Category Archives: B2B

It’s no secret that poor user experience (UX) isn’t going to keep your customers and target audience coming back to your website. Poor UX also negatively impacts your ability to rank on Google’s search engine results page (SERP).

To ensure your website has delightful UX for your visitors as well as one that meets Google’s standards for ranking, you’ll want to focus on Core Web Vitals.

Core Web Vitals

At a high level, Google’s Core Web Vitals exist to fix poor user experiences on your website — Google knows that poor UX leads to higher bounce rates and that’s why they take page performance into consideration when determining your page’s ranking.

Core Web Vitals are meant to be applied by all site owners on each of their web pages to ensure all three Vitals — which we’ll talk more about below — are measured.

HubSpot Core Web Vitals

HubSpot’s SEO audit tool reviews all three of Google’s Core Web Vitals metrics for you. Below, we’ll cover the ways in which HubSpot can help you prepare for Core Web Vitals.

How HubSpot Helps Users Prep for Core Web Vitals

Google’s Core Web Vitals metrics are part of the search engine’s page ranking algorithm. HubSpot’s SEO audit tool flags pages with unsatisfactory scores based on Google’s Core Web Vitals metrics. Specifically, HubSpot uses Google Lighthouse to automatically scan all pages that make up a website. The tool then flags pages that fail any of these metrics.

Three Core Web Vitals that HubSpot’s SEO audit tool flags:

Source

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

LCP is perceived page load speed. It refers to how quickly a page can load and render all of its visual elements to the screen.

2. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

CLS is visual stability. It refers to how often users experience unexpected layout shifts on a web page.

3. First Input Delay (FID)

FID is load responsiveness. It’s a quantifiable measurement of how users feel when a page is unresponsive.

An alternative measurement for FID is Total Blocking Time (TBT). TBT is the quantifiable measurement of how much a non-interactive page is before becoming interactive. In other words, TBT measures the total amount of time that a page is blocked from responding to user input. HubSpot scans and flags web pages that have a TBT of over 300 milliseconds for you (because Google believes a good TBT is anything less than 300 milliseconds).

Who benefits from HubSpot’s SEO audit tool?

HubSpot can help you prepare for Core Web Vitals whether or not you’re a CMS Hub user — in fact, it’s available to those who are CMS Hub Professional and Enterprise users as well as Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise users. You can use HubSpot’s SEO audit tool whether you’re on a HubSpot-hosted website or a website hosted by another platform.

Pro Tip: Get HubSpot CMS Hub or Marketing Hub to begin measuring your web pages’ UX against Google’s Core Web Vitals. 

Start Prepping For Core Web Vitals With HubSpot

With HubSpot, you’ll know if your web pages meet Google Core Web Vitals. As a result, you’ll be able to ensure your web pages are offering your visitors delightful UX. Additionally, you’ll know that your web pages have a significantly better chance at ranking for your keywords and phrases than they would if they didn’t meet Google’s criteria.

Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a new blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of Black business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success.

We live in a digital era, and people are still checking their emails daily, so strong email marketing strategies are essential, especially for Black-owned businesses.

When thinking about creating the best email marketing strategies, make sure you are authentic and tell your community your story.

Do a brain dump of your ideas if you need to find purpose and discover the expected outcome for each marketing strategy you are working to create.

The Black community supports you best when you’re honest, so they can empathize with you.

“The most effective email marketing campaigns we’ve launched have been those that are authentic, tell our story, and bring our audience along for the ride. In the early days before we launched our company, all we had was our story to draw people into our funnel,” THE MOST founder and CEO Dawn Myers told HubSpot.

Myers adds, “Be vulnerable. Show the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. Show that you identify with their pain points and how much you’ve sacrificed to be able to serve them. This tactic builds deep credibility and trust.”

Below, you can find five email strategies that have worked for Black business owners today.

Additionally, for additional email marketing resources, check out these blogs on how to create an outstanding marketing plan and how to craft successful email marketing plans, with downloadable templates included.

Successful Email Marketing Strategies for Black-Owned Businesses

1. Find out what else your audience cares about in correlation with your mission.

If someone subscribes to your email list, it’s safe to say they have already heard of your product or find it interesting, so it’s important to dig deeper beyond that.

Ariel Butler, founder and CEO of hair and skin products company Shea Adé, learned that people mainly care about when the company is emailing about sales when it comes to product-based businesses. It can also get daunting if emails are about the same products consumers have already heard about.

“I’d recommend brands find other topics to email their audience about (blog posts, free ebooks, etc.),” she said. “Everything outside of that should be emails about sales or new product releases as opposed to the emails that look like ‘Hey, don’t forget to buy this full-priced item that I’ve been bugging you about 4X a week!‘”

One strategy that works for Butler is sending daily affirmations to her customers. She started trying out this simple email tactic since her brand’s mission is all about not only healing hair but healing beyond the scalp.

“I want my customers to wake up every day and feel good about how they look,” Butler said. “Since I started sending out those emails, I have been completely blown away by how enjoyable daily affirmations have been for my customers. Some people have only been introduced to my brand because someone told them about our emails, and when they found out that Shea Adé is a hair company, they supported me because they resonated with my brand’s mission to heal.”

2. Connect with your customers weekly.

Every week, Raven Gibson, founder and CEO of Legendary Rootz, sends out a campaign that allows email subscribers to download a free personal digital wallpaper.

She says this is her best email marketing strategy, and she coined it “Wallpaper Wednesday.” Over the years, Gibson’s audience has expressed to her that while they want to support her business, they don’t have the funds to do so. She recognized this problem and came up with a free solution to still connect with her community.

“Typically, the design centers around celebrating Black culture or an important reminder of the day,” Gibson said. “This marketing strategy has allowed for our email list to grow, and given us the opportunity to connect with our community.”

Gibson runs a similar campaign on Tuesdays where she connects with her followers by highlighting their love for natural hair. She sees this as a way to share community and emphasize the importance of Black hair culture. Gibson also uses these emails to share exclusive deals and product restocks specifically for email subscribers.

These weekly email marketing campaigns have helped drive an excellent return on investment, Gibson said.

 “Investing in email marketing has allowed us to stretch our marketing dollars while making a meaningful connection with our community,” Gibson said.  

3. Launch an engaging outreach campaign.

Creating outreach campaigns can grab people’s attention while providing a more significant incentive beyond expecting folks to just read your emails.

Alvarez Mckendall, a serial entrepreneur and digital marketing strategist, is responsible for social media and email marketing at Real Estate Bees, a technology and marketing platform for the real estate industry. One of his most successful email marketing strategies is interviewing the professionals and business owners with which he’s trying to connect.

Mckendall said this strategy is most effective because it helps consumers understand what the business is offering and how potential customers can benefit from it based on what he learns in those interviews.

Mckendall transformed Real Estate Bees’ previous email questionnaire into an interview-style questionnaire and adjusted email templates and subject lines to indicate his company’s desire to interview the business owner or a key member instead of completing a boring questionnaire.

“Just like your friends and family members, business owners love to get attention and feel important,” Mckendall said. “Appealing to one’s ego is an extremely effective technique whenever you want to get their attention and start building a business relationship.”

When Mckendall launched the outreach campaign, Real Estate Bees’ email open rate was 25-27%, and the response rate was about 1%.

“I was constantly thinking about how we could improve it,” he said.

Based on this campaign, Real Estate Bees’ email open rate has improved to 42%, and the response rate increased by 3%. It’s essential to make your campaigns engaging by including hyperlinks, photos, videos, and whatever else makes sense for your brand.

