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I send the HubSpot Marketing Emails every day, so I’m pretty familiar with the types of marketing emails marketers can leverage. However, which ones gain the most engagement and which do not?

To answer that question, and to pass that knowledge on to you, we ran a survey with Glimpse, asking marketers which types of emails achieve the highest performance.

Here’s what I found:

4 Types of Emails That Get the Most Engagement

The four emails get the most engagement, according to our latest Glimpse survey.

1. Multimedia Emails

Multimedia emails include videos, photos, GIFs, and other elements to make its content stand out. 44% of the marketers in our survey say multimedia emails get the highest engagement.

It makes sense because a variety in media gives consumers more dynamic content to interact with and is more appealing than emails with only text.

For example, Society6 sent the below email featuring GIFs of dancing phones with changing cases to showcase the variety of cases available on the website.

It also features moving text with changing colors to emphasize the phrases “Today Only” and “Flash Deals.”

2. Basic Emails

When I think of basic, I usually think “boring,” but that doesn’t have to be the case with these emails.

39% of marketers say they get the most engagement through basic email formats that highlight a list of links, articles, or pages to click on with light imagery.

For example, this email I received from Amazon Prime highlights links to the films on its platform with clickable images that take me to where it’s available to stream.

Incorporating photos in your emails will help illustrate the products, services, or information you’re trying to convey and entice readers to click.

3. Discount Emails

Our survey found almost a third of marketers (31%) say emails promoting coupons, discount codes, free resources, or sales get the most engagement. Who doesn’t love a chance to save money?

Bear in mind, however, that the secret to the success of these emails isn‘t just their content; it’s also in their subject lines.

I get promotional emails highlighting deals all the time in my own inbox, and something I’ve noticed is that almost every subject line includes quantitative information about these coupons, discounts, and sales. See the example below.

Notice all the subject lines read:

• “50% off Art Prints”
• “Earn $7 rewards”
• “25% of everything”
• “Up to $100 off”

Include quantitative information about deals in the subject line to immediately let subscribers know why they should click and open your email.

5 Types of Emails That Get the Least Engagement

For context, our surveys asked marketers to name the point out the types of emails that gain the most engagement. The emails in this list are mentioned because they got the least amount of votes from marketers.

1. Product/Service Announcement Emails

Only 24% of marketers say emails announcing new products yield the most engagement. That said, I still find a lot of value in sending product and service announcements via email — you just have to do it right.

To make your product/service announcement emails stand out in your recipients’ inboxes and boost their engagement, really lean into personalization.

Use the information you have about your consumers to send targeted product emails that are relevant to the recipient. For example, let‘s say you’re a pet supply store.

If you‘re selling a new cat toy, only send that product announcement to cat owners on your email list or to recipients who often buy cat supplies. And if you’re now offering dog grooming services, only send the information to subscribers who often purchase dog supplies.

2. Article-Style Emails

Only 23% of marketers in our survey say article-style emails with original content yield the most engagement.

Admittedly, it’s not my favorite type of email to receive. Like most consumers, I only spend a few seconds reading an email to scroll to the next or go about my day.

In fact, people spend, on average, only 9 seconds reading an email. So, article-style emails aren’t the most fruitful emails marketers can send nowadays.

Instead, I suggest doing what I do for the HubSpot Marketing Emails: include a short excerpt of articles or blog posts in the email and include clickable links and images so readers have the option to read the full article on your website.

Even if recipients don‘t read the full article, they’re at least more likely to click and go to your website.

3. Emails Promoting Contests/Competitions

This took me by surprise because I love a chance to win, but only 18% of marketers said emails promoting contests and competitions yield the most engagement.

However, I wouldn’t let that statistic dissuade you from leveraging contests and competitions in your email marketing campaigns. Instead, make your contests interesting and fun for your audience to encourage participation.

For example, I recently received an email from Canva challenging subscribers to design a mood board using the graphic design platform’s tools. If I make a mood board and share it with Canva, I could win a prize.

To make the competition more interesting, Canva says users must showcase their work on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) along with the brand’s hashtag #CanvaDesignChallenge for a chance to win.

Canva can then repost and share these creations as user-generated content.

It’s a clever idea because the challenge does the following:

• Creates a fun and engaging experience for users
• Showcases the brand’s tools and features
• Boosts brand awareness on social media via hashtags and content sharing
• Leverages user-generated content

So, to get the most out of your email contests and competitions, integrate social media and user-generated content in a way that is simple, engaging, and fun for recipients. Furthermore, use the competition as an opportunity for recipients to experience aspects of your product or service.

4. Educational Emails

Just 17% of marketers say educational emails about their industry rather than products or services get the most engagement.

This makes sense because consumers are typically less concerned with industry insight than they are with the products and services that could benefit them.

If you want to leverage these kinds of emails, make sure you let you audience know how the information benefits them and tie it back to the products and services you offer.

For example, this email from InVideo shares a quick blurb of valuable information:

“The use of apt text and text styles in videos can have a positive impact on several metrics, including watching time, engagement, and overall retention.”

The email then ties the information back to its service with a call to action:

“Find one that best goes with your content.”

The text is followed by an image showing the different kinds of text and text styles available on the platform.

In a way, the email presents a possible problem (you need the right apt text and text style), and then it presents the company’s products/service as a solution (look at all the text options they have).

Do the same in your own educational emails.

5. Event Announcements

Finally, only 10% of marketers say emails announcing events, such as conferences, livestreams, and webinars get the most engagement. To boost the engagement of these kinds of emails, follow the same advice I gave for educational emails.

For example, let’s say InVideo is hosting a webinar about choosing the right text style for videos. The email could have the same email message as the one above:

“The use of apt text and text styles in videos can have a positive impact on several metrics, including watching time, engagement, and overall retention.”

This time, however, the email could then say:

“Sign up for our webinar to learn how to choose the right apt text or text style for your next video.”

InVideo could also sweeten the deal by offering email recipients 20% off on some of its features in exchange for signing up for the webinar.

What I‘ve learned as an email marketer is that the type of email you send will depend on the goal of your email campaign and type of content your recipients respond to. I’ve also learned every email has to offer value to your consumers.

So, make sure every email you send out ties back to what solutions your organization provides. Keep this in mind, and you’ll surely have a successful email marketing campaign.

In today’s data-driven world, the ability to transform data into actionable insights has never been more critical  for success. According to HubSpot’s research, 36% of marketers say data helps them reach their target audience more effectively.

Data-driven decision making is used in almost all areas of business, especially marketing. Why building the right strategy will lead to solid ROI, doing so can be complex and time consuming. .

In this post we’ll help by covering:

• What Data-Driven Decision Making Is
• How to Build Data-Driven Decision Making Processes
• Benefits of Data-driven Decision Making
• Data-Driven Decision Making Examples

Data-Driven Decision Making Process

1. Define the objective.

Begin by clearly defining the goal or problem you need data to address. You’ll also want to determine how you’ll measure your success and  key performance indicators (KPIs). You can also leverage strategies like SMART goals to ensure your goals and objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound .

2. Collect and prepare data.

Gather relevant data from sources like internal databases, surveys, customer feedback, market research, or external sources. Clean and prepare the data by removing duplicates, addressing missing values, and ensuring consistently strong data quality. Then, use tools like dashboard, spreadsheets, or graphic software to transform the data into a usable format for analysis.

3. Analyze your data.

Tools like Marketing Analytics & Dashboard Software measures performance

Use data analysis and data visualization to gain insights from your collected data. 

Look for patterns, trends, correlations, and anomalies to understand the relationships within the data and identify potential opportunities or areas of concern.

Not an analytics pro? Tools like HubSpot’s Marketing Analytics & Dashboard Software can help you record and measure marketing performance data with built-in analytics, reports, and dashboards.

4. Interpret the findings.

Compare how your results stack up against your goals and objectives.. 

Identify key insights and draw conclusions based on the patterns or trends observed. Consider the limitations, assumptions, and potential biases that could have impacted the data and how that could affect the quality of the decisions made. .

5. Evaluate options for decision-making.

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Identify a handful of ways you can respond to, or make decisions based on, your data. 

Then, with tactics like cost-benefit analysis, SWOT analysis, or decision trees, compare the potential outcomes and risks of each potential decision, carefully considering different scenarios and trade-offs..

6. Make your decision. 

Select the best decision option after  considering youranalysis findings, goals, and any constraints. 

Involve key stakeholders in the decision-making process, communicating with and gaining feedback from them to ensure alignment and buy-in.

7. Implement and monitor your next steps.

Implement the chosen decision and track its progress against relevant KPIs, milestones or other performance data.

8. Learn and iterate

Lastly, continuously assess and refine your strategy based on any new data and feedback.

Analyze the results, including successes and failures, and incorporate the learnings into future decision making. 

Use a feedback loop to ensure data-driven decision making becomes an ongoing practice. This way, you can set the stage for continuous improvement and adaptation.

Benefits of Data-driven Decision Making

Different teams gain different benefits from data-driven decision making. In this section, we’ll go over how marketers, sales professionals, and service professionals can leverage data to their advantage.

For Marketers

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1. Targeted and personalized marketing

How can you create great content or campaigns for people you don’t know? 

With that question in mind, it’s not shocking that one-third of marketers say that the biggest benefit of data is being able to better target prospects. 

Data analysis helps you  understand your audience’s preferences, behaviors, and demographics, allowing you to create highly targeted and personalized marketing campaigns. This leads to better engagement and higher conversion rates.

For example, if you have a global audience, you might want to know which social platforms are used abroad and cater campaigns on those channels to audiences in different time-zones. This way, your content meets them where they are. 

2. Optimized marketing budget allocation

In uncertain economic times, marketing budgets are more scarce than ever. This is why 36% of marketers say one of the top reasons they leverage data is to justify their spend.

By analyzing data on marketing performance across different channels and campaigns, you can allocate your budget more effectively. This ensures that resources are invested in the most impactful areas, maximizing return on investment.

When you’re struggling to get budget, the same data can also help you determine where you might be spending too much, helping you reallocate spend quickly when tactics that once yielded ROI lose steam.

3. Improved campaign performance and ROI

Marketers, like those we surveyed above, know that data is power when it comes to developing and measuring key strategies and campaigns. By monitoring key metrics, you can make data-backed adjustments to optimize your campaigns or tactics for better results and higher ROI. 

Not to mention, your data and findings could also spark ideas for new campaigns or initiatives.

“Data should be one of the first things you look at when brainstorming new marketing initiatives,” says Pam Bump, Head of Content Growth at HubSpot. “Even when I’m trying to come up with a completely new idea, I’ll look at past campaigns’ performance, use SEO or social listening dashboards to determine traffic potential, and sometimes perform surveys to ask prospects in my target demographic what they’d like to see.” 

Bump isn’t alone, while 32% of marketers say strong data leads to ROI, 31% say it helps prove the value of their work — which can be vital to marketing budget, roles, and career growth In today’s economy.

4. Enhanced customer segmentation and targeting

Every prospect is unique. While you shouldn’t launch a giant campaign for each of them, the right data can help you break your audience into demographic or preference-based segments and cater your tactics to each group.

