Author: Franz Malten Buemann

There are 96 mountain peaks in the US with an elevation of at least 14,000ft. Colorado has the most of any state at 53. No doubt, if you’ve been to Colorado, you’ve heard about these “fourteeners”. It’s a common goal to try to summit all 53. None are easy, but many are just long beautiful hikes. Eventually, though, you finish those and need to take on more challenging climbs.
Last summer, my son and I set our sights on Snowmass Mountain. The fastest and safest way up is via a steep snowfield that covers much of the mountain well into summer. An ice axe and boot crampons are essential equipment. When shopping for crampons, I came upon a pair for a little over $20. Sure, they were from some company I’d never heard of, only had 2 customer reviews and were a fraction of the cost of name-brand competitors. But the price was right! I bought them.
Did they just about get me killed? Yep. Did they prevent me from getting to the summit? Yep. They just kind of fell apart when I needed them most, as my son continued on to eternal glory and bragging rights. Sometimes not investing in the right tools can cost you a lot more in the end. The same is true in marketing.
Ads and Attribution
If you manage a marketing budget, you know how much money goes into two critical areas: paid media and marketing technology. This post is about the intersection of those two things. Namely, B2B advertising leader LinkedIn and the #1 B2B marketing attribution application, Bizible. Each brings unique value and, now connected via an enhanced integration, their combined value has become downright mountainous! Marketers have never been in a better position to break through the clouds and step onto their own summit of marketing mastery.
LinkedIn Ads have proven to be a powerful tool for B2B marketers. Sure, LinkedIn Ads might cost a little more than some competitors, but do they get you to the top of the mountain? Do they pay you back many times over in revenue growth? The evidence suggests they do. But more on that in a bit.
Measuring B2B Marketing Performance
As it turns out, measuring revenue and ROI performance in B2B advertising (and really B2B marketing overall) is a sufferfest. Why? In short, your CRM.
CRM holds hostage all of your sales opportunity, pipeline, and order value information and it’s built to track sales reps instead of buyer behavior. Thankfully, Bizible solves this problem by combining B2B marketing channel and CRM data to create a new 1st party dataset. It’s built exclusively to help you measure and optimize marketing performance at every stage of your lead-based or account-based demand funnel. With it, you can finally prove and improve the impact of marketing. With it, you can see what pipeline and revenue is coming from LinkedIn or any other channel. And that’s how we know LinkedIn rocks.
The ROI of LinkedIn Ads and Bizible
Results certainly vary and different advertising tactics work better at different times, but Bizible benchmark data showed that, on average, LinkedIn Ads provided the #1 ROI among major paid media platforms. Bizible is also a great example of “You get what you pay for”. There are other ways marketers try to do B2B marketing attribution without investing in a B2B marketing attribution application. But the other ways have limitations. These limitations are what has brought (and continues to bring) thousands of marketers to Bizible.  In a 2020 Total Economic Impact Study commissioned by Adobe and conducted by Forrester Consulting, Forrester found that organizations investing in Bizible saw a 298% ROI and a <1yr investment payback period. Since each interviewed Bizible customer was already doing some form of attribution before they implemented Bizible, this return is even more impressive because it reflects not the value of doing attribution, but the value of doing attribution right.
A Strong Integration Gets Stronger
If LinkedIn and Bizible are each capable of providing such great returns, can that get even better when you connect them? Oh yes. How? Bizible automates the tagging, tracking, and attribution of LinkedIn Ads. Bizible proves the revenue contribution and ROI of advertising to win more budget. Finally, Bizible gives you the insight you need to know which ads, campaigns, and creative are generating not just leads, but leads that turn into pipeline and revenue. Of course, Bizible also helps you compare performance across all your channels so you can optimize your channel mix and overall spend.
As the latest result of Adobe’s strategic partnership with Microsoft, we’re excited to introduce a new native integration between Bizible and LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms. This new capability enhances the current and very popular integration between Bizible and LinkedIn Sponsored Content. Now, when marketers choose to take advantage of LinkedIn’s awesome auto-filling, high-conversion-rate forms in conjunction with Sponsored Content, Bizible can track and attribute revenue to those form fills. And it’s all automated. Bizible also captures form metadata such as Form Name and ID, Campaign Name and ID and more so that marketers can understand and optimize form performance right along with ad performance.
“This integration will make a huge difference for our team in assessing the impact of our LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms and using Bizible data to pivot our campaigns, as needed, to drive even more growth.” -Sydney Mulligan, Sr. Manager, Marketing Automation, Hyperscience
All of this is available to joint Bizible and LinkedIn users at no additional cost. This isn’t just a “possible integration” you need to sort out and maintain yourself or connect through some third-party data integration tool.  Like all of Bizible’s marketing channel integrations, it’s easy to set up with just a few clicks and is fully vendor-supported.
Reaching your Summit
There are few things more important in marketing than knowing which investments and engagement tactics are driving progression and wins (and which are not).  Marketers who have the tools to do this put themselves in a unique position to win and help their organizations win. LinkedIn Ads and Bizible are two tools we should all bring with us on our climb to the summit of state-of-the-art B2B marketing.
For more information, please visit our Bizible LinkedIn Integrations product docs or ask an Adobe representative.
The post Reaching the Peak of LinkedIn Ad ROI With Bizible appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog – Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

