Running a successful business involves not only being able to attract new visitors but also the ability to convert these visitors into meaningful business opportunities and, eventually, customers. The concept of inbound marketing was built on this premise. This enables you to connect with potential customers and prospects, and then eventually convert them to paying customers by giving them relevant and valuable content to inform their decision.
HubSpot is designed to help you reach your potential customers, build meaningful relationships with them as they become relevant opportunities, and then turn them into a customer and—eventually—your biggest promoters. It has several tools—for example, smart content, emails, and workflows—to help you achieve this.
In this chapter, we'll show you how to use HubSpot to create lasting relationships with prospects and customers through email nurture plans and workflows. We will also explore the use of conversion tools such as calls to action (CTAs), forms, and lead flows to capture the information of prospects visiting your site.
We'll cover the following topics in detail:
By the end of this chapter, you will have learned how to use HubSpot's conversion tools to personalize your communication with prospects and increase the number of qualified contacts handed over to sales.
To get the most out of this chapter, you will need the following:
Forms are a critical part of any marketer's strategy as they are the most popular way to capture a lead's details. Every website page, campaign, and social media ad eventually leads the prospect to give you their details using a form. Therefore, the more control you have over adjusting fields or optimizing the user experience (UX) when filling out a form, the higher the likelihood of capturing more contacts. Remember—the goal is to make filling out forms as painless as possible and to ask the right questions at the right time. It is often said that filling out a form is like going on a first date. There are some questions you ask on a first date and others you leave for second or future dates.
Unlike regular website forms, using HubSpot forms for your website and campaigns allows you to capture vital information without making the user feel overwhelmed at having to fill out too many fields. Here are five features of HubSpot forms that can help you convert more leads:
In the following sections, we will explain in depth how to use each of these features, but first, let's understand how to access the Forms tool in HubSpot.
To access forms in HubSpot, go to Marketing | Lead Capture | Forms, as shown in the following screenshot:
Now, we can look at the five features of the HubSpot Forms tool.
By clicking Create Form on the top right, you will soon arrive at a dialog box showing six different types of forms you can create within HubSpot, as illustrated in the following screenshot:
The types of forms you can choose are explained as follows:
In Chapter 2, Generating Quick Wins with Hubspot in the First 30 Days, we explained how to use Pop-up box as a quick win to convert more leads. Slide in left box and Slide in right box are relatively new features released by HubSpot. They are like a pop-up form and can be used as a quick-win technique as well to improve conversions. So, in this chapter, we will focus on how to optimize the use of the Embedded form and Standalone page forms. They both operate the same way; technically, only their use cases are different.
Once you click on Embedded form and Next, you will then be taken to another page that prompts you to select a template, as shown in the following screenshot:
HubSpot offers some pre-made templates to help you decide on the most important fields for the various types of forms you might be considering. Choosing any of them can also be a great start in creating your form. In this example, however, we will begin by clicking on Blank template and then Start.
You will notice once you arrive at the next page that Email is already a mandatory field in the form. This is because it is the minimum information you will need to collect about a contact. Also, as HubSpot is an inbound platform mostly focused on online communication, it only uses email to identify a unique contact and not something else, such as a phone number.
Now, let's say we are creating a webinar form for an upcoming webinar event. The first step is to consider the minimum information you would need to collect from a contact registering for it. Besides email, you may want to consider First Name and Last Name fields, and if you aren't insisting on a company email address, then you may want to add a Company Name field.
So, let's first see how to add these fields. Have a look at the following screenshot:
As you can see in Figure 9.4, all fields in the system are on the left-hand side, while fields that will appear on the form are located on the right side. To add a field to the right side, you need to follow these steps:
Should you wish to add more fields to your form that do not exist in the list of options, click on Create new on the top left-hand side of the screen, as illustrated in the following screenshot:
Should you wish to add text—for example—to your form, you will need to select the Header Text option. The text will then appear on the top of the form, and you can add any text you wish by clicking on this sample text that appears. You can see an illustration of this in the following screenshot:
Once you've edited the text, click Done, and the text will appear at the top of the form, as seen in the following screenshot:
Completing these steps will allow you to have a completed form, as seen in the following screenshot:
The next step is to find ways to optimize the form and make it easier for people to fill it out.