4. Make allies with other businesses by doing press partnerships.

Networking and building partnerships can be handy for email marketing strategies, too. Francis Perdue, CEO of public relations firm Perdue Inc., suggests Black business owners team up to expand their following by promoting each other.

The free promotion exposes different audiences to new products and services, and it also helps build community by connecting various consumers.

“No money is exchanged, yet it does wonders for your businesses,” Perdue said. “Share each other’s audiences to support one another. Creating an e-blast for an event or cause for someone in exchange for the same will grow your reach and show that you are committed to the community while promoting unity.”

If you don’t know where to start, pick up your phone and see what emails you have in your contact list already. When Perdue launched her firm over a decade ago, she said she didn’t know many people in the industry, but she had a strong community of friends, old colleagues, and former classmates.

She did an e-blast to promote her new business, and right off the back, she got 200 subscribers. More than 2,500 people are subscribed to Perdue Inc.’s email list, all of which came from Perdue’s organic outreach via her network.

“People want to support you; you’d be surprised,” she said. “Get out and network. I own a restaurant, so I know the importance of repeat customers.”

5. Use tools, applications, and other digital resources.

Building email marketing strategies can be tedious and time-consuming, especially if you’re

releasing emails weekly. It’s okay to build out your campaigns yourself, but if you’re looking for something new or different, here are some tools, applications, and resources that Black business owners use to better connect with their audiences:

• “This may sound crazy, but I believe TikTok is an amazing way to drive customers to your brand and your email list.” — Butler.
• “Switching to Klaviyo for all email correspondence helped with increasing our abandoned cart click rate from 4% to 7%. I am so happy that I took the time to switch over from Shopify and set it up.” — Gibson.
• “We have been using the BuzzStream tool to send out emails and monitor all the analytics and stats.” — Mckendall.
•  “I love Adobe XD. It’s a prototyping application; however, I use it to craft all of our email marketing collateral. My favorite feature is the ability to duplicate and switch up the content in a split second. After creating specific templates for Wallpaper Wednesday or an exclusive email-only sale, I can reuse them again with just the click of a few buttons. I’ve found that using these templates allows me to streamline the process immensely.” — Gibson.
• “Some email marketing apps range from $0 to $100 a month. The good news is that usually, under 200 contacts are free. Use GoDaddy when you start your website to get coupons for marketing from their partners to cut costs as well.” — Perdue.
• “I love the website Really Good Emails. It is a gold mine for all things email. The site is very well-organized, and you can find just about any topic within the site. It’s almost like the Pinterest of email marketing.” — Gibson.

While branding can feel like a vague concept, it’s one of the most important elements of a marketing strategy.

Did you know that presenting a brand consistently across all platforms can increase revenue by up to 23%?

Plus, consistently presented brands are 3.5 times more likely to have excellent brand visibility than those with inconsistent branding.

In fact, 82% of investors say name recognition is an important factor guiding them in their investment decisions.

So, what does all this mean? Well, consistent branding leads to increased brand awareness which can then help gain investors and drive revenue to your business. Needless to say, branding is important for your business to succeed.

In this post, let’s review what brand salience is, how you can increase your brand visibility, and how to measure it.

If you have high brand salience, then you have a strong brand presence that consumers recognize and think about when they need a product. If you have low brand salience, then consumers might not know your brand exists and therefore won’t think of your brand when they need to make a purchase.

Essentially, brand salience is a similar metric as brand awareness except it’s focused on measuring awareness during the actual purchasing decision instead of overall brand visibility.

For example, when someone wants to get a cup of coffee and is driving around, what’s the first brand they think of? Probably Starbucks. When they want to buy tissues, they think of Kleenex. When they want to search for something online, they Google it.

All of these brands have transcended the perception of being a random company, and are now household names in their own right. Most people think of these brands and know of them whether they’ve been there or used those products before.

These brands have high brand salience. To have high brand salience, your customers need to think about your brand as the first solution to their wants or needs when they have to make a purchasing decision.

The concept of brand salience is actually psychological in nature. According to research done by Jenni Romaniuk and Byron Sharp, brand salience is “a brand’s propensity to be noticed or come to mind in buying situations.”

This means that you have to capture people’s attention and be memorable enough for consumers to recall your brand when they’re purchasing something.

For example, when a consumer has a choice of brands to purchase from, they’ll rely both on their memory and attention salience. This means they’ll recall brands they know and then see what captures their attention.

This process is actually scientific. People who have studied brand salience have studied the human brain — how do people recall information and how does a brand associate positive memory structure with their product?

To increase your brand salience, some of your marketing campaigns probably won’t even focus on persuading consumers to buy your product. The goal of many branding campaigns is to constantly reinforce positive associations with your brand. Familiarity is important. Constant marketing messages from a brand ensure that the brand is top-of-mind when a consumer is making a purchasing decision.

Brands create high brand salience by using distinctive brand assets that capture attention and create positive memories for their audience. This means your marketing assets promote positive storytelling and create a meaning associated with your brand. When you promote your values, you’re differentiating your brand from the competition and increasing brand salience.

To create campaigns that will improve brand salience, think about the emotional impact of your assets. Your campaigns should be meaningful, authentic, and portray your values as a company.

All of this will help customers create a positive association with your brand and remember your brand when it comes time to make a purchase.

For example, let’s say I want to buy some gum. When I think about gum, one of the first things I think of are the commercials for Extra. I’ve never forgotten those commercials because they were emotional and created a positive experience for me.

Now, when I think about gum, I usually buy Extra even though that brand has never been my favorite gum company (I used to buy Orbit). But since those commercials, I’ve leaned toward Extra because of the positive association and it’s one of the first brands I recall because of those commercials.

Ultimately, brand salience is a combination of brand awareness, familiarity, relevance, frequent communication, and emotional connections between brand and consumer.

Now, you might be thinking, “This all sounds great, but how can I measure this and prove its effectiveness to my managers?”

Let’s dive into that below.

How to Measure Brand Salience

Brand salience is rather conceptual in nature. Unfortunately, it’s not a mathematical metric that is easily measured. So, what do brands do?

Well, one of the only ways to measure brand salience is through surveys and focus groups. It’s important to ask your customers when they think of you, what they associate with your brand, and if they recall your company when making a purchasing decision.

You can ask customers whether they recall or notice your brand relative to competitors. Then, ask whether your brand is just thought of or sought after to determine how favorably your brand is judged.

Your survey can include descriptive assets to track your brand’s distinctive assets. For instance, what tone of voice, logo, color, or slogan comes to mind when users think of soda. They might say red, because they’ve associated Coca-Cola branding with soda in general.

To measure this, you can present survey respondents with a randomized list of cues and attributes by asking them which brands they associate with each statement. It could be questions like “when I want to eat something quick and healthy” or “I know I will not overpay there.”

Using a survey or focus group will help you determine how high your brand salience is compared to competitors.

Now, let’s look at the brand salience model that you can use to strategize your brand positioning.

Brand Salience Model

In his book, Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand Equity, Kevin Keller developed a model for brand salience that has become popular in digital marketing.

In the graphic below, Keller creates a pyramid of building blocks to pay attention to when you’re trying to increase your brand salience.

Image Source

This model focuses on increasing deep, broad brand awareness by creating an identity that customers remember. At the foundation of the pyramid is salience, which you can increase by defining your brand in detail, frequently communicating with your audience, and using creative assets to tell a story.

Then, you create meaning and authenticity to differentiate your brand from the competition. And then, you use frequent messages to create positive, accessible reactions in your customers. And then you create loyalty by building a relationship and emotional connection with your audience.