There are 96 mountain peaks in the US with an elevation of at least 14,000ft. Colorado has the most of any state at 53. No doubt, if you’ve been to Colorado, you’ve heard about these “fourteeners”. It’s a common goal to try to summit all 53. None are easy, but many are just long beautiful hikes. Eventually, though, you finish those and need to take on more challenging climbs.
Last summer, my son and I set our sights on Snowmass Mountain. The fastest and safest way up is via a steep snowfield that covers much of the mountain well into summer. An ice axe and boot crampons are essential equipment. When shopping for crampons, I came upon a pair for a little over $20. Sure, they were from some company I’d never heard of, only had 2 customer reviews and were a fraction of the cost of name-brand competitors. But the price was right! I bought them.
Did they just about get me killed? Yep. Did they prevent me from getting to the summit? Yep. They just kind of fell apart when I needed them most, as my son continued on to eternal glory and bragging rights. Sometimes not investing in the right tools can cost you a lot more in the end. The same is true in marketing.
Ads and Attribution
If you manage a marketing budget, you know how much money goes into two critical areas: paid media and marketing technology. This post is about the intersection of those two things. Namely, B2B advertising leader LinkedIn and the #1 B2B marketing attribution application, Bizible. Each brings unique value and, now connected via an enhanced integration, their combined value has become downright mountainous! Marketers have never been in a better position to break through the clouds and step onto their own summit of marketing mastery.
LinkedIn Ads have proven to be a powerful tool for B2B marketers. Sure, LinkedIn Ads might cost a little more than some competitors, but do they get you to the top of the mountain? Do they pay you back many times over in revenue growth? The evidence suggests they do. But more on that in a bit.
Measuring B2B Marketing Performance
As it turns out, measuring revenue and ROI performance in B2B advertising (and really B2B marketing overall) is a sufferfest. Why? In short, your CRM.
CRM holds hostage all of your sales opportunity, pipeline, and order value information and it’s built to track sales reps instead of buyer behavior. Thankfully, Bizible solves this problem by combining B2B marketing channel and CRM data to create a new 1st party dataset. It’s built exclusively to help you measure and optimize marketing performance at every stage of your lead-based or account-based demand funnel. With it, you can finally prove and improve the impact of marketing. With it, you can see what pipeline and revenue is coming from LinkedIn or any other channel. And that’s how we know LinkedIn rocks.
The ROI of LinkedIn Ads and Bizible
Results certainly vary and different advertising tactics work better at different times, but Bizible benchmark data showed that, on average, LinkedIn Ads provided the #1 ROI among major paid media platforms. Bizible is also a great example of “You get what you pay for”. There are other ways marketers try to do B2B marketing attribution without investing in a B2B marketing attribution application. But the other ways have limitations. These limitations are what has brought (and continues to bring) thousands of marketers to Bizible.  In a 2020 Total Economic Impact Study commissioned by Adobe and conducted by Forrester Consulting, Forrester found that organizations investing in Bizible saw a 298% ROI and a <1yr investment payback period. Since each interviewed Bizible customer was already doing some form of attribution before they implemented Bizible, this return is even more impressive because it reflects not the value of doing attribution, but the value of doing attribution right.
A Strong Integration Gets Stronger
If LinkedIn and Bizible are each capable of providing such great returns, can that get even better when you connect them? Oh yes. How? Bizible automates the tagging, tracking, and attribution of LinkedIn Ads. Bizible proves the revenue contribution and ROI of advertising to win more budget. Finally, Bizible gives you the insight you need to know which ads, campaigns, and creative are generating not just leads, but leads that turn into pipeline and revenue. Of course, Bizible also helps you compare performance across all your channels so you can optimize your channel mix and overall spend.
As the latest result of Adobe’s strategic partnership with Microsoft, we’re excited to introduce a new native integration between Bizible and LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms. This new capability enhances the current and very popular integration between Bizible and LinkedIn Sponsored Content. Now, when marketers choose to take advantage of LinkedIn’s awesome auto-filling, high-conversion-rate forms in conjunction with Sponsored Content, Bizible can track and attribute revenue to those form fills. And it’s all automated. Bizible also captures form metadata such as Form Name and ID, Campaign Name and ID and more so that marketers can understand and optimize form performance right along with ad performance.
“This integration will make a huge difference for our team in assessing the impact of our LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms and using Bizible data to pivot our campaigns, as needed, to drive even more growth.” -Sydney Mulligan, Sr. Manager, Marketing Automation, Hyperscience
All of this is available to joint Bizible and LinkedIn users at no additional cost. This isn’t just a “possible integration” you need to sort out and maintain yourself or connect through some third-party data integration tool.  Like all of Bizible’s marketing channel integrations, it’s easy to set up with just a few clicks and is fully vendor-supported.
Reaching your Summit
There are few things more important in marketing than knowing which investments and engagement tactics are driving progression and wins (and which are not).  Marketers who have the tools to do this put themselves in a unique position to win and help their organizations win. LinkedIn Ads and Bizible are two tools we should all bring with us on our climb to the summit of state-of-the-art B2B marketing.
For more information, please visit our Bizible LinkedIn Integrations product docs or ask an Adobe representative.
The post Reaching the Peak of LinkedIn Ad ROI With Bizible appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog – Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