Although most online users are accustomed to filling out forms, this does not mean they enjoy doing it. Most drop-offs from websites and campaigns occur when a contact reaches a form and, for some reason, decides not to complete it. The most popular reasons for not completing a form are that the form is too long or asks for information the visitor is not yet ready to share. However, marketers are often measured by how many of these contacts they can get to fill out a form while ensuring these contacts are qualified.
Next are three important features HubSpot forms offer to ensure conversions are not hampered:
Note
Once you've chosen to block all free email domains, it is best to remove Company Name from the form. Asking this question is redundant, as HubSpot can then automatically fill this in using the contact's domain provided in the email address.
Let's see how to build progressive fields. Proceed as follows:
Remember that these progressive fields will only be shown to returning visitors whose information you already have in your customer relationship management (CRM) database. New visitors who have not yet converted or given you their information will see regular fields, such as First Name, Last Name, Email, and Country.
Now that your forms are optimized, the next consideration is to add elements that would prevent bots and spam from submitting information to your forms and to ensure your forms are GDPR- and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)-compliant. Adhering to these regulations allows you to store the information of your contacts and reach out to them in the future without being exposed to fines and penalties.
To set up these features, follow these steps:
To activate this feature, you simply need to choose one of the three pre-built options of GDPR notices in HubSpot. To access them, you will find a box called GDPR options, just below CAPTCHA (spam prevention). Clicking on it gives you three options from which you can choose. Once chosen, it will appear right after the last field on the form so that visitors can comply before clicking Submit. See the following screenshot to view this in more detail:
Adding these two features to your form often helps to improve the quality of the leads you attract, since—as we will discuss later in the chapter—you would like to nurture these contacts a bit further before they get on a call with you.
Now that we have all elements of the form in place, the next step is to ensure there is some confirmation for contacts when they have submitted a message. HubSpot forms make this easy by providing an option to create a follow-up email within a form. To access it, click on Follow-up on the top navigation bar in the form module, as shown in the following screenshot:
Once there, click on Create follow-up email and begin creating an email. Note that for this particular webinar form, you won't necessarily need to create a follow-up email. The email will automatically come from the platform hosting your webinar—Zoom or GoTo Webinar. But for illustration purposes, we have created an email as it can be used for other scenarios such as a Contact us form or a Downloading the content form. The process is illustrated in the following screenshot:
A follow-up email is created, as seen in the following screenshot, but note a few restrictions when creating this email. For example, personalization tokens are not accessible in this simple form email template, as well as the ability to edit the footer address to a single line or two not being possible. If these are features important to your follow-up email, I suggest building a regular automated email and then adding it to the workflow. Later in this chapter, we will demonstrate how to do this. In the meantime, the following screenshot demonstrates an example of what a follow-up email would look like when created in a form:
Once a follow-up email is created, the next option is to define what should happen next when a user submits the form and who should be notified, as well as whether these contacts should be set as marketing contacts and be created as new contacts in your CRM.
I'm sure you've filled out a form online before and recall one of the following two things happening:
To execute either of these actions in HubSpot, you must first click on Options on the top navigation bar of the form, and then the first section allows you to determine which of these actions you would like to occur. To display a thank-you message, simply click on this option and create a message you would like to appear. Notice in this textbox that you can add hyperlinks, so if you created this form to download an asset (for example), you can give access to the asset from this message. You can see an illustration of this in the following screenshot:
On the other hand, if you wish to redirect users to another page to display more information, you can do so by checking the Redirect to another page option, as seen in the following screenshot:
The next setting you may like to configure for form submissions is who should get a notification once a form is submitted. By default, whoever creates the form is notified, but this isn't often the case. For example, if you have set up a demo form, you would usually like the owner of the lead to be notified; or, you may choose to notify additional users within the system so that other team members will know a contact has requested a demo.
To set up notifications for the owner of a contact to be notified, ensure you are still on the Options tab of the Form page. Then, scroll down a bit and check the Send submission email notifications to the contact's owner box, as seen in the following screenshot; and to add additional contacts to notifications, add their email address to the Send submission notifications to section:
So, now what's left? Designing the form, of course.
