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How to Nurture Your Way to Success with HubSpot Marketing Contacts

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Greetings, fellow marketing warriors!

Are you tired of feeling like you're fumbling around in the dark, blindly trying to connect with potential customers? Do you wish you had a magic wand that could help organize contacts and track interactions with them?

Well, sorry to break it to you, but magic wands don't exist (unless you count Harry Potter's, but let's face it, he's not sharing.)

However, fear not!

There's a tool that's almost as good: HubSpot Marketing Contacts.

If you're ready to take your marketing game to the next level, buckle up and get ready to learn how to set up and manage HubSpot Marketing Contacts, as well as three strategies to nurture them, including contact segmentation, targeted email marketing, lead magnets, gated content, and more.

And, of course, we also l cover how to track your progress with HubSpot Analytics and Reporting.

Let's dive headfirst into the world of HubSpot Marketing Contacts.

What Are HubSpot Marketing Contacts?

HubSpot Marketing Contacts

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I suggest we start with the basics.

HubSpot Marketing Contacts is a contact management system. It allows you to organize contacts based on various criteria, like where they came from (did they fill out a form on your website or send a note via carrier pigeon?), their interests, and how they interacted with your brand in the past. This makes it easy to target specific groups with relevant content, which is key to driving engagement and conversions.

You may think, "Haven't those features always been available on HubSpot's platform?"

Well, my friends, that's where HubSpot Marketing Contacts are different.

In October 2020, HubSpot released the marketing contact feature, only charging users for storing prospects to which they promote their services or products.

Companies can store as many as 15 million contacts intended for marketing through the feature.

The platform utilizes the "Marketing Status" property value to assign this attribute to HubSpot Marketing Contacts. In other words, these are leads or prospects businesses actively advertise to via marketing tools, such as:

  • Audience ad targeting
  • Email marketing
  • Social media interactions
  • Website pop-ups
  • Special deals

When the value of the contact is set to "No," they fall under the non-marketing category, meaning those leads will not count towards your contact tier and cannot be utilized with HubSpot or third-party marketing tools.

Schools of businesses worldwide bowed down to HubSpot for releasing this feature as it offered a workflow answer that unlocks the full potential of HubSpot's extensive suite of solutions. The feature also helps run your organization more efficiently due to its integrated, scalable, and unified database management platform.

HubSpot Marketing Contacts vs Non-Marketing

HubSpot Understanding Marketing Contacts

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Ah, the eternal question—what's the difference between HubSpot marketing vs. non-marketing contacts? It's like the age-old debate of dogs vs cats or Coke vs Pepsi. Luckily, we can easily break it down for you in a way that even Aunt Mildred, who still uses a flip phone, can understand.

You already know that a marketing contact is someone who has interacted with your brand in a way to suggest they may be interested in what you have to offer. Whether they attended one of your events, clicked on a social media ad, or requested more information on a product, these contacts are the ones you're looking to nurture.

Conversely, non-marketing contacts have no affiliation with your brand (yet.) This could be a cold lead you bought from a third-party vendor or someone you met at a networking event with but haven't had any other interaction with.

So what's the contrast between these two types of contacts? Well, for starters, how you interact with them.

  • Non-marketing contacts may be anyone from vendors, suppliers, or other businesses with whom you need to communicate but don't have to sell products or services.
  • Marketing contacts are people you want to engage and nurture to turn into loyal customers.

To illustrate the difference between marketing and non-marketing contacts further, let's take a look at this handy dandy table:

HubSpot Marketing Contacts

HubSpot Non-Marketing Contacts

Prospects who have interacted with your brand

No prior interaction with your brand or people you aren't selling to

These individuals may be interested in what you have to offer

Cold leads, third-party vendors, suppliers, or people not aware of your offerings or brand

Leads who are worthing nurturing and engaging with

More effort may be required to convert these people into customers

It's clear to see there are pretty key differences between HubSpot Marketing Contacts and Non-Marketing Contacts. But why does it matter? First, it lowers the cost of your HubSpot bill at the end of the month, and second, it affects how you communicate with your contacts.

You don't want to send a marketing email to someone who has never heard of your brand, just like you don't want to ignore someone who has shown interest in your products and services.

HubSpot's platform has you covered, irrespective if you're dealing with marketing or non-marketing contacts.

How to Set Marketing Contacts in HubSpot

Hubspot Set Contacts as Marketing

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So you've decided to take the plunge and segment your HubSpot Marketing Contacts and non-marketing contacts. Congratulations, this is a wise decision.

But now that you're starting, you may be thinking, "how do I set marketing contacts in HubSpot?"