By leveraging data, you can segment your audience more accurately based on various criteria such as demographics, interests, or behavior. This allows you to tailor your marketing efforts to specific segments. 

5. Predictive analysis and trend identification

You can identify patterns, trends, and emerging market opportunities by analyzing historical and real-time data. 

Predictive data helps you stay ahead of the competition, adapt to changing customer needs, and make data-backed predictions.

6. Improved customer experience and satisfaction

Better understand customer preferences, pain points, and behavior at every touchpoint by analyzing data. You’ll be able to deliver a personalized customer experience, resulting in higher satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.

7. Continuous improvement and optimization

Data-driven decision making provides marketers with insights into what works and what doesn’t. By continuously monitoring and analyzing data, marketers can make data-backed optimizations to your strategies, campaigns, and tactics.

How Data-Driven Decision-Making Benefits Cross-Team Alignment

Whether you’re a marketer who doubles as a sales or service rep at a small company, an entrepreneur wearing all the hats, or focused on better aligning your campaigns with sales and service department efforts, it’s important to know how data-driven decision making impacts the whole funnel (and can drive more connected experiences between your brand, prospects, and customers).

Data-Driven Decision Making in Sales

1. Improved Sales Targeting

By analyzing data, sales professionals can identify and prioritize your most promising leads. It also can help you determine when marketing tactics aren’t generating interest from ideal buyers. By digging into sales targets, buyer persona and lead data, teams across your company  can  focus their time and efforts on engaging prospects with the highest likelihood of converting, resulting in improved sales efficiency, higher closing rates, and revenue attributed to your efforts.

2. Enabled Personalization

As marketers, we’ve seen how personalized campaigns can meet different types of buyers where they are (ideally, at the right place and right time to learn about a product). Data-driven insights also help enable sales teams to understand customers’ preferences, behavior, and pain points. 

Armed with this information, you can tailor your whole funnel – from marketing content, to sales pitches, and to customer solutions to specific customer needs, leading to higher engagement, better conversion rates, revenue, and even customer loyalty.

3. Increased team productivity.

HubSpot’s Sales Reporting & Performance Management Software tracks your sales teams’ progress

Sales leaders can identify and share best practices with your team. By analyzing data on successful tactics, strategies, or approaches, you can learn from your teammates and replicate successful sales techniques, leading to improved overall team performance.

For example, HubSpot’s Sales Reporting & Performance Management Software enables you to track your sales team’s progress and performance. You’ll be able to report on pipeline revenue, track target attainment, monitor your team’s sales activities, and unlock additional rep performance with deep coaching insights.

How Data-Driven Decisions Boost Service & Customer Experience

1. Improved customer satisfaction

By analyzing data, service professionals can gain insights into customer preferences, behavior, and satisfaction levels. This helps you identify areas for improvement and deliver more personalized and tailored experiences, leading to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.

2. Efficient resource allocation

Data-driven decision making helps you improve resource allocation by understanding demand patterns, peak times, and resource use. This ensures that resources, such as staff, equipment, or inventory, are allocated effectively, resulting in improved efficiency and cost savings.

3. Proactive issue resolution

By monitoring and analyzing data, you can identify potential issues or trends before they become major problems. This allows you to take proactive measures to address or prevent issues, resulting in faster resolution times and improved customer experience.

4. Enhanced service personalization

Data enables you to gain a deep understanding of individual customers, their preferences, and their history with their organization. This allows for highly personalized service interactions, tailored recommendations, and a more personalized customer experience.

5. Better customer insights

Uncover customer insights with HubSpot’s Service Analytics tool

Data provides you with valuable insights into customer behavior, needs, and pain points. This understanding helps both marketers and service teams anticipate customer needs, offer relevant recommendations, and provide proactive content or support, resulting in a more seamless and satisfying customer experience.

Insightful tools can help you achieve this. With HubSpot’s Service Analytics tool, you can view reports on customer service data such as how your customers use your knowledge base, chat wait time, and customer satisfaction scores.

7. Continuous improvement

By collecting and analyzing data on service performance, you can identify trends, recurring issues, or areas for improvement. This enables you to make data-backed decisions to continuously evolve and enhance your service.

Data-Driven Decision Making Examples

World Wildlife Foundation

WWF wanted to gain a deeper understanding of user behavior on their website to ensure the success of its “Earth Hour” campaign in 2020.

They used analytics tools, including CMS Hub and Marketing Hub  to identify their most engaging content, enhance their content strategy across channels, and segment their user base to improve awareness for the event. Of course, this requires generating insights from data.

With data-driven tools and processes, WWF was able to better understand “users’ actions across our website, emails, and social pages, connecting the dots without having to rely on separate analytics tools for each channel,” says the Digital Communications Specialist at WWF. This, in turn, enabled their campaign to drive nearly 9500 newsletter signups. 

HubSpot Blog

In 2019, the HubSpot Blog had driven thousands of Page 1 search rankings and millions of organic (or search-based views) annually. But, we wanted to be less reliant on Google algorithms (which can drastically change traffic patterns when tweaked)

Pam Bump (also quoted above), leveraged historical data from blog posts, email campaigns, social media posts, and backlink profiles to build a content strategy around non-search content (which we call non-organic content). 

While the content strategy drove half a million views in year one, Bump continued to use performance data to further implement, refine, and scale it, without negatively impacting our winning SEO tactics. 

Today, “Non-Organic” content annually drives well over 9 million views, thousands of email and social engagements, and countless high-authority backlinks (coincidentally boosts search authority and organic traffic).

Get Started With Data-Driven Decision Making

Data is powerful. Without it, you’d be making decisions in the dark. Get started with HubSpot’s analytics and reporting tools.

As a marketer who frequently writes SEO-optimized content, I can confidently say that link-building is an essential aspect of SEO.

I‘ve found that it’s a cost-effective marketing principle that allows me to advertise on other reputable websites for free while gaining high-quality referral traffic.

If you’re unsure what link building is, it means creating links on other websites to increase search engine rankings and drive referral traffic to your site.

I typically embed links to my site via forms of content, including blog posts, infographics, articles, press releases, and images.

The process may sound time-consuming, but there are plenty of link building tools available to help you along quickly and efficiently. Let’s explore some link building tools you should check out.

Best Link Building Tools for SEO

1. Mailshake
2. Ahrefs
3. Check My Links
4. Screaming Frog
5. Scrapebox
6. Hunter
7. Semrush
8. Respona
9. BuzzSumo
10. Pitchbox
11. HARO
12. MOZ Link Explorer
13. Majestic
14. Help a B2B Writer

Best Practices

Best Link Building Tools for SEO

1. Mailshake

Mailshake is a simple-to-use software that sends email requests for link building, guest posting, and networking opportunities. The software allows you to choose from a collection of message templates, personalize your favorite, and send.

This strategy improves your email campaign‘s effectiveness and your business’s overall efficiency.

In addition to saving you time, Mailshake allows you to monitor replies, clicks, and more. The tool costs $29 per month, making it an affordable link-building software solution for marketers starting with their cold email outreach.

2. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a powerful, well-rounded SEO software that provides several link building treats. With Ahrefs, you can analyze backlinks and referring domains, narrow them down with filters, and even secure your profile against suspicious links.

The full suite of options lets you do anything you need your SEO link building software to do.

Ahrefs also features a speedy crawler that crawls over four million pages without delay. Find link prospects by viewing your competitors’ data — including their top linked pages, new links, broken links, and more.

To access Ahrefs, sign up for a seven-day trial and choose the best plan that fits your needs and budget after the trial expires.

3. Check My Links

Check My Links is a free Google Chrome extension that crawls through any web page to check for broken links.

It’s one of the fastest link checkers you can use, and it registers and reports all of the broken links on a website within 20 to 30 seconds.

This gives you a significant advantage when contacting websites to promote links.

After checking a site with Check My Links, you can compile the broken links that are most relevant to your subject matter and propose replacing them with your functional links.

Hopefully, the site’s owner will appreciate you pointing out the broken links and offering a solution and will update the post with your replacement links ASAP.

4. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is another popular software among SEO experts. It’s able to monitor link building profiles and generate accurate reports automatically.

Screaming Frog‘s most notable value is that it enables you to thoroughly understand your backlink profile and the other factors that impact your website’s current search ranking.

As a link building software, it ensures all your links work correctly.

Screaming Frog has a free and paid version, highlighting broken links and generating reports. However, for $149 per year, you can enjoy all of the software’s features and unlimited website crawling.

5. ScrapeBox

ScrapeBox is a comprehensive link building software that pulls links from search engines that match your keywords. It‘s helpful to analyze your competitors’ link profiles to understand where you should target your link building efforts.

You can even scrape hundreds of proxies to be used in other link building SEO software.

ScrapeBox offers several significant advantages for your link building campaign, including the competitive edge of seeing into other brands’ link profiles.

It also allows you to add custom search engines and collect the usual URLs and their proxies.

6. Hunter

This comprehensive platform allows users to set up and manage link building outreach campaigns. I’m especially impressed by its features, such as:

• Domain Search: This feature helps users find a point of contact within a company by quickly providing publicly available email addresses associated with the website as well as confidence scores, department filters, and detailed sources.
• Email Finder: Just enter the website and name of the prospect you’re trying to contact, and Email Finder will give you the verified address you need.
• Email Verifier: This tool verifies the emails on your list to ensure you’re sending emails to the correct contacts.

7. Semrush

Semrush has a couple of features that are valuable for link building. One feature is the Link Building Tool, which helps users build backlinks at scale. It identifies link building opportunities by analyzing target keywords and competing websites.

You can then take that information and set up an email outreach campaign. The feature also includes built-in reports to monitor the campaign’s effectiveness.

Another feature is BackLink Gap, which analyzes your competitors’ backlink profiles so you can find untapped link-building opportunities. BackLink Gap shows what websites link to your competitors but not your website. You can then target those competitors in your campaign.

8. Respona

This link-building outreach platform comes with various pre-built campaigns to boost organic traffic. Some of my personal favorites are:

• Link-Insertion: Finds relevant, non-competing articles to link back to your site.
• Skyscraper Technique: Discovers backlinks to the the top search results for your keywords.
• Product Reviews: Gathers reviews for your product.
• Podcast Outreach: Finds interview opportunities on podcasts within your niche.

9. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a brand monitoring and content discovery tool that offers many perks. For example, the tool allows you to discover and track domains that link to your competitors.

Even better, you can export those domains to a spreadsheet for reference in your next link building campaign.

You can also set up alerts for when a website links to your competitors. Finally, BuzzSumo also tracks your own backlinks and sends alerts when you get a new backlink.

10. Pitchbox

Pitchbox provides several ways to find prospects and build links. With Blogger Outreach, you can find and contact blogs within your niche to post about your products and services and link to your website.

You can also use Pitchbox’s many templates to execute link building strategies. And if you already have prospects, you can import them into a spreadsheet to be referenced in your campaign.

11. HARO

Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is mainly a resource for reporters looking to gather sources; however, it can be a useful link building tool if used correctly.

I use HARO to secure backlinks in different publications and both small and large media outlets. The New York Times and Mashable, for example, are reachable via HARO.

All you need to do to see the benefits is sign up to be a source on the platform.

