This article will walk you through the basics of creating an email using the email marketing tool in HubSpot, as well as other important and useful tips and insights.
The most successful partners of ours don't just rely on us to send out communication. While our team heavily focuses on marketing campaigns, there are other types of communication (such as client alerts for important updates) that can easily be handled internally when someone understands how to properly utilize the email marketing tool in HubSpot.
This article will walk you through:
- How to build an email in HubSpot
- Insights from HubSpot's email marketing training course
- Tips on avoiding the spam folder
- How to figure out why an email was NOT SENT to a contact
- How to view metrics and engagement
How to build an email in HubSpot
First, navigate to >Marketing>Email in HubSpot.
Once there, in the top right corner, click "create email". Alternatively, if you sent an email previously that you feel would be a good starting point for creating this new one, you can clone that old email.
If you are creating a new one, choose "regular" as the email type. Then, select one of the two templates below as your starting point. This way the header and footer are already configured for you, and you only need to worry about the content in the middle:
- Standard Template MAD
- Simple Template MAD
There are two types of components to an email, sections and elements.
Sections
The section involved a group of elements. You can add padding to sections, set a background color, or add or remove columns. See the below screenshot for where to hover your mouse to bring up the below icons to click on and edit the section (click the pencil icon):
Once you click the pencil icon, you will see the below pop-up on the left-hand side, where you can edit the above things:
If a section has multiple columns, you can adjust the width using the tools indicated above, or do it manually. Once you have the section selected, you can use the "+" and "-" icons to add or remove columns, and use the dots icon (cy clicking, holding, and sliding) to adjust the width:
Elements
Elements are the individual things you add, such as rich text boxes, cta buttons, images, and dividers. These are the four elements you will generally want to stick to using:
You will want to edit element settings the same way you edit sections. Hover over the element you want to edit (like the below screenshot) and click the pencil icon again to bring up the settings for that element:
Once you click the pencil icon, you will see the below pop-up on the left-hand side, where you can edit the element settings. a
Rich Text Element
Rich Text allows you to edit padding:
To edit the actual text, just click into the rich text box like you would anything else. When doing so, you'll get the below format bar to format text as you wish, it's generally the same as word, google docs, etc.:
One of the more unique parts of this is the "personalize" option. Click this if you want to add personalization tokens.
For instance, we start the email off with a "Hi <first name>" using a "first name" personalization token.
The fallback value is what would display if the property you are using for the token is unknown. For instance, for "first name" a good fallback value is "there". This way if name is unknown your email would start off as "Hi There,".
One other thing to keep in mind is the link tool. When adding a link, you'll get this pop-up:
You can choose to link to a variety of things:
Some of the common ones you will use are:
- Email address: adding a link for someone to click an email to start an email that they want to send to the linked address
- File: like a PDF, etc.
- Meeting: A HubSpot calendar scheduling page
- One of your pages: a link from the PayNW website
- URL: an external link
Image Elements
Images allow you to select the image file, add alt text, add a link, edit the size, select the alignment, and edit the padding.
Use the "content" tab to edit the image file, alt text, link, and size:
Use the "style" tab to select the alignment, and edit the padding:
Button (CTA) Elements
Buttons allow you to select the link, edit the button text, choose text font, color, and style, choose the background color, edit the corner radius (do not change), select the alignment, and edit the padding.
Use the "content" tab to select the link, and edit the button text:
Use the "style" tab to choose text font, color, and style, choose the background color, edit the corner radius (do not change), select the alignment, and edit the padding:
Divider Elements
Dividers allow you to edit the height and width, color, line type, and padding, and select the alignment:
Adding Elements and Sections
Adding elements and sections is simple, and uses a drag-and-drop tool. On the left-hand side select the "add" tab. At the top you will see the elements, and under that the "styles" or sections. Simply click, drag, and drop what you want to add onto the email.
You'll see a blue line appear to indicate where you are about to place the element or style. For elements, if a line appears like below, it means that it is going to be placed within an existing section. The thicker part of the line indicates which section. In the below screenshot, this is indicating we are adding an element to the section above:
A single solid line indicates that you are going to create a new section when you add the element to the email (that element being added to the newly created section. The same line appears when adding a section as opposed to an element:
Once elements and sections are in the email you can continue to drag and adjust them by hovering over them and clicking and holding the dots:
Editing Settings and Send Lists
Once your email content is ready to go, at the top you'll see tabs for "edit", "settings", and "send or schedule".
