates that you can share from HubSpot or via email or Slack — and you can also create dashboards from scratch if you prefer.
• Behavioral Events track custom interactions that are unique to your business and indicate when a customer is ready to move to the next stage of the buyer’s journey.
• Account Based Marketing (ABM) closes the gap between Marketing and Sales so you’re able to close more high-value target accounts.

Finally, if you’re already using other marketing attribution software, it’s worth checking whether there’s an integration available between HubSpot and that tool. The HubSpot App Marketplace offers more than 1,200 app integrations, so you can easily sync your HubSpot marketing data with other apps.

2. Ruler Analytics

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Ruler Analytics is a marketing attribution and call tracking software. It provides closed-loop marketing attribution, giving you access to all of your revenue and conversions in a single location.

This multi-channel marketing attribution platform comes with online and offline conversion tracking to help you determine your return on ad spend (ROAS); identify which campaigns, channels, and keywords are leading to conversions; and get a better understanding of your customer journey.

Pro Tip: With Ruler Analytics, you can compare various rule-based models including first click, last click, and linear attribution. You can also map your customer journey to identify the marketing channels that are leading visitors to find your business, to make purchases, and to convert in other ways (e.g. to complete an online form or chat with a sales rep).

This tool also makes it possible to pull customer data from any form submission and automatically match it to the marketing source it came from. Integrate your data with Google Analytics using Ruler’s Google Analytics and Google Adwords integration, and upload your marketing attribution.

3. Branch

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Branch is a cross-channel attribution and mobile linking platform that offers insight into all of your team’s marketing efforts. This tool connects customer touchpoints from all of your channels with conversions that occur on any platform.

What we like: Branch‘s Predictive Modeling feature is anonymous and uses historical attributions to identify accurate attribution when there’s no universal ID. This is helpful because Apple now enables users to block identifiers on apps (known as IDFAs, or Identifiers for Advertisers), which work similarly to cookies that track activity on web browsers.

Branch also tracks referral and ad attribution, as well as measuring email, web, and social media marketing success. You can use cross-platform, cross-channel cohort analysis to compare attribution across all of your marketing campaigns and channels, including email, ads, social media, and web.

Branch displays your data on analytics dashboards and segments that data by device, platform, channel, campaign, conversion events (e.g. installs), or metrics (e.g. clicks).

4. Active Campaign

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ActiveCampaign is a customer experience automation platform with attribution reporting capabilities that allow you to identify which traffic sources and touchpoints cause your leads to convert.

The tool‘s contact records include lists that are updated with all conversions a contact makes and the specific touchpoints that played a role in that conversion. There’s also a Segment Builder that tells you which traffic source (e.g. ad or campaign) a contact who converted actually visited your website from.

Best for: ActiveCampaign is particularly effective if you’re looking to set up automatic triggers to take certain actions once a contact has converted in a specific way, and to create attributed values for your conversions. For instance, if one in 10 customers who completes the web form on your landing page spends $500, you can set the attribute value for a web form conversion as $50.

Use ActiveCampaign to determine attribution from a wide range of traffic sources that are both paid and organic.

In terms of paid touchpoints, ActiveCampaign can help you track Facebook Ads, AdWords, and more.

As for organic touchpoints, ActiveCampaign can help you track product reviews on any site aside from your own, blog posts by guest contributors, social media posts, or even responses on Quora.

5. C3 Metrics

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C3 Metrics is an attribution reporting tool that focuses on enterprise cross-platform advertising attribution. It offers attribution solutions for businesses across a range of industries, including ecommerce, automotive, financial services, pharma, and travel.

Pro Tip: The comprehensive C3 Metrics Attribution Data Cloud works across digital, TV, radio, and direct mail.

This tool’s Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) considers external factors, such as competition or changing industry trends, when pulling attribution data.

You can also connect users anonymously cross-device and cross-platform with ease, and analyze attribution with online reporting dashboards and offline reports that can be delivered when you want them.

6. Windsor.ai

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Windsor.ai is a multi-touch marketing attribution software tool that integrates all of your marketing data and metrics and runs attribution models.

This tool measures ROI from attribution across multiple channels, campaigns, and keywords.

What we like: Multi-touch attribution modeling maps and optimizes the customer journey, empowering you to make data-driven decisions about how and where you spend your budget. Windsor.ai also provides your ROAS for all touchpoints by combining multi-touch attribution with customer journey data that’s matched to cost data.

Use Windsor.ai’s Keyword Optimization tool, its Google Ads Optimization tool, and its TV Ads Performance tool to enhance all of the different channels and touchpoints for your unique target audience.

You can also access and pull marketing and CRM data from any tool with one of Windsor.ai’s many integrations and APIs.

7. Attribution

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Attribution is an enterprise multi-touch attribution software that identifies the specific impact of your marketing funnel‘s touchpoints.

It includes features ideal for both B2C marketers looking to optimize marketing ROI and B2B marketers looking to streamline the path to purchase.

The tool’s automated data collection feature organizes all of your online and offline touchpoints and combines that information with your budget spend.

Pro Tip: Use this tool to manage affiliate marketing, report on and improve partner performance, and compare affiliate performance to the performance of your other marketing touchpoints and channels.

Attribution also enables you to build automated attribution models with machine learning algorithms that surface any patterns in your data and touchpoints.

In addition, its dashboards and reports can segment your data by campaign, touchpoint, or channel, and sync all of that data to your other software tools (e.g. your CRM, marketing tools, or business intelligence tools).

8. Dreamdata

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Dreamdata is a B2B revenue attribution platform which gathers, joins, and cleans all revenue-related data to present transparent, actionable analysis of what drives B2B revenue.

The platform integrates with users‘ techstacks and tracks every recorded touch to build end-to-end B2B customer journeys.

Dreamdata’s application then gives you comprehensive insight into these journeys through visualized interactive timelines of every account in your pipeline.

Best for: Dreamdata offers data, ops, and BI professionals free access to its data platform, including all the data on BigQuery, the B2B data models, and maintenance-free data pipelines. Users are also free to connect their favorite BI tools and dashboards to report and query data on BigQuery.

The Dreamdata platform enables you to run all touches through customizable multi-touch attribution models — across and between pipeline stages — revealing which channels and campaigns are generating revenue, and when.

This helps marketers and growth leaders track ROI on all activities, benchmark growth, predict revenue, and plan what efforts to scale next.

9. Factors.AI

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Factors.AI is a B2B marketing attribution solution that provides marketers with wide-ranging insight into how different activities across sales and marketing impact your pipeline — and your revenue.

Its dashboard offers a unified view of all your marketing metrics, as well as multi-touch attribution with an analysis of ROI across channels and campaigns.

What we like: Factors.AI uses no-code integrations that make it easy to break down data silos, so you can see key metrics related to search, ads, web, and more all in one place.

With root-cause analysis powered by machine learning and AI, this platform is able to identify anonymous website visitors, develop automated reports, and deliver actionable insights to help marketing teams optimize their spend.

10. CallRail

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The CallRail platform makes it possible to track performance across form responses, chats, texts, and calls.

From paid search to print ads, CallRail helps marketers optimize their campaigns with insight into exactly where customers are coming from.

Pro Tip: CallRail can save you time by helping you create call transcripts, highlight keywords from conversations, and automatically qualify leads.

CallRail offers a powerful dashboard where you can view marketing attribution data, review customer histories, and fine-tune your marketing messages based on performance data.