With more than half of the world’s population using email, it’s one of the best ways to get your message in front of your customers and potential customers.  Over the years, social media and messaging apps have been predicted to supersede email, but 50 years after the first email was sent, it’s still going strong. …
The post How to Promote Your Live Streams with Email Marketing appeared first on Benchmark Email.

One of the most heated arguments that I’ve been a part of was about whether or not Taylor Swift is a good dancer.
The first thing you should know about me is that Taylor Swift is my favorite artist. So you’d have a hard time convincing me she’s bad at anything (because she isn’t).
SEO experts are probably the same way when debating whether subdomains or subdirectories are better for SEO. As a marketer, that debate can cause confusion and analysis paralysis.
In this article, you’ll learn the differences between a subdomain and subdirectory and how they affect SEO. There are pros and cons to both, and you’ll want to consider all of these factors before moving forward with your website project.

Subdirectory URL
In a URL, the subdirectory comes after the root directory or domain name. For example, HubSpot’s root domain is hubspot.com. So a subdirectory URL might be hubspot.com/pricing. Or it might be something more complicated like hubspot.com/pricing/sales. Below is an illustration of one possible subdirectory structure.

When it comes to subdirectories, think of a structure similar to nesting dolls. Each folder can build off of one another almost indefinitely. That means you could have a subfolder within a subfolder within a subfolder until you’re dozens, potentially hundreds, of layers deep.
But just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Too many layers of subfolders can become an SEO nightmare. The URL string becomes long and confusing, the user experience is at risk with every click it takes to get to the next piece of content, and search engine crawlers will find it nearly impossible to crawl your site for new content and other SEO wins you may have added.
On the other hand, subfolders can be great for SEO as they keep any earned backlinks, domain authority, and page authority closely tied to the root domain. And when the site is fairly easy to navigate, the URLs are short and simple, like hubspot.com/careers, which means you can market specific webpages or landing pages by their URL without confusing your audience.

The structure of a subdomain is fairly flat at the top levels. You’ll have your root directory, then all the subdomains underneath it in a horizontal row. All subdomains are on the same level. You won’t have a subdomain within a subdomain like you would a subfolder within a subfolder.

SEO and Subdomains
A subdomain can be great for SEO, but it will require a dedicated person or team that can manage it. Unlike subdirectories, a subdomain’s domain authority won’t automatically trickle down from the primary domain name. You might also pay extra for tools or subscriptions if you’re billed per domain name since each subdomain will typically count as a separate website. Keeping these challenges in mind, let’s take a closer look at the benefits of using a subdomain.
Why use subdomains?
Subdomains are ideal if your business houses a lot of content that would be difficult to manage all on one website. You may also find this structure beneficial if you run several large recurring campaigns that need separate landing pages or if you plan to do a partnership with another organization and want to split the branding on the project.
In short, subdomains make sense if you have a relevant business need to separate content on your website.