With this model, you can increase brand salience, drive revenue, and even attract investors. Although this isn’t the easiest metric to track, the science proves that focusing on branding will help your company become a household name for your customers.

Maybe you’ve been refreshing the Careers page at your dream company for months.

Alternatively, perhaps you’ve heard glowing reviews about a company from friends — but whenever you check, they’re still not hiring for any roles for which you’d qualify.

Whatever the case, if you feel a company’s culture could be a great fit for you, you might consider sending a cold email so hiring managers can keep you in-mind if a role becomes available.

But that’s easier said than done. If you sound too pushy, you risk alienating the hiring manager. A good cold email should be concise and focus on how you can add value to the team. When done correctly, a cold email is a good opportunity to network and get your name in front of the right people.

Fortunately, the folks at Resume.io put together an infographic, which details the 8 essential elements of a persuasive email you can use to apply at your dream company. Take a look now, and then check out How to Write a Letter of Interest in 2021 [Examples + Template].

 

In middle school, my best friend and I used to have a show on YouTube where we performed a dare from our audience each week.

We actually had some fans that would watch our videos and dare us to do something on a weekly basis.

While hosting these types of videos on YouTube made sense because they were for entertainment purposes, your business needs a platform with more features so you can create videos for marketing campaigns, sales pitches, and customer service knowledge base articles.

In this post, let’s review some of the best video hosting sites for your business.

Video Platforms

1. HubSpot

If you’re a HubSpot customer, you might already have access to HubSpot’s video hosting, creation, and management tool.

With this tool, you can host and manage video files inside the HubSpot platform and then embed those videos on your website pages, blog posts, social media channels, or knowledge base.

Using the same platform that you use for your marketing, sales, or service tool is a great idea because everything is all in one place. You can optimize your videos for SEO right in the tool.

This video hosting product also allows you to insert CTAs and forms into videos, trigger video workflows that provide targeted content to leads, and video analytics so you know which videos resonate with your audience.

For sales reps, you can use the video hosting tool to send video voicemails or record your screen during a sales call. You can also see if a prospect has watched the video in HubSpot’s tool.

Video can also be used for customer service. You can send video tutorials and record your screen right from a ticket to share it with customers for personalized and quick support. Or you can insert these videos into your knowledge base articles or FAQ page.

2. Twenty Three

Twenty Three is another great video hosting service for your business. You can host and embed videos on your site with Twenty Three’s 4K HD player. You can also directly clip and duplicate videos in the editor.

The best feature of this site is that you can publish and measure your videos across multiple platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

Additionally, this hosting site connects with other tools you might be using for marketing software, including HubSpot or Marketo.

Plus, you can use analytics to better understand your marketing data.

Using video for your business can help engage your audience, create a branded experience, and drive results.

3. Cincopa

Cincopa is a video and podcast hosting platform for businesses. With this platform, you can create videos for marketing campaigns, sales prospects, or customer support. Additionally, this platform can host podcasts and images as well.

With this hosting site, you can also combine your media gallery to create a video course with images, video, or podcast files. I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen online courses become all the rage in recent years, so this is a great feature to consider.

You can embed these videos on your site, social media, email, and more.

4. Hippo Video

Hippo Video is a video hosting platform that you can use to personalize your video emails for messages, demos, sales pitches, marketing campaigns, and more.

Using videos in the sales cycle can actually get three times more prospect engagement.

With this tool, you can record and send videos right in your email inbox. Additionally, you can integrate this tool with your current stack, including with Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoom, Zendesk, and more.

5. SproutVideo

SproutVideo is a great option for a video hosting platform if you’re looking for a no-frills, affordable platform.

With this tool, you can create videos and collaborate with your team. You can share a secure internal video, or live stream a product launch. Whatever your video needs are, this is an excellent option to consider.

Free Video Hosting Sites

6. Vimeo

Vimeo is one of the most popular video hosting sites and for good reason. This simple tool can be used to create, manage, and share high-quality videos.

To create videos, you can use templates, license stock footage, record video messages, or live stream. When you’re editing your videos, you might be able to integrate Vimeo with your editor. Vimeo integrates with Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, and others. Then, your videos will be hosted in one central, secure location so you can seamlessly share them with anyone.

You can even create a subscription streaming service for your videos on this platform.

The best part? Vimeo is free. You can upgrade to paid plans, but you’ll never have to pay for Vimeo if you don’t want or need to.

7. Vidyard

Vidyard is one of the only video hosting sites that is built directly with sales in mind. The idea is to build a great sales process to make remote selling easy, from prospecting to proposals, you can record and send videos that add a personal touch at all stages of the sales cycle.

With Vidyard, you can create your videos in just a few clicks, with no video expertise required (that’s great for tech-challenged people like me).

This tool is also free. You don’t ever have to pay unless you want to upgrade to a different plan with more features.

My favorite feature of this tool is that you can easily create videos, track who watches them, and distribute them an unlimited number of times (yes, even in the free version).

8. Wistia

Another great video hosting site is Wistia. You can host videos and even podcasts on this hosting platform for marketers.

On Wistia, you can upload, customize, and embed branded videos or podcasts on one platform. This also has a free plan that you can use, as long as you don’t need to create too many videos a month (three is the max on the free plan). However, if you need more, there are paid plans as well.

But my favorite feature of this tool is that it can integrate with your tech stack and send engagement data to your CRM, ad platforms, and marketing tools.

Video is only continuing to grow, as people spend more time watching video than reading text. As your business continues to evolve, it’s important to have a video hosting tool that can grow with you and help you use videos to drive results for all aspects of your business.

There’s a lot to like about well-designed infographics — whether it’s the beautiful typography, concise messaging, clever layouts, or bold graphics.

Not to mention that people retain 65% of information passed along with an image compared to only 10% when they listen to the same piece of information.

As the fourth most-used type of content marketing, infographics pop up all over the place — from social media posts to whitepapers. But don’t be fooled. They require just as much strategic thinking as a blog post or video.

Yet, as this list of the best infographic examples shows, the effort is worthwhile. Adding them to your marketing strategy can increase web traffic by 12% and help you stay competitive in the B2B crowd, where 65% of marketers use infographics.

Luckily, there are numerous resources to create beautiful infographics of your own.

To help inspire your next visual creation, here are a handful of stunning branded infographics to kickstart your creativity.

Best Infographic Examples to Get Inspired

Simple Infographic Examples

1. 10 Records You Can Break Working From Home, by ChairOffice

Although it’s essential to complete your tasks and remain productive while working from home, many employees often find themselves working too hard without any breaks.

This brilliant, yet straightforward infographic from ChairOffice contains 10 world records you can attempt as you take necessary breaks from work.

With vibrant colors, animated characters, and text, this infographic shares a simple message: take breaks. Who knows? You might be breaking a world record.

2. A Simple Guide to Shooting Video By Yourself, by Spielcreative

Although 86% of businesses use videos as part of their marketing strategy, only a few get it right.

Whether it’s background noises, poor lighting, or some other distraction, the videos don’t usually come out the right way.

This infographic from Spielcreative offers tips you’d need to create incredible videos all by yourself.

The use of simple graphics and arrow pointers makes the visualization easy to follow and understand. You also don’t have to strain your eyes to read the text, as it’s big enough to read from afar.

3. A Purposeful Life, by Studio Patten

This free infographic from Studio Patten collects different survey results concerning living a purposeful life and presents the data with visually appealing charts.

Although the topic of a purposeful life might be a deep one, this infographic does a great job of presenting the information simply.

There’s also a nice balance between the use of text and data visualization elements.

4. The Most and Least Bike-Friendly Cities In America, by Tower Electric Bikes

Knowing whether a city is bike-friendly or not is a factor cyclists consider when moving.

