How to Get the Most Out of your Marketing Automation Software
If you have Hubspot, and you work for a SaaS business, you already know they’re a match made in tech heaven.
But, are you really getting the most out of your subscription? The data suggests that of the 110,000+ companies using Hubspot, the majority probably aren’t scratching the surface of what’s available to them.
That means it’s likely there’s so much untouched potential waiting for you to tap into!
In this guide, we give you tips, tools and insights you need to maximise your HubSpot use and get the best ROI on your investment.
We focus particularly on 6 main areas that you can level up to see real tangible results, quickly.
Before we get stuck into it, let’s be clear that the focus of this article is on the marketing automation software component of Hubspot – the “Marketing Hub”. While there are a whole suite of additional functionalities available in Hubspot, those won’t be explored here.
What is Hubspot?
According to their website, Hubspot is an “integrated CRM platform [that] contains the marketing, sales, service, operations, and website-building software” required to grow a business.
In terms of the marketing component specifically, the “Marketing Hub,” Hubspot provides the tools and infrastructure to help you “grow traffic, convert more visitors, and run complete inbound marketing campaigns at scale.”
There’s various pricing tiers to suit different size companies and budgets: Starter, Professional, and Enterprise.
Specific features of their marketing software include:
- Email Marketing
- Landing Pages
- Workflows
- Live Chat
- Contact Management
- Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Ads
- Traffic and Conversion Analytics
- Ad retargeting
- Marketing Automation
- Account-Based Marketing
Why do so many SaaS companies use Hubspot Marketing?
The SaaS industry is still relatively young and growing rapidly. In order to compete, companies need to be able to scale in the most cost-effective way possible. Hubspot provides the infrastructure needed to achieve this.
Companies of all sizes and stages of development, can access the tools they need to do their marketing more efficiently, without forking out a fortune. Which is absolutely crucial for B2B SaaS businesses with an extended sales cycle.
As Joel Marsh, VP of Marketing at SaaS Company,Scrive writes “Scrive was looking for an integrated solution so that it could do inbound marketing in a really effective way; HubSpot had the answer.”
Similarly, associate Marketing Manager Thao Nguyen Leg at SaaS company, Grove HR, writes “With HubSpot, everything is easy to use and customisable. We don’t need any other tool to support our marketing.”
Using Hubspot, Grove HR was able to grow their marketing database by 300x and monthly traffic by 500x which has had a huge downstream impact on their bottom line.
There are many reasons why leading SaaS companies should care about Hubspot’s Marketing Hub and use it to grow, but one of the main ones is cost-effectiveness.
How to get the most out of your Hubspot instance in 5 steps
It’s clear Hubspot is a must-have for SaaS organisations of all kinds but in order to get the best results you need to know what you’re doing.
We help you know what you’re doing in 5 steps.
Know the Why (Don’t Over Engineer!)
Before doing anything in Hubspot ask yourself – do I really need this? What is the purpose behind what I’m creating? Is this approach the most effective way of achieving what I want to achieve?
When it comes to leveraging Hubspot for the best results, you should thinking about the why before you do anything.
The biggest mistake we see SaaS organisations make is having a Hubspot instance that is filled with 1000s of unused workflows, lists and reports. And nobody knows what any of them do or mean.
An over cluttered, over engineered Hubspot instance is the easiest way to devalue your investment.
If we can give you one, golden tip: Make sure everything you create in Hubspot is meaningful (and all your users know what this meaning is)!
Label, Label, Label
Beyond knowing the meaning of what you’re doing, cleanliness is crucial to getting the most out of Hubspot. You need to keep your account clean, well-organised and easy to navigate.
If you don’t clearly organise and label your assets: workflows, emails, lists, contacts etc. you will find going into HubSpot a stressful experience.
And it’s this stress that causes friction between you, your team & the platform; meaning you’ll likely miss out on seeing a lot of the value out of HubSpot.
Alas, you want to make going into HubSpot as pleasant as possible for anyone who uses it. Devise a logical, easy-to-understand naming convention, circulate it with the team and STICK with it.
By following this advice, your team will be much more likely to see HubSpot as their partner in growth and success, rather than the headache making their job more difficult. Go forth and get labelling!
Maximise your integrations
Hubspot has a long list of integrations – many of them which are commonly used and hugely valuable.
An absolute must-do for savvy SaaS company’s leveraging Hubspot is making use of these integrations! And not letting them sit around to gather dust
From a marketing perspective, integrations with popular platforms like Linkedin, Facebook and Google Ads can have a huge impact on the success of your company’s marketing strategies.
By integrating directly with these platforms you can easily track the performance of your campaigns and compare to different channels with cross-network reporting, access full ROI and more.