Fear not, my compadre, the steps to setting HubSpot Marketing Contacts are simple and available below:

  1. Head over to "Contacts" at the top navigation bar
  2. Choose the contact you want to change with the little checkbox selection
  3. Press the "More" dropdown menu at the top of the table
  4. Select "Set as Marketing Contact"

You can also automate updating contact statuses with a HubSpot workflow. The platform allows you to create a workflow based on enrollment conditions of your criteria and then set the action to marketing or standard contact status.

Creating a form allows you to choose if form submissions should be marked as a HubSpot Marketing Contact or not.

Select "Yes," if the form is a lead generation portal.

Any leads generated from this form will immediately receive automated emails and other marketing from your workflow. You may not want to mark HR and customer support forms for job applicants as marketing contacts.

How to Manage Marketing Contacts in HubSpot

Hubspot Marketing Settings

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Managing HubSpot Marketing Contacts can be a daunting task.

But don't let that make you shy away!

A marketing contact is a contact that you are sending a single or blast of marketing messages. You can assign the marketing status to any contact at any time, and it won't override a contact's opt-in preference.

For example, if you assign the marketing status to a contact who opted out of your emails, being a marketing contact won't change the fact that they won't purchase from you, meaning you wasted a marketing contact on that individual.

When someone enters your company's ecosystem via a form, you can immediately set their status to "Marketing Contacts" as they are a potential client. You can also do this with the bulk selection tool by choosing the contacts you want to set marketing status and clicking apply when you're ready.

Utilizing HubSpot's reports, workflows, and lists can assist in monitoring your contacts. With these features, you can track and define the following:

  1. Which contacts are non-marketing contacts
  2. How many marketing contacts there'll be next month—using Hubspot's Forecast Tool
  3. Who is currently a marketing contact
  4. Which contacts will continue to be marketing contacts until the end of month
  5. Which types of contacts do you want to mark as marketing contacts (e.g., existing customers, prospects who fill out a lead gen form)

Finding out these fundamental statistics will help you plan better for the following month's HubSpot Marketing Contacts endeavours.

3 Strategies to Nurture HubSpot Marketing Contacts

HubSpot Marketing Contacts. They're like plants⁠—you have to give them the right amount of water, sunshine, and TLC in order to see them flourish.

But let's be real, who has time to tend to each and every contact personally?

That's where these strategies come in: contact segmentation, targeted email marketing, lead magnets, and gated content.

It's like creating a personalized greenhouse for your contact where each one gets exactly what it needs to grow big and strong (or, in this case, convert to loyal customers.)

So grab those gardening gloves, and let's dig into these strategies to see how they can help you nurture your HubSpot Marketing Contacts into blooming success stories.

1. Contact Segmentation

Nurturing HubSpot Marketing Contacts with contact segmentation is an excellent strategy for success. By dividing your audience into smaller groups based on their preferences, behaviours, and interests, personalized content marketing can be created that's relevant to each group, increasing the chances of converting them into customers.

Roketto is a content marketing agency and certified HubSpot partner who focuses on understanding the client's journey and what key information to feed them next. We concentrate on providing your audience with valuable content that educates and inspires your readers to take action.

Here are a few tips on how to create an effective content segmentation strategy for nurturing your HubSpot Marketing Contacts:

  • Define buyer personas: A persona for marketing is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal client. Creating a persona or personas with buying behaviours, pain points, goals, job titles, and demographics can help you better comprehend the motivations and requirements of your audience. This data is utilized to help you create targeted content that speaks directly to a specific audience's concerns and needs.
  • Segment contacts based on behaviour: Tracking user behaviour on your website, such as the actions they take, the content they download, and the pages they visit, can help you measure their chance of converting. Analyze this information to identify trends and patterns to assist in developing relevant content that resonates with each segment.

For instance, if you have a group of contacts who frequently visit your blog to read about industry trends and news, you can create a segment for them and send them emails with curated content on these topics. Similarly, if another group of leads has downloaded a specific ebook, a segment can be created for them, and follow-up content sent that builds on the information in the ebook.

Contact segmentation is like dividing a pizza into slices⁠—it helps you serve up the correct flavour ratio. By utilizing contact segmentation to nurture your HubSpot Marketing Contacts, you can serve them content that speaks directly to their preferences and interests, increasing the chance of turning them into paying customers.

2. Targeted Email Marketing

Once your customers are segmented, it is time to create personalized emails that will captivate them.

Emails can sometimes feel like the digital equivalent of a message in a bottle tossed into the vast ocean of the internet. But unlike a message in a bottle, emails don't have to be a shot in the dark. You can increase your chances of actually getting a response with a strategy and a bit of perseverance.

First things first, let's chat about subject lines. Striking a balance between not being too spammy and grabbing the prospect's attention is crucial to a successful targeted email marketing strategy.

