HubSpot Automation: Nurturing Leads Effectively

Not everyone who gets in touch with your business will be ready to lay their money down straightaway. In traditional sales, these ‘cool leads’ may be sidelined on a sales database or CRM for lack of time, often leading to lost opportunities. HubSpot automation, on the other hand, helps you nurture these leads with the information they need to make informed decisions in their own time, so that no sales opportunity is left to gather dust. In this article, we’ll look at how HubSpot automation can enhance your lead-nurturing process at various touch points.

CRM segmentation

Segmentation is the foundation stone of effective lead nurturing, ensuring that each prospect gets the content and communication they need for their state of the buyer journey. Unfortunately, in many sales processes, the rules for segmentation are inconsistent, which reduces their effectiveness. Automation tightens up the process, so that leads are automatically grouped by specified criteria – e.g. job title, industry, location, or behaviour on your website. It also helps avoid the embarrassing faux pas of placing a lead in multiple segments, so they get duplicate communications

• Automated segmentation – set up HubSpot workflows to define criteria and automatically segment your leads. For example, when a prospect fills out a contact form on a specific service page on your site, they can be automatically added to a segment for that service, and not just a ‘general newsletter’.
• Dynamic segments – HubSpot segments are dynamic, meaning that they update in real time based on your interactions with your prospects, so that your lists never get out of date and always reflect the current engagement level and interest of your leads.

Content management

Automation can help you deliver personalised content at the right time, and to the right audience, to maximise engagement and value.

• Personalised content workflows – HubSpot workflows can deliver the ‘logical’ item of content based on the prospect’s previous engagements. So, if someone frequently visits a webpage about the benefits of marketing automation, they can be emailed a free e-book, video, or additional resources on this topic. Or, if they spend more time looking at your prices page, the same workflow can send alternative resources – using the principle of ‘branching logic’ – without having to set up multiple workflows.
• Content delivery – workflows can automatically deliver e-books, emails, and incentives when a lead performs certain actions. This makes it easier to give your leads the information that matches their current requirements and keep them moving through the sales funnel.

Email marketing

Email marketing and automation are made for each other. HubSpot workflows can automate various processes associated with email marketing to improve personalisation and timely delivery.

Drip feed campaigns – set up a series of automated email sequences to nurture your leads over time, or in response to behavioural triggers. Each email builds on the previous one to create a compelling value proposition, so that the prospect can make an informed purchase decision.

Email personalisation – HubSpot workflows use ‘personalisation tokens’ to customise each email to the recipient, including the recipient’s name, company, job role, and so on, but also specific interests you hold in your CRM. This makes your communications more personal and engaging, increasing the chance of conversion.

Social media marketing

Engaging with prospects on social media can be time consuming and inconsistent. HubSpot’s automated workflows streamline the process to maximise your brand extension and credibility on your chosen platform.

• Content scheduling – posts and other content can be scheduled to go live on social media at the best time for your target audience.
• Social monitoring – workflows can be created to monitor social media interactions mentions on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook, automatically engaging with prospects who mention your brand (e.g. via #hashtag), or like, comment or share your posts, so that no potential touch point is missed.

Lead scoring

HubSpot’s lead scoring system helps you prioritise prospects based on their engagement level and readiness to purchase, giving you a good indication of lead quality.

• Automated lead scoring – no need to scratch your head over how warm one lead is and how cold another one is, and what such and such interaction means. Define criteria in advance for lead scoring and set up workflows to adjust the scores in real time based on engagement points like email opens, form submissions, clicks, and webpage visits, then go grab a coffee. It’s a numbers game. This dynamic scoring system helps you identify high priority leads when they reach a certain threshold, and flag them for immediate attention.
• Lead priority – lead scoring workflows can automatically move high-scoring leads to the top of your follow-up queue, so that you and your sales team can focus on the most conversion-ready prospects.

Find out more

To find out more about HubSpot automation and how it can increase the efficiency of your lead nurturing strategy, please get in touch with one of our inbound marketing team today by calling 01332 982022.

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