You‘ll then receive email requests from journalists needing your expertise or information, which you can offer, and they’ll typically link to your website in their content.

12. Moz Link Explorer

This tool from Moz is an excellent way to stay competitive. All you have to do is enter the URL of the website or page you want link data for. Then, you can see all of their backlinks and receive metrics, like the site’s domain authority.

13. Majestic

Majestic offers information regarding the number of backlinks a website has, referring domains, and anchor text analysis.

But its standout feature is its Topical Trust Flow, which measures how many links a website has from trusted “seed” websites.

14. Help a B2B Writer

Help a B2B Writer works the same as HARO, but it’s a service for content marketers rather than journalists. As you would on HARO, you register as a source with Help a B2B writer and you get daily emails with source requests.

You can also select specific categories to get relevant emails that suit your niche.

Link Building Best Practices

The bare-bones definition of link building is strategically acquiring links pointing back to your website to increase organic rankings and drive referral traffic.

However, successful link building is more than that — it also means carefully considering where you place your links, the type and format of the links, the links’ anchor text, and how diversified the backlink portfolio is.

I’ve found these best practices to be practical parts of an overall link building strategy:

• Create excellent content: The more valuable and engaging your content is, the more likely you can earn coveted spots on popular websites. I always ensure my content is easy to read, with helpful information like stats, quotes, and other trustworthy data.
• Keep links relevant: The links should also lead back to high-quality and relevant information on your site. Search engines emphasize relevance, which is another reason targeting websites within your industry is important.

For example, if my site offers professional cleaning services, linking to a site offering cleaning equipment would be more relevant than linking to a sports equipment company.

• Less is more: I’ve realized that placing a few links on high-quality sites is much more effective than putting a more significant number of links on suspicious or spammy sites.

For instance, with the correct social media management tools, you can make the most of your link building software on the most visible online platforms. It’s all about quality over quantity.

I also recommend diversifying your link portfolio to have a mix of different kinds of links.

• Build relationships: Popular blogs are quickly becoming where we go for reliable, relevant news for almost any industry. Take advantage of the existing audiences on blogs in your industry by commenting on posts or even guest blogging. Blog comment links won‘t pass any clout, but they will grab the author’s attention.

If you are adding value, that will make it easier to partner up on content opportunities. Similarly, developing strong ties with industry influencers and reputable authors can help you add well-placed links to your arsenal.

• Aim for resource pages: One of the more proven link building strategies is to get links included on a popular resource page. Websites often list helpful links and resources for specific topics, such as a recipe page on a food blog centered on a particular restaurant.

If you have a recipe or related content to share, you can contact the website’s author to ask if they could include your links on the page. It can become a home run if it fits the page and your brand well.

Link building is essential for the success of any online business, which you can measure by the volume of targeted traffic to your website.

By following proven best practices and investing in the best SEO link building software, you can ensure that traffic and prosperity remain high.

We’ve all been there: staring intensely at the screen, willing ideas to come to our minds.When words or ideas aren’t shooting out of our minds or fingertips, we know we’ve entered a writers’ block rut.

This is where brainstorming tools come in. By helping us generate and organize ideas, they can help both individual marketers, or teams who are always brainstorming. 

With features like virtual whiteboards, mind maps, and voting systems, today’s brainstorming tools foster efficient idea generation and collaboration among team members, regardless of their physical location.

In this post, we will cover:

• AI Brainstorming Tools
• Collaborative Brainstorming Tools
• Note-Taking Brainstorming Tools
• Free Brainstorming Tools
• Brainstorming Templates
• Brainstorming vs. Mind Mapping

AI Brainstorming Tools

HubSpot AI Content Writer

Get started with the AI Content Writer

HubSpot AI Content Writer is a brainstorming tool that can help you when you’re stuck. If you need to create content, whether it’s an email, a landing page, a blog post, or a social post, you can tell the software the audience you’re writing to, the message you want to communicate, the length, and the tone you’d like to convey.

For example, I gave it a prompt to brainstorm ideas for a blog post about how to set up an e-commerce shop. In return, I received a list of blog post ideas I can pursue.

You can also use AI Content Writer to generate outlines, headlines, and content ideas in a pinch. 

Price: HubSpot AI Content Writer is available as part of CMS Hub, which offers a free version, Starter at $23 per month, Professional at $360 per month, and Enterprise at $1,200 per month.

Collaborative Brainstorming Tools

Lucidspark

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If you like sticky notes, Lucidspark might be the brainstorming tool for you. The software is an interactive whiteboard that supports real-time collaboration by allowing you to chat, leave comments, react with emojis, and vote on ideas. You can simply type your ideas on a sticky note, or use drawing tools to mark something up, and drag or share your thoughts to the canvas. 

Lucidspark also offers customizable brainstorming templates for brainwriting, concept summaries, storyboarding, mind mapping, and wireframes. Lucid supports basic Excel import for Individual and Team accounts.

Pricing: Free version available. Individual at $7.95, Team at $9 per user, and custom pricing for Enterprise.

Miro

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Like Lucidspark, Miro is a collaborative brainstorming tool that fosters an open teamwork style with a whiteboard user experience. It also offers more than 200 brainstorming templates includingstickies, user story maps, and brainwriting. Additional features like chat, comments, sticky notes, and video allow you to bounce ideas off your team and gather feedback.

Miro can also import data from spreadsheets and integrates with popular tools like G Suite, Microsoft Teams (and Excel), Slack, and Zoom.

Pricing: Miro offers a Free version, Starter at $8 per member per month, Business at $16 per member per month, and custom pricing for Enterprise.

Milanote

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Milanote is another online whiteboard that enables you to collaborate with teams. You can write notes and to-do lists; upload images, Excel documents and design files; save text, images, and links from the web; and add notes and photos from your phone.

Unlike similar whiteboarding tools on this list, Milanote’s geared towards design and creative teams with its ability to support design files.

Pricing: Milanote offers a free version with paid plans starting at $9.99 per person per month and team upgrades starting at $49 per month (billed annually).

Note-Taking Brainstorming Tools

TheBrain

 

TheBrain is a note-taking brainstorming tool with AI features. It aims to digitize your thoughts and organize everything you need for brainstorming in one place by enabling you to take notes and save files, web pages, images, and emails to the platform. Though it’s note-heavy, you can also structure and visualize the writing with outline view, thought icons, and embedding of images, videos, and links into your notes.

You can also generate outlines and content by leveraging TheBrain’s AI capabilities.

Pricing: Free version available. Pro Service at $15 per set per month, Pro License at $219 one-time, and Pro Combo (License and Cloud Services) at $299 per seat per year.

Evernote Teams

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Evernote Teams is a note-based collaboration tool with brainstorming features. You can access shared notebooks and spaces and collaborate in real-time by editing notes with team members.

Evernote Teams integrates with Google Suite, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.

Pricing: Free trial available. Pricing available upon request.

Free Brainstorming Tools

HubSpot Campaign Assistant 

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HubSpot Campaign Assistant is a free AI-powered brainstorming tool for marketing campaigns. If you’re encountering roadblocks, Campaign Assistant can help you brainstorm marketing campaigns, whether you need copy for a landing page, marketing email, or Google ad.

You can share details about your campaign and select a tone of voice that aligns with your brand. With just a few clicks, you’ll receive copy highlighting your selling points and incorporating your desired call to action. 

For example, when I used this tool to create an email marketing campaign for an online Halloween sale at a costume store that also sells Halloween home decor, I gave the tool a description of what the campaign was about, key facets my audience should know about, a call-to-action, and a writing style. 

Within seconds, Campaign Assistant generated a ready-to-use email in an excited and humorous tone.

Pricing: Free.

Google Docs

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You’re probably already familiar with Google Docs. It’s a classic brainstorming tool that enables you to type out ideas, and collaborate with your team by sharing docs. 

I use Google Docs on a nearly daily basis — in fact, I wrote the draft for this blog post on Google Docs. Before delving into a blog post, I would create a separate document for to brainstorm a good outline.

Google Docs also integrates with other popular brainstorming tools, making it a helpful supplementary software.

Pricing: Free

Brainstorming Templates

Brainstorming can be intimidating, especially when you’re staring at a blank slate. This is how brainstorming templates can help.

Brainstorming templates are pre-designed frameworks or structures that guide and organize the brainstorming process. These templates provide a starting point for teams to generate ideas and encourage structured thinking. Whether in the form of mind maps, SWOT analysis, or decision matrices, these templates help individuals and teams explore different angles, foster collaboration, and ensure that no important areas are overlooked.

By using brainstorming templates, teams can streamline their ideation process, stay focused, and ultimately increase their chances of generating innovative and effective solutions.

Here are some brainstorming templates:

• HubSpot’s Free Brainstorming Template 

• Asana
• Canva
• Lucidspark
• Miro

Brainstorming vs. Mind Mapping

Brainstorming and mind mapping are two distinct techniques employed in the creative process. While brainstorming focuses on generating a large quantity of ideas without any evaluation or organization, mind mapping involves visually organizing and establishing relationships among these ideas. In brainstorming, ideas can be random and diverse, allowing for a free flow of creativity.

On the other hand, mind mapping uses a central point as a starting point and branches out to connect related sub-topics and ideas, creating a structured and hierarchical visual representation. Brainstorming is the initial step in idea generation, while mind mapping facilitates the organization and understanding of these ideas for further development and implementation.

Get Started With Brainstorming Tools

From capturing and organizing ideas to leveraging artificial intelligence for content generation, brainstorming tools have become essential. With their intuitive interfaces and powerful features, brainstorming tools empower you and your team to unleash creativity, think outside the box, and find unique solutions to complex problems.

Get started with tools like HubSpot’s AI Campaign Assistant..

One great example of personalized marketing is the Charles Duhigg New York Times article titled, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets.”

Charles wrote this article as a sequel to a public showdown. In this incident, a furious father stormed a Minnesota Target store to demand why his teenage daughter received coupons for baby products.

Later, the father found out his daughter was pregnant.

It turns out the retailer was able to predict her pregnancy and personalized the promotions she received. How? The retailer collected ‌(completely legally) and analyzed a ton of data. Creepy or great marketing?

We’re still asking ourselves that question. Beyond this edge case, many brands exemplify how businesses should approach personalized marketing.

In this post, you’ll learn how personalized marketing works and see examples of brands that practice it without sounding creepy. Here are 14 brands that nailed personalized marketing in a fun, non-intrusive way.

14 Personalized Marketing Examples

1. Shutterfly

Shutterfly is a website and app for creating canvases, photo books, and calendars. It’s also great for designing personalized gifts with the faces of people or anything you want.

One of Shutterfly’s hallmarks is the creative emails it sends. But more than that is the personalized item offerings on its app.

If you download the Shutterfly smartphone app, you can create an account and permit Shutterfly to access your photos.

With this permission, Shutterfly automatically identifies photos with faces and places them on items you can purchase from the app. An example is these mugs.

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The Takeaway

If you sell personalized products, it’s helpful to show your customers what they could get. Seeing their photos or words related to their life on your product could entice them to buy.

However, when you do this, ensure you get explicit permission to go through someone’s information to pull this data. Without proper permissions, getting the personal data of customers could come off as untrustworthy or downright creepy.