There are a number of instances when a company should use a subdomain. Below are the most common.
1. Support
Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to have your customer support on your main site. For instance, Google uses support.google.com instead of google.com/support. The main reason is probably because of the site structure. Google.com is a search engine, and Google’s Support line doesn’t belong to its Search business line. Therefore, it needs its own subdomain to properly connect with and serve its users.
2. Different Regions
If you serve multiple regions, whether nationally or internationally, using a subdomain would be a good idea. If you had a site in German and one in English, it wouldn’t make sense to list those as subdirectories. For instance, Craigslist uses subdomains for the different regions it serves. Here are two of its subdomain sites: orangecounty.craigslist.org/ or stgeorge.craigslist.org/.
3. Blog
Many companies choose to have their blog as a subdomain. In fact, that’s what HubSpot does. If you’ll notice, the page you’re on right now is a blog.hubspot.com page. However, this specific article is in the Marketing subdirectory of the blog.hubspot.com subdomain. Sites may choose to have their blog as a subdomain if they have a content campaign in mind that’s large enough in volume to deserve its own hierarchy and growth path (more on that in a minute). Additionally, a subdomain is useful for a blog if you want to create a niche authority.
4. Ecommerce Store
For companies that sell merchandise, in addition to their regular product or service, they can put their ecommerce store on a subdomain. HubSpot does this as well. Aside from our main software hubs, HubSpot merchandise is available at shop.hubspot.com.
5. Events
If your company hosts events, it might be a good idea to partition that section of your site into a subdomain. Again, this is helpful when you want to distinguish a section of your site from your regular product or service. Microsoft does this with its events.microsoft.com.

Technically, a website can use both a subdomain and a subdirectory structure. Subdomains will usually have at least a few subfolders within them to organize content, but likely not as many as a subdirectory. That’s because there is a smaller variety of content covered on a subdomain than a root domain with subfolders.
So it’s important to understand what the primary structure of your website will be. To decide this, let’s take a closer look at how subdomains and subdirectories impact SEO.
How do subdomains and subdirectories affect SEO?
Some SEO experts believe that Google’s crawlers could confuse a subdomain for an entirely different website from the main domain. However, others say its crawlers can recognize subdomains as extensions of parent domains.
According to Google, the site crawls, indexes, and ranks subdomains and subdirectories the same way.
In the video below, Google Webmasters Trends Analyst John Mueller says, subdomains generally don’t hurt a site’s rankings. In fact, he says Google is smart enough to see your main domain and subdomain as being tied to the same website.

Some SEO professionals argue that subdomains don’t share the authority they receive from inbound links (or backlinks) with the root domain. The reverse can also be true; because subdomains are considered separate entities from your root domain, they may not inherit any of the link authority you’ve already built to your core website content.
Additionally, if you’re optimizing pages for the same keywords on your main site and subdomain, you could be competing against yourself.
On the other hand, other SEO experts argue that subdomains make it easier to navigate your site. Ultimately, this leads to a better user experience, which could result in better engagement rates, therefore improving your SEO.
Subdomains can be beneficial if you have a large corporation and the subdomains serve a different purpose and essentially function as a separate business.
For example, Disney has subdomains such as cars.disney.com, shop.disney.com, and movies.disney.com.
Since these subdomains serve very different purposes, it doesn’t matter if the sites don’t share the same authority from backlinks, because they probably aren’t targeting the same keywords.
According to some SEO experts, another benefit is that subdomains can help build niche authority. For instance, you might want your blog to be considered a separate entity from your product or service.
Conversely, if your site doesn’t have any extensive verticals on your navigation, then you might not need to use a subdomain because you want as many links going back to your main site as possible. If you don’t have a compelling reason to use subdomains, then subdirectories work just fine.
Which is Better: Subdirectory or Subdomain?
Although this topic can often be confusing, ultimately the decision depends on your website’s needs. Subdomains can provide organization and structure to your site if you have a lot of different, but important content to share. Subdirectories can be helpful for smaller websites that don’t have a large variety of content. No matter which structure you choose, you’ll want to stay abreast of SEO best practices in order to meet your website goals. The free guide below will help you improve your site with a free SEO audit tool kit.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in February 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Email marketing is an undeniably powerful strategy for lead acquisition and customer retention.
Of course, creating an email marketing campaign isn’t easy, and it might require you to build a template using HTML so you’re not designing and altering every new email from scratch.

Thankfully, there are dozens of email template builders available, all of which can help you intuitively and quickly create new email templates for your upcoming campaigns.

Email Template Builders
Now you might be wondering how you’re supposed to know which template builder will best suit your needs?
We’ve done the homework for you, compiling a list of our favorite email template builders, complete with pricing, screenshots, and a general overview of each app’s unique features. Keep reading to choose the best email template builder for your company.
But first — why do you need an email template builder, anyway? Let’s start by answering this important question.
Why You Need an Email Template Builder
An email template builder grants you several advantages:
1. Better Design Features
Without a template builder, you may struggle to arrange your content in blocks as you want, or add videos to your email.
2. Initial Time Savings
Most email template builders rely on intuitive mechanics, like drag-and-drop editors, so you can design your emails faster.
3. Long-Term Time Savings
Creating a library of email templates can save you a ton of time long-term, allowing you to quickly choose and lightly edit past templates for new emails.
4. Replicability
Did you see impressive results with your most recent campaign? With an email template builder, you can easily replicate it with some minor tweaks in the future.
5. Analytics
Most email template builders also feature built-in analytics, which you can use to study your past email marketing efforts and make improvements to your approach.
Additionally, depending on the email template builder you’re using, you may have access to even more features.
Next, let’s dive into some of the best builders.
The Best Email Template Builders
Here are some of the best email template builders — they’re categorized by their pricing plans.
Best All-Around Email Template Builder
1. HubSpot Email Marketing Tools