Naturally, questions about the city’s bike lanes, cyclist fatality rates, and the number of people using bikes would come up in a cyclist’s mind. Tower Electric Bikes answers these questions using this simple infographic.

To make sense of the infographic, Tower Electric Bikes used color gradation (going from green to red) to help its audience of cyclists understand how friendly the different cities in the United States are.

Cyclists can take a look and tell they’d need to avoid the Los Angeles areas if they want to enjoy sunny days out on their bikes.

5. How to Enjoy Studying, by IvyPanda

Studying doesn’t always have to be a chore. IvyPanda created this excellent infographic design to help students enjoy studying instead of feeling burned out or turning to social media because of boredom.

The use of bright colors and minimalist animated design is brilliant from IvyPanda.

Business Infographic Examples

6. How SMB Sales Teams Are Keeping Up in 2020, by Zendesk

We all know 2020 led to massive changes in the way we work, buy, and enjoy leisure time. But this infographic by Zendesk hones in on a specific group (SMB sales teams) to show how they keep up with the times.

Through research-backed data, clear visuals, and concise copy, the main point comes across crystal clear: Know customers’ expectations to meet them where they are.

This infographic does an excellent job following one theme, from start to finish. Readers can answer “What’s the point?” within the first few sentences — a best practice, according to CoSchedule.

This helps focus your infographic and avoids cramming too much information into one piece, which is why Zendesk flowed from the research and stats to how SMB sales teams adopt new technology to keep up.

It even includes the benefits of CRM technology, like a 52% increase in productivity from sales reps. Of course, the benefits align with the customer service software Zendesk offers, making the infographic a good sales tool for its team.

7. Content Marketing in Times of Uncertainty, by LinkedIn

More than eight out of 10 people want brands to act as a news source in uncertain times, foster a sense of community, and provide educational resources. Whew.

As a content marketer, those are significant expectations to live up to. LinkedIn realized the changing global landscape would alter customer expectations and, as a result, content marketing strategies. So the team put together this handy infographic to help marketers focus on what matters most.

This infographic example features several design elements from LinkedIn’s current brand. The graphics adhere to its primary and complementary color scheme, include diverse illustrations, and relate to the work-from-home times.

It also uses color block banners to add visual interest and break up chunks of text. But my favorite part? The ruler graphic on how to measure ROI and show why your efforts are worthwhile.

8. How to Be Productive While Working From Home, by Bannersnack

Working from home isn’t the pajama party many people (used to) imagine. As offices closed and millions turned dining tables into home office spaces, Bannersnack created this infographic to help its employees transition to a different way of working. As a freelancer working remotely for the past five years, I found it full of practical tips and valuable tools.

Beyond essential elements like brand colors, Bannersnack includes information people can immediately put to use. While it’s easy to stay planted on your couch all day, Bannersnack recommends finding multiple workspaces for different tasks — an inspirational spot for creative thinking and another for deep work and crunched deadlines.

Tips like this may seem small once you’ve been working remotely for a while, but for newcomers, it’s one less thing you have to learn while adjusting to a different routine.

9. 45 Slack Tricks That Will Impress Your Boss, by Net Credit

A tool as powerful as Slack has many features most people will never use, yet this infographic makes it easy to look like the cool “Slack-er” at the company even if you’ve only mastered the /giphy shortcut until now.

Net Credit starts with a handful of stats to inform readers and give an idea of Slack’s scope. Who knew people spend 50 million hours on the platform in one week? I’m intrigued and want to keep reading.

As you scroll down the graphic, you see a combination of direct headlines “Read Channel Highlight” followed by text instructions and visual cues. As a visual learner, I appreciate how these cues mirror the actual interface.

Each section is organized to help you find what you’re looking for, whether it’s “#channel” or “message” tips. Finance may be Net Credit’s bread and butter, but this infographic shows how its team is adaptable and helpful — exactly what you want in a financial partner.

10. How Bad Data Affects Businesses, TD Insights

A bad egg spoils the whole bunch, but what effect does bad data have on businesses? TD Insights answers that question with this excellent infographic design.

The use of contrast makes this infographic visually appealing. Any reader can quickly identify the main themes and points of the design because of the creative use of different fonts.

Timeline Infographic Examples

11. Tech’s Bizarre Beginnings & Lucrative Pivots, by Visual Capitalist

The beauty of infographics? They can be used by dozens of industries for hundreds of different purposes. But the best ones are often unexpected.

Take this graphic designed by Visual Capitalist. It reveals the wild origin stories of some of the biggest tech companies today. I had no idea YouTube began as a video dating site with the tagline “Tune In. Hook Up.”

As a growing online publication that focuses on data and technology news, Visual Capitalist’s audience is likely interested in stories around company pivots that led to success.

That information, coupled with a simple timeline structure, fun graphics, and hard-hitting metrics, makes it tough to look away from this infographic. Plus, we all need reminders that it’s not where you start but where you’re going.

12. Power Shifts, Studio Patten

The United States is a powerful nation, but that wasn’t the case centuries ago.

In this infographic, Studio Patten takes us on a journey through the years that show the most powerful nations at different times in history.

This infographic is simple, but it also uses creative images and text to provide a history lesson.

13. The Evolution of US Vaccines, by Janet Haniak

Humans have been fighting diseases and pandemics long before COVID-19. Here is one of the many infographics that make it easy to learn about past vaccines created to combat these diseases.

The use of real-life images instead of cartoon characters makes this infographic more believable. Instead of complicating the infographic, the designer made the timeline appear on a single line, with the notable event branching out of that line.

14. The Journey of Oprah Winfrey, by Blue Mail Media

Oprah Winfrey is one of the most powerful women alive today. But did you know she grew up in a poverty-stricken family and had a tough childhood?

This infographic from Blue Mail Media allows us to look into Oprah’s early life and how she grew to become who she is today.

Although this infographic has a prominent blue background, the other bright colors make engaging with it easy. The quote breaks also add personality to the infographic.

15. Apple History Timeline, by Viziononline

Apple is the subject of this creative infographic created by Viziononline, and why not? Apple is one of the largest corporations in the world. In fact, you’re likely reading this article on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

But was Apple always this big?

With one look, a reader can tell that this visualization is about Apple because of the different products that appear throughout the infographic.

Interactive Infographic Examples

16. Response to COVID-19, by the U.S Food and Drug Administration

It wouldn’t be a 2021 round-up without mentioning the global pandemic that kept many of us at home for months. The bright spot? There are infographics galore educating people on how to wash their hands and social distance properly.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also relied on this visual medium to share how their regulatory department addressed COVID-19.

This infographic example made our list for several reasons. First, to show how infographics can highlight the impact, instead of sharing step-by-step instructions or research-oriented content.

The impact of each action is organized into separate columns and given a distinct color to help your eyes track from top to bottom. While this flow breaks the typical left-to-right reading pattern, it’s not distracting or difficult to follow.

The healthcare worker design at the top of the page nods to those on the frontlines, the colors align with the brand, actual numbers are easy to read, and the page isn’t crowded with text.

So the next time you need to explain the fruits of your labors to your boss, help win them over with an impact-driven infographic.

17. Pianeta Plastica, by Manuel Bortoletti for GEDI Gruppo

“Che bello” is the first thought that comes to mind for this design. The stunning data visualizations, oceanic color scheme, and easy-to-understand layout let the visuals do the talking. Visme explains how an infographic follows this essential best practice if it makes sense with all of the text removed.

That may seem impossible, but designer Manuel Bortoletti pulls it off with informative maps accompanied by clear keys and a bar graph that uses oil tankers to inform readers about how oil circulates the globe.