2. Funko

Personalization can be a value proposition and generate buzz around your brand. Looking for an example? Check out Funko, a toy manufacturer best known for its bobblehead-like figures of pop cultural icons.

In 2023, the brand launched a new POP! Yourself line, where customers can make Funko figures of themselves, their families, and their friends. This allows customers to interact with the brand, creating something in their image.

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The Takeaway

Personalization gives your audience a unique way to interact with your brand. Funko figures have a cult following among collectors.

This new offering allows brand enthusiasts to create something totally unique — a figure they can’t get anywhere else.

Folks who know Funko lovers can also create a gift that their loved one doesn’t have in their collection.

3. Penguin Random House

Personalized marketing isn’t just about making custom products. Often, personalized marketing focuses on pairing your current products with folks who will love them.

For example, let’s take a look at book publisher Penguin Random House.

The publishing company has a wide range of titles, and book lovers can find something they’ll love in their library. The marketing team at the company makes the process a little easier with quizzes.

Readers can find out who their literary match might be, piquing their interest in buying the book.

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The Takeaway

Quizzes are both a sneaky way to offer recommendations and an interactive element that can keep your website visitors entertained. You can provide an easy, fun way to personalize their experience on your site.

4. Vidyard

I was in awe when my colleague, HubSpot Academy Sales Professor Kyle Jepsen, forwarded me an email with the comment, “Taking personalization to a whole new level.” This video shows personalized marketing at its finest.

Vidyard could have superimposed each recipient’s name onto the whiteboard in this video and kept the same script for each one.

But they didn’t stop there. Cole, the gentleman speaking in the video, not only addressed Kyle by his first name but also referred to his specific colleagues and the conversations he had with them.

The Takeaway

There’s only so much personalization you can achieve using text. But personalized videos? That changes everything. Personalizing your mixed media content is an interesting and often effective approach. “I mean, clearly, he made the video just for me,” Jepson said.

While this sort of data-driven personalization is memorable, it’s also extremely time-consuming. So, if you set out to create it, be absolutely sure you’re targeting the right people. There’s nothing worse than taking the time to produce something highly customized, only to discover you’ve sent it to someone who doesn’t have the decision-making power you need.

5. Tony Robbins & Dean Graziosi

Self-improvement experts Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi hosted a week-long Own Your Future webinar in 2021. After the webinar, registered participants received a personalized appreciation email. This email included a picture of Dean holding an envelope with each participant’s first name handwritten on it.

Damilare Olasinde, a content marketing professional, was one of the webinar attendees. He had this to say about how he felt upon receiving the email.

“It thrilled me to bits. Being a copywriter, I’m familiar with email personalization. But I’d never seen this before, and I loved it.”

The Takeaway

Email personalization typically revolves around custom subject lines, list segmentation, and personalized content. But Tony and Dean took their email personalization efforts up a notch.

This might feel like a cheap thrill, but it makes a difference to customers. For instance, Damilare knew that this seemingly handwritten address was probably a handwritten font generated by software. Still, the gesture warmed his heart.

As an entity, you need to find creative ways to use digital tools to create cute little moments like what Tony and Dean’s list members experienced. This kind of gesture is difficult to forget, even after many years. It can help you create loyal fans and customers for a lifetime.

6. IPSY

IPSY is another brand with personalization at the core of its business. This subscription service sends over five personalized, sample-sized products every month to its users. The grab bag’s selection is based on the product categories users are most interested in.

To get started, subscribers take a quiz to indicate their interests. Here, they can indicate what products they would like to receive and how frequently.

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The Takeaway

Beauty is a very personal category. Shoppers are looking for products that match their skin tone and shade range. The more personalized your product offering, the more personalized your marketing should be.

7. Amazon

Amazon’s personalization efforts aren’t exactly new. Since at least 2013, its product curation and recommendation algorithm has made headlines and case studies. And yet, every time I visit my Amazon homepage, I can’t help but scroll down and get a kick out of its recommendations for me. Have a look:

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Those who know me are aware of my borderline obsession with hip-hop, which is also the motivation for much of my online shopping behavior. Clearly, Amazon has taken notice.

And as I continued scrolling down, the fitting personalization went on. There was a header reading “For a night in” with recommendations on what to stream on Amazon Prime — an activity that comprises most of my weekend.

Its recommendations for dog and kitchen products were on point, as well. After all, those are the categories where I make the most purchases.

It’s not just me. When I asked my colleagues what their Amazon homepages looked like, they were equally pleased. Sophia Bernazzani, a fellow Marketing Blog staff writer (and self-proclaimed “cat mother of three”), had a plethora of personalized cat food recommendations, while Managing Editor Emma Brudner’s suggested Prime streaming titles came with the header, “Bingeable TV.”

“Amazon,” Brudner remarked, “You know me so well.”

The Takeaway

As Brudner said, Amazon seems to know us pretty well, though I do question why, as per the image above, its algorithm thought I might like to buy a pair of leg warmers. The nice thing about this personalization is that it can often lead to unplanned purchasing decisions.

For example, the purpose of my most recent visit to Amazon was to check out its personalization features for this article. But then, I discovered that Rapper’s Delight: The Hip Hop Cookbook was in my recommended books. Did I buy something I don’t need? Sure. But I was also delighted because Amazon brought it to my attention with very little effort.

The best part about these recommendations for users is the discovery of what they like — whether it’s a book, a tool, or an article. If you can provide this, customers will keep coming back because they know they’d only need minimal effort to find suitable products on your site.

8. Spotify

Music enthusiasts love Discover Weekly, a curated playlist of Spotify tracks a user may like. Like other personalization and recommendation platforms, Discover Weekly works with the help of an algorithm to determine a user’s “taste profile” based on listening behavior and the most popular playlists among the entire Spotify audience.

Here’s a great diagram that visually represents the process:

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As much as I use Spotify — which is close to daily — I’ve never bothered listening to my Discover Weekly playlist. So, I took it for a spin.

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The results were hit-or-miss. While it thrilled me to discover a few great songs that I plan to listen to again, many songs on my personalized playlist felt “meh.”

That said, those behind Discover Weekly acknowledge that personalization isn’t a perfect science. They also have suggestions for how to make it better, like adding the Discover Weekly songs you like to your library or skipping those you dislike.

For instance, “If users fast-forward within the first 30 seconds of a song,” Spotify Product Director Matthew Ogle and Engineering Manager Edward Newett said, “The Discover Weekly algorithm interprets that as a thumbs-down for that song and artist.”

The Takeaway

Most personalization initiatives will not be perfect. Even with a great algorithm, they are, at best, very educated guesses about what’s going to apply to your customers.

For that reason, it might be best to take a conservative approach to your recommendations, especially in the earliest stages of your personalization efforts.

This is an area where small-batch testing can be helpful. When you want to try out a personalization project or algorithm, identify your most active users and invite them to pilot the technology.

Listen carefully to their feedback — good and bad — and see what you can do to make it better.

Spotify continues to emphasize the importance of personalization on its platform. In 2023, the company announced that it would be launching a merch hub.

Here, avid listeners will get recommendations on merchandise based on their listening habits. That’s great if you’re looking to acquire cool band tees.

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9. ProWritingAid

User data is core to the marketing personalization strategy at ProWritingAid. As a free or premium user, you receive a weekly email from ProWritingAid with this subject line — Your Achievements Last Week.

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ProWritingAid can send this email because they track writing on multiple devices and platforms. They also know the number of grammar and style suggestions you accepted and even your most active writing days.

Beyond personalization, another goal of this email is to tap into the community of users. By including a “click to tweet” link, users can share their progress on X (formerly Twitter) and provide free PR for ProWritingAid.

The Takeaway

Data is like unrefined oil for your brand. If you run a SaaS business and you collect user data, think about how you’d refine that raw data and use it to personalize the experience of your users.

Consider it like a “help me help you” situation.

Customers subscribe to your product because they need help with specific tasks. Using the data they provide, you can help them know how they are faring and highlight opportunities for improvement.

That’s the type of action that can make a brand remarkable, fuel-free PR, and earn you new business.

10. Netflix

Netflix takes personalized marketing seriously, and they are extremely good at it. Using AI and Machine Learning, Netflix monitors and analyzes the movies and shows that users watch, consistently interact with, and rate.

The matching percentage (in green font) beside each program’s title shows how much a movie or show may appeal to a user. For me, Netflix nails this very well. But the personalization strategy of Netflix doesn’t end in-app.

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Netflix also sends personalized emails to re-engage its users. These unique emails inform users about shows or movies that match their preferences.

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The Takeaway

Customer experience should be central to your brand. Everything Netflix does is to make each user happy by predicting the content that a user may like.

While we can’t attribute Netflix’s steady revenue growth since 2013 solely to its personalized marketing strategy, there’s no gainsaying that it’s a great contributor.

11. OpenTable

OpenTable is a real-time online reservation network that helps restaurants run smoother shifts, fill seats, turn guests into regulars, and create and sell dining experiences. This business requires personalized marketing to thrive.

Like Netflix, OpenTable has figured out how to know its customers so it can send personalized content to them. See this email, for instance:

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Any customer who receives this email is likely to check it out. Why?

• They’ve used OpenTable before
• They know the email is for them
• They believe OpenTable knows their preferences

In the rare case that a user doesn’t like OpenTable’s recommendations, the final call-to-action (Find Your Table) comes in handy.

The Takeaway

Don’t add more work to a customer’s plate. The less work a customer does, the better. Imagine a customer wading through 52,000+ restaurants. That’s impossible.

Where possible, use your customers’ data to help them out. Learn and use their preferences to create personalized recommendations. This will help you reduce the timeline for your customer to buy a product or service.

Do this, and you may have more revenue in the bag.

12. Safeway for U

Personalized marketing isn’t just about putting the right products in front of shoppers. You need tactics to get them to buy.

That’s where personalized coupons come in. If a shopper sees that an item they like has a special sale, they’re more likely to add it to their cart.

Let’s take a look at Safeway, a grocery store with over 240 stores in the U.S. The business has an app called Safeway for U. At the store; users can scan barcodes that offer special discounts. From there, the app learns about buyers’ preferences.

Safeway can then notify customers when a product they’d like is available, personalizing the marketing experience.

The Takeaway

When personalizing your marketing strategy, look for opportunities to target coupons to the right audience. Personalization allows you to target the most compelling offers to the right audience.

This gets shoppers into the store and the right item into their cart.

13. Complain.biz

Complain.biz is a new online platform that helps consumers file complaints against businesses. The platform has a mission and belief that “consumers deserve to be heard and treated fairly by companies.”

In March 2023, the brand launched an AI complaint letter generator (powered by GPT-4) that personalizes and facilitates complaint filing based on thousands of successful examples.

This service empowers consumers to mail well-written complaint letters to a company’s headquarters.

The surprise? Complain.biz doesn’t send emails. They send traditional paper mail, which is vetted by a human expert.

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The Takeaway

The revolutionary GPT-4 technology presents new opportunities to serve consumers better. For instance, at HubSpot, we’re developing our content assistant and ChatSpot, which are powered by AI.