HubSpot offers a comprehensive, start-to-finish solution for all your marketing needs. You can create a sleek, on-brand email campaign using HubSpot’s drag-and-drop editor, and customize the template to match your brand and align with your goals.
Additionally, you can customize each email depending on your recipient’s lifecycle stage, list membership, or any information in their contact records to ensure each email is designed for optimal conversions.
Best of all, the email tool provides top-notch analytics and A/B testing tools so you can continue to refine your marketing strategy over time.
Pro Tip: Use HubSpot’s Free Email Marketing Tools to create, personalize, and optimize marketing emails without the need for technical or design support.
Unique Features

Analytics to provide deep insights into your email success rates, including open-rate, most popular links clicked in an email, who engages with each email, when and on which device, and what emails perform best.
Tailor each email to individual subscribers based on lifecycle stage, list membership, or any other contact information to serve the best calls-to-action to segmented groups.
Ability to run A/B tests to improve open rates and clickthroughs.
More than 100 email templates available by default.
Custom landing page creation tools.
Advanced social sharing options.
Integrations with other marketing tools (more than 300 third-party apps).
24/7 support from customer service reps.

Pricing
Free, $45/mo (Starter), $800/mo (Professional), $3,200/mo (Enterprise)
Best Free Email Template Builders
4. BEE Free

BEE Free is a free online email editor that has been used by more than a million people. In just a few clicks, you can get started designing your first email template — or use one of the 150 templates currently available by default. It also offers free design ideas on its own blog.
Unique Features

150 pre-designed templates (and additional paid templates).
Full responsiveness for mobile-friendly designs.
Integration with many SaaS apps.
Options to pick up where you left off.

Pricing
Free
5. Mosaico

Mosaico.io is an open-source email template builder, which is something of a rarity. You won’t find any predesigned templates, as you would with other email template builders, but you will be able to alter the tool however you see fit.
Unique Features

A unique click-based design tool, abandoning the traditional “drag-and-drop” model.
Community support, due to its open-source nature.
Infinite flexibility, if you’re willing to put in the work to customize it.

Pricing
Free
6. Unlayer

Unlayer is a free HTML email template builder, with a simple, easy-to-grasp approach. You can choose any of its 100+ base kit templates and edit the template as you see fit. You can also install the free Chrome extension if you want to integrate it with Gmail.
Unique Features

Template designs are immediately available, so you can start in mere minutes.
A free Chrome plugin so you can use the tool directly in your browser.
The ability to save and download templates for future use.

Pricing
Free
Best Paid Email Template Builders
2. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the top names in email marketing, in part because of its accessibility. It’s super easy to learn and build your first few email templates, and you can get started right now with a free plan. As you scale your business, you’ll find additional options, features, and tools for your needs.
Unique Features

More than 100 email templates available by default.
Custom landing page creation tools.
Advanced social sharing options.
Integrations with other marketing tools (more than 300 third-party apps).
24/7 support from customer service reps.

Pricing
Free, $9.99 (Essentials), $14.99 (Standard), $299 (Premium)
3. Moosend

Moosend’s easy-to-use drag-and-drop email editor allows you to create professional-looking email templates that include marketing elements — such as countdown timers and videos — without any prior HTML knowledge.
Unique Features

Customizable, ready-made templates and custom fonts
Drag-and-drop landing page editor
Integration with GIPHY, Google Drive, Stock Photos, and social media platforms
Video email marketing tools
Customer support for all pricing plans through email, chat, and phone

Pricing
Free, $8/mo (Pro), call for a custom plan (Enterprise)
7. AWeber

AWeber is specifically designed for small businesses eager to get started with email marketing, but who might have trouble knowing where to begin. Predesigned templates, custom designs, and email automation are all available.
Unique Features

A drag and drop AMP carousel, which allows you to add AMP image carousels to your emails.
AWeber’s Smart Designer, which uses AI to construct and recommend email templates.
A campaign marketplace that allows you to design and launch full email campaigns.
24/7 customer service.

Pricing
Free, $16.15/mo (Pro)
9. Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is primarily focused on email marketing but has other features you can use for a variety of other marketing and ecommerce purposes. Because it’s designed to work for teams, it’s ideal if you have many people working together on your campaigns.
Unique Features

Template management and collaboration for teams.
Built-in support for surveys with unlimited questions.
80 predesigned email templates.