The settings tab will allow you to customize the subject line, preview text, from name, from address, a separate reply address (optional), and the subscription type. Don't worry about updating anything else:
The send or schedule tab will allow you to attach your send lists, and exclusion lists, and choose to schedule or immediately send your email:
For important client communications, it is recommended to uncheck "Don't send to unengaged contacts".
In the same tab, you can click the "preview" dropdown in the top right corner to send a test email to yourself or other members of the team:
Congrats! Your email is done.
Here are some other good things to know:
Insights from HubSpot's email marketing training course
Why Are Email Service Providers Important?
Email Service Providers (ESPs) are valuable tools in launching and executing marketing campaigns. HubSpot Email Marketing is an example of an ESP.
ESPs are important because they have the potential to integrate with your CRM allowing for better engagement with your email data, as well as providing delivery infrastructure. It helps create and design emails while ensuring you can reach your audience through things such as legal compliance tools and bounce prevention tools.
Why Is Proper Contact Management Important?
Proper contact management is crucial for success, and in turn, so is clean data. It is important to make sure that you manage properties well, which will in turn be used in your marketing campaign segmentation. For instance, never create a property as a single-line text property if you plan to use that property for segmentation, as it leaves room for human error. Always segment using properties like dropdown selects, checkboxes, and other properties with fixed fields/labels/answers.
Deliverability
When it comes to delivering emails, there are two things to be aware of.
Deliver Rate, which is the percentage of emails that actually make it to the person's inbox. In other words, emails that didn't bounce. Deliverability is the likelihood that your email will make it to the person's primary inbox, in other words, the likelihood that it is going to be seen and interacted with. Deliverability is always changing, so maintaining it is an active process.
Your deliverability score can consist of:
- Sender reputation - impacted by contact interactions and email authentication, it is a score that an inbox service provider (ISP) assigns to your organization as it receives emails from your brand (domain)
- Can be impacted by:
- The amount and rate of emails sent in a month by a company
- Amount of hard bounces
- Amount of negative engagement such as unsubscribed and spam flags
- Amount of positive engagement, opens, clicks, etc.
- Whether your company's IP is listed on impactful block lists
- Can be impacted by:
- Authentication - Common forms of email authentication include DKIM, SPF, DMARC, the three major forms of authentication working to identify you as a sender, and prevent fraud attempts using your brand, and BIMI which attaches your brand's logo to your messages like a verified badge on social media.
- Domain Set-up
Data Privacy and Regulations
When running marketing campaigns, we need to be cognizant of the data privacy and regulations that are in place to protect such privacy.
CAN-SPAM Act - Federal regulation, regards commercial email content, not just bulk emails.
Requirements include:
- No false or misleading header information (clickbait)
- No deceptive subject lines (no clickbait, again)
- A valid physical postal address (something we always include, and HubSpot will alert you if this is missing)
- A message that clearly identifies as an advertisement (to be honest we sometimes get a bit grey with this, but never full on over the line)
- Must have an opt-out capability (an unsubscribe button, which we include a manage preferences link instead), these requests must be made effective promptly
- Monitor those emailing on your behalf
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - issued by the E.U. as a privacy and human rights law, applies when emailing anyone from the European Union. This does not apply to us as our clients generally operate domestically.
Requirements include:
- Lawfulness, fairness, and transparency
- People need to understand what, how, and why their data is being processed
- Purpose limitation
- Data should be collected only for clear, specified, and legitimate purposes, compatible with your original purposes
- Data minimalization
- Only the specific data companies need should be collected
- Accuracy
- Data must be accurate and kept up-to-date, otherwise, it should be erased or corrected
- Storage limitation
- If data can be linked to individuals, companies can only keep it for as long as they need to carry out the purposes they specified
- Integrity and confidentiality
- Companies must ensure that the data they keep is secured and protected
- Accountability
- Companies are responsible for the data they hold and should be able to demonstrate their compliance with the GDPR
Noncompliance can result in hefty penalties and fines, and heavy damage to sender reputation and deliverability.
Tips on avoiding the spam folder
Here are some tips for avoiding the spam folder:
Spam Checklist: Things That CAN Land You in Spam
The following things have a good chance of landing someone in the spam folder.
Targeting the Wrong Audience
Ensure that lists are correct, and make sure the estimated number of recipients isn't way off from your list size.