While this saves time and cost, sacrificing personalization to over-rely on AI may not be best. Complain.biz understands this, and that’s why they leverage AI to augment (and NOT replace) human intelligence.

Opportunities exist to provide consumers with valuable personalized experiences using AI. As a business leader, the onus is on you to look deep into your business to find how AI can help you create pleasant customer experiences.

14. Alibaba

Alibaba is a popular ecommerce giant that used the Ling Shou Tong initiative to reinvent convenience stores in China.

LST is a partnership program between Alibaba and traditional mom-and-pop stores that aims to modernize and digitize.

Among other benefits of this program, participants had access to the Ling Shou Tong app, which helped store owners automate their inventory management.

The app works by suggesting a list of goods most likely to sell based on each store’s sales data.

Brands like Mondelez, the owners of Oreos and other popular snacks, also benefited from this analytic data.

By relying on consumer insights gathered in these stores, Mondelez launched a single Oreo package that targeted customers who want affordable snacks.

LST has helped expand Alibaba’s offline reach and strengthen its brand recognition. As of the summer of 2019, 1.3 million of the 6 million convenience stores had adopted the LST initiative.

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The Takeaway

Accenture consulting rightly describes LST as an innovative disruptor. Upon closer examination, LST is simply personalized marketing applied to B2B retail. Nothing more.

In retrospect, the genius of the LST initiative is obvious, as no one was doing it at the time.

This prompts the question: What potentially disruptive ideas are hiding in your business data? As Michael Simmons remarks, great opportunities for growth and improvement are often “sitting right in front of us…but we can’t see.”

How can you uncover more of these invisible opportunities? There’s no straightforward answer to that. But one recommendation is to lean into Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why” philosophy.

As Simon describes in his book, great ideas often emerge when you’re maniacally committed to improving the lives of your customers.

Get Personal

One of the fundamental purposes of any personalization effort is to let your customers know you’re paying attention to them.

But, striking a balance between “we think you might find this helpful” and “we’re watching you” isn’t a simple process. Be sure to do careful research, planning, and testing before jumping into any large-scale customization initiatives.

Remember that while you might be a marketer, you’re also a consumer. With experiments like these, put yourself into the shoes of the customer and ask, “Is this delightful? Or is this creepy?”

If it leans toward the latter, find out what’s giving it that vibe, and try something different.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in December 2013 and has was updated for comprehensiveness in November 2019.

I send HubSpot’s Marketing Blog email newsletter daily (a not-so-subtle reminder to subscribe). So, it’s my job to keep a pulse on the latest email marketing trends.

As a marketer, I often stay on top of trends by reading up on marketing news, but when it comes to email, there’s a much simpler method — scanning my inbox.

I subscribe to a ridiculous amount of email lists, and while seeing 54,188 (and counting) unread emails on my phone is a little hair-raising, it provides a large pool of emails to draw from to find trends that stick out.

So, without further ado (and probably a little judgment), we’re going through my inbox to spot trends marketers need to know going into 2024.

Email Marketing Trends for 2024

The first few email trends we‘ll cover have to do with privacy changes and Apple’s latest developments, and the rest are straight from my overcrowded inbox. Let’s get started.

1. More Focus on Data Protection and Privacy

64% of online consumers have quit doing business or working with an organization for asking for too much personal information.

Furthermore, 86% of consumers believe companies and organizations collect more information than needed.

As a consumer, I‘ve declined products and services from businesses that seem too eager to gather personal information or indicate they know more about me than I’m comfortable with.

For instance, last year, I contacted a moving company to assist me as I relocated from Florida to Pennsylvania. I gave the company my email address and phone number but ultimately decided not to use movers.

Days after exchanging information, I was bombarded with emails from several other companies advertising their moving services. Somehow, after opting into the initial company’s mailing list, I was also added to several others.

The idea of my email and phone number being added to many strange lists that I did not sign up for made me uncomfortable. I immediately unsubscribed from them all — including the first company.

Data protection and privacy are important to consumers, so don’t ask for or use more information than you need in your email campaigns. Instead, give email recipients the option to unsubscribe and allow them to change their email preferences.

This improves data privacy, builds trust, and ensures a more engaged email list.

Data protection and privacy aren’t just trends; they’re also a legal obligation. Your emails must also comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and follow its guidelines for practices such as cold emails and mailing list building.

2. Less Focus on Open Rates

Speaking of privacy, I can‘t be the only email marketer trying to make sense of my open rates with Apple’s new Mail Privacy Protection (MPP).

In a small survey conducted with Glimpse, we found that almost one-third of marketers list open rates among the top two metrics they track when sending and reporting marketing emails.

However, MPP stops senders from using invisible pixels to collect information about a user, according to Apple. It also prevents senders from knowing when recipients open an email, and it hides their IP address so it can’t be linked to other online activity or be used to determine their location.

In other words, this Apple update prohibits marketers from seeing when and where users open their emails, the device the email is opened on, and the activity used to open it.

Now that open rate is no longer a reliable metric, we must shift our focus to the following metrics to get an accurate read on the success of our marketing emails:

• Click rate – The percentage of recipients who click a link in the email
• Conversion rate – The percentage of recipients who take action, such as making a purchase
• List Growth – How fast you’re gaining and losing subscribers
• ROI – Revenue generated for every dollar invested in email marketing

The metrics you track are going to depend on the goals of your email marketing campaign. So, I suggest evaluating what you want your next email marketing campaign to accomplish and tailoring the metrics you track to its purpose.

3. More Niche Content

At HubSpot, we recently started experimenting with newsletters focusing on specific niches within our content.

For example, our newsletter, The Lead, covers the latest news and trends in marketing. The newsletter has featured timely commentary on the “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” marketing campaigns, Popeye’s use of TikTok’s “Girl Dinner” trend, and more.

“Our marketing news content really compliments the educational, evergreen content in HubSpot’s repertoire,” Principal Marketing Manager and The Lead editor Lestraundra Alfred, explains.

She said, “By showing how companies are applying the latest marketing strategies in real-time, we’re able to keep our audience engaged, taking them behind the scenes of the latest and greatest campaigns to inspire their own work.”

Consider ways to amplify specific brand niches that interest your target audience. For example, if you’re a clothing brand, you can send out a newsletter focusing on the latest fashion trends and use it as a chance to showcase products that fit those trends.

4. GIFs

Maybe it‘s the millennial in me, but I still adore GIFs and use them despite Gen-Z’s overall disinterest in them. While GIFs may have fallen out of fashion on social media, I often notice them in my email subscriptions.

For example, the email below is from ThredUp and features a GIF emphasizing the opportunity for email recipients to win $500 of credit with the store.

GIFs are a great way to make your emails stand out and leave an impression on recipients. Use GIFs to emphasize deals and special events or illustrate jokes.

5. Gamification

Who doesn’t love games? Many brands entice email subscribers by offering a game-like experience. For example, I received this email from the clothing brand Midnight Hour.

The email announces I‘ve earned 176 points from my past purchase, bringing me closer to the number of points I’d need to win prizes such as free shipping.

Gamify your emails to create a fun, rewarding experience for your subscribers.

To gamify your emails, you can use a point system that customers can redeem for rewards and perks (like Midnight Hour), or you can encourage subscribers to purchase products through email for a chance to win a prize like free onboarding or three free months of a product feature that’s usually paid.

6. Challenges

This may fall into the gamifying trend, but I love this method so much that it deserves its own section.

One trend I‘ve seen pick up steam is including challenges in your email. For example, this email I received from Canva challenges subscribers to design a mood board using the platform’s design tools.

If I make a mood board and share it with Canva, I could win a prize! Cool, right?

From a consumer perspective, I love that Canva is giving me the chance to be creative and have fun in exchange for a possible prize.

From a marketer‘s perspective, it’s clever because it showcases Canva’s different tools and features by having users try them independently.

The challenge also integrates with social media by having users showcase their work on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) along with the brand’s hashtag #CanvaDesignChallenge.

Canva can then repost and share these creations as user-generated content.

So, in short, this one challenge:

• Creates a fun and engaging experience for users
• Showcases the brand’s tools and features
• Boosts brand awareness on social media via hashtags and content sharing
• Leverages user-generated content

In other words, it’s a versatile trend that can be the gift that keeps giving. For your own email campaign, think about a challenge that will entertain your consumers, create shareable moments, and showcase the best qualities of your product or services.

7. Engaging Feedback Surveys

I never really thought of feedback surveys as interesting until I started seeing emails like the one below from New York Comic Con.

I love that this email suggests the con doesn’t just want feedback; it wants attendees to help shape the con for the future.

It’s much more engaging and personal than a “How did we do?” survey. When sending feedback surveys, steer away from asking how consumers liked the product or service.

Instead, let them know their feedback and opinions are valuable in shaping the direction of your business.

It’s true. Consumer feedback is crucial to ensuring your organization is meeting the needs of your audience, so let them know their input has value.

8. Emojis

If you‘re like me, you’re subscribed to way too many email lists and find yourself aimlessly scrolling past hundreds of email subject lines. After a while, they blur together, but the ones that stand out typically include emojis.

Again, let‘s look at this screenshot from my inbox. At a glance, which email catches your eye first? It’s likely the ones with the emojis.

Bear in mind the blue dots indicate emails that remain unread, and it‘s no coincidence the only emails I’ve opened feature emojis.

And I’m not the only person dazzled by emojis; 53% of email recipients are likelier to open an email with emojis in the subject line.

So, in your next marketing email campaign, think about emojis that can illustrate and emphasize your message and capture attention. For instance, use snowflake emojis (❄) to underscore a winter sale.

9. Emphasis on Numbers

Almost every subject line in the marketing emails I receive focuses on quantitative information — just look at the screenshot below.

“50% off NOW … $7 rewards … 25% off everything.” Including quantitative information about deals immediately lets subscribers know why they should click and open your email.

So, if you’re offering holiday deals, include how much consumers can save in the headline.

10. Personalization

Personalization is less of a trend and more of a necessity in email marketing — but brands like Spotify are taking it to a whole new level with personalized incentives, news, and rewards.

I scroll past many emails in my inbox. But, if there is one sender I never ignore, it‘s Spotify. That’s because Spotify takes my listening history and uses it to recommend relevant concerts in my area.

For example, I love pop-punk and reggaeton, so Spotify emails me when artists like Fall Out Boy and Bad Bunny come to a city near me. Even better, Spotify alerts me to exclusive releases from artists I listen to the most.

A few months ago, Remi Wolf partnered with Spotify to release an exclusive EP for Spotify listeners. Spotify emailed Remi’s top listeners (including me) about the one-of-a-kind recording, saying, “Remi Wolf made you something special.”

Of course, I’m delusional — so I immediately clicked, thinking she knew who I was. And I bought the record.

On a serious note, brands are taking email personalization to higher heights by offering personalized experiences. To leverage this trend, use the information you’ve gathered about your consumers to deliver personalized deals, invites, relevant news, and exclusive products or services.

11. Exclusivity

Many brands add value to their marketing emails by providing exclusive offers only subscribers can access.

Recently, Amazon Prime sent exclusive invites to a screening of its game show “007: Road to a Million.” The email‘s subject line clarifies that the offer is special by reading, “You’re invited to an exclusive screening.”