Even with my incredibly limited Italian, I understand that the main point of the piece is to inform readers about the impact of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. And since this infographic was designed for the Italian media outlet GEDI Gruppo, it stays on-brand with a more formal editorial tone.

18. How to Properly Wear a Mask, by John Hopkins Medicine

Education is the crux of an infographic. And when you have mere seconds to capture people’s increasingly narrow attention span, the information better be easy to learn.

That’s why one of the best infographic examples comes from John Hopkins Medicine. They designed an infographic to share tips on a crucial COVID-19 procedure: wearing a mask.

Is covering your nose important? You bet. What about wearing a bandana as a mask? No way. Hopkins uses a combination of straightforward graphics and copy to make the do’s and don’ts very clear.

As a renowned medical institution, Hopkins has the experience and authority to educate people on this topic, so it fits its brand and is helpful for everyone’s health — a true win-win.

19. The Sustainable Development Goals Report, by the United Nations

Infographics are a great way to add visual flavor to otherwise dry content, like annual reports and whitepapers.

What stands out in this infographic example is how it can be used as one visual or divided into 17 sections — one for each Sustainable Development Goal. This allows the content team to choose which type of content best fits the target audience.

If the UN is speaking to organizations that empower women and girls, they can share the “Gender Equality” graphic. But a non-profit that promotes all of the UN goals will likely be interested in the entire design.

While a lot of information is packed into each graphic, it’s never overwhelming. Each goal is separate from the other with bold headers and distinct colors, which are also used to differentiate the UN’s marketing efforts.

20. Ocean Pollution, by Stephanie Phung

Designer Stephanie Phung created this engaging visualization to make more people aware of the ocean’s current state of pollution.

This free infographic uses art to tell a story about the financial and environmental implications of ocean pollution. The designer also uses colors and design elements — the blue color for the sea — that people are already familiar with.

Ready to start designing stunning infographics?

Now that your creativity is sparked, it’s the perfect time to start creating your infographics.

While the infographics you create might be different from those on this list, ensure they’re colorful and engaging. And most importantly, that the infographics pass across information in a manner that’s easy to understand.

A while ago (as in 13 years ago) we created the first Website Grader. The goal was simple: help anyone with a website evaluate its effectiveness at attracting an audience of interested and relevant buyers.

We founded HubSpot in 2006 and created Website Grader in 2008 because we believed that the inbound methodology — building meaningful, lasting relationships with prospects and customers — was not only a more effective way to grow a business, it was the right way to grow a business. And we knew how important it was for people to leverage their websites to attract visitors and connect with customers to grow.

Fast forward to 2021, and websites do a whole lot more than attract visitors.

Your website is a sales rep, providing prospects with the features and pricing of your offering. And helping them book a meeting to learn more.

Your website is part of your customer service team, answering questions about your products and services through a knowledge base or chatbot.

Your website is a member of your HR team, sharing information about your company culture and open positions.

The list goes on…

To put it bluntly: your website is really freaking important! Today, 86% of people will find your business online. Your website is your first impression, your primary spokesperson, your around-the-clock inbound sales team — you get my point. It’s one of the most important assets to your business.

It’s no wonder we see businesses invest so much in their websites. In a recent HubSpot Research study, 63% of marketers indicated that they were going to upgrade their website this year.

Website upgrades can include:

• Performance: Page speed, load time, page requests, page size, and more
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Page index, meta descriptions, content plugins, and descriptive link text
• Design: Responsive design, legible font size, and tap targets
• Security: HTTPS and secure javascript libraries

Since 2008, we’ve graded over 1 million unique websites on the above four factors. With all this investment, are they actually getting better? Are businesses focusing on the right website upgrades? For example, are websites providing better security for their visitors. Are they offering faster load speeds for quick access? What about mobile accessibility and SEO best practices?

Let’s take a look at average performance in 2015 compared to this year to see what’s changed.

Website Performance Data (2015 vs 2021)

What surprises me the most about this data is that the improvements in technology over the past five years haven’t led to the same improvement in website performance. The overall grade average has only improved 17.1% in little over five years, and performance has actually decreased by 23.3%. The average website grade in 2020 is a D+ (69.1 out of 100). My mother wouldn’t be happy if I came home with that kind of grade.

We also found that only 3.8% of websites have an overall score of 90 or more. If your website scores above a 90, pat yourself on the back. Here are the percentile ranges from our data:

• 80 overall score: 82nd percentile
• 85 overall score: 91st percentile
• 90 overall score: 96th percentile

Here are some observations of the individual benchmark scores:

Website performance has decreased in the past half-decade.

Websites should load faster in 2021 than they did in 2015 — but the exact opposite is true. Performance was the only benchmark metric that decreased in five years. This includes testing for page size, page requests, page speed, and five additional tests that offer a holistic performance grading.

The result? Websites are slower today than they were in 2015.

This is a risk for businesses: the longer visitors wait for your page to load, the more likely they’ll leave your page.

For every second that your website takes to load, people are leaving your business. Good performance should be a priority when improving your website. How does your website’s performance compare?

Search engine optimization is the biggest winner.

In a 2020 survey, we found that 64% of marketers are actively investing in search engine optimization (SEO) and growing their organic presence.

Marketers care about SEO, and this has led to significant progress in the SEO benchmark since 2015 — a 51.9% improvement. Search engine optimization is essential to getting discovered online. It’s good that so many websites are following SEO best practices to improve the discovery of their business. How does your SEO compare?

Security had the second-biggest gain, but the total average falls short.

Our security benchmark shows that websites have improved their security by 142.3% over five years. This is a huge gain but there’s still a lot of room for improvement — the 2021 average score is only 6.3 out of 10.

Security is essential to have on your site to protect customer data. If your website isn’t secure, your visitors might lose trust in your business, especially when shopping on your site. We found that 85% of people won’t visit a site if it’s not secure.

Additionally, security improves discoverability. Starting in 2019, Google prioritized displaying websites with HTTPS in search results. Website Grader checks that your website uses HTTPS and has secure JavaScript libraries.

These two security factors are critical for delivering a secure experience for your visitors. How does your website security compare?

Mobile optimized websites improved marginally.

In the mid-2010s, it felt like every website was going responsive — that is, investing in mobile-first website design. It made sense.

Everywhere I looked, people were heads down on their phones, reading the latest Facebook post or watching a viral YouTube video. And, things haven’t changed much. Well, they have, but now people are scrolling through Instagram or browsing the latest TikTok dance challenge.

Responsiveness wasn’t just a trend — in the first quarter of 2021, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 54.8% of global website traffic. So how do websites stack up on small screens?

We found that our mobile design benchmark average improved by 8% over five years. Today, average websites score 21.6 out of 30 on mobile design. A great improvement, though I’d love to see that number go up even more.

Instagram, for example, is a website that does exceptionally well in how they design and optimize users’ mobile experience. It has a seamless mobile shopping feature for businesses to sell products directly through its mobile website or in-app.

Image Source

One study by Google found that 59% of shoppers surveyed said that shopping on mobile is important when deciding which brand or retailer to buy from.

That’s a huge portion of people looking at your website on mobile and making a decision of whether or not to buy from you. Mobile design will not only impact the experience that people have with your site, but also influences social media posts and your rankings in search engines.

Check your mobile design score on Website Grader.

Where do we go from here?

Our goal with the original Website Grader was to help anyone with a website —developer, marketer, or entrepreneur — to quickly grade their website’s performance. We’ve received good feedback from our users, but we are always growing and evolving.