It also offers a single system of record, helping keep your entire team coordinated and up-to-date.

11. Demandbase

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The cloud-based Demandbase solution is designed to help marketers bring attribution insights into every stage of the B2B buyer’s journey.

This tool gives you access to reliable, detailed, account-level data, making it easy to see what’s working (and what isn’t).

Best for: Demandbase helps B2B marketing and sales teams optimize their pipelines from end to end, driving conversions through meaningful customer engagement and personalized content.

You can use Demandbase across your organization to measure how your various marketing campaigns and sales activities are driving revenue, from the top of the funnel to the final deal close.

Ultimately, this makes it possible to reduce friction in the buying process and provide a top-notch customer experience to prospects and customers throughout your pipeline.

12. Invoca

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Invoca uses AI-powered conversational intelligence software to give marketers greater visibility into which campaigns drive the best phone leads, whether you’re losing sales due to bad call experiences, and other critical business questions.

What we like: Phone calls are a critical channel for many organizations. With Invoca, you can be confident that you understand how calls are leading to conversions, which kinds of conversations are resonating the best, and what it takes to drive revenue through the phone.

This powerful attribution tool eliminates wasted ad spending and boosts campaign performance by ensuring your team can effectively attribute every call that’s driven by your marketing efforts.

13. CAKE

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CAKE is a marketing attribution tool that offers solutions in three key areas: affiliate marketing, multichannel marketing, and lead generation.

Pro Tip: Measure and optimize the performance of your marketing campaigns in real time with CAKE’s performance tracking platform.

When it comes to affiliate marketing, CAKE empowers marketers to track key metrics, optimize profitability, and attract the most valuable partners.

Similarly, this platform’s multichannel marketing tools make it possible to measure the true cost of customer acquisition across various channels, boosting campaign performance across the buyer’s journey,

Finally, CAKE helps marketing teams boost their lead generation efforts by offering a comprehensive view into traffic sources and lead quality, in turn leading to increased revenues and more efficient lead generation efforts.

14. WhatConverts

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WhatConverts is a lead tracking software solution that helps marketing agencies and their clients determine how effective their marketing efforts are.

This tool includes chat tracking, call tracking, and form tracking, all of which makes it possible for organizations to get a better sense for where their leads are really coming from.

Best for: Beyond call tracking, WhatConverts also provides extensive support for lead reporting and management, making it a useful option for marketing teams large and small.

With auto-organized leads, marketing attribution for all types of conversions, and reports listing actionable, data-driven insights, the WhatConverts dashboard puts all the information you need right at your fingertips.

Plus, WhatConverts offers more than a thousand integrations with different marketing tools and platforms, making it easy to incorporate it into your existing workflows.

15. Flowcode

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Flowcode offers an attribution tool focused specifically on QR code marketing for direct-to-consumer businesses. This solution is particularly powerful when it comes to connecting the dots between your customers’ offline and online activities.

What we like: Flowcode provides mobile-first landing pages for first-party customer data collection, geo-reporting, and seamless API integrations.

With its comprehensive platform, Flowcode provides marketers with all the data and insights they need to optimize conversions, drive ROI, A/B test their funnels, and analyze their audiences.

16. CallTrackingMetrics

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CallTrackingMetrics provides comprehensive conversation analytics services, making it possible for marketers to track every lead and attribute exactly which campaign or activity it came from.

The tool uses call recordings, transcripts, and live conversations to uncover key insights about customer behavior and preferences.

Pro Tip: You can choose whether you’d like to analyze the data manually, set up automated rules, or leverage CallTrackingMetrics’ AI-driven solutions to better understand conversation data.

It can be hard to tell which ads are driving the highest-value conversions or the most qualified leads. That’s where CallTrackingMetrics can help.

Its automated call tracking tool uses closed-loop attribution to connect every form, chat, text, and call to the specific ad that drove it.

17. impact.com

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A wide-ranging partnership management platform, impact.com leverages data from across the customer journey to help companies optimize their collaborations with affiliates, influencers, publishers, and other B2B and B2C partners.

Best for: This tool helps you automate every stage of your pipeline and maximize the value of your partnerships strategy.

Partnerships can be a powerful revenue driver for many organizations — but only if managed effectively. impact.com takes the risk out of these critical relationships and gives marketers the tools they need to invest in their partnership efforts with confidence.

18. Triple Whale

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Triple Whale is an analytics and attribution platform focused specifically on ecommerce businesses. This tool provides marketers with visibility into key attribution data, and integrates smoothly with other common applications and tools.

What we like: Triple Whale offers mobile apps for both Android and iOS, enabling marketers to easily access critical performance data in real time whether in the office or on the go.

This tool makes it possible to track customer purchases at the ad level, giving marketing teams insight into where shoppers are coming from and which advertisements are most effective at driving conversions.

It also offers automated reporting via Slack or email, unlimited users, and the transparency marketers need to ensure their campaign decisions are driven by data.

Choosing the Right Software

When it comes to marketing attribution, there are countless software solutions that can help you get started.

To choose the best tool for your unique business, determine what your marketing attribution goals are and what types of reports would be most helpful for your business.

You’ll then be ready to begin using one of the many marketing attribution tools available today to grow better through data-driven marketing.

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

How many days of the year are you encouraged to dress and goof around at work? Probably just one — Halloween — and even then, it can be hard to know which office costume ideas are appropriate for the workplace.

We want you to have fun this year, so we‘re taking the work out of it for you. We’ve compiled a list of DIY Halloween costume ideas that are easy to assemble, inexpensive, and perfect for the digital marketer or tech professional.

If your family and friends don’t get your costume, your colleagues definitely will.

55 Office Costume Ideas for Marketing Nerds and Tech Geeks

Computer or App-Related Costumes

Emoji Costumes

Topical Office Costumes

55 Office Costume Ideas for Marketing Nerds and Tech Geeks

Ready to impress your co-workers with your on-brand office costumes? Here are the best office costume ideas we could find.

Computer or App-Related Costumes

1. Incognito Mode

If you’re looking for a dash of mystery and clever internet humor, dressing up as the Incognito Mode logo is your best bet. The costume is simple, and there’s a good chance you already have most of the materials you need around your home.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• A black fedora or cowboy hat
• Weak or fake reading glasses with a thin frame
• A black suit coat and dress pants
• A black mask
• Dress shoes
• A white or black dress shirt

2. Web Browsers

This costume is great because you can either dress up as your favorite web browser on your own or have your friends join in on the fun and make it a group costume.

Either way, it’s a simple and cost-effective costume for your next office party. Just print the browser logos, cut them out, and wear them around your neck with a string or ribbon.

For the rest of the outfit, you can coordinate colors using your home clothes.

3. Alt Text

Alt text isn‘t just the metadata of an image published on the web; you could also say it’s an “alternative” fashion statement with the text to describe the era.

It’s great because you don’t even look dressed up if you have a casual office dress code, so you can just blend in.

To dress as alt text this Halloween, break out your best 90s alternative garb — like black jeans, combat boots, and a flannel.

Then, tape hyphenated text that best describes what you’re wearing, much like an image of your outfit would do online to help search engines read the file.

We edited a sash of alt text onto the alternatively dressed girl below to help you picture your awesome costume.

4. Mobile App

Wander around holding an appetizer — candy, cheese and crackers, chips and dip, or whatever you have on hand — and you can call yourself a mobile “app.”