Exclusivity can spark a fear of missing out (FOMO) and encourages subscribers to stay subscribed. For example, I have no interest in game shows, so I’m not attending the screening.

However, I am a fan of other Prime programming, and emails like this keep me subscribed so I can experience exclusive screenings of the shows I do enjoy.

12. FOMO

And exclusivity takes us to the final trend I spot in my inbox — the fear of missing out. No one wants to miss an opportunity to save money, get exclusive products, or have a one-of-a-kind experience.

And brands seem to know that because almost every email in my inbox plays on my intense FOMO.

Notice the emails above have a sense of urgency:

• “Hurry! 25% off boots is almost gone.”
• “LAST CALL Halloween Sale”
• “Last Chance for 45% off …”

Instilling a little FOMO in your emails will encourage swift action because consumers will know time is of the essence and they need to act now.

So, if your holiday sale is about to wrap up, or a product is about to sell out, let your audience know they’re about to miss out on the deal of a lifetime.

Sometimes it pays off to have an overflow of emails in your inbox.

If you’re an email marketer like me, it can inspire your next campaign and keep you informed on the latest trends.

When you get a chance, look through the thousands of emails in your inbox and take note of the trends you spot. Were there any that I missed?

Many of us have been there with the cup of noodles diet when money is tight. 

Sometimes, marketing teams also run into tight budgets. But that doesn’t mean you should stop your operations. There are still clever ways to run lean marketing campaigns.

In this post, we’ll highlight budget-friendly marketing campaign tips straight from experts.

Low-Budget Marketing Campaign Tips

Media Campaigns

Be Realistic

When you have few resources, one of the worst things you can do is have unachievable expectations. You’ll have to scale them down and be realistic.

“If you’re working with a tight budget, make sure that you have clear measurable KPIs and stop yourself from thinking of ways to grow the product from a paid perspective outside of the budget you have to spend,” says Dréa Hudson, Head of New Media Growth at HubSpot.

She adds that this can be challenging if you’re an ideas-first person, but also a lesson in prioritizing time, resources, energy, and budget. 

“Get creative with your earned and owned media, pull together a clear, concise value proposition that’s easy to share, highlighting what you’re able to offer any partner that can help you reach your goals,” Hudson explains.

Focus on Targeted Advertising

When you can’t afford an ineffective campaign, it’s crucial to ensure that your advertising efforts are reaching the right audience. 

Instead of casting a wide net, focus on targeted advertising to maximize your budget. 

Use platforms like Facebook Ads or Google AdWords, which offer robust targeting options based on demographics, interests, and behavior. This way, you can ensure that your ads are shown to people who are most likely to engage with your brand.

Pitch to the Press

Getting press coverage for product releases and campaign launches is a good way to generate buzz at no cost. 

Drafting a succinct press release and keeping media contacts organized is a good start to garnering coverage.

Use Free Promotional Channels

Source

Social media marketing and email marketing are both powerful ways to reach audiences on a tight budget. 

Editorial Campaigns

Embrace Collaboration

No one should operate in a silo — it takes teamwork to run a successful campaign. 

“Identify teams you’d like to work with within your company, then brainstorm or pitch mutually beneficial collaborations that can align your work around a unified goal.” says Pam Bump, Content Growth Team Manager at HubSpot. “If your team creates text-based blog content or marketing emails, but you need videos for your campaign to work, offer the video team content promotion in your text-based content if they create media related to your campaign topic.”

She adds that cross-team collaboration is beneficial for all parties involved.

“This way, you get the content you need to drive time on page or video search, and they benefit from the views, awareness, and potential channel subscriptions that come with promotion in your content,” Bump concludes.

Leverage User-Generated Content

Encourage your customers to create and share content related to your brand. 

User-generated content not only promotes your brand but also builds trust and credibility. 

Tory Bullock, YouTube Marketing Manager at HubSpot, says, “As brands look for new ways to extend their reach in a rapidly growing digital space, UGC is becoming a more viable and cost effective marketing strategy than ever…People trust people.” 

Run contests, social media challenges, or ask for testimonials and reviews to encourage user-generated content creation. This approach isn’t only cost-effective, but also helps in building a strong community around your brand.

Brand Campaigns

Outsmart, Not Outspend

When you’re on a budget, your best bet is to outsmart the competition. 

“Look for creative efficiencies by producing assets in waves or batches. And for brand media, find ways to outsmart, not outspend, your competition with memorable, contextual ad placements to drive outsized impact,” says Callie Wilkinson, Principal Brand Marketing Manager at HubSpot.

Use Affordable Tools to Streamline or Optimize Campaign Work

Get started with HubSpot’s Campaign Assistant

Software comes in handy when you’re running campaigns on a tight budget. Tools like HubSpot’s Campaign Assistant can help you generate content for campaigns ranging from emails to landing pages.

For example, I took on the role of owner at a costume store and created a landing page for a Halloween sale. 

Campaign Assistant prompted me to summarize the campaign, list key factors people should know about, decide a call to action, and choose a writing style. In seconds, I got ready-to-use landing page copy.

If you’re looking for another tool, HubSpot’s AI Content Writer can help you generate copy in a pinch. While Campaign Assistant is designed specifically for campaigns, AI Content Writer casts a wider net. You can play around with both tools.

AI software are not the only tools at your disposal. You can also leverage HubSpot’s Branding Kit that contains free templates.

Embrace Virtual Events

In-person events are often costly. Virtual events, on the other hand, are a smart and cost-effective way to get people to interact with your brand on a personal level.

“The dirty little secret of in-person events is you’re all competing for the biggest number — but the bigger the number, the worse the experience for the attendees,” said Bob Bejan, Microsoft’s VP of Global Events in a past interview with HubSpot. 

“The power and effectiveness of virtual events is just so convincing from a data perspective that it’s hard to imagine they’re ever going away,” Bejan explained.  “Virtual events at every dimension are so much more effective than in-person events.”

Get Started With Marketing Campaigns

You don’t need to be extremely well-funded to run a successful marketing campaign. All you need is creativity, understanding of your audience, and the right tools.

Tools like HubSpot’s Campaign Assistant can help you generate content for your campaign. 

While AI is a hot topic as of late, it’s been around for a long time.

At our agency, Mekanism, we are seeing beyond the hype and exploring how AI will impact all aspects of marketing, including research, strategy, creativity, and performance. 

And one area poised for disruption? Advertising. 

Here, let’s explore how private AI tools can transform your advertising strategy.

 

An AI Tool is Only as Powerful As the Data You Provide

Through our adoption of AI tools there’s one common trait we’ve noticed in our evaluations: There’s nothing inherently special about many of the AI tools out there. What’s special is the inputs we put into them, and the data we provide each tool.

Like many people will tell you with AI: It’s garbage in, garbage out. You want to make sure that the dataset you are using with any AI tool is the best you can provide.

This means collecting whatever first-party data you can to make your outputs from AI as productive and personalized as possible.

For instance, to receive a powerful AI-generated marketing plan, you’ll want to incorporate client expectations, first-party data around the consumers you’re trying to reach, past examples of campaigns and their performance, etc. 

Our thesis for the solution to this problem: The future of AI in advertising will be setting up bespoke internal AI tools that safeguard clients’ data, and providing personalized marketing.

The Five Elements You’ll Need to Incorporate Into Your AI Tools for Stronger Advertising

There are a few key elements that a corporate AI tool will need to be successful when it comes to advertising. Let’s jump into those, now.

1. A shared prompt library. 

A shared prompt library is a collective resource across your organization that allows for anyone to share their best prompts for completing work. By sharing this information, you help onboard your team members to better leverage AI.

Consolidating and protecting your prompt libraries also address privacy concerns. Prompt libraries help centralize the knowledge around AI, and reduce any loss of productivity when people leave the organization.

2. A document library. 

A document library inside of an internal AI tool is the personalized training that you bring to any LLM (large language models). This library is the “brain” of your organization’s AI and should include any relevant documentation that can train the AI to provide more personalized results.

The library can include a brand’s past campaigns, competitors’ campaigns, results of campaigns, data around your consumer, and results from past brainstorms.

3. Brand tone and voice guidelines.

As part of that library, there should be a Brand Tone and Voice Guideline document that clearly states what would and wouldn’t be in any communications from your brand. This document should be weighted heavier than others in training to help maintain your brand in any generated content.

4. Approval flows. 

An internal AI tool should also include an approval flow that allows any generated content from the AI to be audited and checked for things like hallucinations and biases before being used outside of the tool.

As part of this approval process, other things can be checked by AI, such as any claims being made with citation or any regulatory issues that certain brands may encounter within the used language. This approval flow is key to keeping the work human. By applying the good taste that only a human can harness, we can avoid work that feels robotic.

5. Security. 

Lastly, and most importantly, these tools should include a robust suite of security measures to make sure that all generations remain private before they receive approval to become public. This security should also keep the document library secure, and perhaps offline, to better protect any first-party data provided to the LLM.

What Personalized Results Look Like with Private AI Tools

With significant first-party data added into a private AI tool, a company could expect results that are both personalized as well as potentially predictive in performance. It’s a tall order to place on generative AI, but with enough past performance information, AI could produce responses that mimic the best practices of top performers from the past.

Asking a simple question like, “create 10 ads about going back to school” would yield results not only with more brand-appropriate responses using private AI, but also with predicted results alongside each response.

These tools could also plug directly into the API’s of e-commerce platforms, as well as social platforms, to track organic and paid content performance to optimize its generations in real time.

Private AI Tools That Continue To Learn

If our private AI tools are learning from qualitative data points such as click-throughs, likes and shares, why not qualitative, as well? That’s truly the power of LLM tools, the ability to manipulate and compute the written word just like numbers. These tools will be able to also take into account consumer sentiment via comments and reviews to create better generative outputs for brands.

One area Mekanism is currently exploring is collecting and measuring the rich conversation with TikTok comments to better understand what consumers are thinking. With the waning usefulness of social listening from platforms like Twitter, comments in videos are becoming increasingly more important.

A common workflow for our social strategy team whenever they are researching a brand or topic is to pull the comments of the top videos in that space and then run those conversations through an LLM like ChatGPT’s Code Interrupter to better understand topics of conversation. After this data is entered into ChatGPT, our strategies can then have a “conversation” with these consumers and ask them more questions based on this data to better craft their understanding of the brand or topic.

What’s Next

So many organizations are currently looking around and asking how they will use AI, and many are running into the same issues around copyright and security. Our hope is that we’ve provided a framework on how the advertising and marketing industry can move forward with adoption of these tools by investing in private AI.

If we want AI tools to meet our expectations of the future, we’ll need to provide more useful data. And, in order for everyone to feel safe doing so, developers of these tools will need to provide options for organizations to run these tools on-site, off the cloud, or with strict security options.

It’s a pretty exciting time out there for humans and AI.

As a marketer, I understand the importance of landing pages. A landing page can be the designated page visitors are taken to when they click on an ad.

It can also be the page that follows a call-to-action button or serve as the homepage of a website.

Regardless of how my audience “lands” on a landing page, it encourages them to convert to a lead or customer. Hence, landing pages are uniquely powerful components of a business’s digital marketing strategy.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a website page with a specific purpose — the objective of a landing page is to convert visitors into leads. While there are many landing pages, the intent is the same — get more leads.