So we asked ourselves, how could we make Website Grader better?

Our users’ comments had a common thread. They graded their site. They saw where their websites fell short. But we stopped short of teaching them how to improve:

• “More information about how to solve website problems”
• “Instructions on how to get better performance and SEO to get our score higher”
• “How about putting explanations and guidelines for beginners?”

Introducing the New Website Grader

You talked. We listened. Not only have we updated Website Grader’s grading system and foundational technology to get you a more accurate score, but we’ve also created a five-lesson video course that helps you improve your grade. All for free.

You can find the Website Optimization course inside Website Grader starting today.

One last question: How did HubSpot.com score?

HubSpot’s score has not historically been the best. At one point, we averaged 70-80 on Website Grader. Years of marketing updates had slowed things down over time.

Since then, we’ve worked hard to improve HubSpot.com’s design and performance over the last five years for our visitors and customers. Powered by HubSpot CMS Hub, our website now scores a 97 out of 100 on Website Grader — no kidding. It’s something we’re extremely proud of.

Your website is one of your most important assets in attracting business. A bad user experience could lose customer interest, but that doesn’t have to happen if you take the necessary steps to optimize it. If you’re curious to see how your site measures up, run it through our Website Grader and find out how you can make your site more delightful.

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

Data can be a scary word.

It shouldn’t be, but it is. Mostly because people struggle with how to manage it.

Many companies have reached the point where they have so much data, they don’t know where to go next. Others believe they are so small, there’s no need to invest in an enterprise data strategy.

The truth is, regardless of the size of your company and the current state of your data, you will benefit from implementing a data strategy.

To help you get started, we’ve enlisted the expertise of Zosia Kossowski, the group product manager for the business intelligence team at HubSpot (i.e. our in-house data strategy expert.)

By the time you finish reading this article, you’ll have a better idea of your company’s current data maturity level, what factors to consider before you build your strategy, and some steps to help along the way.

Despite popular belief, an enterprise data strategy isn’t solely for big companies with large volumes of data. In fact, small businesses can benefit from investing in a data strategy early on and set the foundation that will help them scale.

Benefits of an Enterprise Data Strategy

The common pitfall many organizations face is that while they are collecting a lot of data, every team is interpreting it in their own way. There’s no standard reporting method and each team might be reporting a different value for the same metric.

This means that everyone ends up with different data with no clear understanding of what’s accurate. When there’s no single source of truth, it becomes incredibly difficult to trust your data and pull valuable insights.

“Data doesn’t just exist in a silo,” said Kossowski. “The marketing team is not just going to use marketing-specific data that no other team has any influence over. They’re going to want to pull information from different areas as well.”

She continues, “And so, an element of governance and standardization and a common language is really important in making sure that those teams can communicate with one another.”

So, by implementing an EDS, you prevent information silos, allow for trust in the data, and enable decision making.

What To Consider When Building an Enterprise Data Strategy

1. Your Current Data Maturity Level

The first thing Kossowski recommends doing before building out your strategy is a self-assessment.

Ask yourself: Where does your company fall in the data maturity stage?

Dell has a widely used “Data Maturity Model” that helps companies determine how data-driven their company actually is. There are four stages:

• Data aware – Your company has not standardized its reporting system and there’s no integration between your systems, data sources, and databases. Plus, there’s a lack of trust in the data itself.
• Data proficient – There’s still a lack of trust in the data, specifically its quality. You may have invested in a data warehouse but there are still some pieces missing.
• Data savvy – Your company is empowered to make business decisions from your data. However, there are still some kinks to work out between business leaders and IT, as IT works to provide reliable data on demand.
• Data driven – IT and business are working closely together and are on the same page. Now, the focus is on scaling the data strategy because the foundation work (particularly integrating data sources) has already been successfully implemented.

What’s most important here is being realistic about where your company falls.

“I think the biggest pitfall that I see is not being really honest with yourself about where your company is in the data maturity stage,” said Kossowski.

She adds that it’s not enough to look at the feelings you have about how data driven you think your company is. Look at the facts.

Start by identifying the data problems your company currently faces, as that is a great indicator of where you stand.

2. Your Industry and Company Size

The industry you’re in and the size of your company will determine whether you take a centralized or distributed approach to your data strategy.

But before we break down those approaches, let’s talk about two data strategy frameworks: offense and defense.

During my conversation with Kossowski, she brought up how this framework (explained in detail here) has helped HubSpot develop its own strategy.

Data defense prioritizes things like data security, access, governance, and accuracy while data offense focuses on gaining insights that will enable decision making.

Every company needs a balance of offense and defense. However, some lean more on one end of the spectrum based on their industry.

A healthcare organization or financial institution, for instance, likely deals with highly sensitive data, where data privacy and security is paramount.

Getting real-time data and quick insights is likely not a top priority whereas providing guardrails for who can access data probably is. As such, they will lean more toward a defense framework.

On the flip side, you have tech companies, an industry that tends to move quickly and relies more heavily on a quick turnaround of data insights.

So, they lean more on offense. With that said, there are certainly departments within tech companies (and other fast-moving industries) that will focus more on defense, such as finance.

Now back to centralized and distributed strategies.

The framework you use will inform which strategy serves your company best.

In a centralized structure, you have a centralized reporting or business intelligence (BI) team that manages and prepares the data as well as the reports.

“That [structure] can work a lot better at a smaller organization, and especially in an organization that’s prioritizing defense because you’re going to move slower,” said Kossowski. “You’re going to be the bottleneck but you also have tight control over every piece of it.”

A distributed model, on the other hand, works better for larger teams who take the offensive approach. This way, each team can move quickly and is empowered to do work in a way that works for them.

In this model, BI simply is responsible for the platforms and setting the guardrails while the teams do the development work, Kossowski explains.

“If you think about an organization, as the company gets larger, with a more centralized team, it becomes more and more difficult to scale,” she said. “You end up having to just hire more and more people to be able to achieve that.”

“So I think at a certain size of the company, you’re going to end up moving more and more toward [a] decentralized [strategy] anyways.”

So, once you understand which framework works best for your industry and size, you can implement the appropriate strategy.

3. Your Data Management Team

Data science is the hot topic right now in data management, according to Kossowski. And she’s not wrong.

In 2012, Harvard Business Review named it the sexiest job of the 21st century. Nearly 10 years later, Glassdoor has named it the second best job in America.

But if you’re debating what role to add to your data management team, a data scientist shouldn’t be your first option.

Kossowski highlights that your data science is only going to be as good as the data that’s powering it. And if that data isn’t trustworthy, you’re not going to get valuable insights.

“Data science is not a magic wand that magically turns bad data into insights. Regardless, you’re still going to need that data foundation,” she adds. “So, jumping into doing something because it’s the next big thing, I think that’s a big concern.”

If you’re in the earlier stages of the data maturity model, Kossowski has a suggestion on where to focus your efforts.

“A data warehouse architect or even a data analyst who is experienced in writing SQL and building out SQL tables,” she says. “If you’re only going to hire one person and you don’t have that much data, that can be a really powerful hire because there’s a lot that one person can do when you’re at a smaller scale. They can wear many different hats and learn different things.”

When it comes to the more technical tasks, like ingesting data into the warehouse, there are third-party tools you can use to do that for you.

At this stage, what you really need is someone to help you with structuring your data.

1. Outline your data architecture.

The first thing you want to do is understand your data at a granular level.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Where will the data live?
• What type of data will you be collecting and from what sources?
• How will the data be organized?

The goal here is to understand the structure of your data.

If there’s no understanding of the structure, you can’t build a comprehensive plan on how to manage your data.