Low Engagement Rates
Top webmail providers have stated that they look at how many emails are opened and how many are deleted as a factor in spam filtering decisions.
Countering this is simple, and can be done with a good subject line and preview text creation.
Subscribers Don't Remember You
Believe it or not, and in our world, this would be more common with prospects, some recipients may report emails as spam because they do not remember opting in to get them.
It is important to maintain consistent and clear branding throughout campaigns to counter this. Using personalization tokens is also a helpful tool for establishing familiarity.
OptinMaster Recommendation: When we send emails with an actual employee name for the sender, we include "at <the company>" after.
Example: Nick Fodera at Marketing All Day
Sending to Inactive Emails
While sending an email to one or two inactive accounts isn't a big deal, if your send list includes a large number of inactive email accounts it puts up a giant red flag for spam.
Again, ensuring lists are correct and up to date can help counter this. Using Hubspot's "Don't Send to Unengaged Contacts" filter can help here as well.
Misleading Subject Lines
While we want to have good practices for email subject lines, we don't want to take it to an extreme of almost "click-bait" nature.
Bottom line is, don't be misleading and definitely don't click-bait.
See here for email subject line practices
Some subject lines to avoid are:
- Did I leave my jacket at your place?
- RE: CURRENTLY IN OFFICE
- Urgent – Update your information
- Thanks for your order!
These seem silly, but these are also to the extreme, below is an example that would still be a grey area in this regard. So it is best to be careful.
Inaccurate From Information
Again, simple yet important. Always ensure that the from name and address are consistent and appropriate, and certainly never misleading.
Missing Company Address
Including the company address in an email is actually legally required, so be sure it is included. Hubspot typically has this included in all emails, but always good to check.
Spam Trigger Words
Avoid the following words in pretty much any part of the email, but especially the subject line and preview text:
- Amazing
- Cancel at any time
- Check or money order
- Click here
- Congratulations
- Dear friend
- For only ($)
- Free or toll-free
- Great offer
- Guarantee
- Increase sales
- Order now
- Promise you
- Risk-free
- Special Promotion
- This is not spam
- Winner
Tips for Avoiding the Spam Folder
The following tips can help you avoid landing in the spam folder.
HTML Email Best Practices
This doesn't apply to text emails but certainly does for HubSpot branded emails.
Some best practices for sending HTML emails, so they don’t get marked as spam, are:
- Use a maximum width of 600-800 pixels
- Keep your HTML code as clean and straightforward as possible
- Keep your image-to-text ratio low
- Optimize your images
- Don’t use obscure fonts
- Optimize for mobile
Subscription Welcome Email
A welcome email for new subscribers is a great way to establish early familiarity. It is also an opportunity to ask subscribers, or rather recommend that they whitelist your email address to avoid any important messages going to spam.
Alert Recipients of the GMAIL Trap
Unfortunately for anyone using Gmail, in addition to avoiding spam emails need to avoid the social and promotion inboxes as well. Again, it can be helpful to alert new gmail subscribers to be on the look out for this,
How to figure out why an email was NOT SENT to a contact
When sending marketing emails, there is always a chance that the email will not be delivered. Whether it gets sent to spam, bounces, there are a few reasons it could happen. However, sometimes an email doesn't even get sent by HubSpot. There are MANY reasons as to why this could happen, see this hubspot article for a full breakdown.
One of the more common reasons, and a good example of the difference between a bounce and a "not sent" is sending a marketing email to a non-marketing contact.
When an email bounces, its because something on the contacts Inbox Service Provider (ISP) flagged the email. An email that is marked as "not sent" never even made it out the door (the door being our Email Service Provider (ESP) aka HubSpot).
Here is what it looks like when an email is "Not Sent":
There are a bunch of investigative things you could do, like manually checking properties for bounces, unsubscribes, marketing contact status, etc. that could all have an impact. However, there is a quick and easy way.
When you see the above message, click on the email title and you'll be brought to the email analytics page:
Then, click the recipients tab:
On the left-hand side, there are categories. Open the "Not Sent" category:
Search for the contact in question:
And under "Action" you'll see why the email was "not sent":
Once you have determined the cause, you can take the necessary action, such as marking this contact in the example, as "marketing".
How to View Marketing Email Performance and Engagement Metrics in HubSpot
See here for a full breakdown of the HubSpot email marketing analytics tools.