Episode 258: HubSpot Custom Surveys, Workflow Email Actions

Welcome to HubShots Episode 258: HubSpot Custom Surveys, Workflow Email Actions 

This edition we dive into:

• Custom Surveys
• Workflow email actions (there’s 4 of them!)
• Notification filters
• Options for Unsubscribe links in email footers
• Brands don’t create categories

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Recorded: Monday 30 August 2021 | Published: Friday 03 September 2021

Shot 1: Growth Thought of the Week

Why Do I Keep Mixing Up Microsoft and HubSpot?

In an episode a few weeks ago I chatted about Satya Nadella’s book - Hit Refresh - which I was reading at the time.

In it he details how we changed the culture at Microsoft to be unpinned by empathy and built on a growth mindset. However as I was explaining this in that episode, for some reason, I kept referring (on the podcast) to how he was doing this at HubSpot. My mistake - I meant Microsoft of course, but for some reason my brain just kept saying HubSpot. Apologies for the confusion.

It’s not the first time I’ve done this - I’ve often mixed up Facebook and HubSpot when discussing tactics.

Have You Seen This?

Let me know how accurate it was for you - it was spot on for me.

(Note: works better on mobile in a social feed - probably not ideal in an email you scroll down through)

(via Mark Davison and @famouscampaigns)

Shot 2: Quick Shots of the Week

Here’s a few quick items of interest we noticed over the past month (since our last two episodes were different to our usual format):

• Company Sync in Operations Hub
• Theme child Themes
• Repeating tasks
• Sync tasks to Google and Office 365 calendars
• ‘Simple’ branch (Workflow action) are now called ‘Value Equals’ branch

Shot 3: HubSpot Marketing Feature of the Week

Setting your Unsubscribe Link in Footer Settings

A quick tip about setting Unsubscribe links in drag and drop emails. You can easily switch between:

• Unsubscribe, OR
• Manage Preferences, OR
• Both

This might be new for some long time HubSpot users - previously you couldn’t publish an email unless it had an Unsubscribe link with the label ‘Unsubscribe’ in it. This seems to have been relaxed lately in the drag and drop builder.

Shot 4: HubSpot Sales Feature of the Week

Filter Your Notifications

The Notifications settings can be really powerful (and also potentially overwhelming) for keeping you updated.

Btw shoutout to Clint (you know who you are) for reminding me of this.

You can see your notifications from the Bell at the top right of your portal:

One handy feature is being able to filter your notifications:

BTW this list will change based on the page you are currently on eg here’s the list when I’m on the Dashboards page:

The available notifications are also determined based on your Preferences (from your profile settings).

And finally, the option only shows if you actually have notifications for that type (ie if you haven’t been mentioned anywhere, you won’t see an option to filter Mentions)

Shot 5: HubSpot Service Feature of the Week

Custom Surveys

A nice feature for Service Hub Professional and Enterprise portals has been released recently - the ability to create custom surveys. No more need for Survey Monkey or other survey tools.

Shoutout to Elliott for altering us to this today.

The big advantage over other survey tools is you can send the survey directly as an email, or as a shareable link.

When you start you will get to choose the type of property you are interested in using, like the Sentiment one here.

We discovered that in the rating you can choose how you want to see it, like Circle or Stars.  Plus depending on what you choose you can edit the values and labels to match.

For all our subscribers you will be getting the survey shortly!

(Want to get the survey - make sure you have signed up here)

Shot 6: HubSpot Workflow Action of the Week

The Different HubSpot Workflow Email Actions

Workflows can send a number of different types of emails - which potentially can be confusing.

Here’s a breakdown of each, and where you’d use them:

• Internal emails - plain text
• Internal marketing emails - automated email template
• Send email: Marketing emails (external)

Internal emails are ideal for quick internal notifications, such as letting sales reps know there has been a form filled out. The interface is a simple text based email you build in the workflow. Note that they are powerful though - you can include personalisation tokens.

Internal marketing emails are also ideal for internal notifications (ie to users), and are built in the full drag and drop email builder. They can include formatting, images, and any other modules that can be added to emails.

Marketing emails are for external communications (ie to contacts) and are built as automated emails in the drag and drop email editor. They include the full formatting, modules, personalisation tokens and smart content capabilities.

Bonus:

• Sequence emails

You can also enroll contacts into a sequence that sends 1 to 1 emails to a contact.

Sequence emails are plain text, but can include personalisation tokens.

Shot 7: HubSpot Wishlist Item of the Week

Date Range filters to include Today

I’d love HubSpot to add date range filters that are similar to Google ads (ie they allow to choose between including/excluding today):

We chatted about this back in episode 247 (Shot 6) where we lamented not including today’s results in date ranges and the potential gotcha it allows.

Shot 8: Marketing Term of the Week

Self Liquidating Offers (SLO)

Running a campaign that returns a result (usually revenue) that pays for the cost of the campaign.

In B2C this is easy to understand (eg an entry level purchase that pays for the campaign) and then leads to upsells.

In B2B it can be a little more complex (eg filling a ‘free’ event that you know historically will convert at least 1 customer that pays for the entire campaign).

Shot 9: Insight of the Week

Categories Make Brands

An interesting (perhaps challenging) deconstruction of the ‘brand cult’ that many companies fall into: thinking that building their brand is secret to success.

Brand is important (of course), but it doesn’t build categories.

The article (it’s long, but so worth it) includes numerous examples, but the one that stood out to me was Ralph Lauren. Easy to assume the company was successful based on their brand, but actually it all started with differentiation: wider ties. And a new category was born.

Then, with the uptake in wider ties, new shirts were required. And thus another new category was born.

Ralph Lauren grew new categories - and their brand followed. Not the other way round.

This is still pretty funny though:

Final notes from the article:

Force A Choice. Don’t Invite A Comparison

So, if you are an entrepreneur, an executive, or a marketer, we urge you to ask this very important question:

What are you DOING with your marketing?

Are you forcing a choice? “We are a different thing altogether.”

Or are you inviting a comparison? “We’re like everybody else, PLUS some more.”

The answer to this question is the seminal difference between brand marketing and category marketing.

Somehow, the business world got duped into solving a problem called, “We’re not different,” by putting drapes on the painting—opposed to creating a different painting.

Stop arguing over whose drapes are the best.

Paint a different painting.

This is a bracing reminder to me - and something I’ll be implementing (where appropriate) for our clients, and of course for our site (which I can’t bear to look at after reading the article).

Shot 10: HubShots Throwback of the Week

Via the HubSpot product updates blog.

This time a year ago HubSpot was improving the ‘experience’ of adding tasks via the mobile app.

Note: as I write this, the product blog seems to be a little behind on the latest updates.

Shot 11: Resource of the Week

Keeping up to date with SEO as a Marketer

A useful thread from Will Critchlow, ideal for marketing executives who used to be all across SEO changes and have lost touch in recent years as their overall marketing activities crowd out specific SEO updates.

Amongst other items he covers:

• Javascript: yes, Google is getting good at crawling JS)
• Content in tabs and accordions: could be working against you, might be worth pulling important content into clear view (especially with Google moving to mobile first indexing)
• Freshness signals: they can be helpful (eg including seasonality or month in titles)

Shot 12: Quote of the Week

“Our mind is a garden, our thoughts are the seeds,

Shot 13: Follow Us on the Socials

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HubShots, the podcast for marketing managers and sales professionals who use HubSpot, hosted by Ian Jacob from Search & Be Found and Craig Bailey from XEN Systems.

HubShots is produced by Christopher Mottram from Podcastily.

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