2. Define the relationship between BI and your teams.

When it comes to data strategy, one of the most important steps is defining the teams involved in the process and setting expectations for BI.

In a large organization that hasn’t thought about data strategy before, you’ll often find that every team follows a different model and has a different relationship with BI, making it hard for BI to operate in a streamlined and standard fashion.

It also blurs the lines between the roles of the data analyst and BI.

The data analyst should know the business logic that is specific to their team and the structure of the data being collected. BI, on the other hand, shouldn’t need to have specific knowledge on the operational area it is supporting, and should instead be focusing on the data source and managing the platform to support the analyst.

When BI is regularly adjusting its process to match the team’s specific business logic, it slows everything down and creates a constant need for relearning.

Kossowki’s suggestion? Strip the business logic out of the BI layer and work on things that are relevant to as many teams as possible.

In addition, come up with a standard analyst profile and a model for the relationship between BI and teams.

“There are still going to be some places where we’re working on data sets and not the whole platform,” said Kossowski, “but as much as we can, it’s cleaning up the base data, making it easy to join, but not actually doing those joins and the logic for them.”

3. Assign ownership.

After establishing the relationship between your teams and BI, the next step is defining who will own what.

It’s typical to have a different owner for each part of the data. For example, one person or team may own the operational data while another owns the reporting data.

You may also need to assign owners at different stages in the pipeline. The BI team may own the data at a particular stage then pass it on to the analysts.

Kossowski believes ownership starts with the teams who are producing the data.

“They need to feel some level of ownership over the data and have some level of accountability if something’s wrong,” she said. “Because if it’s wrong at the source, there’s very little that BI can do.”

She continues, “And if you try to put in patch patches at that level, you’re just going to run into more problems down the line, so that relationship is important as well.”

4. Establish data governance.

Data governance is a set of policies and regulations that inform how data will be collected and stored to ensure accuracy and quality.

In simple terms, data governance is saying “Hey, you want to use and be a part of this source of truth data we’ve created? Then you’ve got to meet this criteria.“

This can include meeting coding standards, having a certain number of reviewers, and following a specific documentation process.

“When we think about governance and adoption, it’s really about the mechanisms you can put into place toward adherence,” said Kossowski.

There are two pieces that you have to consider when it comes to governance: the cultural piece and the technological aspect.

From a cultural perspective, how do you get your teams to adopt these standards? And from a technical perspective, which processes can you automate so that everything does not require behavior modification?

As you think of these two pieces, you have to consider both the analyst side and the engineer (or source team) side.

Kossowski explains that for engineering teams, it can be hard to think about what data looks like when it comes into the warehouse because it’s not a core part of their product or responsibility.

They may not see the tangible benefits of the data unless it’s a data-driven organization that works tightly with its analysts. In this case, the analysts can relay that the data is powering X decision, so until the data means Y requirements, decisions can’t be made.

For analysts, it’s easier to see the benefits because they’re closer to the business and can see the direct impact. They can realize that following data governance standards means less reliance on BI, which makes things move more quickly.

“The insights from the data have to be powering decisions being made about the product because that’s the only way you’re going to get the product and engineering teams

bought into the value of data and thinking about their data as it is exported,” said Kossowski.

5. Reassess regularly.

Wherever you fall on the data maturity model, your data strategy will always need some tweaking.

“[At HubSpot], we have a three-year plan and all these ideas of what happens in each of those years,” said Kossowski. But I fully expect that a year from now, when we look at it, there are things we’re going to want to tweak based on how things have changed.”

For instance, say you introduce a new feature in your product or service and now are collecting more sensitive customer data. This may require taking a more defensive approach. If your company grows exponentially, you may need to shift toward a distributed strategy instead of a centralized one.

Even if there are no changes in how your company operates, you may still need to reassess. Here are two major indicators it’s time to review your data strategy:

• There is frustration with how long things are taking.
• There’s a lack of trust in the data.

Kossowski says finding the balance between those two is key.

“You don’t want BI doing everything because then it’s just going to take a long time,” she said, “but you also don’t want to have so much freedom in the analyst population that you can’t really rely on any data.”

A good rule of thumb is to review your strategy every six months to a year. Speak with business leaders, IT, and your teams to understand how everyone feels about your progress and determine what changes need to be made.

The process for building an EDS will vary from one company to the next, as your data maturity level, industry, and company size all play a role in the steps you take.

By taking stock of where your company currently stands, you can develop a strategy that meets the specific needs of your business.

You know the expression, “What you see is what you get”?

Well, when it comes to email marketing campaigns, that might not always be the case.

Since everyone uses different email providers such as Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo, emails can appear differently for various subscribers.

Sometimes images are blocked, alt text is missing, or fonts won’t render. If this happens, you could damage your credibility and lose subscribers. That’s why it’s important to test your emails before you send them.

In this post, we’ll discuss the best free and paid email testing, previewing, and rendering tools you can use to make sure your emails are ready for the eyes of your leads and customers.

Before we get started let’s take a moment to review HTML versus plain text emails and previews.

There are benefits to both HTML and plain text emails and specific use cases in which it’s wise to use one option over the other.

No matter which email type you choose, you should preview your emails to make sure they’re ready for your audience. This is especially important if you go with an HTML email since it inherently includes multimedia elements, colors, fonts, branded elements, images, and more.

HTML Email Preview

As your HTML emails become more sophisticated and as your email list grows, it’s important to preview and test your emails prior to them being sent to recipients. By previewing your messages, you’ll ensure your emails are professional, error-free, easy-to-read, and ready for your leads and customers.

An HTML preview allows you to adjust anything necessary prior to the final version being sent to your audience. That way, you can send your messages to the people who matter most — your customers — with complete confidence.

Free Email Testing Tools

It’s important to note that the following free email preview tools are also free email testing tools. Meaning, they have the ability to assist with email previews and email testing.

1. HubSpot Email Marketing Tool

With HubSpot’s Email Marketing Tools, you can create, personalize, and optimize all of your marketing emails without the need for any code or help from designers.

Since this tool is part of your all-in-one HubSpot CRM platform, you’ll know the data that you’re using to customize your emails is accurate. For instance, personalize emails by referring to the recipient’s lifecycle stage, membership status — then schedule your campaign so your customized emails are sent automatically.

Pre-made and customizable email templates as well as the tool’s drag-and-drop editor allow you to quickly create and send beautiful and professional emails to your recipient list. Lastly, A/B test different elements of your emails — such as subject lines or the time that you send your emails — to determine what works best for your audience.

2. SubjectLine.com

Testing the visual design of your emails is important. However, don’t forget to preview your actual content as well.

With SubjectLine.com, you can test your subject lines and receive a free rating out of 100. The tool considers the total length, word length, urgency, and more.

Word choice matters in your subject lines and this tool will help you come up with more clickable subjects so your readers are more likely to open.

3. MailNinja Email Previewer

MailNinja is a free, easy-to-use, uncluttered email preview tool. With this tool, you can see instant previews of your HTML emails. Additionally, you can double-check your alt text, send test emails, and see how your email will look on different devices.

If you don’t trust or want to use a different preview tool than your email marketing software, this is a simple, free option.

4. Inbox Analyzer

Inbox Analyzer, another free email preview tool, helps take the pain out of inbox and spam testing your emails.

Send your emails to the most popular inbox providers to see how they appear and if they deliver — this tool will let you know if your email hits the inbox, spam folder, or is undelivered.

Additionally, you’ll receive instant reports on your sender scores, reputation alerts, and even blacklists. With this tool, you’ll be able to find issues and learn how to resolve them.