Landing pages contain lead forms that ask visitors for their contact information in exchange for something of value, otherwise known as an offer.

The video below will help drive that definition home.

Now, think about how protective you are of your personal information. What would make a person want to give up their contact information over the internet?

Well, that’s where landing page best practices come in. A targeted, well-crafted landing page with a solid format and sound copy will get almost anyone to submit their information.

Why do you need a landing page?

Why would you create a unique page for people to complete a form? Why not just use your homepage or About page? Great questions.

After reading this article, you’ll likely be able to answer those questions yourself.

Still, the short answer is this: A landing page eliminates distractions by removing navigation, competing links, and alternate options so you capture your visitor’s undivided attention.

Complete attention means you can guide your visitors where you’d like them to go, i.e., to your lead form. In sum, landing pages are specifically designed to create conversions.

Now that you understand their importance, let’s cover landing page best practices to ensure your pages are set up to convert.

Was that a lot? I’ll break down these landing page best practices below.

1. Craft a benefit-focused headline.

Over the years, I’ve learned that for every 10 people visiting a landing page, at least seven will bounce off the page. To keep that number low, visitors must understand what’s in it for them within seconds of arriving.

My headline is the first thing they’ll read, and it should clearly and concisely communicate the value of my landing page and offer. The same goes for your own landing page, so craft a clear, direct, and engaging headline.

2. Choose an image that illustrates the offer.

I always include images in my landing pages. The purpose of an image is to convey a feeling — it should illustrate how visitors will feel once they receive the offer.

Specific images may work better than others, so you should always split-test your options (which we’ll cover below).

3. Write compelling copy.

An engaging headline and image can be crucial, but experience has shown me that it can fall flat without well-crafted copy. Your copy must be clear and concise and guide your visitors to the action you want them to complete.

Compelling copy also speaks directly to the visitor using “you” and “your” to engage them. We’ll go more in-depth on copy tips below.

Pro tip: Speed up the writing process by using generative AI to create a rough draft of your landing page copy and refine it to match your brand voice and tone.

With Campaign Assistant, HubSpot users can plug in their main points, features, and CTA and generate a first draft in seconds.

4. Include the lead form above the fold.

Your lead form needs to be readily accessible should your prospect want to convert immediately — you don’t want them searching and scanning your landing page to find your offer.

“Above the fold” means visitors don’t have to scroll to get to the form — it’s in view when someone hits the page.

This could be a form or an anchor link to the form. Even better: Design your layout to scroll with the user as they move down the page.

5. Add a clear and standout call-to-action.

The call-to-action (CTA) is arguably the most crucial element on your landing page — it’s one of many elements that encourage conversion. The CTA button must stand out, meaning you should use a color contrasting with other elements on the page.

Be clear about what you want visitors to do; that is, use an action verb that spells it out for them, like “submit,” “download,” or “get it now.” More on CTA best practices below.

6. Give away a relevant offer.

Think of your landing page as part of your lead’s journey to your ultimate offer — your product or service. Your offer is the thing you give in exchange for your lead’s personal information.

Not only should it be compelling enough for your visitor to provide their contact info, but it should also be relevant to your business. Say you sell horseshoes.

Your offer might be something like “10 Simple Ways to Size Your Horse’s Hooves” because, ultimately, you will ask that lead to buy your horseshoes.

You wouldn’t hook them with an offer about organic farming because that puts them on a different path.

We’ll talk more about how compelling offers are below.

7. Only ask for what you need.

You want to gather as much information as possible about your lead, but how much you ask for depends on several factors: how well-acquainted they are with you, where they are in their buyer’s journey, and how much they trust you.

Ask for as little info as you need in your lead form to create a low barrier to entry. A name and an email are more than sufficient to nurture a new lead.

8. Remove all navigation.

Your landing page has one objective and one objective only: to convert visitors into leads. Any competing links — including internal links to other pages on your website — will distract from that goal.

Remove other links on your page to draw your visitors’ attention to your call to action.

9. Make your page responsive.

Like every other page on your website, your landing pages must be responsive to accommodate every viewing experience. The last thing you need is for your form to fall out of view on mobile devices.

Give your visitors every possible opportunity to convert, no matter how they view your page.

You can use tools to help accomplish this. For example, HubSpot’s drag-and-drop landing page editor, available in Marketing Hub Starter, makes creating mobile-optimized landing pages and forms effortlessly easy.

10. Optimize for search.

Sure, you’ll be driving visitors to your landing page through email blasts, social posts, and other marketing methods, but your page should also be optimized with target keywords for your paid campaigns and organic search.

When someone searches for your key phrase, they should find your landing page. Similarly, when you target a keyword with paid ads, those words should exist on your landing page.

11. Remember to use a thank you page.

A thank you page is where you send leads once they’ve completed your form. Now, you could just show a thank you message on the same page or ditch the thank you altogether, but there are many reasons why that’s not the best option.

A thank you page serves three essential purposes:

• It delivers the offer that you promised (usually in the form of an instant download)
• It allows you to interest your new lead in additional relevant content
• It serves as a chance to thank them for their interest, which goes a long way in promoting them to a customer.

How to Design Your Landing Page

Often, design means creativity, colors, and pretty pictures. We take design a step further for a landing page to mean functional, direction-oriented, and practical.

So, to craft a well-designed landing page, you’ll have to tap into both your right and left brain.

But don’t get me wrong — you still need fantastic imagery and attractive colors to convert your visitors. We’ll touch on how to incorporate all of this below.

Landing Page Structure

The good news is you don’t need to get too creative here. I’ve found that most landing pages follow a very similar structure because it’s been proven to work.

You can infuse your creativity through branded elements and images, but stick to a landing page format people are used to seeing.

A good landing page has five elements (check out the landing page example below to see these elements in practice):

1. Headline that grabs the visitors’ attention
2. Relevant image that is relevant to your audience
3. Lead form that sits above the fold to capture visitors’ information
4. CTA that is action-oriented and compelling
5. Copy and description that informs and entices your visitor to complete your form

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Can your landing page include more than this? Absolutely. (Think of social share buttons visitors can use to spread the word about your offer). This is simply the bare minimum.

You need to know your audience, where they are coming from, and where they are in their buyer’s journey to understand how much you need to include. The rule of thumb is to have as much information as you need to get people to convert.

Landing Page Layout

Trust me when I say most people don’t read every word of your cleverly crafted copy. Instead, they skim through and pull out the most important tidbits. Your job is to make those tidbits stand out so your visitor doesn’t miss anything important.

That means a few things …

• Keep the most important information above the fold so your visitor doesn’t need to scroll to get to it.
• Perform a blink test on your page, meaning a visitor should be able to gather the main message in less time than it takes them to blink, i.e., less than five seconds.
• Use white (or unfavorable) space to keep your visitors engaged and focused and to help them comprehend your message.
• Write with bullets and short paragraphs to make your copy easy to digest.

Try to work the critical copy into an F-pattern, which is the direction that most people scan a page online. Work with the flow of visual patterns to drive people to the key points that will get them to convert.

Landing Page Colors

The design of your landing page — including the colors you use — should reflect that of your website.

You’re aiming to form a long-term relationship with the people who visit your landing page, which means they need to become familiar with your branding colors and unique style.

The more they recognize your brand, the more they trust you (and the more they trust you, the easier it is to get them to do what you want them to do).

The areas where you should consider using alternate colors are on the elements of your page that need to stand out — ahem, your CTA button.

Contrast is the name of the game here. Say your branded colors are primarily green; you’ll want to choose a color that can draw users’ attention, say purple.

What colors perform well? We did a little research for you to determine which colors convert best.

Landing Page Images

The image on your landing page is one the first things people see, and since people process visuals far quicker than text, it sets the tone for their entire experience.

But how can you choose between millions of stock photos and that company photo shoot that’s taking up all the space on your computer?

Let’s narrow down the selection with a few essential questions:

Who is my target audience?

What does your persona look like? How old are they? How do they dress? What are they interested in? The answers to these questions are important in determining what image you will place front and center on your landing page.

If it will appeal to your audience, it needs to represent them somehow.

Where on my landing page do I want them to look?

This might seem odd, but it’s based on the idea that people follow directional cues, like where someone is looking or pointing. If you want visitors to fill out a form, consider an image that drives their attention toward that form.

Will this image reinforce my message?

Every element on your landing page serves an essential purpose. Since your image is one of the first things people see, it should help clarify what visitors can expect from your page. Make sure that your image adds value.

Here are other important things to consider when creating excellent landing page images.

Call-to-Action (CTA)

We’ve discussed your CTA a few times, but since it’s the most crucial part of your landing page, it’s worth mentioning again. When it comes to the design of your CTA, there are a few tricks that will make it so alluring that visitors feel compelled to click.

To clarify, your CTA includes the button and the copy you use to draw attention to it; these tips cover both.

• Give your CTA a vibrant and contrasting color
• Focus your CTA copy on the benefit to your visitor
• Get to the point — try using no more than five words
• Tell your visitor what you want them to do using action verbs, e.g., Get, Download, Click
• Make your button large enough to stand out on the page
• Give it some negative space — don’t crowd the area around your CTA
• Follow the flow of the page and place your CTA where your readers’ eyes will go, such as to the right of or below the copy
• Test your button shape, test your copy … as a matter of fact, test everything (we’ll cover how to do this below)

Source

Mobile Landing Page

More than half of website traffic comes from mobile devices; therefore, the user experience should be the same regardless of the device visitors use. By making your landing page responsive, you give them every opportunity to view and convert, whether on a desktop, phone, tablet, or otherwise.

Landing Page Copywriting Tips

After design comes excellent copy; your objective is to be compelling, instructive, likable, concise, effective, trustworthy, and informative. How? Keep reading.

1. Cover the main points.

No matter how you position it, there are a few main points that you need to hit with your copy.

Those main points are your persona’s pain point, the solution to that pain point, how your solution works (features), how your solution will improve their situation (benefits), and verification that it works (social proof).

Most of what you write needs to address how you can help your prospect, not how awesome you are (because that’s implied). Let’s go more in-depth on these points.

The Pain Point

The pain point that you focus on should be the one that your offer solves. Not to sound negative, but it’s important to touch on the problem your persona is facing so they know you understand what they’re going through.

Empathy is an effective way to build trust. And if they know you get their problem, they’re more likely to trust your solution.

Your Solution

The solution to their pain point is what you’re offering in exchange for their information. Illustrate a clear path between their problem and how your solution is the remedy they need.

Features

Knowing your solution may not be enough to convert leads, so you need to mention what’s included in that solution. If it’s an ebook, what are the subjects you cover?

If you’re promoting a webinar, how will it work, and what will you teach?

If it’s a service, what can they expect? Give your potential lead all the information they need to make a decision.

Benefits

Your copy should be heavy with benefits to the user because that’s what they care about — what’s in it for them. While features list what your offer has, benefits tell visitors how their situation will be improved.

Using your solution paints a vivid picture of how much better their life could be.

Social Proof

Studies show that social proof is adequate for persuading people to take a desired action.