You could use a subject line like "Can we talk about something other than the weather?" It's a little unexpected and cheeky and immediately sets the tone for a more interesting conversation.

Once you have the lead's attention, it's time to keep it. Here is where a bit of humour and confidence comes into play. People are bombarded with emails every day, most of which are boring and dry. If you can inject some humour into your message, it'll surely stand out from the crowd.

For example, let's say you're trying to sell a SaaS marketing tool. Instead of launching into a dry sales pitch, start with something like this:

"Hey there, [First Name]. Are you tired of feeling like a marketing caveman using outdated tools while your competitors ride high-tech hoverboards? Fear not, my friend. I come bearing a solution to bring you out of the stone age and into the digital age."

By using a little bit of imagination and humour, I've created a message that is more memorable and engaging.

Lastly, don't forget a call to action. You've gained their attention and made them laugh⁠—now it's time to seal the deal. Make it clear to them what action must be taken next, whether it is replying to your email, signing up for a free trial, or booking a demo.

3. Lead Magnet & Gated Content

In the world of inbound marketing, gated content and lead magnets are robust tools for attracting and converting leads. By offering something of value in exchange for contact information, you can not only grow your email list but nurture those prospects toward becoming customers.

So what exactly is a lead magnet? Simply put, it's a piece of content that is offered for free in exchange for contact details. This could be anything from a free product trial, a template, a webinar, or an e-book. The key is to provide value to your audience that can potentially give them insight into solving their pain points or offer education on a certain topic.

Gating content, such as an in-depth guide on a specific topic, a research report, or whitepapers, can help you capture the contact information of people who are highly interested in your industry or topic and are likely a good fit for your services or product.

When creating lead magnets and gated content, it's important to keep a couple of things in mind.

First, ensure it is something your target audience actually wants. Do research to understand their interests and pain points, and create something that addresses those needs. High-quality content is the name of the game here. You want to showcase your expertise and provide value to the audience, so don't skimp on production or design quality.

Secondly, gated content should have a clear call to action to get the lead to move through the sale funnel.

In terms of promotion, lead magnets, and gated content can be promoted through a variety of channels. Email marketing, social media, and paid advertising can all be effective ways to drive traffic to the landing pages for your gated content items..

Marketing Contacts HubSpot Analytics & Reporting

Hubspot Marketing Analytics and Dashboard Software

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Let's look at the bread and butter of any successful marketing campaign: reporting and analytics.

To be honest⁠—no one actually enjoys manually crunching numbers and sifting through data.

That's where HubSpot's analytics and reporting tools step in!

With HubSpot, you can easily analyze and track your marketing campaigns, website traffic, and lead-generation efforts. But it's not just about racking numbers⁠— it's about turning that data into actionable insights that can drive business growth.

Website traffic is the first topic of conversation. HubSpots analytical tools not only let you track how many people visited your site but also how long they're staying, what pages they're visiting, and where they're coming from. This information is invaluable in understanding how your website's performance and what changes need to be made to improve it.

Of course, tracking data is only half the battle. The real magic occurs when you transform that data into actionable insights to add to your marketing strategy. HubSpot's reporting tools make this easy, allowing you to create custom reports and dashboards highlighting the metrics that matter most to your company.

Marketers can see which channels and campaigns are generating the most leads and the quality of those leads. This data can be used to refine targeting and messaging to ensure that leads are more likely to convert into customers.

HubSpot's reporting tools also make sharing data with stakeholders and team members easy. Reports can be customized and even automated, allowing stakeholders to see real-time performance data without the need for manual data entry or analysis.

HubSpot's integration with other marketing tools, such as the CRM and marketing automation platform, also provides a complete picture of the customer journey.

Overall, HubSpot's analytics and reporting tools are essential components for any marketer looking to make data-driven decisions and improve their marketing ROI.

HubSpot Marketing Contacts - Final Thoughts

And that's all, folks!

Hubspot Marketing Contacts is the perfect way to save money and segment your contacts so you can target them better. If you want to take your marketing game to the next level, you need a HubSpot partner that can help you make the most of it.

Enter Roketto. As a certified HubSpot partner, we understand the ins and outs of the platform and assist with making the most out of its comprehensive list of features and tools.

So what are you waiting for? Let's work together and take your marketing efforts to new heights! Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you with your HubSpot needs.

And remember, marketing can be fun⁠—especially when you have the right tools and partners on your side.

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Garreth Aspeling

Garreth Aspeling

Garreth has 6 years of experience crafting compelling SEO-based blog posts and articles for various audiences. From cryptocurrency to SaaS and everything in between, Garreth always creates high-quality content for his clients. He is also engrossed in books, hiking trails, and spending time with loved ones.

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