HubSpot has made it possible for everyone to have the option to style and design forms as they wish. You can do so by accessing the Style & preview section within the form module, as shown in the following screenshot:
In the Input options section of the form builder, you can decide whether your form fields should be boxes with squared edges or round edges or lines, as seen in the following screenshot:
You can also choose the font of form fields, the label color, the help color, and GDPR description notice colors, as shown in the following screenshot:
In addition, if you wish to change the size and color of the thank-you message, the option exists to do so, as seen in Figure 9.25.
After completing these previous steps, you are now in a position to publish your form.
To publish your form, simply click on Update in the top right-hand corner of your page and click Publish, as shown in the following screenshot:
Once a form is published, you can use it on any HubSpot landing page or website page. However, if you wish to use it on a non-HubSpot asset such as your website, you will need to copy the embed code that appears on the final page after you click Publish, as shown in the following screenshot:
Following these eight steps will help you successfully create, optimize, and use a HubSpot form on your website or your landing page.
Next, let's examine how to create a landing page in HubSpot. We'll also see how you can connect a form and the thank-you page.
Landing pages are dedicated web pages usually focused on getting users to take one specific action, which is usually to fill out the form on the landing page. Each landing page should have the following:
In most cases, there is no navigation bar on a landing page.
HubSpot's cloning and drag and drop features make it easy to create and reuse landing pages. To create a landing page, follow these steps:
So, now that we have built forms and landing pages, the next step is to ensure that leads are getting timely emails to follow up once an action is taken and a form submitted. In this example, the next expected action when the form is submitted would be to get a confirmation email with details of how to join the webinar. In other cases, it could be a link to download an asset or confirmation that someone will be in touch with you. These latter cases can be dealt with by using the form options, as described previously, but for an event such as a webinar, we would need to use the workflow function to get this step done.
Workflows are the holy grail of the HubSpot portal. A workflow is the most commonly used tool in Marketing Hub as it allows marketers to build drip campaigns and maintain the internal organization of the CRM. In this section, we will specifically look at how to build a nurturing workflow for a webinar.
However, before getting into the workflow itself, we must first map out what is required from a webinar workflow. Which actions would you like this workflow to perform? Here are some scenarios to consider:
These three are basic actions you would expect for a webinar event. Of course, there might be more internal actions you may want to add, such as converting attendees into marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and sending them off to the sales team. We will consider these scenarios in the next section.
At this point, let's break this down into steps to understand what we need to convert these actions into a workflow. This is what we'd need to do:
Note
Ensure this email does not go out before the recording is available.
A few more points you may want to consider are set out here:
This exercise should be performed for any type of workflow you are building, especially for nurturing workflows that will affect the information your contacts will receive.
Now that we understand what's needed, it's time to execute the actions.
To build a nurturing workflow for a webinar, there are a few steps to follow, as outlined here:
You will then be redirected to another page where you can insert a webinar in the search bar and see all the webinar tools that exist and are integrated with HubSpot. Choose your preferred platform. The process is illustrated in the following screenshot:
Once the webinar setup is completed in Zoom or GoTo Webinar, the next step includes building all the assets we referred to earlier for creating a form and landing page.
In addition to forms and landing pages, you would want to create an invitation email to be sent out to your database and a last chance to register email that can be sent a day before the webinar date. Note that your reminder emails to registrants will typically be sent from Zoom or GoTo Webinar itself, as each registrant will receive a unique link to join the webinar so that you will know who attended and for how long.
Once these assets are created, you must then build a workflow to connect the form, the invitation emails, reminder emails, and post-webinar emails. To build this workflow, go to the top menu of your portal and choose Workflows. In some cases, if you have Sales Professional (Sales Pro), you will see Automation on the top menu of your portal; from there, choose Workflow.
Click Create Workflow in the top left right-hand corner of your portal.
The next page that appears gives you several options. First, you need to choose the type of workflow you wish to create—Contact-based, Company-based, Deal-based, or Ticket-based. Each of these options will depend on which properties you are trying to access within the HubSpot portal. For a webinar workflow, choose Contact-based.
