Collecting Better Data to
Send Even Better Emails
Nina Stepanov | Inbound.org (HubSpot)

Two quick notes about this
presentation
It’s an adaptation of a post written by my fellow team
member, find it here: https://goo.gl/SjegLN
It’s intended to be referenced after this presentation,
so I’ve intentionally made it as something you can
return to and understand without feeling completely
lost.
1
2

Email is dead.

No it’s really not...
81% of US online shoppers are more likely to make additional purchases, either online or in a store,
as a result of emails based on previous shopping behaviors and preferences. - Harris Interactive
72% of consumers say that email is their favored conduit of communication with companies they do
business with. 61% say they like to receive promotional emails weekly and 28% want them even
more frequently. - MarketingSherpa (2015)
68% of consumers find email to be their #1 preferred channel for receiving commercial messages. -
CG Selections "National Email Onderzoek" (2013)
66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a direct result of an email marketing message. -
Direct Marketing Association (2013)
1 in 5 (19%) of consumers said they read every email newsletter they receive just to see if
something’s on offer. - Forrester Research "North American Technographics survey" (2014)
In 2014 consumers delete less promo emails without looking, down 25,4% relative to 2010. - Forrester
Research "North American Technographics survey" (2014)

…further proof of it not being dead.
55% of companies generate more than 10 percent of sales from email. - Econsultancy
"Emailmarketing census"(2014)
Marketers consistently ranked email as the single-most-effective tactic for awareness,
acquisition, conversion, and retention. - Gigaom Research (2014)
Email is almost 40x better at acquiring new customers than Facebook and Twitter. -
McKinsey & Company (2014)
42% of businesses say email is one of their most effective lead generation channels. And
for B2B marketers, 88% say email is the most effective lead generation tactic. – Circle Research
(2012)

Your emails just suck. Plus, there’s a lot of new stuff on the
market.
Bots, desktop notifications, text, social media, Slack, and so on are
coming onto the scene with new ways to notify consumers
Email is a well-established source of information. It’s easy to use
and getting even easier (and prettier).
Email belongs to no one. It’s not a startup or big business that
controls your usage of it (except spam, don’t spam).
Alternatives to email are great, but email is not dead.
It just needs a tune up.

Story Time

Inbound.org
A community of marketers who:
• Ask and answer questions (Q&A)
• Share awesome content from around the web
• Write their own original content (Inbound Originals)
• Find and post jobs

Our Goal and The Big Gnarly Problem
Goal: A lot more weekly active users
Problem: What started as a community of SEO’s sharing content,
couldn’t last…
Our total number of engaged WAU was flatlining at 350-400 per week for
almost 18 months!
...but what would last?

Our Solution:
Q&A Threads driven by Personalized
Emails
Q&A is hard, engagement is even harder.
To do list:
• Increase the number of questions asked on inbound.org
• Solicit answers using hyper-personalized emails

But How?
1. We wanted to just use Gmail, but that’s illegal…
2. Then we decided HubSpot would do the trick.
3. We used plain text templates and sent to a subset of our
contacts.
4. People clicked through and left a comment on the discussion!
By sending these emails to highly-targeted
subsets of our 150,000+ members, we’ve
been able to get those questions answered
and build out our original content on the
site!

But Why? Sounds like a lot of effort.
People hate being marketed to.
People like to be treated like people.
People in your database are not all the same.
This isn’t rocket science, but it definitely takes
time.

What does this mean for your
business?
Stop treating your email list as a single entity!
Answer this:
What are you offering and how can that be applied to the
different groups of people that you’re selling to?

The Steps to Personalization
Pre-Work: Come to terms with the fact that not everyone
in your list cares about every single update, promotion, or
change to your business, but some do.

Review what data you currently have. Is it
enough?

Here’s a sampling of just a few of the
data points we use to personalize our
emails.
• Job title keywords and titles - “manager”, “writer”, “SEO”, “consultant”,
etc.
• Social media bios keywords (Twitter and LinkedIn)
• Pageviews - including keywords and exact match URLs and slugs
• Company name - keywords and exact match
• Profile data - skills, location, badges, job seeking status, karma
• Industry - in the company name (a HubSpot contact property)
• Followers and following (Twitter)
• Last actions - Last seen, last karma events, last comments, last post
• Lifecycle status - (members with full profiles are more likely to contribute)
• Number of comments
• Persona

Figure out how you’ll collect the data you need
from old and new contacts.

We run on-site and email campaigns to
encourage users to fill out profile information.

Pro Tip: Onboarding is a great tool for
collecting nice-to-have information

Create lists based on the data and activities of
your contacts in regards to your business and
elsewhere.

Here’s a small sampling of our lists

Don’t forget your suppression lists!
• Email throttles
• Personal contacts
• Banned accounts
• Timezone

Personalize and prioritize your communication.

An example of 1 of our personalized emails

Personal email checklist
Why they’re being emailed
What the thread is about
What they can bring that’s unique to the conversation
Call to action: post in the comments
Link
Sign off

Now, do a little dance!

A few takeaways… 8 to be exact.

Personal emails are personal.
Be ready for the responses and reactions, and
don’t forget to be respectful.
1

Don’t burden your contacts with too much
email.
Throttle your emails, and consider a separate,
longer email throttle period for your more personal
messages.
2

Personal emails is more than just using a
*|Firstname|* merge tag, plain template and
sending from your own email address.
Make it patently clear why you’ve chosen them
in your email body.
3

Check and validate your data before using it,
especially if you’re using that data to personalize
your messaging.
4

Suppress or customize your sends to people
who already know you.
5

Try (and test) keeping your emails short and
asking for only one thing, but tweak your
messages to different segments to make your
calls-to-action more appropriate.
6

Be aware of when people are likely to open
email.
Schedule or suppress to avoid sending in the
middle of the night or outside their working week.
7

Create standards and conventions to make your
marketing operation more efficient.
But don’t be afraid to break those conventions!
8

Wondering how to get all that data?

A final note.
We will not be doing it this way forever.
This methodology is sound, but it may not work for you.
Just treat your people like people.