Social proof comes in the form of logos of brands you’ve worked with, testimonials from previous clients, reviews of your product, or confirmation that others have purchased your service.

In essence, people also want to know that others have used and benefited from your solution. You validate your offer without saying anything by including social proof on your landing page.

Source

Touching on each of these points will provide you with well-rounded copy that answers all of your visitors’ questions … which brings me to my next point.

2. Preemptively respond to objections.

A key part of writing persuasive copy (copy that gets people to convert) is dismantling objections before they even come up. Now, this takes some skill … or at least some help from a friend.

Once you’ve laid your foundation by addressing all the main points, put yourself in your prospect’s mind and think about where they might protest or challenge you as they read.

For instance, if you say, “We’ve helped Fortune 500 companies bring in customers,” your reader might scoff or doubt it unless you follow that statement with social proof.

Do this exercise for every section of your page (or ask an unbiased friend to help) until you’ve covered every possible objection. When you get questions from people visiting your landing page, use that as feedback to further sharpen your copy.

To ensure your landing page meets every need, seek constructive criticism from your first few converted leads.

3. Build trust with your prospect.

You read a sales page, and the company wrote, “Our product has helped 100 people, and it might work for you, too!” Meh. I’d probably pass and find a company with a solution that can work for me.

Your goal is to build trust with your visitor, and the way to do that is to come across as an authority.

Besides using social proof, some other ways to build trust are:

• Write how you speak and address your prospects like a live customer.
• Cite statistics that support your message.
• Use case studies that highlight customers similar to your target.
• Be relatable. Show your audience that you’re human by admitting failures, opening up about doubts you’ve had, and being honest. The caveat is you should only share what is relevant to their struggle; don’t just divulge anything.

4. Use click triggers.

Click triggers eliminate that last bit of doubt before a visitor converts. You can think of them as lick Probability Enhancers (yes, I made up that term).

They are copy-positioned next to your CTA, which pushes your prospect over the edge by easing their mind and mitigating the risk of converting.

Below are some practical ways to employ click triggers:

• Money-back guarantee
• Easy unsubscribe
• Quote from a successful or happy customer
• Blurb on “what to expect”
• Price slashing
• Privacy policy
• Some other creative method

Source

Whatever you choose, click triggers will give your conversions the boost they need.

A/B Testing Your Landing Page

Everything we’ve discussed until this point is great … in theory. However, your business differs from others, and your target audience is unique. How do you know if the copy you chose is working?

Or if your CTA placement is correct? Or what colors perform best?

Or which image to choose?

You test it. That’s how. Split testing (or A/B testing) is probably nothing new to you as a marketer, and split testing your landing page is just one more experiment to add to your list.

Let’s briefly go over how to best A/B test your landing pages.

What is A/B testing?

A/B testing simply splits your traffic into two (or more) page variations to see which performs better.

While you could do this manually by launching one take for some time, then another for the same amount of time, it’s far more efficient to use software that allows you to split test and track your results.

The main components of an A/B test are variants, or the two versions of the page, the champion, or the original page, and the challenger, or the page you modified to test against the original.

How to A/B Test

The most essential trick to split testing is minor tweaks with each experiment.

For instance, you don’t want to split-test your headline and image simultaneously because you won’t know which element garnered the results.

For this reason, stick to testing one element at a time. If the “winner” becomes your champion, you can create a new challenger to test the next element.

You repeat this cycle until you reach a conversion rate that you’re happy with (and that falls within realistic expectations, which we’ll cover below).

What should you test?

You can test virtually anything on your landing page. But while that’s possible, you may want to limit your test to a few of the most impactful elements of your page, like:

• Headline copy
• Image
• CTA color
• Click triggers
• Copy on the page
• Lead form length and fields

These tests will have the most significant impact on your conversion rates. Try starting with the simplest change, like a headline or CTA color, then work your way to the more significant undertakings, like your page copy.

Landing Page Metrics to Track

Metrics will tell you everything you need to know about how well your landing page is performing and give you some insight on improving it. It’s hard to know exactly what will work when you launch a page.

Measure and track meticulously in the beginning until you reach a relatively good conversion rate; then, you can track your metrics less frequently.

Page Visits

How many visits are you getting on your landing page? The more visits, the more you increase your probability of conversions. Adjust your paid strategy or redefine your keywords to drive more traffic to your page.

You can also inform your current followers about your offer through emails, social media, and your website.

Traffic Source

Knowing where your traffic is coming from will let you know where to double down or ditch your efforts.

Submission Rate

This is the number of people who complete your lead form and land on your thank you page. You can tweak your page to increase this number, but make sure to A/B test so you know what’s working.

Contacts

Contacts refer to the number of leads that you generate from your form. This differs from submissions because duplicate contacts are only counted once, meaning if a current lead fills out your form to get your offer, they don’t affect the count.

Heat Mapping

This is more of an observation of how people interact with your page than a metric. Heat mapping can show where people scroll, what they read, and how they engage with your page. This is all valuable data when thinking about your page layout and structure.

Bounce Rate

If visitors are coming to your page and leaving immediately, you must examine whether the content aligns with the offer. Does your copy capture visitors’ attention, and do visitors automatically know what to do when they land on your page?

Is your page a reflection of the copy you used to get people to visit it?

Form Abandonment

This metric tells how many people start filling out your form but don’t complete it. If this number is particularly high, some adjustments to consider are introducing new click triggers, shortening your form, or making it more transparent what you want your visitor to do.

Benchmarks

You must judge your landing page against industry norms and across a similar audience to know if it’s performing as expected. Check out some industry benchmarks to set as your baseline, but don’t be discouraged by other company’s results.

No matter what’s going on, diagnosing and healing your landing pages is possible if you pay attention to the metrics.

How to Make Your Landing Pages More Effective

There are always tweaks you can make to boost landing page performance. Below are a few great tips to get your landing pages leveled up.

Optimize your landing page.

Optimize is such a confusing word, isn’t it? Are we talking about imagery, copy, keywords, or UI? The answer is yes — we’re talking about all of it. Optimize just means to make your landing page the best it can be, and that can include a myriad of modifications.

You’ll need a pretty expansive guide if you want to know everything you can do to optimize your landing page. And, guess what, we have one here.

Present an outstanding offer.

You could argue that anything free qualifies as “good,” but that isn’t exactly true. Not only should your offer be free (we’re not talking sales pages here), but it must also be good enough to warrant a stranger giving you their personal information.

Let’s face it — many companies are competing for your audience’s attention, asking for their information and soliciting them via email. So, what’s going to make you stand out from the pack? An outstanding offer, that’s what.

Here are a few questions to determine if you have a compelling offer or not:

• Does my offer solve a pain point for my target audience?
• Is there a clear benefit that a lead can gain from this offer?
• Can my offer rival the competition?

Decrease page load time.

A single-second delay in page load time means 7% fewer conversions and 11% fewer page views. Slow page load times can also result in customer dissatisfaction and frustration.

Landing page load time is a metric to take seriously. If you need some tips, check out this resource on decreasing page load time.

Keep the buyer’s journey in mind.

Since you’re driving traffic to your landing page, you should know where your visitors are in their buyer’s journey. That means you’ll see if they’re trying to diagnose a problem (awareness), looking for a solution to their problem (consideration), or are ready to close (decision).

Your copy and offer should reflect this if you want to convert. It’s no different from other marketing materials — meet your visitors where they are.

Create a seamless experience.

No one should be surprised when they arrive on your landing page. It should be exactly as advertised, meaning it should be consistent with your copy.

Use the exact words on your landing page that you used to get people to arrive there, whether it was a paid ad, social post, blog CTA, or email. If you want people to stick around, you must avoid the bait and switch at all costs.

Create a clear path to conversion.

There should be no guesswork involved in navigating your landing page. Once someone arrives on your page, what you want them to do should be clear — submit their info to your lead form. Your goal is to guide visitors to your form using creative directional cues.

Here are some ways to point your visitor to a conversion:

• Choose an image of a person that is either gazing in the direction of or meaning to your form
• Make your CTA a contrasting color to draw attention to it
• Use arrows that point to your lead form
• Insert anchor text that brings people back to the form when clicked
• Give your CTA some negative space on the page
• Frame your lead form with a bold color or outline

Add scarcity to your offer.

Few emotional marketing tactics work as well as fear and the fear of missing out (more formally known as FOMO). Consumers don’t like to lose their ability to choose, and once you make it clear that your offer is in high demand and/or short supply, they’re going to clamber to get it.

The other reason this technique works is that people want things that are hard to obtain — that signifies value and exclusivity.

To show scarcity, mention how little of your offer is left, include a countdown timer, and use words like “ends soon” or “last chance.” We want you to be genuine, so only employ actual tactics for your business.

Bottom line: there are many ways to use and benefit from this technique.

Use video.

Video marketing is becoming increasingly popular for good reason. Not only do customers prefer to see videos from companies, but 88% of video marketers say that video gives them positive ROI.

The key is to create a compelling video that doesn’t distract visitors from your ultimate goal: the call to action.

If you’re on the fence about using video, here are some reasons that might push you over the ledge:

• Increases conversion rates
• It is a more personable way to share a message and connect with prospects
• It can be more engaging than an image and will get visitors in the habit of clicking (and converting)
• Can reduce the number of support calls or tickets you receive
• It is processed 60,000 times faster than text

If you plan to employ this tactic, VidYard has some helpful landing page video guidelines to follow.

Are you excited yet about how you can improve your landing pages? Sure, there are quite a few, but that just means that a poor-performing landing page doesn’t have to stay that way. Take it one tactic at a time and build as needed.

What to Do Post-Conversion: Lead Nurturing

So, you have an optimized landing page that converts like a charm. Now what? You don’t want to leave those leads hanging. Instead, you want to nurture them into becoming customers, then nurture them more. Here’s how.

Optimize your thank you page.

I hope you’re not tired of optimizing yet. Your thank you page is the first thing someone sees after they convert, so it is an excellent opportunity to delight your new lead even more than you already have.

Your objective is twofold: deliver your promised offer and get them interested in something else on your site.

Your thank you page should:

• Thank your new lead (go figure)
• Provide links to relevant content on your site
• Invite your lead to follow you on social media
• Ask your lead to subscribe to your blog
• Automate a follow-up email with the offer

Guide them along their buyer’s journey.

Your new lead will make their way to the decision stage with or without you. You want to be the one to help them get there. You’ve gathered valuable information about your lead to anticipate what they need next.

Provide content or resources to bring them to the subsequent stage of their journey; you might just be their option for the decision stage. After all, we know that prospects buy from companies that they know, like, and trust.

Form a relationship.

Once someone signs up to receive information from you, they become a potential customer with whom you should work hard to build a relationship and connection.

The good thing is you already know what they’re interested in and their pain points so you can target them with additional, helpful content and personalized marketing.

If you’re still stuck, get some inspiration from some of the best landing pages we could find.

Grow Better with Landing Pages

Landing pages will account for most of your new leads, demanding your attention. With the many tweaks, additions, and variations you can implement, there’s no reason you can’t have a landing page that converts well.

As long as you follow the best practices we covered above, you’ll be on your way to a high-performing landing page.

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