This costume is also great for introducing yourself and making friends at a party.

5. Ghostwriter

Have you ever written something for somebody else‘s byline? Such is the life of a ghostwriter. Turn your author-less accomplishment into this year’s office Halloween costume.

To dress up as a ghostwriter, grab a white sheet and cut a hole for your head and arms. Dab some black ink spots on the sheet, get a book and one of those feather quills (or just get a feather, I suppose), and boo — you’re a ghostwriter.

6. Whitespace

Whitespace on the internet might denote all the blank space you use to help your design stand out, but on Halloween, “whitespace” isn’t just the absence of space.

Dress in all white, and add a white wig if you’re ultra-committed. Then add a hint of color to the outfit, like a colored tie, scarf, or even a paint splotch.

That color splotch will make the white space more prominent, transforming you into “whitespace.”

7. Anonymous Rhino

I don’t know about you, but seeing an anonymous animal pop up in my Google Doc while I’m in it sends chills down my spine.

Dress up as one of the many animal profiles that Google has created to represent anonymous or unknown users in your document.

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8. Error 404 Code

You’ve most likely encountered a funny error 404 page before, and you can make it a funny costume, too. Grab a sheet of paper, write “Error 404: Costume Not Found,” and tape it to your outfit.

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9. (Monty) Python

If you’re into programming code, British comedy, and low-effort costumes, being (Monty) Python is perfect.

Dress up in anything remotely snakelike in your closet: olive green clothing, snakeskin accessories, and fake vampire teeth that can serve as your fangs.

Then, to amp up the dork factor on this costume, add two coconuts or a gold chalice to embody Monty Python on his quest for the Holy Grail.

10. Facebook

Grab face paint or eyeliner and write “book” across your cheeks. Just like that, you‘re the world’s most extensive social network for Halloween.

And for your sake, we hope your colleagues get it:

11. Unicorn

Here’s another tech-friendly, double-entendre costume: Be your version of a tech unicorn. Here at HubSpot, we love this tech icon, and you can easily make your version of a unicorn horn with help from this article.

12. Phishing Emails

Phishing emails are nothing to joke about — they can seriously threaten your technology and data security. But on Halloween, you can dress up as a play on phishing emails for an easy DIY costume.

All you need are a stick, a string, and an envelope. Bonus points if you own a bucket hat and vest to complete the ensemble. Check out an amusing version of this costume below.

13. Identify Theft

Similar to the phishing costume above, this cheeky identity theft costume will be a hit in the IT department at the office.

14. Copycat

“CTRL + C” is the popular keyboard command that allows you to copy items from one place to another on your computer. Well, here‘s a technology spin on a classic Halloween costume.

All you’ll need are cat ears, eyeliner-drawn whiskers, and a sheet of paper. Write “CTRL + C” on the paper, tape it to your outfit, and you’re a “copycat.”

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15. The Blue Screen of Death

You know the screen, even if you don‘t know the morbid nickname the tech world has given it. This classic error screen is known for signaling the end of a computer’s useful life, and you know it when you see it.

It causes so much stress on site, in fact, that the color alone is scary enough for Halloween.

Believe it or not, there are t-shirts of this ominous screen you can find online. Want to make your own? All you need is a royal blue t-shirt and a printed version of this horrifying error message to pin to it.

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16. Map Costume

Get a plain white or black T-shirt and use yellow tape to form roads. You can then personalize the costume however you’d like by adding popular street names in your city or making a map of where the office is located.

You can even get more intricate by finding a T-shirt with a map on it.

17. Dead Battery and Low Wi-Fi

Nothing is more terrifying to marketers than a dead battery or no Wi-Fi. This costume brings every techy‘s fears to life. It’s also pretty simple to create.

Just tape or glue images of dead Wi-Fi and low battery signals onto a black shirt. To emphasize the low-connectivity fears, put on some zombie or skeleton makeup.

Although this can work as a couple‘s costume, this could also be a fun option for office colleagues.

Since both costumes within the set don’t rely on each other to be understandable, an individual could also wear either the dead battery outfit or the no-wi-fi suit and still be easily recognized.

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18. ChatGPT

There probably hasn’t been a day that’s gone by this year where you didn’t hear the word “ChatGPT.” Embrace the AI platform by creating an office costume out of it.

For your outfit, you can simply print out the ChatGPT logo and attach it to a black t-shirt. The fun part is when people come up to you. You can respond just as ChatGPT would.

Encourage people to ask you for advice, tips, and ideas, and respond using your best modern robot voice.

19. TikTok

Dress up as the most downloaded app across the globe, TikTok. As a marketer, you’re more than familiar with the ins and outs of the For You Page. Who better to represent the social media platform than someone from the marketing team?

Not to mention, your colleagues will appreciate the break from being asked to appear in one of your TikTok videos. Finally, you’re the one featured in the frame!

20. Spreadsheet

Do you work in finance or data analysis? Represent your role by dressing as a spreadsheet. You can recreate the look below by taking a white bed sheet or t-shirt and using a black Sharpie to draw an Excel-like spreadsheet.

21. Clippy

Everyone’s favorite paper clip Clippy is a classic character. Even if your office prefers Google Docs, everyone will recognize this helpful tool.

22. QR Code

Your fellow marketers will get a kick out of this QR code office costume. The best part is that you can get creative with where the QR code will take them (keep the link office-appropriate, of course).

23. Pantone Color

Are you the designer of the office? Dress up as your favorite Pantone color swatch, or opt for the trendier Color of the Year.

Emoji Costumes

24. Information Desk Girl

This genius professional found a golden (or, rather, purple) opportunity to be the information desk emoji — the many gestures that we’ve all come to know, love, and use at some point in a text conversation.

The best part about this awesome tech reference is that you don‘t need to alter your regular attire to make it work. As Naomi shows us below, it’s all in the hand gestures.

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25. Dancing Girls Emoji

The dancing girls emoji is another popular emoji.

The easiest version of this costume is to find a buddy and dress all in black together. If you’re committed to emoji authenticity, buy black bunny ears to complete the look.

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26. Heart Eyes

Are you just in love with Halloween? Prove it with this passionate emoji face. You don‘t have to paint your entire face to get the Heart Eyes Emoji just right, but it certainly helps.

It’ll also disguise your stress when you’re at your most focused during the day.

“This employee just seems to love her job, I can’t put my finger on why,” your manager will think. See how to paint this emoji onto your face below — you’ll need some help with this one.

Topical Office Costumes

27. Barbie

The Barbie movie was the talk of the summer when it was released. With its massive success, I’m sure the Barbie resurgence will continue for years to come.

Create your own Barbie box and display yourself for the day like this team of teachers did.

28. Three-hole Punch

If you aren’t the type who likes dressing up, take the Jim Halpert approach and dress up as a three-hole punch. Simply cut out three black circles and tape them to your shirt.

29. Office Supplies

You’re dressing up at work, so it’s only fitting to match the environment. Blend in by dressing up in your favorite office supplies, whether that’s scissors, a piece of paper, or a bunch of pencils like the image below.

30. 1920s Flapper

The best part about dressing up as a flapper for Halloween is that this fun outfit can be found easily online at affordable prices, or you can assemble it using whatever you have at home or find at the craft store.

