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Everyone wants to grow their business, but not everyone has the time or patience to learn all the ins and outs of marketing, sales enablement, and making the most out of a CRM such as HubSpot. Join the Web Canopy Studio team, a HubSpot Diamond Partner Agency, as they chat about various topics all designed to help you grow your B2B business.
Tom Andrews (00:04.074)
Right, see you later, mate. Right, man, let's get to it. So Elliot, welcome back to the Web Canopy Studio Show. How are we today?
Elliott Sitkins (00:16.69)
Pretty good, pretty good. Glad to be back. All the fans have been clamoring for my return, I'm sure. So here we are.
Tom Andrews (00:23.018)
Hi there. Have you got your, your autographs ready? Let's the signed photos send. Yeah. All right. And sweet. So last episode we spoke about email marketing generally kind of platform agnostic really just talking about general best practices and some tactics to help people squeeze more juice out of that email marketing today. However, we are going to be going a lot deeper into the weeds talking about our favorite email marketing platform.
Elliott Sitkins (00:27.762)
Yeah.
Tom Andrews (00:51.946)
I mean, we are a HubSpot partner agency, so it's going to be a bit weird if we suddenly mentioned Klaviyo. But no, HubSpot is generally incredible, especially for B2B companies. Probably worth mentioning that platforms like Klaviyo just for email are probably great for e -commerce. But for our stuff, for our market, and if you listen to this podcast, you're probably in B2B. HubSpot is amazing. So Elliot, do you want to start off just by talking about...
giving us an overview of HubSpot's capabilities and advantages for email marketing.
Elliott Sitkins (01:26.93)
Absolutely, yeah. So obviously, like you said, we're a little biased, but I really, really do think HubSpot is one of if not the best email marketing tools out there. And really all that comes down to at its foundation, HubSpot has everything centered around their CRM. So rather than being an email tool that you can just upload contacts tool, it's truly a contact database that also allows you to leverage all that information into its email tools.
And it's email tool is one of the oldest things they've had. We've actually had talks with HubSpot's internal team. Like that is the thing they've probably worked on and perfected the most. They've obviously expanded into so many different hubs and different tools, but email is really the one that's most sorted out. So the ability to access all the information from your contact database, not only have those emails, but all the information you might use for personalization tokens, which we'll get into a second.
and even just being able to sort it out into lists and have all that available in one platform that also tracks all their email activity over time. So you can search through that and all the automation tools and everything on top of that and just being easy to use. It really is a great, great tool for most marketers.
Tom Andrews (02:39.69)
So let's now dive in again a little bit deeper and just talk about some specific tools. And you mentioned there the personalization tokens. How can you use HubSpot's personalization tokens to essentially make your email marketing better and make it feel more personal?
Elliott Sitkins (02:56.05)
Absolutely, so the most common easy use is just gonna be using that first name token. I think that's very common. Most brands do this nowadays, but for good reason. I forget the exact number. There's a lot of evidence about more personalized content, getting more engagement, better open rates, things like that. So whether it's in a subject line or preview line or just the first line of the email, just like that. Hey, first name so someone knows that it's a little bit more customized for you, even if...
At least as marketers, we generally know that those emails are going to be automated. It still shows they put in a little bit of effort to make it for you. And obviously you don't want to go too far to the other extreme and, you know, give them all of the information you have on them and their database. That's going to creep them out a little bit, but being able to make it personalized like that. The other great thing that HubSpot tools has is sometimes you do need a hyper personalized email. If it's maybe a little bit more transactional, if you're.
You can even send internal emails this way to pass along contact information or external emails if it's like a confirmation like, hey, we received all this from you. You can go and plug in all the information that you would need. You can also use a lot of the information in their database for smart content, which would be actually modifying different parts of the email. You can modify the opening paragraph if, say, I'm emailing both marketers and sales leaders and I want to adjust how I introduce myself a little bit depending on that audience.
If those people are members of a list of marketers and sales leaders segmented in my HubSpot, I can actually change the first paragraph that they're going to get entirely. So just a lot of different options to customize and personalize the content for your audience and make sure that you're going to get better engagement in that.
Tom Andrews (04:35.85)
And something I was thinking of when you were saying that was when it comes to that personalisation as market is, we understand it. And I think most people do in today's day and age that it's not just a one -to -one email. However, one thing HubSpot offers is so workflows, which is your typical marketing emails and then sequences, which are your more sales emails, which are going to look as though they are just coming from one person to another. Do you feel that personalisation tokens can maybe like...
