For those of you familiar with this blog and our company you know that Image Media Partners is an inbound marketing agency and that our preferred inbound marketing tool is HubSpot. We’ve been using it for about two years and even though there are plenty of very successful inbound marketers doing a great job without HubSpot, it is the platform I prefer to use. That is one of the reasons I’m so excited about recent updates HubSpot has made in its email program. I don’t want to go through a step-by-step description of the new e-mail platform; there are just too many features. I’ve written about email marketing in the past and do not want to get into “How to” do something here. What I want to talk about in my next blogs are some of the new, cool features that I really, really like.

1. Tracking URLs: A big part of inbound marketing is keeping track of what works and what does not. One trick is to put a unique tracking URL in e-mails. Previously in HubSpot that meant using the URL tracking tool to get a unique URL, setting up a tracking campaign then cutting and pasting it into your email. If you don’t use HubSpot you would need to use a tool like bit.ly to get a unique URL, embed the URL in the email then use bit.ly or Google Analytics to track the clicks. Now in the basic email set up section I just check “Click Tracking” and choose “Add source tracking tags to all URL’s”. Then before I leave I check “Turn on HubSpot identity tracking on all future emails”. I do that every time I set up the Basic Email Options, which I do…. ONCE! Then I never have to deal with it again.
2. Email Types for Unsubscribe: Providing a way for recipients of your emails to unsubscribe is required by spam laws. But not all of your email marketing is the same. Some recipients may not want to get your newsletter but welcome information about new products. This feature lets you set up different types of email marketing. Simply put in a description about the different types of email and how frequently you will send those types of emails. When a recipient decides to unsubscribe from you newsletter they are given an option to unsubscribe from everything or only from your newsletters. 4 out of 10 subscribers report they’ve marked emails as spam simply because the email was irrelevant. (Marketing Serpa) Give your subscribers a chance to subscribe to relevant emails and opt out of irrelevant emails.
3. Default values for personalization: Many email programs let you personalize the email. So for example you can set up the email like this: “Hi *|First Name|*,” so it shows up like this: “Hi Bob,”. These are called merge tags and the problem is that when your database is missing data, like the first name field is blank, your greeting turns out like this: “Hi          ,”. The work around has been to put some code in like this:
   *|IF:FNAME|*Hi *|TITLE:FNAME|*,*|ELSE:|*Hello,*|END:IF|*.
   Well, not only can you drop into your email any value that is in your database, everything from the eBook they downloaded to their twitter handle to their first name, you can set it up so a default value will always replace a blank field. Put “there” in the “first name” field and turn a blank “Hi….,” to “Hi there,”. You can do this for any personalization field and you only have to do it once and you’ll never deal with complex merge tags again.

There are so many new features and cool things you can do with HubSpot’s new email marketing platform that I’m only able to touch on a few. Later this week I’ll touch on the email template and editing section and the statistics after you’ve sent the email. If you would like a more thorough overview, download HubSpot’s free guide: How to Optimize Email Marketing for Conversions. If you are interested in learning more about HubSpot and inbound marketing contact us for a personal inbound marketing demonstration and a free 30 day HubSpot trial. 

Illustration: HubSpot