The latter is what interior designer and DIY enthusiast Mandi Johnson did last year. She found a simple black dress and managed to make all the jewelry, accessories, and fringe items from materials she bought at a crafts shop.

31. Minnie Mouse Costume

You can never go wrong with the classics. Minnie Mouse is a timeless, simple, and inexpensive costume that never goes out of style.

And if your Halloween office party allows for a plus one, you can invite your spouse or significant other to dress up as Mickey. Who doesn‘t love a cute couple’s costume?

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32. Top Gun

Top Gun-inspired costumes will likely see a boost in popularity for a few more Halloweens thanks to the 2022 sequel “Top Gun: Maverick.”

While you can find the signature green jumpsuits online for a decent price, you can also put the outfit together at home if you have jeans, a white shirt, a jacket, and sunglasses lying around.

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33. Dwight

One of the most recognizable characters from The Office, Dwight, is easy to dress up as. You only need a few key items for this office costume, including his signature mustard button-up shirt and wireframe glasses.

34. Formal Apology

Ever bought formal attire for a special occasion and never worn it again? Well, now you have an excuse to bring your formal pieces out of retirement.

Dress up as a “formal apology,” because nothing says “quirky office party” like a good play on words. Simply dress up in your formal dress or suit, and have a sign or sash that reads “apology” or “sorry.”

35. Men in Black

This is a great costume to pull off with your best friend at the office, especially if you already have a suit lying around.

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36. Fully Vested

At work, “fully vested” usually refers to one‘s ability to earn all matching funds of a 401(k) retirement plan. But for some, you just can’t help but picture someone wearing lots of sleeveless jackets at the same time.

Now’s the time to personify that image.

If you work in a company where people would get the joke, put on a bunch of vests (at least three, but even more is encouraged), and that‘s about it. You’re fully vested.

37. Nerd

What I love about the nerd costume is that it’s effortless and always unique — there are many ways to be a nerd in this day and age. Are you a tech nerd, a video game nerd, or a book nerd?

The sky is the limit with this costume. Show up wearing glasses with your favorite accessories — such as a magic wand, book, or lightsaber — to complete the effect.

38. Smarty Pants

This is another simple yet effective costume. Simply buy a bag of Smarties candies and attach them to your jeans. Add accessories like glasses or a book to complete the full look of someone who’s booksmart.

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39. Sanderson Sisters from Hocus Pocus

The Sanderson Sisters made a comeback in Hocus Pocus 2. The iconic sisters will likely be a popular costume for many Halloween seasons to come which means that they will be easy to find at any costume store.

40. Eddie Munson from Stranger Things

Eddie Munson was a fan favorite in the latest season of Stranger Things, and his outfit is pretty easy to put together. If you have a jean vest or jacket at home, you‘re already halfway to the look. You can also find Eddie’s Hellfire Club shirt at Target or Walmart for less than $20.

41. Fifty Shades of Grey: PG Paint Swatch Costume

Want to do something cheeky, but still office friendly? This PG pun costume shares the name of a popular romantic novel and film, “50 Shades of Grey.”

Go to your local paint or hardware store and buy 50 grey paint swatches. Then, tape them to a black shirt and tell your colleagues you’re “50 Shades of Grey.”

42. Early 2000s Disney Red Carpet Fashion

If you‘ve been on social media at all, you’ve likely noticed old red-carpet photos of Disney Channel stars like Ashley Tisdale re-circulating online.

Early 2000s Disney fashion was interesting, to say the least, and would make a fun, nostalgic costume.

The best part about this idea is that there is a lot of room to improvise. The wilder the accessories, the better — and you can likely use almost anything from your closet.

Want to wear a skirt over jeans? Or add a chunky belt to the ensemble? The possibilities are endless.

43. Eleven from Stranger Things

Eleven from Stranger Things is universally beloved, and it’s a bonus that her signature look is a comfortable and easy-to-assemble costume. Rock your best Eleven with a dress, a denim jacket, and a box of Eggo Waffles.

44. Scoops Ahoy Employee from Stranger Things

While Eleven is a classic Stranger Things character, season two inspired another great costume opportunity.

In that season, Steve, played by Joe Keery, worked at an ice cream shop called Scoops Ahoy. As a server, he had to wear a goofy sailor uniform alongside his coworker Robin.

Since it‘s a pretty generic sailor uniform, you might be able to easily find one that’s similar in a variety of Halloween shops. This costume could work for both individuals or two colleagues.

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45. Dress Up as Your Favorite Anime Character

Anime is seeing a huge surge in popularity, and if you‘re an anime fan — why not dress up as your favorite character? Just make sure it’s office-appropriate.

Some great work-appropriate characters include Aizawa from My Hero Academia, Nanami from Jujutsu Kaisen, and Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service.

46. Plant lady

Do your co-workers rely on you to water their orchids when they’re out of office? Embrace your green thumb by dressing up as a plant lady or gentleman. Simply dress in all green, buy some fake greenery, and attach it to your outfit.

47. Where’s Waldo?

One of the most recognizable costumes, you’ll stand out (or blend in?) at your office party.

Group Office Costumes

48. Crayons

A good group or solo costume, dressing up as a crayon is a colorful way to bring nostalgia into the office. You can accomplish this office costume by getting a T-shirt with the Crayola logo printed on it. Or, if you want to go the DIY route, you can use a black marker on a colorful shirt.

49. The Sales Lifecycle

At HubSpot, we love embracing team costumes. A few years ago, a handful of HubSpot employees grabbed some T-shirts and wrote the stages of the sales lifecycle on them.

Then, they lined up accordingly and passed a fake prospect listing around to symbolize the process of making a sale.

This was such an easy costume to coordinate that the team could even include an out-of-office employee over a video call.

50. Social Media Channels

Simply pick out a solid list of the hottest social networks, then buy blank T-shirts that match the colors of each platform. From there, you can either draw, tape, or glue the logos onto each shirt.

To tie it all together, wear matching pants, or just wear jeans and keep things simple.

51. Black Hat and White Hat SEO

This is another SEO-related costume, and I think you can figure this one out on your own.

I recommend wearing a black hat for one, and a white hat for the other, and having “SEO” embroidered on each one — which you can easily custom order.

52. Snapchat Filters

Here‘s another group costume idea that pays tribute to Snapchat’s filters feature.

There are numerous options that you and your team can choose from to embody this costume.

You could dress up as vomiting rainbows, cat and dog ears, a flower crown, or a face swap, and this could be as DIY or store-bought as you’re interested in pursuing.

53. Snapchat Ghosts

Put a marketing spin on a classic Halloween costume by arriving as a Snapchat ghost. All you’ll need is a white sheet and to pick which ghost you like the most.

54. Pacman and Company

Here’s yet another awesome ghostly costume idea your whole team at work can get in on.

Have your team lead wear the yellow pie-shaped garb of Pacman, with each team member dressed as the multi-colored ghosts that roam the screen in this vintage arcade game.

Just make sure the team lead doesn’t actually try to eat the ghosts — you‘re in an office, and you’re all technically on the same team.

55. Instagram

You’ve seen the caption, “Instagram versus reality” before, right? Maybe you’ve even used it in your company’s content. If so, you know people always get a kick out of this phrase.

It can easily be replicated into an office costume, as shown below.

The clothes don‘t make the marketer, but the costume can certainly make the culture at your company.

Now that you have plenty of ideas for fun, work-appropriate Halloween costumes, you’re ready to wow your coworkers at your next spooky office party.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published October 21, 2018, but was updated for comprehensiveness.