Pricing
$9/mo (Basic), $29/mo (Unlimited), $149/mo (Premier)
9. Chamaileon.io

Chamaileon.io is a cleverly named email template builder that allows your team to design emails collaboratively, complete with drag-and-drop mechanics so you never have to worry about coding. You can also design and follow a set email campaign workflow, simplifying your efforts in the future.
Unique Features

Collaborative email design for teams working together on the same templates.
Unique and flexible account roles for multiple levels of access.
Replicable testing settings to allow for easy testing of new designs.

Pricing
$150/mo (Standard), $250/mo (Premium)
10. Designmodo Postcards

Designmodo Postcards email builder is designed to bring teams together for the email template building process. You can use it to design emails however you like, then export as HTML, or to a full email service provider like Mailchimp.
Unique Features

Modular designs that help you stack, customize, and rearrange your options.
Long-term content management to help you revisit previous successes.
Unlimited exports, which is ideal if you’re exporting to other services frequently.

Pricing
Free, $18/mo (Business), $29/mo (Agency)
11. Stripo.email

Stripo.email helps you create responsive email templates without any HTML coding skills necessary. It also features innate dynamic AMP support, and a robust testing tool to help you preview your email in more than 90 popular environments, including variants for devices and browsers.
Unique Features

Drag-and-drop AMP blocks for image carousel and/or accordion support.
Thorough testing in nearly 100 different environments.
A customizable module library, allowing you to reuse past successful elements.
Integration with many ESPs and third-party tools.

Pricing
Free, $125/mo (Business), $400/mo (Agency)
12. Taxi for Email

Taxi for Email provides scalable email template creation, as well as the ability to create email workflows. It also allows you to assign various tasks and permissions to your team, so each of your marketers can play a role in perfecting your email campaign.
Unique Features

Team dynamics, including collaborative tools, access assignment, and user permissions.
Robust testing on-demand as you design.
Support for multiple languages and email segmentation.

Pricing
Request a custom quote.
13. SendGrid

SendGrid is an email service that provides support for email template designs — additionally, it offers email functions such as automatic shipping notifications and password resets. It also boasts an open API, which you can use to integrate with just about anything.
Unique Features

A wide variety of tools, including email design, automation, signup forms, and more.
APIs, SMTP Relay, and Webhooks.
Delivery optimization tools so you can increase delivery rates.

Pricing
Free; Essentials and Pro plans vary in pricing based on the number of emails you send per month but plans start at $14.95/mo and 89.95/mo respectively; call for a quote (Premier)
Choose the Best Email Template Builder for Your Needs
There are a number of benefits that result from using an email template builder — so, consider your needs, goals, and budget while reviewing the list above to determine which option is most ideal for your team.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

I’m using Builtwith to identify websites that use our competitors and discovered the CRM export tool. Have any of you used this tool before? How do you find the quality of the contact data from Builtwith? Is it fairly reliable, on par with Zoominfo, terrible, etc?
submitted by /u/vjarnold [link] [comments]

Are you knocking it out of the park with your email campaigns? Any marketer would rarely answer yes to that question. No matter what your strategy looks like or how effective you think they are, email marketing mistakes happen, and results, open rates, and conversions can always be improved.  There are different types of emails,…
The post The Different Types of Emails and Why You Should be Sending Them appeared first on Benchmark Email.

If your product team is working on the next big thing, there ought to be an equally awesome promotion strategy to spread the word.
While some companies are guilty of drafting a press release, crossing their fingers, and hoping that the users will come, there’s actually much more to it than that.
Quite simply: If you have big news, you need a big strategy. And that’s where your product launch marketing plan comes in.

From establishing the proper messaging and creating the assets to enabling your sales team and keeping momentum, there’s a lot that goes into putting together a solid product launch plan.
At HubSpot, I work on the product marketing team, and we’re responsible for launching all of HubSpot’s new products. Our experience has shown us that there are three distinct phases of a product launch: the pre-launch, the launch, and the post-launch.
Pre-Launch
Before you launch, take the time to get really close to the product. Work with your product team to understand the problem they are trying to solve. Join them as they do users tests. Chat with them about their product philosophy. And most of all, ask a ton of questions — especially if you’re not familiar with the space.
Focus on understanding their vision and becoming a product expert. Outside of the product manager, the marketer launching the product should be the most knowledgeable person at your company about that product.
By understanding the product and performing market research, you’ll be able to align your messaging strategy with the product. The primary goal will be to bridge the gap between what the prospects’ pains are and what the competition is not doing to address them. The pre-launch stage also includes the necessary promotion planning as you decide:

Where you’ll advertise (e.g. search engines, social media, traditional channels)

Where you’ll promote your message organically (e.g. social media, blog, website homepage, events)