5. PutsMail

PutsMail is a free email testing tool by Litmus. With PutsMail, you can see how your email will look across 50+ different platforms and devices. This is a great tool if you’re just looking for a quick and easy way to preview your emails.

1. Get Response

Price: $15/mo (Basic), $49/mo (Plus), $99/mo (Professional), request custom pricing (Max)

Get Response is an email marketing software that can help you create content, boost sales, and increase traffic to your site. Preview your emails in more than 25 popular email clients, and determine if and when multimedia elements like images are blocked.

2. Litmus

Price: $99/mo (Litmus Basic), $199/mo (Litmus Plus), request custom pricing (Litmus Enterprise)

Litmus is a tool for testing and developing email campaigns. With a paid account, you’ll gain access to an email preview testing tool that allows you to see screenshots of your emails across 90+ different apps and devices.

If you have a Litmus account, you can add a Chrome extension to your browser and test your emails without ever leaving your email service provider. With the extension, you can validate your links, images, and tracking. Plus, the extension will instantly run a new checklist with every edit.

3. Stripo

Price: Free, $12.50/mo (Business), $40/mo (Agency)

Stripo is an email builder with email testing and a variety of available email service provider (ESP) integrations (including HubSpot, Gmail, Outlook, and Mailchimp). There’s a library of custom modules so you can use them across various campaigns.

All of the emails you design with Stripo’s HTML editor are responsive so you’ll never have to worry about how they render for recipients across different devices. Additionally, after building dynamic AMP emails with Stripo, the tool’s code validator checks the email for errors for you.

4. Preview My Email

Price: $25/mo (Standard), $45/mo (Business), $160/mo (Professional), $399/mo (Enterprise)

Preview My Email is another email testing solution that can help you improve your performance. With it, you’ll get real screenshots of your email across all the popular email providers in one click. Additionally, this tool offers email analytics that can help you understand your email audience better.

5. Email on Acid

Price: $73/mo (The Basics), $112/mo (Premium), $424/mo (Professional), request custom pricing (Enterprise)

Email on Acid is an email preview tool designed to help you display emails properly, across all clients. The email previews are live clients, so you’ll see exactly what your subscribers see.

This tool gives you screenshots so you have no questions about what your email will look like on 90 clients and devices. It also tests for poor formatting, broken links, and code problems.

Email on Acid also offers the ability to comment, edit, and review email previews directly in the software for a faster and more efficient testing process.

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Previewing your emails is an important part of email marketing. If people can’t see your emails or your credibility is ruined, those emails haven’t done their job. Use an email previewing and testing tool to ensure they’re perfect for recipients. 

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

What did you last Google? Willing to share it with the public?

Search histories can tell a story about a person and what they’re thinking.

But I can’t imagine anyone would willingly give up their personal search history — especially if it identifies them — without some sort of incentive.

Thankfully, we can tap into Google Trends for these insights.

Let’s dive into what Google Trends is, where the data comes from, and how you can use Google Trends for market research, product innovation, and more.

What is Google Trends?

“Explore what the world is searching” greets you on the Google Trends homepage and accurately reflects what the tool does.

Google Trends visualizes trending topics, search terms, and news on Google. It provides real-time data regarding current trends from the past seven days, as well as past trends, which dates back to 2004.

Where Does Google Trends Data Come From

Google Trends includes anonymized samples — real-time and non-real-time — of search requests made to Google, which is then categorized into topics.

Because we can see trends by location, the data is normalized to ensure regions with the most search volume do not consistently rank the highest.

To normalize the data, Google divides each data point by the total searches of the geography and time range it represents to compare relative popularity. Those numbers are then scaled on a range of 0 to 100, based on a topic’s proportion to all searches on all topics.

One major caveat to the data is that Google retains queries that may come from “irregular activity.” Google says this is done to preserve the quality of the search data provided from other Google tools.

Simply put, if Google filtered out the spammy activity from Trends, spammers could then use the tool to understand which words are identified as spam, and adjust accordingly.

In addition to the search query data, the Realtime Search Trends report also includes the number of Google News articles written per hour.

How to Use Google Trends

Google Trends has several ways to slice and dice the data. Google Trends has four main sections:

• Explore
• Trending Searches
• Year in Search
• Subscriptions

The data can be filtered by location, date, categories, search section (i.e., News vs. Shopping), and even by topics vs. search terms. Rather than walking through each section and visualization, let’s see how they can apply to common marketing tasks.

1. Use Google Trends for Market Research

Need to understand the interest in your product or service to launch in a new market?

Google Trends Explore can help you understand how seasonality and location might affect your product or service.

In the Country drop-down selector below your query, for instance, you can filter down to a metropolitan area or click into the options on the map. You can also change the date to expand or decrease the history — but keep in mind the sample will change if you select a time within seven days.

Pro Tip: As you are typing in your query, notice the auto-populated options. Anything that does

not have a “search term” underneath it is a Topic. Topics are aggregated categories, while search terms focus on keywords. The same applies to the “Related topics” and “Related queries” tables. Start broader with a topic, and then narrow down to specific search terms as you analyze the results.

2. Test Out Google Trends for Newsjacking

Do you use newsjacking to help generate content? Then you should definitely use Google Trends subscriptions. Sign up to get the top, most, or all search trends weekly, daily, or as they happen.

3. Leverage Google Trends for Keyword Research

Many keyword research tools show an expected monthly search volume. Unless you’ve been tracking that data month-by-month, it’s hard to tell if searches for the topic are trending up or down. Google Trends can give you the directional data to pair with your monthly search volume.

While you are checking trends for your keywords, you can find related queries that are on the rise to also consider in your keyword set.

If you aren’t sure what people might be searching for, use the topic presented by Google in auto-complete, where possible, and check the “Related queries” filtered by Top queries. Once you’ve found different terms in the related queries, add, up to five, to compare them.

Pro Tip: Make sure you are using search terms. Wrapping your search in quotations ensures the whole phrase is used in that order. You can further refine your search with punctuation to include or exclude certain words.

4. Use Google Trends for Product Innovation

Are you looking for insights into the latest colors, materials, or styles for your product? Suppose you start broadly with a topic in Explore.

In that case, the “Related queries” filtered by Rising can surface trending colors, materials, or other product innovations and indicate how much the interest has increased in the selected time frame. Those marked with Breakout show a significant increase from the previous period, growing more than 5000%.

5. Employ Google Trends for Topic Clustering

Hopefully, you understand the difference between search terms and topics in Trends by now.

With topics, Google Trends can help simplify your topic cluster strategy. As you search for a term, Google will provide you with topics instead of just search terms, and once one is selected, lists “Related topics”, too. You can get a sense for how Google News helps build relationships between topics by checking out the real-time search trends report.

We can go even broader than topics, though. Once you’ve selected a term, you can then choose a Category. While these are meant to refine your search query, you can remove your search after a Category has been selected and be left with queries and topics tied to the high-level category.

6. Test Out Google Trends for Analyzing News Publications

Are you pitching to or working in the news? Then you want to dig into the Trending Searches data.

As mentioned before, the real-time trending searches lists how many Google News articles have been created about a trending topic each hour. Once you select a topic, the bar charts show the newly-added articles that hour and the cumulative total. You can see how the news may lead or follow the search trend.

The articles listed are the top articles based on the Google News’ ranking system, per Google. If you subscribe to specific topics, you can monitor which publications rank well.

Focus on pitching those publications that are regularly featured on your topics. If you are a publisher, audit those competitors to see if you can update your structured data or Publisher Center information to get on their level.

Ready to start exploring? Dive into Google Trends now, and see the unique ways you can leverage the tool for your own business needs.