How should I phrase it? That almost you can make the most out of personalisation tokens from sequences rather than workflows. And if so, can you maybe give me a specific way how you could use a personalisation token in a sequence?
Elliott Sitkins (05:18.866)
Yes and no. I would definitely say that because a sequence, as you said, you know, just high level workflows are using automated marketing emails. That's like your general, you know, one to many, like you said, and then sequences are more of a sales tool, actually leveraging your inbox, whether that's, you know, outlook, email, sending one to one emails, like you said. So, so yes, in that sense, personalization tokens can be more helpful in sequences because it is that more personalized.
more direct outreach. Like I know in the past we've even played around with if you're doing like cold sales outreach through a sequence or lukewarm sales outreach even, if you kind of have a template that you're going to send but you want to customize maybe the first email or two, if you have like an SDR role you can actually create a custom property on a contact record that says custom first line and that way if you have someone doing research on this person and you just want to customize that first line to be like,
you know, hey, it came across your LinkedIn profile and I noticed this experience, whatever that is to make it a little bit more customized. Now you can actually completely change the first line of an email and have someone go in and just update on everyone's contact record. Then you can have a completely templated email. All you do is use a personalization token custom first line. That'll be the only thing you need to adjust in there. It's going to automatically pull in, you know, their name and whatever else you need to introduce. So in that sense, using some of those tools like that for that more personal outreach, absolutely. Uh,
And so from a sales side, yes, there are some other more creative ways you can use personalization tokens and smart content in marketing emails, where, like I said, if you're treating it as more of a transaction email and you want to give them, let them know some of the answers to their form responses or use smart content to recommend different products, things along those lines, that might be a more complex use of those features in marketing emails.
Tom Andrews (07:11.37)
super fascinating. And one thing where HubSpot truly excels as well is with sequences and workflows, the email automation side of things. So, I mean, as Mark is, we all love the idea, don't we, of setting something up once and then letting it run forever. And it sounds like with that personalization, we can do that really effectively. Have you got any best practices for using email automation though, without overwhelming?
recipients because I imagine it can be very tempting to just write a ton of emails and just be like, boom, there you go. This is all automated sit back now. But whereas in reality that could get overwhelming, people could start missing two emails, too many emails maybe. So have you got any best practices for just sort of keeping that excitement level down and not letting us market is just go and have a free for all.
Elliott Sitkins (08:01.618)
Yeah, absolutely. I think, uh, one of the big things to keep in mind just with HubSpot in general, but especially when it comes to things like automation is keeping your portal clean and organized because when you first get started, it can be super exciting to, you know, do a new lead engagement, a lead re -engagement, a once this action is taken, we're going to automate these emails. Those are all great things, but make sure you're really keeping track of what.
triggers someone's taken action and what's going to happen when that trigger happens because after a while, once you create all these workflows, if you leave them all on, it can be easy to lose track of a campaign you might've started a year and a half ago. All of a sudden you want to launch something new and now a new lead might come into your database and get enrolled in three workflows right off the bat. And all of a sudden, well, each of those workflows individually might be well -timed to send, you know, an email every other day for a couple of weeks, but now all of a sudden they're getting
two emails every single day for a week because you didn't realize all these background workflows were going on. And that can quickly overwhelm someone and turn them off, especially if the messaging is not aligned and you know, they're getting promoted three different offers. So I think the number one thing is just making sure that you, you are aware of all the other workflows in workflows. You can also check in settings to automatically unenroll someone from other workflows. Uh, and in sequences that'll automatically happen, someone can only be enrolled in one sequence at a time. So just keeping track, making sure that.
you know, you're, you're organized with all that.
Tom Andrews (09:31.786)
Yeah, I've signed up to email this before where I've been got their welcome series and then like an hour or two or however long after not very long. I receive another email, which is generally their sort of daily or weekly email. And then in some cases you'll then get a separate email later that day about like another promotion they're running. So like you said, there you've got three emails from different workflows coming and like smacking you around the face and it's
You just cannot possibly keep track and in your head, you're trying to work out what, hang on a minute. Like, where does this relate into the last email? And it just doesn't. And that automatically leaves a bad taste in your mouth because you think, okay, these people don't care about me. They're just trying to squeeze me for every penny I've got. Um, and that's why they're bombarding me with emails. Um, one other tool I really want to cover is the AB testing tool, just because.
The really cool thing with email marketing is that if you depending on your list size and you will need, I think quite a decent size list to really make the most out of AB testing, just so you hit statistical significance. But if you do have a list size and they'll ask you what this size you think that should be in a moment as a minimum. Um, but you can then send one part of an email, such as a subject line out to one segment of your list, and then another subject line out to another, see which one does best.
And if there's a statistically significant difference, send that subject line or whatever part of your email you're testing to the rest of your list. So can you just go into a little bit more depth about AB testing specifically in HubSpot and any, any do's and don'ts of AB testing and things to watch out for.
Elliott Sitkins (11:17.234)
Yeah, so like you were saying the cool thing with HubSpot's A -B testing for marketing emails is if you so say we're gonna You know send out a new offer. We scheduled to send out at noon today What's gonna happen is HubSpot is gonna automatically send to half of your list a random sample of half your list is gonna get sent out at noon over the next four hours It's then gonna determine Which version A or B performed better based on the metric you choose it can be open rate click rate click through rate?
And then four hours later, it's going to send to the rest of your audience, the winning example. And if it can't determine a winner, then it'll just continue to send them 50 -50. So for that automation to happen, I believe their number is 2000 contacts. So that's kind of like what they determined is going to be, you know, make sure that a thousand people will then get the A and B versions. And hopefully enough of them will engage in the first four hours to get.
significant results to determine a winner. Now you still can send an A -B version with fewer than that, but it's just going to randomly sample A and B. You'll have to pick the winner and take those results into account for the next time. And you can also do A -B testing with sequences now. That's kind of a newer feature that HubSwi has introduced. But anyway, as you were saying with best practices, the main thing is know what you want to test for. So like I said, you can test for open rate, click through rate or click rate.
make sure that you are optimizing the correct thing. So if it's open rate, generally you're going to be testing subject lines there. Make sure you're only testing subject lines because we want to determine what's going to win there. Same thing, if we're determining click rate, that might be layout of the email or some copy tweaks. Make sure you're testing one thing at a time and make sure you're tracking results is the big thing. I know a lot of people just, they love that there's an AB test feature. They run all sorts of AB tests.
but they never really like track and look back on that information to make improvements going forward. It's always just like, okay, let's see which subject line wins in all these emails. Like, okay, great. After you run 10 tests, let's look back. Does asking questions work better? Does using more personalization work better? Is there a certain language that tends to get higher open rates? And use that to continually test and improve going forward. Cause we don't just wanna keep running, you know,
Elliott Sitkins (13:36.498)
20 % open rate versus 25 % open rate, okay, the 25 % wins every time. We'll now use test some of those subject lines against each other and use variations to maybe bump that up to 30%.
Tom Andrews (13:48.138)
Fantastic. And just touching on that at the end, have you found a way to maybe use AI to speed that process up? So say you find that you, like you said, you look at the last 10 email subject lines, you've said, is there a way to maybe take all of those subject lines, put it into chat GPT and maybe ask it to explain if they see a pattern.
Is that, is that something you've tried and is that something you can do just to like make sure you are actually, like you said, using the A -B test for the future rather than just to see what wins in the present?
Elliott Sitkins (14:26.162)
Yeah, that's a great point. And I really like how you explained that use case. Cause I think a lot of people would be tempted to say, here's the subject lines that performed well for me. And then just ask chat GPT to write new ones, which you can do. But I find that it can be, you know, chat GPT or any generative AI model is very hit or miss with certain things like that. Every once in a while they'll get a good subject line, but they tend to feel really formulaic and forced. And at least for people like us that
deal with subject lines a lot, you tend to notice, obviously they're trained on patterns, but it can be a little obvious. But that being said, it can be a great idea to feed it and say, hey, here's the results of my last 10 A -B tests. Here were the winners, here were the losers. What patterns can you find? And it will do a really good job of searching through those and saying, hey, topics like this performed well. Or when you used a more assertive rather than a passive voice, that performed well.
And so, you know, the important thing is always with AI is make sure you're specific on what you're asking it and what you want the answer, you know, what kind of answer you want it to give you. But yeah, I can give you really good insights on things like that.
Tom Andrews (15:37.898)
And speaking of giving it specific instructions, I've also found when it actually comes to writing emails, that if you just ask it to write an email, it will come up with something horrible where as email market is, we, it just gives us the ick. We don't like it. However, if you do feed it, um, the specific instructions, saying what you want the email to do, and then give it examples of other, either other emails you've written or competitors emails that essentially do the same job, attach those to chat GPT.