As a copywriting tactic, the postscript (P.S.) has made its way from standard direct mail copy to email marketing copy.

With the right approach, all companies need is two paragraphs, a few links, and a P.S. to effectively communicate their message, create urgency, and drive conversions.

What is a P.S. in email?

The P.S. is a sentence or a paragraph added after the main body and signature of a letter (or other body of writing). The term comes from the Latin post scriptum, an expression meaning “written after.”

It takes the same form in an email. By adding a small postscript to marketing or sales emails, companies can capture customer interest and encourage them to take action — if brands can effectively use the power of the P.S.

How to Use the P.S.

How do you use the potential power of P.S. in your marketing efforts? And when is using a P.S. a helpful addition to your lead-generating copy?

According to Copyblogger, this starts with a question: “What’s first, last, and unusual in my copy?”

First is always your headline. Unusual is what sets your brand apart — your messaging, your offer, or your unique perspective.

The last is a P.S., or a final thought. It’s also worth noting that there’s no “right” way to write P.S.

In the United States, postscripts often contain a period between each letter. In the U.K., the letters typically appear without punctuation. Whatever option you choose, however, make sure it’s consistent.

Here are six ways to use the P.S. and enhance your email marketing efforts.

1. The Hook

Use your P.S. as bait, and make sure you attach a hook to it (the clickable URL that sends your reader to the landing page). What usually works best is emphasizing the main selling point one more time but from a different angle.

Why the main selling point? There is always a chance that your reader scrolls down to the bottom of the message without taking in all of your glorious copy.

On the chance that they did read it all, offering another key benefit makes them really want to bite.

For example, if you have been emphasizing the money-saving aspect of your offer, add something else.

2. The Final Plea

MarketingSherpa writes in its “12 Top Email Copywriting Tips to Raise Funds” case study that “adopting the direct-mail tactic of putting a ‘p.s.’ at the end of the copy and marrying it to a ‘Donate’ link is a smart move for raising funds.”

Asking for donations is never easy, but a well-crafted P.S. can be the determining factor. You can either pour on the emotion one more time or you can provide a sense of urgency.

3. The Creation of Urgency

The nice thing about emails is their immediacy. You send them out, and within a couple days you know what your open and click-through rates are.

The bad thing about emails is that they have hardly any shelf life. So you want to make sure you give your email all you have to make readers respond either by visiting a landing page or contacting someone directly.

Throughout your email, you’ve been doing your best to get them to take action. Your P.S. is often your last chance. Make it count.

4. The Personal Approach

A P.S. is usually part of a personalized email — one that signs off with the name of someone real in your company. The purpose of this kind of email is to make it as personal as possible.

The nice thing about a P.S. is that it adds to that “personal” approach, almost as though it’s an aside directed specifically to the email recipient. So take advantage of that inherent benefit.

5. The Bonus

A P.S. is also great for introducing a bonus. Throughout your email copy, you sell the main product or offer. Then in the P.S., you give them more if they act now. This adds to the sense of urgency.

6. The Testimonial

Not every product or offer needs a testimonial. But in the case of products with longer sales cycles (like many B2B products) where buyers need reassurance before they commit to a large ticket item, testimonials are often most effective.

They offer a third-party endorsement and provide a sense of assurance to your prospects — maybe just enough to motivate them toward the next step and contact you.

Examples of an Effective P.S. in Email

So what does an effective P.S. look like? Here are six examples of the postscript in action.

1. The Hook

If the body of your email highlights the cost-effectiveness of your product, you can hook potential customers by adding another benefit layer in your P.S., like so:

P.S. Cost-effective doesn’t mean low-quality. Check out hundreds of 5-star product reviews on Google.

Pro Tip: Just when customers think they know where you’re going, change direction. By combining low prices with great quality, you can get buyers to sit up and take notice.

2. The Plea

The plea is often used to raise money or encourage donations. Here, the goal is creating a short P.S. message that resonates with users but isn’t cloying or insincere.

P.S. [Charity] is close to our hearts. That’s why we’re donating [X amount]. Want to help out? Click here.

Pro Tip: Don’t just ask for money — make it clear what you’re doing to help before you bring out the plea.

3. The Urgency

Now, now, now! The sooner customers act, the better. But creating urgency is a balance between making it clear that customers can benefit from immediate action and ensuring your message doesn’t come off as pushy.

P.S. Our Fall Sale is on now. Until October 15th, get 30% off all regularly-priced items.

Pro Tip: Buyers are already bombarded by ads everywhere, every day. Keep your message short and to the point.

4. The Personal Approach

In the United States, 8 billion spam emails are sent every single day. As a result, buyers are always on the lookout for impersonal, insistent messages that don’t offer value.

Done well, your email title and body should convince customers that you’re actually interested in what they need — and your P.S. can help this along.

P.S. How are we doing? Drop us a line [here] and let us know what we could do better.

Pro Tip: By giving buyers the chance to reach out with feedback, companies can generate interaction. The caveat? You can’t just collect customer opinions — you also need to take action.

5. The Bonus

Everyone loves a bonus, so long as it’s something they want.

For example, if you sell high-end sneakers and your bonus is a link to how your product is made, that’s no bonus — it’s just a poorly-veiled advertising attempt. To drive action, make sure your bonus makes sense.

P.S. Use this code [shoeoff] to get 20% off your first order.

Pro Tip: There’s nothing wrong with taking a slight hit to profitability if it keeps customers coming back.

6. The Testimonial

People like your product or service, right?

That’s a big part of why you’re still in business. Testimonial postscripts are a great way to highlight how good you are at what you do, especially for high-value purchases, such as those made by B2B buyers.

P.S. Don’t just take our word for it. See how our solution helped [XYZ company] boost new customer acquisitions and sales over six months.

Pro Tip: It’s OK to brag a bit in the testimonial. The trick? Keep it quick, and keep it focused on end-user benefits.

Power to the Postscript

The P.S. is a powerful tool in sales and marketing for lead generation, customer engagement, and product purchasing.

The caveat? With great postscript power comes great email responsibility.

If postscripts become too long and involved, they lose the punchy impact that’s characteristic of their P.S. potential. If they’re too short and too generic, meanwhile, they’re easy for users to ignore.

Finding a balance means knowing your message, understanding your audience, and recognizing that when it comes to the postscript, less is more.

Around the globe, more than 300 billion emails are sent and received each day, on average. If you ask me, that’s 300 opportunities to market yourself in your email signature.

Many people treat their email signatures like an afterthought, which is a big missed opportunity. It’s a chance for you to tell others who you are, how to reach you, and where to find out more about you or your business.

So, what exactly should go in your signature?

Table of Contents

• What to Include in an Email Signature
• How to Make an Email Signature
• Professional Email Signature Examples

1. First and Last Name

Just like with snail mail correspondence, your name should always be included in your email signature so that the recipient of your message knows who it was from.

I like to make this my first line of text.

2. Affiliation Info (Such as Job Title and Department)

Closely following your name should be your affiliation information. Your affiliations could include your job title, your company or organization, and/or even your department.

In my opinion, affiliating yourself with a larger organization lends you more credibility, especially if it’s a recognizable organization.

3. Secondary Contact Information

Secondary contact information is important, too, so that the recipient knows how else to contact you. On this line, I tend to include phone, fax, or any other method of communication I want to emphasize.