Your next option is to choose how you want the workflow to start. Once again, you have several options, as outlined here:
The preceding options are shown in the following screenshot:
Now that we know we need to choose a specific date workflow, we click on this option and set the date of the webinar, and then click Next, as shown in the following screenshot:
On the next page, you will see the outline of the workflow. The first stage is to choose an enrollment trigger. This is a list of contacts from your database you wish to invite to the webinar. You can see an illustration of this in the following screenshot:
Once a list of contacts is chosen, the next step would be to choose the next action and the date on which you would like it to take place. It is typical to promote a webinar between 4 and 6 weeks before the webinar, so in this step, it is recommended to add the first invitation email that you would like your prospects to receive. Click Save once the date is entered, as seen in the following screenshot:
After choosing a date, you will then want to attach the first invitation email contacts should receive about the webinar. To do this, click the + sign again and choose Send email in order to select an invitation email that was created previously, as illustrated in the following screenshot:
Choose emails from the list of emails that will appear once you click the Send email option. Then, once you choose the relevant email, click Save, as illustrated in the following screenshot. Note that you must create an automated marketing email and ensure it is published for you to see it as an option in workflows:
Next, click the + sign and choose the Delay option to choose a time you would want the second email to go out. Next, you will want to split your actions so that only people who did not click on the webinar link in your email will get the second email, as it is assumed those people haven't signed up yet. To create an if/then case, click on If/then branch, as shown in the following screenshot:
Next, choose the Marketing emails option, as illustrated in the following screenshot:
Select the previous email sent to the list of contacts—in this case, HubSpot Workshop Webinar—so that the system can check who clicked the links in those emails. Once you've selected the email, select Contact clicked a link in email, and select a link to register for the webinar. Note that if you choose the Any link option, you will be including those people who also clicked the links to your social media pages or the Unsubscribe link. The process is illustrated in the following screenshot:
Once you've set up this if/then option, the next step is to insert a second email you would like to send to those who did not click on the link to receive. You can repeat these steps until all of your invitation emails have been included in the workflow. The process is illustrated in the following screenshot:
Before turning on this workflow, though, there are some scenarios you must consider to check how the workflow will affect each contact in your database, not just the ones enrolled into the workflow as you intended. Some scenarios that you may want to consider are noted here:
There are a few other workflow features that might come in handy for this workflow or any other workflow you may build in the future—for example, sending emails out only during specific days and times or not sending them out on specific days, such as weekends or holidays. Other features, such as Remove them from specific workflows, also help you to remove contacts from workflows they may have previously been enrolled in so that they are not inundated with too many emails. The best practice when building workflows for lead nurturing is to spend some time brainstorming and mapping out exactly what these workflows should do and accomplish and then utilize the features to make it happen. After considering all scenarios, you can move on to the next step, which will ensure contacts get webinar confirmation emails from the chosen platforms.
Build a separate workflow to ensure registrants receive a confirmation email from Zoom or GoTo Webinar. It is recommended not to connect these steps to the previous workflow since contacts could reach the form for registering for the webinar in various ways. Therefore, the enrollment trigger for this type of workflow should be the form used on the landing page and not a list, as seen in Figure 9.51. Note the type of workflow used for building this process is Blank workflow. The process is illustrated in the following screenshot:
Once you've selected an enrollment trigger, your next step is to connect the webinar created in Zoom or GoTo Webinar to the workflow. You can use one of the following options:
Following these steps will ensure that contacts who sign up for your webinar receive a unique confirmation email from either of these platforms to join the webinar. Note that if you use a regular meeting link from Zoom or GoTo Webinar to host a webinar, you will lose the ability to track who attended the event versus those who did not attend, as neither of these platforms retains this data when an event has ended if it was set up as a meeting since everyone used the same link to join the event. It is for this reason that it is highly recommended to use the Webinar add-on feature on Zoom or GoTo Webinar.
Understanding how to convert leads into qualified contacts that turn into meaningful opportunities is every marketer's challenge. Therefore, having a suite of easy-to-use tools that allow you to achieve this is what each marketer seeks in a platform.
HubSpot offers a variety of such tools all in one platform. From forms to landing pages to workflows, these tools become a marketer's secret weapon as they allow a myriad of tasks to be done quickly and efficiently to achieve the main goal of improving conversions. Therefore, it is imperative that you take the necessary time to understand how each of these features works in order to ensure you get the best results from your campaigns.
In the next chapter, we will look more closely at how the email marketing tool in HubSpot can help you build meaningful relationships with your customers by sending them personalized and relevant information.
Have a go at answering the following questions: