Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Every marketing team is challenged to do more with less — especially nonprofit organizations. Often times, resources are tight, and teams are small. Sound like your organization?
We want to help. That’s why we created this nonprofit marketing guide. Your organization might not operate for profit, but it can still value from the traffic, funds, and awareness marketing brings in.
Bookmark this guide for later and use the chapter links below to jump around to sections of interest.

Inbound Marketing for Nonprofits
Your nonprofit organization likely takes up all of your time, and building a marketing plan might seem like an added responsibility that’s just not worth it.
We’re here to convince you otherwise. Inbound marketing is all about creating valuable experiences that have a positive impact on people and your business.
Inbound marketing for nonprofits can help you attract new supporters for your cause, connect to valuable donors, engage your constituents, and inspire your community.
Boost your organization’s awareness and compel action. See firsthand how HubSpot can transform your nonprofit organization.
Here’s how else nonprofit marketing can help.
Nonprofit marketing raises awareness.
Your nonprofit organization is a brand, therefore you need to raise awareness just like any other business or company. Marketing raises awareness of your brand, and brand awareness spreads the word about your organization and your overall cause.
Nonprofit marketing raises funds.
Nonprofit marketing and nonprofit fundraising go hand-in-hand. The more people that know about your organization, the more potential funding you can bring in.
Nonprofit marketing drives donor memberships and recurring donations.
Many nonprofit organizations offer donation memberships and monthly giving programs, like this one from Charity: Water. These programs are valuable because your organization doesn’t have to fundraise so actively and so often, and they can actually help you raise more money — the average monthly online donation is $52 ($624 per year) compared to the average one-time gift of $128.
Marketing your nonprofit gets your cause in front of fresh eyes and informs your donors about how they can consistently contribute.
Nonprofit marketing recruits volunteers.
Nonprofit marketing isn’t just for funding — it also drives manpower (and woman-power!) to your organization. Regardless of industry or size, all nonprofits benefit from volunteers, and marketing your organization can help bring in new hands.
Moreover, volunteers are twice as likely to donate as non-volunteers.
Nonprofit marketing promotes your services.
Awareness, funding, and volunteers are integral to your nonprofit, but what about the purpose of your organization? What about the people, animals, or cause you’re helping? Marketing can help with that, too.
The more people who know about your nonprofit organization, the more people you can help.
These are just a handful of reasons you should invest in marketing (particularly inbound marketing!) for your nonprofit. Now, let’s discuss how to build a nonprofit marketing plan so you can start bringing in new funds, volunteers, and constituents.

Crafting a nonprofit marketing plan might not be too different than a for-profit marketing plan, but it’s debatably more important. Increasing awareness and constituent engagement without exhausting your hardworking team requires approaching your marketing systematically.
That’s where a nonprofit marketing plan comes into play. Putting systems in place to produce and distribute your marketing content allows you to focus on operating and scaling your nonprofit.
Here’s how to create a successful nonprofit marketing plan.

1. Define Your Marketing Goals
Your nonprofit marketing plan exists to transform your organization’s mission and big-picture objectives into strategic, actionable goals.

For example, let’s say one of your objectives was to protect the welfare of animals in your community (like one of my favorite local rescues, ALIVE Chicago). I’d ask you to brainstorm three to five marketing ideas to advance that objective.
Some ways you could use marketing to advance that objective include:

Create and publish content that educates your community on the state of animal welfare.
Post on social media about your organization and the animals you have for adoption.
Send a weekly email newsletter sharing your content, adoptable animals, and volunteer needs.
Host a quarterly event with educational resources, foster training, and adoption opportunities.

Next, I’d ask you to turn these ideas into SMART goals. Let’s use idea number one as an example:

Specific
Educate the community on the state of animal welfare by producing one blog post per week.

Measurable
Increase traffic by 15%.

Attainable
Our blog traffic increased by 10% last year when we upped our publishing frequency to twice a month. A 15% boost in traffic with a 100% increase in production seems attainable.

Relevant
An increase in blog traffic will boost awareness of our organization, educate the community, and alert more people of our adoption opportunities — thus, saving more animals and bringing in more funding.

Timely
We will start producing one post per week and the start of next month.

SMART Goal: By the start of next month, our blog will see a 15% boost in traffic by increasing our content production from two posts per month to one post per week. This increase will boost awareness of our organization, educate the community, and alert more people of our adoption opportunities — thus, saving more animals and bringing in more funding.
See how I turned the organizational mission into a marketing objective, and then into a SMART goal? SMART goals are especially important when it comes time to analyze and measure your marketing performance (which we talk about later), so be sure to finish this step before moving forward in your nonprofit marketing plan.

2. Understand Your Audience(s)
Nonprofit marketing is different from other types of marketing because your organization is likely targeting multiple groups: constituents, customers, volunteers, and donors.
It’s imperative to define and understand each of these audiences (a.k.a. buyer personas) because your marketing will differ based on who you’re talking to. (We’ll get into key messaging next.)
For example, following our animal shelter example from above, an email targeting donors will have different messaging than an email calling for volunteers.
One easy way to organize your different audiences is using a CRM to segment the different groups. By separating contacts with tags and lists, you can easily send marketing messages to the appropriate groups.

3. Craft Your Key Messages
Key messages encompass the information you want your audiences to hear, remember, and share about your nonprofit organization. Crafting these before you employ your marketing is important for a few reasons:

Key messages keep your organization aligned. No matter who’s doing the marketing, you can be confident the same thing is being said and promoted.

Key messages simplify your marketing. With these created ahead of time, you already know what you’re going to say in your marketing messaging.

Key messages help organize your different audiences (as we talked about above). As a nonprofit organization, you’re likely talking to donors, volunteers, constituents, and your community … more personas than a typical for-profit business. Developing key messages for each of your audiences informs your team and your marketing to make sure you’re targeting the right groups.

Continuing with our animal shelter example, here’s a look at how you can craft a key message for different audiences.
Key message: We protect the welfare of animals in our community through education, adoption and fostering, and animal advocacy.

For adoption customers/constituents: By adopting or fostering, or by alerting us of animals in need, you can help us protect the welfare of animals in our community.

For volunteers: We protect the welfare of animals through round-the-clock animal care and advocacy.

For donors: You can help us protect the welfare of animals by donating to support animal care, advocacy, and adoption promotion.

All of these key messages have the same purpose and undertone, but they vary slightly depending on your audience. Together with your nonprofit organization’s mission, vision, and goals, these messages will help effectively communicate and market your organization’s needs and purpose.

4. Choose, Plan, and Create Your Marketing Strategies
Many marketers jump right to this step — creating and publishing various marketing tactics. Marketing encompasses much more than an advertisement, blog post, or event. In order to execute successfully, you must complete all the steps prior to this.
Now that you’ve established your goals (what you want), your key messages (what you’re going to say), and your audience (who you’re going to say it to), you can determine your marketing tactics (how you’re going to say it).
Marketing tactics refer to channels like email marketing, social media, events, and more. We’ve dedicated an entire section to these marketing strategies — read about them in detail below.
Regardless of which tactic you choose, be sure to conduct thorough planning before and as you execute on it. Here are some questions to ask yourself as you prepare:

What will you do with this marketing tactic?
When will these marketing activities take place?
Why is this tactic important?
Who will be responsible for these activities?
How much do we plan to spend?
How does this tie to our organization’s marketing goals?

Tactical planning is an integral part of your overall nonprofit marketing plan. How you approach your marketing strategies and how they impact your organization is just as important as how you execute on them.
Before you hit the ground running on any of these strategies, be sure your team has a solid game plan and a full understanding of it.

5. Analyze Your Marketing Performance
Your marketing probably won’t perform perfectly from the get-go. That’s OK. Routine reporting and analysis help you figure out what’s working and what you need to change.
As you choose and establish your marketing channels, pay attention to the measurable performance indicators for each. Here’s a list of examples from our list of marketing strategies below:

Marketing Strategy
Performance Indicator

Email marketing
Email opens

Event marketing
Ticket sales

Video marketing
Video views

Social media
Shares and comments

Website
Page views

Public speaking
Referrals

Content marketing
Subscriptions

Remember the goals you defined in step one? The point of measuring your marketing performance is to stay aligned with those goals.
You can track these performance indicators using tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, and the analytics tools built into Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.
If you know what you want to measure before you start marketing your nonprofit, you’ll know exactly what to look for — and how to determine success and impact — when your marketing is in play.

You’ve created your nonprofit marketing plan. Now, let’s talk about how to execute that plan with actionable marketing strategies.
Many of these nonprofit marketing strategies will overlap, like sharing your blog content on social media or releasing an event invite over email. These methods can and should be used in tandem, but we recommend introducing each strategy slowly so your team doesn’t overwhelm itself.
In fact, we recognize that your nonprofit is likely operating with a small (but agile!) marketing team. For this reason, throughout these sections, we’ll recommend tips for doing more with less. Ultimately, though, don’t hesitate to outsource your nonprofit marketing where needed.
Nonprofit Email Marketing
You might be using email sporadically to call for volunteers or confirm an online donation, but that’s not enough. Email marketing is a highly effective marketing resource, especially for nonprofit organizations. Why? It’s personal and powerful.
Here are a few ways to leverage email marketing to reach all of your audiences:

Send a weekly newsletter with your newest content, updates about your organization, industry data, and volunteer needs.
Send monthly emails with donation needs and opportunities.
Set up an email sequence for new subscribers thanking them for joining and educating them on your organization.
Set up an email sequence for new donors thanking them for their contribution and sharing how else they can support your organization.

Also, don’t forget to put information on your website about how to subscribe to your email list. Nonprofit organization Acumen does a great job of this by putting subscription opportunities on their homepage and in their main menu.

👉🏼Nonprofit marketing tip: Automate as much as possible. Email marketing automation (like HubSpot) saves precious time and energy for your team and can be the key to growing your email list, donations, and memberships. You can also automate an email sequence triggered by website visitor behavior indicating a high level of interest, such as downloading educational content.

Nonprofit Event Marketing
Event marketing is one of the most effective (and enjoyable!) ways to grow awareness of your organization, connect with your community, raise funds, and garner support for your cause.
PAWS, which stands for Pets are Worth Saving, is another local animal rescue that I’m a fan of. They hold a PAWS 5K race every summer to raise awareness and funding for the organization.

This type of event impactful for multiple reasons:

It inspires competition and physical activity. Runners raise money for the organization and participate in the run.
It brings people in the community together to celebrate the organization and bring awareness to the PAWS cause.
It provides PAWS a channel to promote their services and adoptable pets.
It’s fun to attend and be a part of! Many people go to the event to support runners, play with dogs, and simply be a part of the fun — all while supporting and sharing PAWS.

From fundraisers to auctions to competitions, there are many different kinds of events you can organize to market your nonprofit organization.
Nonprofit Video Marketing
Whether they’re consuming content for work, school, or fun, people prefer video content. As a nonprofit organization, video marketing is a surefire way to garner interest and support from all of your audiences.
Here are a few reasons that video can help you market your nonprofit:

Video is visual. We process visual content 60,000 times faster than written content. We also remember more content, longer.

Video is personal. It inspires empathy and emotions, which can’t be said about other types of marketing.

Video is educational. Many organizations need to educate their communities on their causes in order to garner attention and funding. Video can help you do that.

Video is shareable. 92% of consumers on mobile will share videos with others. Consumers love sharing videos, especially those that inspire and resonate with them.

Video is interesting. 60% of people are report that video is a media they consume thoroughly. Keep your visitors, followers, and supporters engaged and interested with video.

The Girl Effect, a nonprofit that works to empower girls worldwide, is a great example of video marketing. The organization’s homepage is a video, which captures visitors’ attention right away. Moreover, when you click “See more,” the site opens an informative video telling you all about The Girl Effect.

Nonprofit Social Media Marketing
Social media is a highly popular marketing strategy among nonprofits. Not only is it free, but it provides an avenue for organizations to show their brand personalities and engage with their followers and supporters.
Here are some ways to use social media for your nonprofit marketing, as inspired by a HubSpot study of 9,000 nonprofits:

Share news about your organization and cause
Boost brand awareness and recognition
Fundraise
Recruit volunteers and employees
Recognize donors, employees, and volunteers

Don’t forget to use the key messaging you crafted in your nonprofit marketing plan to keep your social media posts consistent and targeted. Also, make the most of each platform to promote your organization, such as the Donate button on Facebook.
HubSpot customer FIRST, which stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is a nonprofit organization that works to advance STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education among children.
FIRST makes use of social media in many different ways, such as using Facebook to post videos, news, fundraisers, and reviews — as well as making use of the Donate button. The organization has amassed almost 100,000 followers.

👉🏼Nonprofit marketing tip: Curate content from volunteers, customers, supporters, event attendees, and donors. Implementing a user-generated content (UGC) campaign not only lessens your workload, but it also acts as strong social proof. To enact your UGC campaign, put out a call for constituent stories, images, and videos. Create a hashtag that people can use to alert you of new UGC.
Also, let curation tools work for you. Use Google Alerts and social monitoring tools to alert you when your organization, hashtags, or relevant topics or keywords are mentioned. This provides opportunities to source UGC, get inspiration for new topic ideas, and participate in relevant conversations.
Nonprofit Website
Every nonprofit organization should have a website. A website serves as a digital home base for your organization and includes critical information — what you stand for and how visitors can participate and help.
Your website also houses important assets like your blog, social media streams, event information, videos, and more … basically the rest of your marketing strategies. Lastly, your website serves as a way to intrigue, inspire, and engage your audiences.
Nonprofit organization (and HubSpot customer) American Nursing Association (ANA) is an example of an organization with an outstanding nonprofit website. The site clarifies the ANA mission, shares news and educational content, and informs visitors how to get involved through memberships, events, certifications, or donations.

Nonprofit Public Speaking
It’s said that people buy into other people, not products. The same can be said about nonprofit organizations. If consumers believe in the people behind your organization, they’re likely to buy in your cause and donate money or time.
One of the best ways for consumers to get to know your leadership team, not to mention spread the word about your cause and organization, is public speaking. Whether you speak at a local event of 100 people or a multi-day conference with thousands, the impact is the same: telling a powerful story to real people who may not yet know about your cause.
charity:water founder Scott Harrison spoke at INBOUND18. While he shared some about the conception and organization of the nonprofit, he mostly talked about the people that his organization helps — and how the audience can support the mission. Harrison not only moved the audience of thousands but also effectively marketed the charity:water purpose and brand.

 
Nonprofit Content Marketing
Content marketing and blogging are valuable marketing assets for any nonprofit organization. Here’s why:

Content educates your audiences about your mission, cause, and industry news and trends.
Content (and SEO) bring in new visitors, subscribers, donors, and leads.
Content is shareable and serves as free PR among your audiences.
Content can be repurposed and made into different types of media, saving your marketing team precious time and energy.

Creating a nonprofit marketing blog isn’t always easy. Teams are short-staffed, budgets are low, and time is precious. Thankfully, there are lots of ways around those blogging challenges, such as sourcing story ideas from volunteers, donors, and customers as well as implementing an editorial calendar so you can plan ahead.
One of my very favorite nonprofit organizations is called Blurt Foundation, a UK-based organization that exists to increase awareness and understanding of depression and support those who struggle with it. There’s a lot of misconception and misunderstanding around depression, so Blurt Foundation uses their blog content and other content resources to educate constituents and supporters. They also incorporate these content assets into their emails, social media posts, and online store.

👉🏼Nonprofit marketing tip: Save time and resources by repurposing your content. Content is an appreciating asset that you can reuse and re-promote over and over. Repurposing content to create new marketing assets costs far less than creating entirely new content.
Outline all the ways you could repurpose the content you produce. For example, you could create the following list for your blog content:

Short version for use in emails or newsletters with link back to full post
Group with related posts for report
Two to three visuals images to share on social

Infographic with post information
Reaction piece to original post

Since you’re not going to promote and distribute each piece of repurposed content immediately, your content pipeline is never empty.
Check out HubSpot’s free nonprofit content today.
Strengthen Your Marketing, Promote Your Cause
Raise your hand if your organization has to constantly do more with less. 👋🏼
If that sounds like your organization, we recommend you use this guide to build a nonprofit marketing plan ASAP. Your organization might not operate for profit, but it can still value from the traffic, funds, and awareness that systematic marketing brings in.
And not only will these activities and strategies help promote your organization, but they’ll take a valuable load off the backs of your team and volunteers — freeing them up to dedicate more time to your cause and constituents.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Whether you’re conducting a blog traffic audit or analyzing the success of your most recent campaign, it’s undeniable that data is integral to all marketing tasks and roles.
The Global Director of Analytics at HubSpot, Bridget Zingale, says, “Reporting and attribution have revolutionized marketing in every industry. Marketing data allows businesses to make more informed decisions about their audiences’ needs, challenges, and interests.”
Fortunately, there are dozens of reporting tools for marketers that help collect data from different sources, crunch it effectively, and deliver helpful analyses and insights.

Reporting tools should also make your job as a marketer easier. Having the ability to efficiently create attractive, action-oriented, and readable reports is key to ensuring the results of your work are clear for your entire team. This is exactly where business intelligence (BI) reporting tools come in handy — below, we’ll cover 17 options. 
Best Business Intelligence Reporting Tools
As Zingale notes, “Data points such as age, ethnicity, gender, location, education, and employment have informed marketing teams and heightened the impact of campaigns across the board.”
Solid reporting tools should give you the above metrics — but great tools should give you even more. And you’ll need those metrics and data if you’re part of the 75% of marketers who report ROI from marketing campaigns. Let’s dive into 17 BI reporting tool options. 
1. HubSpot Marketing Analytics & Dashboard Software

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HubSpot’s Marketing Analytics & Dashboard software is easy to use and helps you measure and analyze the performance of your campaigns and marketing efforts with built-in analytics, reports, and dashboards. With HubSpot, all of your marketing and CRM data will be located in one place and at your fingertips — no SQL or coding required.
Attribution reporting (both revenue and contact) connects each customer interaction — and any revenue generated — to that contact’s record. Additionally, you can pinpoint the specific channels that are hitting or surpassing their goals — and which channels need improvement — so you can effectively focus your attention and budget where it makes sense to do so. 
The Custom Report Builder brings together all of your data in a single location without the need for spreadsheets. Access contact, company, and deal data plus your landing page, blog, and email data with this feature. And with Custom Objects, you can get data that’s unique to your business in order to create new segments and create custom reports, campaigns, and workflows.
Pre-built, customizable, and flexible dashboards can be shared with your team with ease from HubSpot or via email or Slack. If one of the many pre-built templates doesn’t interest you, you can always create a custom dashboard with the no-code editor. The drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to personalize your dashboard’s appearance, metrics, and data. 
In addition to reporting, HubSpot comes with a Behavioral Events feature that tracks custom interactions that are unique to your business and indicates when a customer is ready to move to the next stage of the buyer’s journey. The feature can then trigger or schedule your next touchpoint and notify you once that event is completed. Lastly, you can use the Account Based Marketing (ABM) feature to close the gap between Marketing and Sales so you’re able to close more high-value target accounts.
2. Calendar

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Calendar offers productivity analytics. It has a number of features designed to analyze how your team’s time is spent. By tracking your moment-to-moment activities on a daily basis, you can identify key areas in which your schedule could be improved.
As important as it is to have your marketing analytics at your fingertips, knowing how you use your time is just as important for maximizing marketing output. Calendar’s clear and simple reporting tools give you helpful reports on what your agenda looks like and what you can do to make it better.
3. DashThis

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DashThis is an effective tool for keeping up with marketing analytics at a glance. It’s a dashboard that provides a clear look at your campaign KPI data. You can access quick metrics and reports from your dashboard.
DashThis lets you select a template and then automatically fills that template with your data to streamline the reporting process. It also exports data into PDF files so you can share reports with your team.
4. Raven Tools

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Raven Tools offers SEO analysis, social media engagement, funnel performance tracking, and competitor comparison. Whether it’s big-picture analyses, like domain authority, or small-scale comparisons of site functionality, Raven Tools lets you stay on top of how you’re faring in competitive spaces. Additionally, the drag-and-drop editor and report generator make creating custom, professional-grade marketing reports easier.
5. Megalytic

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Megalytic eases the process of combining marketing data from many sources — Megalytic is specially designed to import data from a range of marketing software.
It takes only a couple of moments to access data from Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, Adwords, and more on Megalytic. The tool can also process and report data stored in CSV files. Lastly, if you’re looking to produce a comprehensive report that pulls together loads of disparate data into one place, Megalytic is a smart choice.
6. Klipfolio

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As important as it is for reporting tools to effectively take in and analyze data, they also need to produce readable reports. Klipfolio is great for making sure your reports can be read and accessed with ease across various technologies as well as via the tool’s dashboard that update in real-time.
Additionally, Klipfolio allows you to offer access to your reports through Slack, email, or custom links, and it enables you to sync your dashboards in real-time across multiple devices such as smartphones, web browsers, and TV screens. Having the ability to efficiently pull up your analytics dashboard at any time, via any device, makes actions like on-the-go reporting, team collaboration, and remote work simple.
7. Mixpanel

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Mixpanel is a tracking and reporting tool with powerful analytics features that provide insight into trends like engagement and count. It tracks how people engage with certain products over time and how different features influence user behavior with graphs. If you’re interested in keeping track of how a certain site or product is performing, it can be a valuable tool for reporting on that kind of information, too. 
8. Intercom

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Although Intercom is a messaging platform first and foremost, it also delivers an in-depth view of a company’s customer base. Through integrations with over 100 marketing tools, Intercom lets marketers track, segment, and identify similarities between their customers. One of the best use cases for Intercom’s BI features is account-based marketing and messaging.
Intercom displays performance figures for each stage of your sales and marketing funnel, helping you see where the best opportunities are and how to tap into them. You can also break down metrics by individual representatives, teams, timeframes, and more.
9. G2

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G2 is the go-to website for stacking up software tools against one another. G2 gives detailed analyses and charts for every category of marketing software and explains important factors such as strengths and weaknesses, features, pricing, customer reviews, and more. G2 will also often include screenshots and videos of the tools in use. 
10. Databox

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Through integrations with HubSpot, Google Analytics, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more, Databox compiles popular marketing services and social media into one interface. It comes with pre-configured report templates, but users can also design custom reports. 
The reporting tool lets you view campaign KPIs, check progress, calculate investment returns, and receive notifications when metrics fall outside of specified ranges. Databox has a desktop version, of course, but it also displays data on mobile and via apps like Slack.
11. MaxG

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MaxG is a platform that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to drive results. The software prioritizes recommendations when delivering insights to eliminate guesswork about how to improve content.
Reports are broken down into metrics and the tool tracks how many users interacted with the content across all of your web pages. It also provides insight into various metrics regarding your email campaigns, landing pages, and CTAs. In addition to giving performance recommendations, MaxG offers educational resources for users to learn from (e.g. how to create an informative blog post).
12. Microsoft Power BI

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Microsoft Power BI integrates business intelligence data directly into reports for you. The tool can scale with your business as you grow and boasts a built-in AI feature that offers custom data metrics. You also have a display of visualizations you can choose from to pair with your insights. Lastly, use Power BI to query your data and edit it without affecting other programs you use.
13. Datapine

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With Datapine, you have access to reporting tools that communicate KPIs on a single dashboard. Easy access to real-time, accurate metrics saves you time and keeps your team on the same page. If you don’t have much technical experience, you won’t have to worry — Datapine is easy to navigate and makes data analysis straightforward. The platform also integrates with a number of tools so you can customize your data from other sources, too.
Personalize the KPIs on your reports further with the drag-and-drop dashboard builder. Additionally, Datapine gives you access to a global performance filter and predictive analysis (since Datapine is AI-powered, it combs through data for you and suggests improvements). Datapine also lets you export dashboards by email, URL, or with an embed code.
14. Zoho Analytics

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Zoho Analytics is a part of the larger Zoho Cloud software suite. With it, you can synchronize data that’s spread across multiple sources. The data will sync on a periodic basis for you and you can customize your reports to get the information that matters most to you.
If you want to compare data from multiple sources, add lookup columns so they’ll be included in your reports. With over 40 chart types, like geographical maps, funnels, tables, and heat maps, your reports can be anything you want them to be.  
15. Domo

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Domo is a cloud-based business intelligence platform that helps you create a data-focused culture across all of your teams. There are a number of BI data visualizations that you can choose from including interactive maps, graphs, and pie charts — and if you’re unsure of which visualization would work best for your data, Domo will recommend a visualization for you. Personalize your data and reports with the drag-and-drop dashboard builder and customizable, pre-made templates, which make the process of data visualization faster. Set alerts to track changes to your KPIs in real-time, annotate your data, and refine your data with filters, calculated fields, and by adding or removing certain data points. Lastly, get a quick view of your marketing and sales KPIs in your CRM with Domo’s HubSpot integration. 
16. InsightSquared

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InsightSquared is a revenue operations and intelligence platform that’s available for HubSpot, Salesforce, and Bullhorn CRMs. The tool offers seven main features: deal activity, conversational intelligence, guided selling, interactive reporting, forecasting, dashboards, and personas. The tool is unique because it brings together your marketing, sales, and customer service data to give you cross-team, real-time business and revenue intelligence. 
Automate forecast submissions across your team and manage all of your marketing, sales, and service data and dashboards from a single location. It’s also easy to share those reports and dashboards with team members to ensure everyone, from marketing to sales to service, is on the same page and has access to the information they need to succeed. 
17. Grow.com

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Grow.com is a business intelligence tool that brings together all of your data, from multiple sources, and compiles them into insights, reports, and dashboards. Rather than needing multiple tools to store your data, Grow.com removes the need for third-party data warehouses — it organizes data from disparate sources so your most important data is always easily accessible and you won’t have to spend time sifting through your various tools and reports to surface the information you need.
Build your own metrics and display your data with beautiful and easy-to-understand visualizations. Grow.com makes the process of sharing these reports with your team simple over email, Slack, export, URL, email, and TV mode. You can also integrate Grow.com with HubSpot to help you make data-driven decisions from your CRM. 
Choose Your BI Reporting Tool
Marketers use data daily — that’s why it’s crucial you have data that’s relevant, well-organized, and provides the information you need to hit your goals. Business intelligence reporting tools make this process easier and more effective. So, determine which features you need most out of your BI tool and get started analyzing, sharing, and applying your data. 
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Email is a great equalizer for many brands. You don’t have to have a dedicated email team with years of experience to send an email that looks professional and polished. That’s just one reason email is one of the most lucrative marketing channels for any business.
With a few tips and tricks, you can compete with even your biggest competitors. The key is to know how to design an interactive HTML newsletter that stands out and delivers the most enjoyable experience for your subscribers.
An interactive HTML newsletter does just that. Start with the beginner elements and work your way up to the more advanced techniques.
Here’s how to integrate them into your strategy.
Types of interactive HTML emails (with examples)
Interactive content can take many forms, which makes it perfect for email marketers at all levels. Here are some examples of common types of interactive HTML emails.
Beginner interactive elements
These interactive elements are easiest for marketers to implement without much time or expert knowledge:

Animated buttons
Roll-over image text reveal
GIFs
Videos that play in the email

For example, Burberry uses a small interactive element in the following email, where when you hover over the button, it animates to encourage clicks.

Intermediate interactive elements
These interactive elements require a bit more knowledge to implement correctly and may be more time-consuming to create:

Surveys
Quizzes
Calculators
Contests
“Scratch off” discount animations

For example, Harry’s includes a quiz within a promotional email, designed to then suggest personalized product recommendations based on the results:

Advanced interactive elements
These interactive elements take time to create and animate, and some may require significant coding knowledge.

Games
Long-form interactive content (ebook downloads, whitepapers, lookbooks)
Interactive infographics

For example, Email Monks launched a holiday email that included an interactive game:

Interactive HTML email best practices
Creating your interactive HTML emails is not that different from creating regular email content. However, there are a few best practices that we recommend.
Consider your subscribers’ stages of awareness
The Content Marketing Institute discovered that the efficacy of interactive content depends significantly on the stage of awareness. Most types of interactive content is most effective during the early to mid stages of awareness, instead of the later decision stage.
But there are some types of interactive content that lend themselves well to later stages. Here are our recommendations:
Early stages of awareness
Fun, entertaining, and shareable content is best during these stages. This may be because this type of interactive content does not require a large time investment or pre-knowledge from people who may be completely unaware of your product or services.
For your early stage of awareness subscribers, choose elements like quizzes, games, and contests.
Middle stages of awareness
During the middle stages of awareness (pain aware and solution aware), interactive content that educates and qualifies subscribers is most effective.
For middle stage subscribers, choose elements like interactive infographics, eBooks, and lookbooks.
Late stages of awareness
If your subscribers are product aware, interactive content designed to help people make a decision is most effective.
So, for the later stages of awareness, choose elements like calculators. This type of interactive element provides personalized knowledge to subscribers that can help them make an informed decision about whether to purchase or become a client.
Consider your time and budget constraints
With an email service provider like Campaign Monitor, creating interactive content is no longer only available to huge companies with massive email marketing budgets.
But there are some types of interactive content that require more time and more expertise, which could strain a smaller budget.
Here are our recommendations:
Small to midsize businesses without email marketing teams
Go for an easier interactive element, like a quiz, survey, or contest. Or, consider starting with even simpler elements like a roll-over text reveal or GIF.
These types of interactive content will still surprise and delight customers, but they don’t require high-level knowledge or big budgets to implement.
Businesses with a big email marketing budget or adventurous spirit
Larger businesses with more email marketing experts and bigger budgets should consider investing in complex forms of interactive content. For example, you might create a game, interactive video, or a piece of long-form interactive content like an eBook.
Make your interactive HTML email entertaining
When in doubt, aim to entertain. Consumers reported they are more likely to buy from a brand that entertains them.
So, if you’re not sure how to involve interactive elements into your email marketing, go the fun and entertaining route instead of the educational route. Some examples of entertaining interactive elements include creative quizzes, GIFs, “scratch off” discounts, and games.
Combine interactive content with personalization
Make your emails extra enticing by combining interactive elements with a proven tactic for boosting open rates, conversions, and satisfaction.
Consider that:

Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened
Personalized emails lead to 6x higher transaction rates
26% of consumers feel happy responding to a personalized message from a retailer

Personalization can be subtle, like segmenting your audience to send highly relevant content, or it can be more direct, like personalizing a subject line or salutation.
How to use interactive HTML email in a newsletter (with examples)
Email newsletters are some of the most consistent and frequent emails subscribers see from brands. So how can you leverage interactive HTML in your email newsletter?
Use tools to make it easy and fast
You don’t have to code your HTML emails from scratch to include interactive elements. There are plenty of tools that integrate with your email service provider to make incorporating interactive elements easy and fast.
Here are few key tools to consider:

Jotform for surveys

Stripo for interactive HTML email templates

Outgrow for lots of interactive elements including, calculators, quizzes, recommendations, forms, surveys, chatbots, polls, contests and assessments

Get inspired by these interactive email newsletter examples
Check out how other companies are using interactive HTML email to create stand-out email newsletters.
Wrap up
Don’t forget that your email strategy doesn’t have to be bare bones just because you have a small team or budget. These interactive elements make your newsletter stand out.

HTML email is a must-have in marketing, but interactive HTML emails is where to focus to drive engagement, improve conversions, stand out and compete with larger brands.
Interactive HTML can seem intimidating for smaller companies without a huge email team, but using tools makes it easy.
Interactive elements can also be simpler than you might expect, like adding a video into your email or animating buttons.
You can eventually experiment with more complex entertaining options like games!

To get started building interactive HTML emails today, check out our html email template builder.
The post How to Create an Interactive HTML Newsletter appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

ClickFunnels is an awesome tool but it’s not perfect for everyone. We’ve tried out 5 best alternatives and prepared in-depth feedback to aid your decision.

In 2020, you might have heard your favorite influencers talking about a mysterious new social media app called Clubhouse.
But, unless you had a huge online following of your own, you might just be getting access to the app now.
Until a few months ago, Clubhouse was a platform where big-name celebrities, company leaders, Silicon Valley investors, and some of the web’s top global influencers could have uncensored audio group chats about their lives, hobbies, work, or industries.
Now, as the invite-only Clubhouse continues to gain media coverage and a growing pool of non-celebrity users, you might be wondering, “What the heck is it? And, how do I get in on the action?”
Below, we’ll explain where Clubhouse came from, what it actually is, and the pros and cons of using it in your marketing strategy.

Clubhouse was launched in March 2020 by Paul Davison, who previously worked at companies including Pinterest and Google, and Rohan Seth, a former Google engineer. According to a post from Davison and Seth, Clubhouse was created after a handful of social media app experiments.
“After a lot of iteration in the audio space, we launched Clubhouse in March of last year,” the co-founders wrote. “Our goal was to build a social experience that felt more human—where instead of posting, you could gather with other people and talk. Our north star was to create something where you could close the app at the end of the session feeling better than you did when you opened it, because you had deepened friendships, met new people, and learned.”
Initially, Clubhouse was marketed to top-tier influencers, celebrities, Silicon Valley investors, and industry thought leaders, but recently opened to more general audiences. A few of the app’s first high-profile users include Drake, Daymond John, Elon Musk, and Oprah Winfrey. Early on, these notable users were heard chatting in Rooms related to their interests, hobbies, causes, or industries.
Despite Clubhouse’s exclusivity, it was valued at $100 million and received a $12 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz within a year of its launch.
Most recently, Clubhouse has begun to give access to a larger pool of users by allowing each new member to invite two friends of their own. This has caused the user base to jump from 600,000 active users in December 2020 to more than 2 million today.
“This past week, two million people around the world—musicians, scientists, creators, athletes, comedians, parents, entrepreneurs, stock traders, non-profit leaders, authors, artists, real estate agents, sports fans, and more—came to Clubhouse to talk, learn, laugh, be entertained, meet and connect. It’s the most exciting thing we’ve ever been a part of,” wrote the Clubhouse team in a Jan. 24 blog post.
Why Most of Us are Just Learning About Clubhouse
Just hearing about Clubhouse now? You aren’t alone.
As mentioned, Clubhouse was initially targeted to high-profile industry “elites,” such as celebrities, CEOs, and top online influencers. For a while, these types of users were the only ones who could send and receive Clubhouse invites. On top of the app’s invite-only nature, it’s only available to iPhone users.
While Clubhouse’s early exclusivity made it interesting and alluring to the every-day social media user, it caused the app’s awareness and user-base to grow at a slow but steady pace.
Now that the app’s become more accessible to social media users, it’s been getting more awareness online and across news media. At this time, marketers are also starting to wonder if and how they could use Clubhouse — or something like it — in their strategy.
In fact, many professionals, business leaders, and non-profit members can already be heard speaking in Rooms that discuss a topic related to their brand, industry, or mission.
For example, a recent Room I dropped in on featured a group of lawyers aiming to offer education around patent protection. While this content was intriguing to listeners, it also could have brought each lawyer’s firm more awareness:

Aside from marketers, major social media companies are also trying to take advantage of Clubhouse’s audio social media trends.
Shortly after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke in a Clubhouse Room, the New York Times reported that his social media company was allegedly building a similar audio platform. Meanwhile, Twitter just began rolling out Twitter Spaces — a drop-in audio feature with its app — to a small group of beta testers.
At the moment, Clubhouse seems like a promising way to network and build a community online, and its audio social format is already being adopted by competitors. However, in a time where we see a handful of new online platforms each year, is Clubhouse really a game-changer in the social media space? Or is it just another over-hyped app you shouldn’t waste your marketing efforts on?
Below, I’ll give a brief description of how the platform works and then weigh the pros and cons of using Clubhouse for marketing.
How Clubhouse Works
While we’ll be publishing a detailed how-to guide for the Clubhouse platform, which we’ll link to in this post later, here’s a quick description of how some of the major features work.
Clubhouse’s Main Tabs
When entering Clubhouse, users will find a homepage that highlights ongoing Rooms related to their interests or followers. They’ll also find search, message inbox, calendar, and notification icons in the upper navigation.

When tapping the search or “Explore” tab, users can scroll through a feed of suggested Rooms, Clubs, or people to follow. They can also use the search bar to find specific individuals or Clubs. However, it does not seem like users can search for specific Rooms yet.

If users can’t attend a Room when they’re surfing the Clubhouse app but would like to drop into one later, they can tap the calendar icon.to see or create their scheduled Rooms.

Clubhouse Rooms
Entering a Room is essentially like attending a webinar or Zoom meeting with no video and a partially muted audience.
Attendees, who can join or leave a Room at any time, enter (or drop-in) as automatically muted listeners. If they’d like to speak or ask questions, they can tap the “Raise Hand” icon in the lower right corner of the Room page. Room moderators will then be notified of the hand raise request and can ignore it or unmute the attendee.
Below is a look at what Clubhouse Rooms look like:

Visually, attendees of the Room can see only the profile photos and names of current participants, with moderators and speakers appearing at the top of the screen.
Users and moderators can also add people they follow to a Room by tapping the “+” button in the lower navigation. This gives their friends a notification that they’ve been invited to a Room and enables them to open the app and join it directly.
Starting a Room
At the bottom of the homepage, users can also tap “Start a Room” to launch either a “Closed” chat open to specific people only, a “Social” chat open to all of a user’s following, or an “Open” chat that anyone on Clubhouse can drop into.

Users can also tap the nine-dot icon on the lower homepage navigation to have a private audio chat with specific followers who are online.

Room moderators, who either launched the Room or were assigned to a moderator role after the Room launched, see a similar page that attendees see. However, they also get notifications of new Room attendees and a list of attendees who have raised their hand requesting to speak.
One interesting thing to note is that a Room only ends when a moderator ends it or when the final moderator leaves it. Additionally, moderators who want to leave a Room without ending it can assign someone else to become a moderator. This means that a Room with multiple moderators can go on for hours or even days.
Because of how long Rooms last, and the fact that attendees can join or exit whenever they want, you might regularly hear more seasoned Room moderators re-introduce themselves, what they’re discussing, and who else is speaking throughout a Room event.
Clubs and Networking
Aside from creating Rooms, users can also follow individual profiles of friends, influencers, or thought leaders in their industry.
They can also join or create Clubs, which are groups of users with interest in specific topics, hobbies, or industries. Take a look at some of the Clubs that appeared when I searched, “growth marketing.”

Once users join a Club, they can be notified if a Club’s manager launches a Room related to its core topic. For example, if I were to join one of the Growth Marketing Clubs shown above, I’d be instantly notified if they hosted a Room on a growth marketing tactic.
The Pros and Cons of Clubhouse.
Pros of Using Clubhouse
1. Clubhouse could help brands build trust and community.
In 2020, consumers began to favor companies with authentic, trustworthy messaging over big-name companies with decades of brand loyalty. This shift will likely continue through 2021.
Why? In a time of financial uncertainty and constant news events, consumers want to know that brands care about their customers and share values with them. While creating a live, uncensored, unscripted Room related to your brand’s industry might sound nerve-wracking, it could help some brands seem more authentic and trustworthy.
“Clubhouse offers a lot of opportunities for connection with celebrities, a vast variety of people in different industries, and even close friends,” says Krystal Wu, HubSpot’s social media community manager. “It opens the door for live conversations allowing people to be vulnerable within a community space. This type of connection is unique to deliver audio content with small to large groups of people. Its unscripted content that anyone can be a part of.”
Brands that use Clubhouse could earn credibility by discussing topics they’re experts on. But, they could also earn trust because they’ve made themselves available to listen and talk candidly with their audiences.
2. The app’s content is always evolving.
While the app initially hosted conversations related to entertainment, business, and technology due to its initial target audience, the audio content on the platform has broadened and evolved
In fact, CNBC recently reported that some of Clubhouse’s most engaging Rooms have been launched by innovative Black creatives who’ve done heavy experimentation on the platform.
For example, instead of hosting a chat or discussion, one group of Black performers hosted an audio-only production of Disney’s “The Lion King.” 
While there isn’t a recording of the Clubhouse performance, led by Noelle Chesnut Whitmore, Kam DeLa and Bomani X, here’s a screenshot from the event, which shows each Room moderator as the character they played:

Image Source
“What started as a random conversation on Clubhouse has scaled to something much greater. We have so many talented people contributing their time and energy to this performance,” Whitmore said in a press release. “Our goal is just to spread some joy to people through these events. I never imagined this would get such a huge response.”
In another example, a cocktail brand called Loop hosted a Room that encouraged participants to have a cocktail and join a casual conversation with no specific topic. While this strategy is less structured, it enables people who want to learn more about the brand or just want to chat with other cocktail drinkers to connect.

Because Clubhouse is fairly new, there aren’t major content-related expectations just yet. This means that anyone from any group, industry, non-profit, or brand can experiment with it and learn what’s truly engaging to the app’s growing audience.
3. The app is primed for thought leadership.
Clubhouse’s user base was built around influencers and thought leaders. This means that users are likely coming to the app to hear the latest tips, exclusive information, or discussions straight from industry experts.
For example, the scheduled Room shown below features Coinbase Co-Founder and CEO Brian Armstrong.

In a Clubhouse Room like the one shown above, users could learn more about a brand like Coinbase and ask its leader questions about the company or its industry. Through Rooms like this, Coinbase and other brands could boost both company awareness and credibility with audiences who listen.
4. Audiences want online communities and audio content.
In the last year, people who were stuck at home turned to webinars, virtual events, and other online experiences to learn more about their interests, hear from others in their industry, or just feel a sense of connection to people outside of their households.
But, while virtual events were beneficial for many, most of us eventually dealt with screen fatigue.
Because too much screentime can be mentally draining, consumers also checked out podcasts or camera-free webinars. Now, these audiences could be primed for Clubhouse’s audio-only nature.
“Clubhouse’s most appealing quality is that it’s a break from the nonstop screen time we all exist in,” says Kelly Hendrickson, HubSpot social media marketing manager. “Clubhouse is also a wonderful place to have conversations among niche communities and topics.”
And, while consumers are craving personal connections and live content more than ever, many brands are trying to build stronger online communities and launch effective digital event strategies.
Ultimately, Clubhouse’s audio-only layout could help brands meet and build an engaged community of fans on an interactive, authentic, and live platform.
Cons of Clubhouse
1. The app still has limited audiences.
Ultimately, one of Clubhouse’s biggest brand marketing flaws is also what makes it so intriguing: exclusivity.
“I am generally against anything that is invite-only as it creates a culture of ‘others’,” Hendrickson says. “Any time you need to be ‘in the know’ to have a seat at the table, how can you also be inclusive?”
While Clubhouse might pose unique group chat opportunities for community marketers when more people join, the audiences might still be too limited for some marketers at the moment. On top of this, the app is still unavailable to Android users.
“Clubhouse actually hinders its capabilities because there are many talented potential users out there that are missing out all because they are on Android,” Wu says.
If you’re looking to only create content for the largest audiences possible, you might want to hold off on building a Clubhouse strategy right now. However, if you’re only looking to experiment and see if you can reach the audiences it already has, it might be an interesting platform for your team to try.
2. Clubhouse could have strong audio-app competition.
Facebook and Twitter could be just the first platforms to create a similar audio drop-in experience. And, while this hints that Clubhouse creators have stumbled upon a platform many social media users want, the big-name competition could also pose concerns about the platform’s future.
For example, if Facebook or another major competitor can create something similar that’s less exclusive and allows iPhone and Android users, people might leave Clubhouse for a platform with a larger audience or more credibility in the social media world. If this happens, marketers who invest heavily in a Clubhouse strategy might need to do a sudden pivot.
While this shouldn’t scare you away from testing the platform if you think it’s right for your brand, the competition is still important to keep in mind. If you are considering Clubhouse, continue to follow its competitors and determine how you could pivot your strategy to those platforms if your audiences start to flock there instead.
3. Clubhouse can feel like an “unedited podcast.”
“Another challenge I think brands and individuals will have with Clubhouse is how it feels like an unedited podcast,” says Hendrickson. “That means you’re hearing all the great meat, but you also have to listen to the trimmings. It will be interesting to see if long term, people are okay with that in their content.”
If you’re planning to experiment on Clubhouse, consider practicing a few conversation starters, how you’ll enter the call, and determine what you’ll do if you run into dead air, boring conversation, or off-topic discussion that draws attention away from your Room’s goal.
Although Rooms are live and unscripted, having a gameplan will help you moderate an effective, higher-quality conversation than users might find in other Rooms.
4. Brands could be too vulnerable.
Certain generations, like Gen Z, crave authenticity from people and brands they follow on social media. With an app like Clubhouse, brands could create Rooms or Clubs related to their industry that include thought leaders, prospects, and even clients that want to talk with them in a live, unfiltered way.
However, while Clubhouse’s high level of unscripted authenticity has intrigued both marketers and prospective users, it also could put brands in vulnerable positions. Wu describes this as “a balance between good and evil.”
Within a year of its launch, Clubhouse’s live nature has already led to brand-related controversies.
For example, in February, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, dropped into a Room with Robinhood Markets CEO Vlad Tenev and raised his hand. When he was invited to speak by the Room’s moderators, Musk began intensely questioning Tenev and asked him to explain why his stock-trading company stopped its users from buying and selling GameStop and other manipulated stocks. You can hear the line of questioning in the video below:

While Robinhood’s CEO remained calm and collected throughout the chat, some brands might not have well-trained speakers who would react as calmly or professionally to this surprising scenario.
Additionally, although Clubhouse doesn’t allow users to record, many either downloaded screen-recording apps or filmed their phones with another video recording device. Because of this, Musk and Tenev’s conversation was covered by the media within hours.
Even though conversations cannot be replayed or recorded in the Clubhouse app itself, marketers on the app must remember that they’re live and anything they say could easily be streamed or quoted in seconds. Because of this, Room hosts should prepare themselves so that they can answer both easy and challenging questions from audience members. Moderators should also determine what they’ll do or how they’ll react if an unmuted audience member says something controversial or unexpected.
Is Clubhouse right for you?
In its current state, Clubhouse could offer some major awareness and community-building benefits to brands. But, because of how new it is, it also poses some challenges and cons to companies that want to reach the largest audiences possible. Ultimately, while some companies might thrive on it, others might realize that it isn’t the best platform for their goals just yet.
As with any new social media platform, you’ll want to spend some time on Clubhouse and see what the app has to offer before putting time and effort into using it.
At this point, it could be wise to see if one of your friends or colleagues can send you a Clubhouse invite so you can familiarize yourself with the app. If you can’t log on, be sure to continue following the news around it.
As you surf through the app or read Clubhouse news coverage, ask yourself questions like these:

Are topics related to your product or industry widely discussed on the platform?
Are there any thought leaders or company experts you could host a panel or two with to boost your awareness or credibility on Clubhouse?
Are our competitors using Clubhouse? And, if so, can we create stronger Room experiences than they can?
Do you already use marketing strategies that could be adapted to an audio-only platform, such as live video Q&As, webinars, or virtual events?

With questions like those above, you can determine if you’ll be able to create scalable and engaging content for this social media platform.
Can’t get access to Clubhouse just yet? Don’t worry. We’ll continue to cover it on the HubSpot Blog so you’ll be ready when you do.

Hello everybody! I’m looking for a post scheduling tool that works well with the following platforms: ​ Facebook Groups Facebook Pages Instagram (Carrousel posts and stories) Reddit Pinterest Linkedin. ​ I used Jarvee in the past, but after taking too much damage from it (getting some IG accounts banned) and their awful user interface, I decided to move on. Is crazy to see how there are so many new tools for scheduling post and honestly, all of them are looking the same and providing similar service. Do you have any recommendations for a tool that could help me to cover all these platforms? I care more about having everything in one place than the pricepoint. ​ Thanks a lot!
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