In situations where you don’t want to cough up your direct line, I’d take this opportunity to promote your personal website as another way to get in touch.

4. Social Profile Icons

Your social media presence is a major part of your personal brand because it helps you gain a following in your space and shows people what you care about.

I feel like I can tell a lot about a person by what they post and how they portray themselves.

That‘s why it’s a great idea to include links to your social media pages in your email signature. It not only reinforces your personal brand, but it also helps people find new ways to contact and follow you.

Why use social media icons instead of simply text links? Because icons are more easily recognizable for folks skimming your signature — and they’ll stand out. According to research from NeoMam Studios, visuals shown in color increase a person’s willingness to read the rest of the content by 80%.

Check out the example below, made using HubSpot’s Email Signature Generator.

5. Call to Action

One of the smartest things you can do in your email signature is include a call-to-action. To me, the best email signature CTAs are simple, up-to-date, non-pushy, and in line with your email style.

Choose a CTA that aligns with one of your current business goals, and update it when those goals change. Here‘s an example of a HubSpotter’s email signature that includes a CTA for the HubSpot Podcast Network:

6. Booking Links

If you find yourself emailing back and forth with colleagues and clients who want to book meetings with you (like I do), make it easy for them by including a link to book your calendar right in your email signature.

There are many tools out there that‘ll help people book appointments. For example, if you’re a HubSpot Sales customer, you can easily share your personalized meeting link with anyone who you want to book a meeting with.

If you aren’t a HubSpot customer, one of my favorite meeting tools is Calendly, which is free for Basic and lets you integrate your Google or Office 365 calendar.

7. Industry Disclaimer or Legal Requirements

Some industries such as legal, financial, and insurance have specific guidelines on email usage and etiquette to protect private information from being transmitted.

For this reason, I’d recommend looking into the regulations your industry has in place and including a disclaimer in your signature about email transmissions.

Mail-Signatures offers a number of email disclaimer examples, including this one:

“The content of this email is confidential and intended for the recipient specified in the message only. It is strictly forbidden to share any part of this message with any third party, without a written consent of the sender. If you received this message by mistake, please reply to this message and follow with its deletion, so that we can ensure such a mistake does not occur in the future.”

8. Photo or Logo

I like to use an image to spice up my email signature. It adds a personal touch so that recipients you’ve never met can associate your name with your face.

Alternatively, you can also use the company’s logo to add more brand awareness to your email.

9. Pronouns

Adding your preferred pronouns to your signature is helpful, especially when emailing individuals you’ve never met. It also takes ambiguity away and ensures you’re interacting with others according to their preferences.

1. Emphasize your name, affiliation, and secondary contact information.

My ideal order for an email signature is my name, affiliation, and where else people can reach me.

Your affiliation could mean your job title, your company, your school, or a similar organization that you deem important to your recipients.

Your secondary contact information may include your personal phone number or website.

Here’s a sample email signature that hits on all three things described above nicely. Kevin’s first and last name are accompanied by his affiliation with the University of Connecticut. He also promotes his personal website so his recipients have another outlet to see his work and contact him for more information.

Want to create a signature like the one below? Use HubSpot’s Email Signature Generator.

2. Keep the colors simple and consistent.

In my opinion, branding is most effective when it’s consistent — and that includes your email signature. Adding color to your email signature is a nice touch that’ll help it stand out from the rest of your email.

Pro tip: If you do choose to use color, be sure to stick to one or two in addition to dark text. Use subtle highlights to match your logo or branding, like Brittany Hodak does in her email signature, below. Notice how her social media icons are the same blue hue as the ZinePak logo.

3. Use design hierarchy.

Good design is all about presenting your information in an easily digestible manner. Because your email signature is just a list of information, I’d recommend using hierarchy to direct readers’ eyes to what they should be reading first.

Pro tip: Scale your name up to a larger font so that it attracts the most attention, like you would on a resume. Then, pick and choose information to bold and color based on importance so you can guide people’s eyes logically through the design.

4. Make links trackable.

So you put a few links in your email signature, including your CTA and your social media icons. But is anyone actually clicking on them?

To figure out whether the links in your signature are actually attracting clicks and making an impact, I’d suggest you make those links trackable — just like you would any other link in your emails.

Follow these instructions to easily make a tracking link that helps you attribute traffic to your website to your email signature.

Pro tip: From time to time, you might switch up the format of your signature or the wording inside your signature to see what drives the most clicks.

5. Use space dividers.

There are ways to fit a lot of text into a compact area without compromising design.

Using space dividers within your design, as in the example below, is one great way to do this.

Pro tip: You can also use glyph dividers, which is the vertical bar symbol (i.e., |.)

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6. Include an international prefix in your contact number.

If you work with people around the world, don’t forget the prefix for your country’s code when you list your contact phone number.

Many people overlook this if they aren‘t used to dialing international prefixes themselves, but I think it’s really helpful for your international colleagues and clients to have it right there.

Here’s a list of country codes if you don’t know yours.

Here’s an example from Kit Smith, formerly of Brandwatch, a company that has offices in both the United States and Europe and works with international clients.

Including the U.S. country code makes it easier for folks in other countries to reach him by phone.

7. Make your design mobile-friendly.

According to Truelist, over a third of professionals open emails on their phone making it a prime method of communication for business and professional matters.

Here’s what this means to me: The more people who read email on mobile devices, the more you‘ll want to keep mobile users top-of-mind when you’re writing emails — including your email signature.

One major way to make your email signature mobile-friendly is to make your signature’s design easy to read and clickable for mobile users. This is where scale becomes really important.

Make sure your text is large enough to read on small mobile screens, and that your links and buttons are accessible for folks to tap on with their fingers.

Pro tip: Check out the example below, and note how much space there is between different clickable elements like the social media icons. These are great for tapping with your finger on a mobile screen so that users don’t accidentally tap on the Facebook icon when they meant to go to Twitter.

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8. Use an email signature generator.

If you‘ve tried all of these steps and you’re still not happy with how your email signature turned out, don’t fret — it happens to the best of us.

These digital sign-offs can be tricky to get perfect. Try a free email signature generator to do the heavy lifting for you instead.

Rather than choosing the colors, fonts, and layout yourself, this generator gives you several combinations to choose from. Simply add your information, photos, and links. Then choose your colors. Once you’re satisfied, you can easily add it to your email account.

9. Check your new email signature for quality.

Finally, as with any part of an email, make sure your signature looks as good as you think it does by testing it with various email clients.

Pro tip: Microsoft Outlook doesn‘t recognize background images, so avoid using those. Also, some email clients don’t load images by default at all, so I’d keep that in mind.

Professional Email Signature Examples

Below are some of my favorite email signature examples out in the wild.

1. Vertical Email Signature Example

Create an email signature just like this one with HubSpot’s free signature generator.

If you’d like your email signature to be low-effort and high impact while drawing attention to a call-to-action, I think this is a great option.

What I like: Set in a vertical layout, it not only includes social links for the owner, but it uses space effectively to pull the viewer’s eye to the CTA button at the bottom. And because of its narrow width, this email signature is ideal if many of your recipients will be opening their email on a mobile device

The best part? You can create your own signature using this exact same layout using our free email signature generator.

2. Beige Professional Email Signature Example

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This beautiful email signature example is image-based, and while we don’t recommend using image files for your signature, it still deserves a spot on this list.

What I like: This signature is available as an image template on Canva, and it drew my eye due to its lovely layout, fonts, and colors. The primary benefit of using an image as an email signature is that the fonts don’t change, allowing you to create a stronger branding story.

Remember: The font is determined by the recipient’s email client, not by you.

3. Shorthand Email Signature Example

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This simple email signature example, created by the team over at mysignature.io, uses shorthand to identify each piece of the sender’s contact information. The owner’s email and mobile phone are designated with the letters e and m, respectively.

What I like: This trendy move can differentiate your email signature from the rest. I recommend it if you’re specifically in a more informal or casual industry.

The only thing I might advise against is using such a light font and icon color, which might be more difficult for colorblind viewers to read.

4. Professor Email Signature Example

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This modern, eye-catching email signature example for a professor features a CTA, a line of social media buttons, and a paragraph of boilerplate GDPR language — which is critical in industries where you may require recipients’ private data.

What I like: In doing research for this post, we found countless email signature examples for professors and workers in academia. This one, by far, wins the prize in terms of design, professionality, and utility.

5. Instagram Influencer Email Signature Example

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Whether you’re an influencer on Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok, it’s essential to still have a professional email signature — especially if you often seek corporate partnerships and deals.

What I like: This signature includes a clever prompt for the recipient to download her media kit. Even more importantly, it includes a button at the bottom to “Like her on Instagram” — which is essential for professionals whose main key performance indicators are engagement metrics.

6. Simple Email Signature Example
Create an email signature just like this one with HubSpot’s free signature generator.

When in doubt, keep it simple. This email signature sample, available as a template in our free signature generator, includes all essential pieces of information with plenty of space in between.

What I like: At the bottom, the signature includes social links for those who’d like to learn more about you or your company. And if you edit it using HubSpot’s free email signature generator, you’ll find that you can add a photo of yourself, a CTA button, and more.

7. Formal Academia Email Signature Example

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If you’re ever in need of a formal email signature, I think this is a great example for inspiration. Created by the University of Illinois as guidance to its employees, this email signature example is effective, simple, and frills-free.

What I like: This is a nice option if you work in a traditional industry. I like that it includes a privacy disclosure at the bottom, which is especially important to include if you ever plan to share your emails with anyone.

8. Real Estate Email Signature Example

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This real estate email signature example made me wish I worked in real estate. But you can always adjust it to your needs using mysignature.io’s tool.

What I like: The profile photo includes a cool modern shading effect, and the social buttons at the bottom are more prominent, making this a fantastic fit if you’d like to draw more attention to your social accounts.

The one piece I’d reconsider with this example, if you’re going to use it as inspiration, is that the CTA is too close to the other two social buttons. If you’d like your call-to-action to have the entirety of your recipient’s attention, consider using small social buttons instead.

9. School Teacher Professional Email Signature Example

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With or without the image, I think this email signature example is a winner. It uses both bold and regular text to create a sense of structure, and includes boilerplate language about the confidentiality of the email.

What I like: The language at the bottom is in a lighter font, keeping the attention off of it. This is a solid example to follow if you don’t need to have a CTA in your email signature.

10. Horizontal Email Signature Example

Create an email signature just like this one with HubSpot’s free signature generator.

Take this spacious email signature example as inspiration if you’d like to include plenty of information — while also keeping the attention on your CTA all the way to the right. Available as a template on HubSpot’s email signature generator, this example also has space at the left for you to include social links.

What I like: Its simplicity and customizability is fantastic. And if you’d prefer to control the visuals of the signature down to the font, you can always screenshot it and use it as an image — just remember to include alt text.

Customize this email signature — or create your own — for free.

Best Professional Email Signature

The best professional email signature will be true to who you are both in and outside the workplace.

Once you include the basic contact information, the rest of your email signature is a blank canvas for you to share a bit of personality with each professional email you send.

Armed with these email signature best practices, you can create your own signature that aligns with your brand and gives your emails a little extra umph.

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

From crafting blogs to social media posts, marketers often find themselves puzzled over what the right character count is. It’s not always about the limits set by different platforms but rather the optimal number of characters for user engagement.

For example, you probably know the character limit for a post on X is 280, but did you know using less is actually more effective? (Hold tight — you’ll soon know why.)

We’ve previously discussed how to optimize your content for various platforms. Now, it’s time to understand the specifics of character limits, both mandatory and ideal, for different online channels, all in one place.

Below is a more detailed breakdown of character limits and ideal character counts for posts on your blog, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube.

What is character count?

Why Character Counts Matter

The Length & Character Count for Everything on the Internet

Show Your Character

Why Character Counts Matter

Every social media platform has its own character limit for posts. But as we mentioned earlier, it isn’t just about the character limits set by these platforms; knowing the ideal character count to use in your posts is key.

Let us delve into the top 5 reasons that highlight the importance of character count in your content strategy:

1. Optimizes for platform algorithms

Different social media platforms have different algorithms, most of which consider post length to boost content visibility. By keeping within an ‘ideal’ character count, you can ensure your post performs well in the algorithm‘s ranking system.

This makes your content more likely to appear in your audience’s feeds.

2. Enhances readability

Ever been confronted by a lengthy block of text? It‘s overwhelming, right? Shorter, concise posts with an optimal character count are easier to read and digest.

They look less intimidating and are more likely to be read fully, enhancing your message’s impact.

3. Improves message clarity

Abiding by a character count forces you to be concise and clear in your messaging. This eliminates unnecessary fluff and helps ensure your core message shines through clearly, improving its overall effectiveness.

4. Encourages sharing

Posts that are short and to the point are more shareable. They‘re easier for users to quote or repost, especially on platforms like X and Threads, where character limits are stricter, thus potentially increasing your content’s reach.

5. Enhances mobile user experience

With more people accessing social media platforms via mobile devices, character counts are becoming increasingly important.

Posts with ideal character counts are more likely to be mobile-friendly, offering a better reading experience for your mobile audience.

The Length & Character Count for Everything on the Internet

1. Blog Posts

Quick reference:

• Post length: 1,400 – 2,100 words
• Title: Under 60 characters
• Meta Description: Under 155 characters

Featured Resource: 6 Free Blog Post Templates

Post Body:

When it comes to the length of blog posts, there are a few different items to consider. For example:

• The average reading speed of native English-speaking adults remains commonly cited as 200-300 words per minute, based on the results of several studies.
• At that reading rate, the ideal post length is 1,400 to 2,100 words.
• That aligns with research previously conducted by Capsicum Mediaworks, which indicated that, on average, the top 10 results for most Google searches are between 2,000 and 2,500 words.

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But that‘s just the post body — let’s have a look at the other areas of text that comprise a full blog post.

Title

The length of your title depends on your goals and where it will appear.

Let’s start with SEO. Do you want this post to rank really well in search? It turns out that it often has to do with the dimensions of each entry on a search engine results page (SERP).

For Google, titles of search results are usually contained at a length of 600 pixels — which Moz measures as being able to display the first 50-60 characters of a title tag.

So, if you don’t want your title to get cut off in the search results, it might be best to keep it under 60 characters.

But when in doubt, you can double-check the length of your meta description and title tags with this handy tool from HigherVisibility, or you can use Moz’s title tag preview tool.

For Moz’s title tag tool, type in your headline, and the tool will show you how it would appear in Google results.

