10 HubSpot hacks you didn't know about
As a HubSpot consultant, I am used to seeing businesses using the platform in their own way.
Some of my clients use HubSpot mainly as a CRM and Email Marketing tool, others use HubSpot to create, publish and monitor website content.
Whether you’ve been using HubSpot for a while or are just getting started with it, one thing is sure: You can ALWAYS do more.
I’ve compiled 10 cool HubSpot Hacks you didn't know about.
Before we start
If the only thing you know about HubSpot is that they have amazing online courses about Marketing (but you don't know much about the platform itself), I recommend you to read this article before going ahead with this guide (otherwise nothing that I am going to say here will make much sense lol).
Ok, now let's get started. This guide is composed of two sections. The first one is a list of hacks for beginner users, and the second, for people who are already familiar with the platform.
If you're just getting started (Beginner users)
Hack #1 You can personalize your entire email! (and not only with first names!!!)
Do you know when you receive newsletters or any other commercial emails and your name appears on the subject line?
No, the Marketing department didn't spend 10 hours manually adding everybody's first name before sending the email.
They've used something called PERSONALIZATION TOKEN.
This is a really common feature that email marketing platforms offer. The tool automatically prepopulates the email subject line with data from the email recipients.
First name is the most common one. In fact, some of the email marketing tools I know ONLY offer First Name as a personalization token.
Now, with HubSpot, you have access to a long list of personalization tokens you can use.
But why would you need this?
Imagine sending your customer a message like this:
Hi {Customer's Name},
How are things in {Customer's City}?
We had a chat on {Date of the last meeting with the customer} and I just wanted to ask you if you have any questions.
Now, this is what we call a PERSONALIZED EMAIL!
Sending an email like this to a list of old clients is an amazing tactic to make them engage with you again! Highly personalized messages are proven to generate higher engagement.
Watch my video below to learn more about the different types of personalization tokens you can use in your emails with HubSpot. You will also see you can use these fields across the entire email (subject line, preview text, and email content).
Hack #2 You can create your own custom properties!
You know that HubSpot has more than 100 default properties right?
(If not, just go to any of your contacts inside the CRM and click on View All Properties at the bottom of the left sidebar).
Well, ok, it’s plenty of choices.
Properties are pretty much any type of information about your contact. Their first name, last name, email, birthday, city, which marketing email they opened last, which of your ebooks they downloaded, etc.
There are properties associated with your contact’s profile, company, their browsing activity that HubSpot tracks, ads conversions, email engagement… And much more!
Now, let’s suppose you want to add information about people’s… food choices.
Suppose you are chatting with your customer and you ask them what is their favorite food.
Then you are adding them to your contacts database and you want to have this information registered under their profile on HubSpot.
What you have to do here is to create a new property on HubSpot.
There are different ways you can create your own custom property on HubSpot. Watch my video to learn more!
Hack #3 You can set up pop up forms!
Whenever you are creating forms on HubSpot, you have multiple choices of styles you can go for.
I don’t know about you, but most of my clients always go for embedded forms (forms you create, copy the code of the form, and paste them inside of your website).
Why?
I guess it’s partially because pop up forms are a new thing and people are not very familiar with them yet.
But believe me, they are an awesome way of collecting your visitor's email addresses at the right time.
Pop up forms are more engaging and make the whole process of becoming your subscriber easier and faster.
Now, obviously, pop up forms have to be done right.
Luckily HubSpot knows exactly what it takes to create beautiful and attention-grabbing pop-up forms.
Hack #4 You can create workflows for things other than just email automation
This is by far the biggest mistake I see my clients making.
If I had to choose ONE of HubSpot’s most powerful features, it would definitely be the automations section.
Workflows are available for subscriptions Marketing Professional and up.
Some of my clients still think that workflows are ONLY FOR AUTOMATING EMAILS, which is a big misconception.
Workflows can help you automate tasks in your business, email reminders to improve your team productivity, and so many other things, apart from automating emails to your customers.
To help you get started, let’s create a simple (no customer email-related) workflow together.
Yeah, this is it. Automations help you:
- Streamline your processes
- Get back to your customers in a more efficient way
- Reduce time spent on repetitive tasks
- Improve team productivity
- Convert more leads
If you are using workflows only for emails in your business, you are - I'm afraid to say - leaving money on the table.
Hack #5 You can publish all your social media posts from HubSpot
How many social media profiles do you have?
I'm active on Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter...
Now, if I want to post the same thing across all channels... Let's say I have an important update for my audience. If I want to post the exact same update and I am not using a social media scheduling tool, I'd have to go to Facebook, post, go to Linkedin, post, go to Instagram, post... It's a lot of manual work!
HubSpot offers an embedded social media scheduling tool that allows you to publish across different channels at the same time (you can also schedule posts, and produce your entire content pipeline in advance!)
Let's see how it works!
Ok, ready for more hacks?
If you've been using the platform for a while... (Intermediate users)
Hack #6 Easily clone workflow steps to save time
Cloning workflow steps is the best solution for situations when you have a long workflow where some actions are repeated. This happens a lot with IF/THEN branches.
IF/THEN Contact is a Subscriber >> Send them email X and add them to a list
IF/THEN Contact is lead >> Send them email Y and add them to a list
And etc!
Now, you don't have to manually create your actions over and over again.
Take a look at my quick hack for cloning actions and saving time with your workflow!
Hack #7 Simplify your workflow IF/THEN branches
Do you know those cases when you keep adding if/then branches to a workflow and you end up with a crazy long workflow?
Once I had to set up IF/THEN branches in a workflow for a client that was active in different cities. So we essentially used IF/THEN to segment the communication for contacts from different cities. Small detail? They were active in 11 different cities.
There's a quick hack to simplify your workflows and improve how you visualize what's going on.
Spoiler: you do this WHEN you are adding the IF/THEN branch. Take a look at how this is done!
Hack #8 Track campaign performance with HubSpot's own UTM links builder
My client was frustrated. They had spend a good amount of time creating UTM links (with Google's builder) to analyze where their webinar subscribers came from.
It was a big surprise to us when HubSpot informed us that it wouldn't be possible to check analytics using UTM links created somewhere else (we realized this when we were tried to filter our list, and HubSpot registered 0 contacts coming from a conversion location including UTM link XYZ).
I had a chat with HubSpot and they advised we should only use HubSpot's own UTM links to ensure we would see the performance 100%.
Let's take a look at how to create UTM links for your campaign and discuss a few best practices about campaigns on HubSpot.
Hack #9 Get keyword search volume and difficulty using the SEO tool!
What do you use to get keyword search volume and difficulty? SemRush? Moz? Ahrefs?
There are so many SEO tools out there... But if you're using HubSpot's Professional or Enterprise-level subscriptions, you have an embedded SEO tool available within your account.
You can easily research keyword search volume and competition and plan your SEO strategy around a topic cluster approach. If you're not familiar with this framework, read this blog post.
Use this tool to plan your website and blog content and give your SEO a boost.
Hack #10 Use snippets to save time and avoid writing the same thing over and over again!
Do you find yourself writing the same text over and over again? Whether it's in customer emails you send to your contacts, adding notes after a meeting with a prospect, or other sections inside of HubSpot, repeating that same block of text over and over again is exhausting, time-consuming, and unproductive.
Good news is that HubSpot allows you to create Snippets of text, which works like templates. In a Snippet, you can include that block of text that you find yourself repeating many times and add a shortcut for it. Then, next time you need it, you can easily include that block of text inside of your content with just a few clicks.
In the example below, we will look at adding snippets to a meeting note on HubSpot.