How you’ll get picked up by media outlets (i.e. your PR strategy and media outreach)

Who you’ll rely on to spread the word (e.g. partners, communities, forums, third-party marketplaces)

Launch
During the pre-launch phase, you’ll have decided what channels to promote on, established relationships with any partners who will help you do so, and created the assets that will draw attention to your messaging on these channels.
The launch phase is simply the execution of all your planning. This phase is much shorter than pre-launch: it can take a day, or a week — depending on how long you feel you need.
As you prepare to move on to the launch, you want to stay focused on the work and be ready to put out any fires.
Post-Launch
The work isn’t over simply because the product is launched. In the post-launch phase, you’ll do a retrospective, pulling together the data to determine what went well and what didn’t go so well.
In addition, a product still needs to be maintained and improved upon beyond its launch, taking into account customer feedback in order to maintain adoption and retention.
This is, of course, a high-level overview of a product launch. However, there are some specific tactical things that you can do to help your launch go off without a hitch.
Pre-Launch
1. Research the space in-depth.
At most companies, the product manager will own the problem that the product solves. They’ll have a deep understanding of who the end-user is and what their unique needs are.
The product marketer’s job is to understand the market. They must be able to answer questions like:

What’s the larger narrative around this space?
How do current customers feel about it?
What do people like and dislike?
Is it growing and cutting edge or old and getting disrupted?
What are the leading strategies and tactics in this space?
What is your company’s unique point of view when it comes to this space?
How does your new product fit in?

2. Focus on a single buyer persona.
You may not need to reinvent an existing buyer persona, but you should outline who amongst your target audience is a great fit for this new product. What kind of challenges do they have? How do they work? How big is their team? Talk to people who fit this profile to really understand their needs and goals.
If you need help organizing this information, check out these buyer persona templates or this handy tool.
3. Write a mock press release.
At HubSpot, we write a mock press release before we launch a product. We do this very early on in the product’s life to ensure that everyone involved in the launch is aligned on the messaging.
To give you a better sense of how this exercise unfolds, here’s an example:
But we’re not the only ones practicing this approach. In fact, the folks at Amazon use this exercise, too. The idea is that when you work backward and start with the press release, it’s easier to put yourself in the customer’s shoes.
If the press release doesn’t sound very interesting or fails to conjure a reaction, it’s likely that there’s more work to be done.
(Need some help getting started here? Check out these free press release templates.)
4. Build your messaging — but don’t marry it.
Messaging or positioning is mostly about refining your product narrative to focus on only the most valuable aspects of the new product via a simple message.
This is tough.
Most product people have the urge to communicate how great individual features are –something you want to avoid in launch messaging. At launch, you may only have someone’s attention for a few minutes or seconds, so your messaging needs to be persuasive, simple, and unique. It needs to communicate what your product actually does and communicate its high-level value.
You want to get this right, but don’t over-commit to messaging. It can (and should) change as you share your messaging with internal folks and customers.
Elements of good position often include:

A tagline
The problem it solves
A list of core features
The value prop
A 10-word positioning statement

In the screenshot above you can see some of these elements in action on the HubSpot Ads product page.
5. Share your messaging with everyone.
It’s time to take the messaging you’ve been slaving over and get it in front of your co-workers, customers, and prospects.
This is often the least fun part of a product launch. Mainly because no matter how good your positioning is, it takes time to get the pitch down, and not everyone will get it.
It’s good to start with individuals who may be a little more forgiving and honest before presenting to executives. Use every meeting to pitch people and ask questions. You want to gather as much info as possible here and root out any confusing or bad messages.
6. Get involved in the beta.
Having a group of beta testers evaluate your product before you release it to the public is a really important step. At HubSpot, we release products to a group of folks — our beta testers — that have opted-in to give us feedback in exchange for early access.
If your company does this, make sure you are talking to the customers using the tool in the beta. Capture their stories, review their performance, and validate your value prop with them. This is your opportunity to test your messaging and build real-world proof to support your pitch with an audience that is ready to share feedback.
7. Change your messaging and find the best hook.
After talking to prospects and salespeople, and seeing how beta users use the product, it’s likely that you’ve uncovered a thing or two about your messaging that you might want to adjust. That’s good.
If you’ve done things right, this won’t mean drastic changes, but most likely a tweak to the value prop or tagline.
8. Set ambitious goals.
You need to be deliberate and ambitious with the goals you set, and that can be challenging when you have a new product without benchmarks. To combat that, we ask the question: “If everything went exactly right, what is the highest possible number — whether that be leads, users, etc. — we could achieve?”
This sets a ceiling for your campaign — a number that is realistically almost never achieved.
If I project that the highest possible number of leads the campaign can generate is 500, and I end up with 450, I know we got just about everything right. If I generate 550 leads, it means I probably didn’t do a great job of setting a realistic ceiling. And if we only generate 300 leads, we know some tactics didn’t work at all.
The image below can be a useful slide as part of your go-to-market plan:

9. Take the time to get the market ready.
If you’re launching a new product that enters your company into a new space — potentially a space where your company doesn’t have a ton of authority — start creating content about that space pre-launch.
You’ll want to seed this content for SEO purposes and to establish your company as experts in the market. It’ll also give you a chance to see what kind of content resonates prior to the launch, as well as help you surface any issues.
10. Build compelling creative assets.
At this point, you’re close to launch and it’s time to start building launch assets. But before you start writing emails or building landing pages, think about the customer journey:

How do people make purchase decisions in your space?
What do they need before buying?
Is it a free trial? A demo?
Is it best for them to talk to a salesperson?
What do they need to know before they get to that point?

Once you’ve answered those questions, outline your conversion path. How will you first get people’s attention? Perhaps it’s an email, that drives people to a landing page, where users are encouraged to fill out a form.
Once you have this, get to work building the actual forms, site pages, videos, social posts, emails, and other tactics that will drive users down your funnel and to your conversion point.
(If you’re looking for inspiration, check out this list of the best promotional product videos we’ve ever seen.)
11. Assemble your go-to-market strategy.
All the elements I’ve mentioned should come together in a deck or a doc — something that is clear, complete, and easily shareable.
This is your go-to-market guide: A holistic document of all launch activities, planning, and goals. This can include pricing recommendations, market research, competitive analysis, and any other relevant information you might need.
Launch
12. Choose the right channels.
During the planning phase, you should have outlined the channels you want to use to share your message. This is not a “the more the merrier” sort of thing — a mistake new product marketers often make.
Be sure to avoid channels where the audience may not be the right fit. Pick one main channel — an event, a Product Hunt post, or blog post — and use email, social, paid, and other channels to support that main post.
For example, in 2018, we launched HubSpot’s free email marketing tools on Product Hunt. We choose Product Hunt because it serves as a great way for startups and technology companies to introduce new products to a community of product-centric influencers.

Before you launch, do a final check to ensure that everything works — buttons are functioning, forms are working, copy and creative looks good, and so on.
If you’re at an event, make sure you’re over-communicating with your team. At this point, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Be prepared for that.

13. Activate your sales team.
Work with your sales team to coordinate meetings and outreach the day of the launch, or directly after. And use signals from your marketing efforts to drive the hottest leads to sales right away.
If you running an event, make sure your sales team has the opportunity to talk to customers in an organized way. That might mean ensuring there is a comfortable space for them to meet with customers, computer access, or a system for booking meetings.

14. Make it an event.
Even if your launch isn’t a live event with speakers, you can still make it an occasion.
Host a webinar or Hangout On Air, do a Reddit AMA, or try out a live social chat. Leverage apps for startups to manage and host events for free. (Here’s a helpful guide to get you started on the right track with Facebook Live.) Invite influencers to check out your product. Bring customers and press into your office for a live demo of the new product from your product team.
Whatever you do, strive for an in-person element. It’ll help propel your launch even further.
Post-Launch
15. Don’t lose your momentum.
You’ll reach a lot of people with your launch, but it often takes several touchpoints before someone is convinced to start a trial or get a demo. Make sure to continue to move folks who’ve raised their hands as “interested but not ready to buy” down your funnel.
This means nurturing emails, free trials, demos, and more in-depth, product-focused webinars and activities. Build extra creative, like a longer video or social media posts that you can save for after the launch. This will give you fresh assets to share.
And don’t forget about educating your sales team. It will take a while before all your salespeople feel comfortable with this new product, so it’s important to arm them with amazing sales collateral (demo video, one-pagers, etc.).
Beyond that, you can make a big impact by joining their calls: Getting on the phone and pitching the product with them the first couple of times will give them the confidence they need to carry the torch.

16. Revisit your “go-to-market” doc for reporting.
With all the work that’s going into launch, you don’t want to have to retroactively figure out what to report on. If you’ve done a good job with your go-to-market doc, you should be able to create a new slide and fill in your results with real numbers.
Once you’ve had a little more time away from your launch, spend some time analyzing the results. Where did your campaign succeed and fail? What did you fail to anticipate? What did you learn? Post these to your internal wiki or as a public blog post.
17. Shift your focus on retention.
Now that you’ve successfully launched a new product, shift your attention to retention. Marketing can generally play a bigger role in driving new users, but it’s important to work with your product team to figure out how you can help keep those users around.
This means more ongoing education like post-launch product webinars, as well as sharing case studies and success stories to show your users what they can achieve with your product.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in September 2013 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.