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Then, you can optimize your title for social sharing. On X, for example, consider that each post has a limit of 280 characters; however, if you include an image, that doesn’t count toward the limit.

But consider that even the average shortened URL takes up about 23 characters. That leaves you with about 257 characters left for the title and any accompanying text.

In our own analysis at HubSpot, we found that headlines between 8 –12 words in length got the most X shares on average, while headlines with either 12 or 14 words got the most Facebook Likes.

Meta Description

A meta description refers to the HTML attribute that explains the contents of a given webpage. It’s the short description you see on a SERP to “preview” what the page is about.

Moz notes that Google seems to cut off most meta descriptions — sometimes called snippets — after roughly two lines of text. However, there‘s some conjecture that, like title tags, it’s actually based on pixel count.

In any case, it amounts to about 160 characters, though this particular outlet recommends keeping it at 155.

Again, you can double-check the length of your meta description and title tags with this handy tool from HigherVisibility.

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2. Facebook

Quick reference:

• Status updates: 63,206-character maximum | Ideal length is 40 characters
• Video: 120-minute maximum | Ideal length is two minutes

Facebook’s character limit on status updates is 63,206. However, that’s far from ideal, says former HubSpot Social Media Marketing Manager Chelsea Hunersen.

“The social gurus will throw around the number 40 characters,” she says. “That data seems to be backed up by BuzzSumo’s ranking of HubSpot’s own Facebook Page.”

But why 40, specifically?

“Ideally,” Hunersen says, “you’ll want to use the copy in a status update to provide context for whatever you’re linking to.”

That said, she notes, the copy of the status update itself isn‘t as important as the copy in the meta title or meta description that gets pulled in when you insert a link into your post. That’s right — social media posts have their own metadata too.

“Often, people look at the image of the article and then directly down at the meta title and meta description for context clues,” she explains. “A lot of people don’t realize you can change those.”

Even on Facebook, it’s still best to keep your meta title to fewer than 60 characters, and to 155 for meta descriptions.

There are some resources available to those familiar with coding that let you play around with social media metadata character counts, like these templates. But unless you’re a developer, we recommend keeping it short and sweet.

Video

While Facebook allows a maximum of 240 minutes for most videos (excluding Stories and Reels), we wouldn‘t advise posting anything that long unless you’re doing a special, social-media-only screening of a full-length film.

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Facebook recommends keeping videos short to about 15 seconds so viewers are more likely to watch to the end.

3. X (Formerly Twitter)

Quick reference:

• Posts: 280-character maximum
  • Does not include images, videos, or polls
  • Ideal length is 240-259 characters
• Hashtags: No more than two
• Videos: Maximum length is two minutes and 20 seconds

Featured Resource: How to Use Twitter for Business

Marketers everywhere rejoiced when X finally eased up on its character count parameters, and such media as images, videos, and polls, as well as quoted posts, ceased counting toward its 140-character limit.

Still, the “Quote” feature remains available, providing even greater character-saving measures. That happens when you press the rotating arrow icon to post and then add a comment in the provided text box.

You’ve still got 280 characters all to yourself to comment.

Ideal Length Overall

X differs from other platforms in the sense that longer posts tend to perform better and get the most engagement.

According to SEO expert Kurt Gessler, posts with 240-259 characters tend to get the most likes.

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The same goes for hashtags. X recommends keeping your hashtags short, easy to remember, and easy to spell. The platform also suggests sticking to only one or two hashtags at the most.

Videos

You can post a video on X by importing a video or recording it using the X app. In any case, the maximum video length is two minutes and 20 seconds if you’re not subscribed to X Blue.

X Blue subscribers can upload videos of up to 60 minutes when posting from the website, and subscribers on the app can post videos of up to 10 minutes.

4. LinkedIn

Profiles

Here‘s a handy list of some of LinkedIn’s most important profile character maximums:

• Professional headline: 120
• Summary: 2,000
• Position title: 100
• Position description: 2,000 (200 character minimum)

Foote also notes that “if you select to also post on Twitter from LinkedIn, only the first 140 characters will show on your Twitter post.”

Featured Resource: How to Use LinkedIn for Business & Marketing

Original Content

With LinkedIn’s publishing platform, users can now compose and share original written content with their networks, or publicly. Of course, that comes with its own character counts, according to Foote:

• Post headline: 100
• Post body: 40,000

5. Instagram

Quick reference:

• Bio: 150
• Hashtags: Up to 30
• Captions: Ideal length is under 125 characters

Since Instagram is, first and foremost, a platform for sharing photos and videos, the primary focus is typically your visual content. However, it‘s always helpful to provide some context and let users know what they’re looking at.

Given that, here are some helpful character counts for the text you include with your visual content.

While Instagram doesn‘t seem to specify a maximum total number of caption characters, it does note that, within users’ feeds, the caption is cut off after the first three lines. For that reason, it’s advised to limit captions to 125 characters.

However, don’t leave out important information just for the sake of keeping your entire caption visible. Instead, front load it with crucial details and calls-to-action, leaving any hashtags, @mentions, or extraneous information for the end.

As for Instagram Stories, there doesn‘t seem to be a ton of detail on character limits there, either. However, because the text overlays the visual content — which is the focus — don’t obscure too much of the photo or video with a caption.

Here’s a quick example of a short Instagram bio from my colleague.

6. Snapchat

Quick reference:

• Character limit: 80 per post

Speaking of not obscuring visual content — that brings us to Snapchat.

Instagram Stories was, many believe, an effort to emulate the features of Snapchat, to create an opportunity for users to share quickly-disappearing photos and videos.

And again, because the focus here is on the visual, you’ll want to prevent distracting viewers from it with too much text.

And, if you‘re looking for more guidance, just look at this particular app’s name, remember the “snap” element of it — a word that implies brevity — and try not to ramble. Here’s a great example of how SXSW uses its captions efficiently:

7. YouTube

Featured Resource: YouTube for Business – A 30-Day Roadmap

Here we have yet another network that‘s focused on visual content, leading some to incorrectly assume that accompanying text, like titles and descriptions, doesn’t matter as much.

That’s not entirely false. As a video-hosting platform, YouTube should primarily be used to showcase a brand‘s quality videos. However, like any other visual content, it needs context.

People need to know what they’re watching, who it’s from, and why it matters.

Unfortunately, YouTube doesn’t appear to provide any specific parameters over its character counts — except for your channel description, which, according to the official help site, is limited to 1,000 characters.

But other than that, it seems that the only guideline available is the alert display that lets you know, “Your [title or description] is too long,” if you’ve entered too much text in either of those fields.

In this case, we would advise taking the same approach as adding text to support your visuals on Instagram and Snapchat.

Like the former, a video’s description is cut off after the first line or two, so frontload the most important descriptors and CTAs, leaving extra details for the end.

Show Your Character

As you set out to determine the length of your text, regardless of the platform, remember to do so with the user in mind.

Many of these channel-mandated character limits are established for that reason — to keep audiences from getting bored or overwhelmed.

Like anything else in marketing, it’s never an exact science despite the best data. We encourage you to follow these guidelines but don‘t be afraid to experiment if they don’t always work.

Test different amounts of text within your various channels, and keep track of how each post performs.

From there, you can make decisions about which types of content, as well as its accompanying titles and descriptions, are the most well-received by your audience.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in January 2016 and was updated in December 2019 for accuracy and comprehensiveness.