Other helpful integrations include, but are not limited to: Zapier, Mailchimp, Google Calendar, Gmail, WordPress and Eventbrite.
Integrating is the shortest cut to levelling up your marketing.
Tap into your personas
Whether it’s a list, workflow, email or landing page your building out in Hubspot, your personas should always be front and center in your mind.
As the Hubspot philosophy always comes back to the customer, “If you want your company to grow better, you need to have a deep understanding of your ideal customer. Not everyone is going to buy your product, nor should you want them to. To get there, we recommend creating a buyer persona.”
Before you go about doing anything it’s worth checking in with your personas for a quick sense check.
Ask yourself – does this action I’m taking in Hubspot make sense for my persona?
For example, say you’re building a nurture workflow. Do each of the emails within that nurture speak to something your persona really cares about? Will they stand out and capture attention? Do they address my persona specifically and leverage tokens to build a personal connection?
By connecting every action you take back to your audience, you can ensure that your Hubspot instance is set up for maximum impact.
Segmentation
Leading on from the power of personas – segmentation is a key pillar of optimal Hubspot use. You are simply missing a goldmine of opportunity if you take a pass on segmentation.
Whether it’s an email nurture sequence for an ebook, an audience list for a hyper-targeted campaign on Facebook or a weekly newsletter blast, segmenting your database into meaningful groups, and tailoring actions to fit their needs is easily one of the best ways to get the most out of Hubspot.
We’d recommend segmenting by particular industries, personas, locations, languages, and even partners and customers. And customising messaging and communication forms to match.
Hubspot has a bunch of segementation tips you can soak up to ensure you get this step right, and slay your SaaS marketing strategy.
Revel in the reporting features
One of the main draw cards of Hubspot for software as a service companies is the powerful reporting features it contains.
Whatever your KPIs are e.g. number of marketing qualified leads (MQLs), sales qualified leads (SQLs) or average revenue per user – Hubspot can help you visualise, view and report on them effectively, quickly and easily.
It’s not just customisable in terms of the metrics you choose to display and report on but also in the way you choose to see them. You could opt for a template or to build one from scratch. You could also choose to display in pie charts, bar charts, area charts, line charts and more.
Here you can customize a report from their reporting templates, or build your own report from scratch and view data in pie charts, bar charts, donut charts, area charts, and more.
The possibilities for reporting within HubSpot are really endless. All you need to do is decide it’s worth while
The Hubspot SaaS metrics you should you be using to measure success
In order to get the most out of Hubspot, you need to track, be on top of and in tune to the most important Hubspot SaaS metrics. Particular metrics every SaaS company should pay particular attention to in order to continuously improve your marketing efforts include:
- Customer Churn
- Revenue Churn
- Customer Lifetime Value
- Customer Acquisition Cost
- Months to Recover CAC
- CAC:LTV Ratio
- Customer Engagement Score
- Qualified Marketing Traffic
- Leads by Lifecycle Stage
- Lead-to-Customer Rate
- Customer Health Score
If you want to continue to grow and build a successful foundation for her business, keep them under your thumb.
Hubspot SaaS Case Study; Condeco Books
One head turning examples of a SaaS company achieving Hubspot marketing success is: Condeco Books. Condeco is the “market leader in workspace management and resource scheduling software.”
Before they worked with HubSpot, they used an array of disconnected systems to manage their marketing efforts. They found these systems “disconnected, clunky, and hard to do business with.”
This lead them to decide to invest in HubSpot. Once onboard, they were able to unite all their marketing activity under the one umbrella. And execute a sophisticated strategy founded on segmentation and personalisation.
With this HubSpot-backed approach, they saw results skyrocket. Specifically, they were able to boost MQL numbers by 3X, increase YOY traffic by 154% and lift email CTR by 21.4% CTR.
The Head of Campaigns at Condeco, Stefan, writes: “We’ve recognised that people can engage with our content because they’re interested in learning, while others are looking to buy a solution. HubSpot allows us to score our assets and identify high quality leads based on their engagement, which will further help us to grow and scale.”
Hit your efficiency targets with our Hubspot service today
So you’re raring to go out there, and hit your marketing KPIs with HubSpot. You want to increase MQLs, make your sales team happy and grow your SaaS company just like Condeco. That’s great! But do you feel like you’re lacking the resources or expertise to get started?
You’re in luck! As a Hubspot Gold partner, Digital Rhinos can provide you with the Hubspot knowledge, expertise and executional experience to help you achieve your goals. If you’re interested in teaming up with us to magnify your impact, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Book a 15 min Discovery call today and we’ll discuss exactly how we can help you with your HubSpot needs.