And then tell it what you need and why you need it, who your target audiences doing that can actually spit back some really good emails. You're still probably going to have to edit it a bit because I'm yet to take anything from chat, GPT or another AI model and run with it straight away. But there are some really great use cases for AI. So Ellie, I was going to, I was going to say, Oh, you carry on. You carry on.
Elliott Sitkins (16:20.85)
Mm -hmm.
Elliott Sitkins (16:25.906)
Yeah, well, yeah, I was gonna say.
I was gonna say, yeah, not to cut you off there. I was gonna say we could do a whole episode on AI and maybe we will, but we also, but John Aiken and I actually hosted an AI bootcamp and you can watch all that recorded. So if you want access to our AI bootcamp, shoot me an email, elliott .webcamustudio .com and I can work on getting you access to the AI bootcamp. There's a ton of helpful stuff in there about how some ideas that we've used there and we're probably gonna launch another one this next year. So stay tuned for that as well.
Tom Andrews (16:36.362)
That's what I was gonna say.
Tom Andrews (17:00.746)
Yep. And I have to say that is a very good bootcamp, slightly biased opinion, but it is ridiculously worth it. And I love that idea. That's what I was going to say. I think we should get together and film a, um, record an entire podcast episode about AI, maybe specific to emails, maybe just in general, but listeners, you have that to look forward to in the near future. Elliot will make it another date. So Elliot Sikkins, being an absolute pleasure again, you are a star of the show already. And, um, yeah, listeners.
We'll see you soon.
Elliott Sitkins (17:32.914)
Jason maybe cut out a little bit of that part when we talked over each other on the AI if you can find a good thing to splice that in. But I think that was probably the only thing. You did freeze a couple times, but it was very brief. I don't think it'll be a big deal. So Jason, hopefully that's fine. But there were just a couple times you kind of paused for a second, but it wasn't like super intrusive to the whole thing. So I think we should be good.
Tom Andrews (17:48.298)
Cool, yep, sweet.
Tom Andrews (17:56.01)
Was the audio okay? Okay, sweet. I'll just make sure then when that should be okay then, especially when it comes to the reels as long as, because obviously with the reels it would just be focused on you. Yeah, should be fine. But yeah, Jason, have a look at that. And yeah, sweet, Elliot, I'll let you go because I know you've got a dash. Right, catch you later, man.
Elliott Sitkins (17:58.674)
Audio is great, yeah. Yeah.
Elliott Sitkins (18:08.594)
Mm -hmm.
Elliott Sitkins (18:18.61)
Yeah. All right. Sounds good. Thanks, man.
Tom Andrews (18:24.906)
And then Jason, I will now just go and record the intro. We've said your name so many times in the last like 20 seconds that we probably didn't mention it the whole podcast. And then you type it in and it's just like taking it here.
tempted to say it like five times now really quick just to just to uh just for banter but no archaeologists will say that instead right here's the intro
Tom Andrews (18:58.858)
In fact, I might just record the intro three times just in case any of them like buffer. If it doesn't like come out properly video wise, then at least you'll have three to pick from. But hopefully the first one does the trick.
say Jason, listen back to that previous thing I've just said in case you didn't, just because I'm explaining why I'm recording the intro three times.
Tom Andrews (19:27.178)
Hello and welcome back to the Web Canopy Studio Show. I'm your host Tom Andrews and today we are joined once again by Elliot Sitkins and this time we are going to be talking about email marketing specifically inside of HubSpot. It's a fascinating episode. Let's get started. That's the first one.
Hello and welcome back to the Web Canopy Studio Show. I'm your host, Tom Andrews. And today we are once again joined by Elliot Sitkins, who is here to talk about email marketing, but this time not from a general overview point, but from a specific... I'll start that again.
Hello and welcome back to the Web Canopy Studio Show. I'm your host, Tom Andrews, and today we are joined once again by Elliot Sikkins from Web Canopy Studio. I was about to say Web Canopy Studio Show. I'll do it one more time, one more time, and hopefully the first one was fine anyway.
Tom Andrews (20:22.986)
Hello and welcome back to the Web Canopy Studio show. I'm your host Tom Andrews. And today I am once again joined by Elliot Sitkins, who is once again here to talk about email marketing. But this time we are going to be diving deep into the weeds of HubSpot because last time it was email marketing from, in fact, Jason, I think my brain is fried. So, yeah, hopefully that first one did the trick. If not, I'll...
do it again, but I think that should have been fun. But yeah, cheers dude.