Category: Marketing Automation

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The bigger your sales and marketing teams get, the harder it is to align these efforts. Often called “smarketing”, sales and marketing alignment is critical to ensure that these departments are working in tandem to target the right customer base, create more conversions, and drive more sales.

Not sure how to get started? Check out these tried-and-true best practices for integrating your sales and marketing teams.

Smarketing By the Numbers
Companies face a hard truth. No matter how great their sales and marketing efforts, between 10 and 15 percent of leads become conversions. As a result, businesses face a dual challenge: Reaching as many potential customers as possible and getting the highest number of those reached to take action and make purchases.
Without effective alignment between sales and marketing, this is like shooting in the dark — even as marketing generates potential leads, sales can’t capitalize because both teams have different priorities. The result is that even 10 percent becomes a tough number to hit.
But don’t just take our word for it. Recent survey data found that organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing teams saw 27 percent faster profit growth, and 36 percent higher customer retention. What’s more, 56 percent of these companies met revenue goals and 19 percent exceeded them.
When it comes to conversions, meanwhile, leads nurtured by a company with strong marketing-sales alignment spent 47 percent more than those left to make purchases on their own.

Put simply? While independent sales and marketing teams can still drive revenue, they’re better — and more profitable — together.
Before we dive into best practices for aligning marketing, sales, and strategy goals, let’s break down how smarketing works. Three components are critical:
Organize Sales Around Buyer Personas
Buyer personas aren’t just valuable to your marketing staff; they also educate sales reps on who they’re selling to, what they care about, and how to help them. Consider your buyer personas as you organize your sales team, create sales enablement content, and set up your CRM email templates.
Designate Staff to Receive and Qualify Leads
One avenue through which sales and marketing will always be connected is through lead sharing. As marketing generates leads through content offers and campaigns, they pass them to sales to qualify, nurture, and convert.
Who on your sales team accepts marketing qualified leads? If you can’t easily answer that question, you should review your sales team structure and designate someone (if not a small team) to receive and assign these leads. If there’s one place where sales and marketing need to be aligned, this is it.
Facilitate Training as Needed
Have sales hold product demonstrations for marketing (perhaps the same ones they give prospective customers). Alternatively, ask sales if they have had some trouble with specific questions during their calls. Smarketing is just as much about education as it is about alignment.

Aligning Sales and Strategy
Before you can get smarketing initiatives off the ground, it’s critical to align sales and marketing operations. Not sure how to get from silos to shared goals? We’ve got you covered with the following smarketing alignment tips.
1. Don’t let losses get you down.
Sales and marketing alignment doesn’t happen overnight. This means that your first few campaigns may not go as planned. Despite your best efforts, you may find that customers aren’t responding as hoped and conversions aren’t coming up as expected.
Building your smarketing team means looking at these losses as lessons rather than failures. By analyzing what worked, what didn’t, and how you can improve, sales and marketing can develop a shared vision of success.
2. Look at the big (and small) picture.
Both short- and long-term goals matter for successful smarketing. The challenge? Marketing often looks at the short-term impacts of specific campaigns, while sales target the long-term benefits of loyal customers. Effective smarketing means meeting the middle to get the best of both worlds.
3. Think like your customers.
What do your customers want? Both sales and marketing teams have unique insight into this question; while marketing may understand what gets customers interested, sales has the experience to turn interest into investment. Together, smarketing teams can get a more complete understanding of the ideal customer experience.
4. Identify target segments.
Sales and marketing teams need to identify key target segments to make the most of collaborative efforts. By pinpointing a common customer profile as most likely to respond favorably, smarketing teams can work together to craft the perfect approach.
5. Keep your efforts focused.
Once you’ve identified your target market, keep it in sight. While it may be tempting to shift your focus and pursue potentially easier options for one-off sales, a complete focus on your target market can help teams build a polished and purpose-driven framework for success.
6. Define key metrics.
What are your metrics? While conversions are the ultimate goal, smarketing teams also need to define milestone metrics that help measure the impact of current efforts. These could include email open rates, newsletter signups, or website visits — anything that indicates rising (or falling) consumer interest.
7. Stay true to your core values.
Last but not least? Know where your value lies. This means understanding not just what your product or service is and what it does, but also why it matters to customers and how it can address their specific pain points.

By cultivating a deep understanding of your core value propositions, smarketing team members can ensure they’re all speaking the same language.
Ready to take your smarketing to the next level? Start with the following best practices.

1. Meet Regularly
The best way for sales and marketing to stay connected is to make connection a priority. Regular meetings are an effective way to avoid silo-ing these teams. Here are a few tips:
Have an onboarding smarketing meeting with every new salesperson.
In order to support sales successfully, it’s important to share processes, resources, and best practices from the start. Use this time to get to know each other and share how marketing will support the sales team. If you’re onboarding a large number of salespeople, hold a monthly meeting to set these expectations and field any questions new folks might have.
Attend sales weekly meetings.
Attending weekly sales meetings allows marketers to know how sales is doing with their quota and goals, and offer support when needed. Use this time to share the upcoming campaigns, content, and offers that marketing will be promoting that week. Also ask for content ideas and recommendations for your future offers and blog posts.
Have a monthly meeting with sales managers.
Marketing and sales managers should meet on a monthly basis to analyze results and evaluate their service-level agreement. Important metrics to share are lead generation, marketing qualified leads (MQLs), percent of leads worked, and lead-to-customer conversion rate.
Attend events together.
Whether it’s an industry meetup group, happy hour in your office, or an organized conference — spend time together in a casual setting. Attending an event together provides you with a unique opportunity to get to know your sales department outside of the traditional work environment.
2. Create a Team Email
Have an email alias that gets sent to both sales and marketing teams. Use this to share important information in both directions. A shared email address also allows external teams to share pertinent information with both groups.
3. Define Your Content Creation Process
Your sales reps talk with leads all the time and know what gets prospects excited about working with your company. The problem is that reps don’t have the time to write down this feedback. How can you help? Make sure to put together a process to gather this input. Here are two tips:
Hold brainstorm sessions at weekly meetings.
Have a five-minute brainstorm session at a sales meeting to ask what content they would like to share with prospects or attract more leads.
Use a shared Google document to collect ideas and references.
Have a shared Google spreadsheet where sales can add ideas or certain references for content creation.
4. Coordinate Content Marketing with Sales
Marketers are constantly promoting new offers and content, so it’s important to keep the sales team up-to-date with these promotions so they know what recent offer their leads are receiving.
Here are the basic steps for coordinating your offers with sales:
Include your promotion on a shared calendar.
Build a Google Calendar and add the date and time of your promotion (it might be an email, webinar, or social media campaign) along with the URL, main talking points, and description of each offer. Make sure to invite your sales team to this calendar so they can see it on their personal accounts.
Email the offer to sales.
Once your offer has been promoted and you start getting leads, you should email the sales team with the following information:

Offer talking points. Include two to three bullets about the offer. Assume the salesperson hasn’t read the offer — what main concepts should they know when talking to prospects? Good talking points usually include: stats, business use cases, or “how to” advice.
Lead views.Make sure to include the list of the leads your offer is generating so sales can take action. If you have a CRM, you can easily generate views and share them with your sales team.
A quote of the week. Similar to the talking points, including a more general quote that sales can use on their calls to keep the conversations up-to-date. The best quotes are the ones that are data-driven and relevant, so try to include a recent industry trend or stat.

Build follow-up email templates for your promotions.
Offers are a great way to generate new leads and re-engage old leads. Build email templates for your sales team to start a conversation. This email should be specific about the offer and how your company might help with the prospect’s interest.
5. Set Shared Goals
Historically, sales and marketing function with different key performance indicators (KPIs) and, therefore, different goals. Most goals are separate — sales may be focused on monthly revenue, while marketing may hone in on website traffic.
A good smarketing strategy prioritizes shared goals, too. There are a few KPIs — like conversion rate and lead value — that both teams can measure and influence. Identify these KPIs for your sales and marketing teams can work towards.
6. Share Reporting and Analysis
What do your sales and marketing teams track and measure? What do they learn from their analysis? Just as you keep your communication and ideation channels open between marketing and sales, make sure each team shares their learnings, too. You never know what your salespeople and marketers could learn from seemingly unrelated KPIs and analyses.
7. Celebrate Sales’ Wins and Expertise
Marketing is responsible for promoting all aspects of your company, including your products, brand, and salespeople — the folks your prospective customers will connect with and, hopefully, trust. Leverage your marketing resources to showcase your sales team’s expertise. Here’s how:
Ghostwrite a blog post under your salesperson’s name.
Consider ghostwriting a post under your salesperson’s name. Interview them on the topic, transcribe your conversation, and turn that into a blog post. This can help the salesperson establish credibility and familiarity with their leads.
Get them to use social media.
If your salesperson is active on social media, then encourage them to share your company’s content. You can even write some lazy social media messages for them, so all they have to do is copy and paste them on their favorite networks.
8. Shadow Sales Calls
It’s also worth taking some time to sit next to your sales team and listen to their calls. This is a great learning experience that will help you step into your sales team’s shoes and see how they illustrate the business use of your product or service. You can also get ideas for future content creation and how to build follow-up emails for your offers.
9. Organize Sales Enablement Resources
Marketers work hard to create sales enablement resources such as brochures, company overviews, and presentations, but all that hard work goes to waste if your sales team can’t find (and use) them.
So try to keep all your sales enablement resources in one shared place where sales can easily access them. This location is a great place to also host your campaign calendar, links to relevant offers, and specific content for a market or persona.
10. Have Fun Together
Finally, some of the most important advice is to try to get to know each other as people. Organize lunches, outings, and celebrations, and just have fun. This helps build trust among team members and ensures that people feel comfortable leaning on each other for support.
Need help coming up with an outing idea? Check out this list of fun corporate team-building ideas — from improv workshops to karaoke.
Sales + Marketing = Smarketing
Aligning your sales and marketing team helps both teams reach their goals and boost company revenue. Apply these sales and marketing best practices to improve your smarketing strategy, and you’ll see an exponential growth in conversion rate, revenue, and customer retention.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in October 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Traditional metrics (like clicks, shares, and scroll times) can tell you a lot about campaign performance, but they can’t measure how customers feel about your brand. That’s where neuromarketing comes in. As a supplement to more standard marketing performance metrics, neuromarketing can help you analyze the emotional response to your campaigns.
Neuromarketing tells us what colors, pictures, music, or messages resonate the most with audiences. Your team can use this data to identify customers’ ad preferences.
Take a deep dive into how neuromarketing works for popular brands.

Let’s turn to P&G for a real-world example of neuromarketing at work.
In partnership with marketing firm Dentsu Data Labs, P&G designed an experiment to find mobile ads that emotionally resonated with their audience. During testing, the company worked with Sticky, a webcam eye-tracking tool by Tobii Pro, to measure engagement of on-the-go users.
What they found was intriguing — the time spent watching video ads on social media was not equal to the time they spent focusing on the ads. Social platforms’ impressions and watch rates did not correlate with real customers’ engagement.
Moreover, Sticky detected which video ad details triggered a desire to interact with the brand. Eye tracking data became actionable insights, highlighting content P&G should change to retain audience attention.
The big takeaway: Knowing what the brain actually resonates with is more important than knowing what people say they like or how much time they spend watching ads.
To grab your customer’s attention, make them feel something and compel them to act. Marketers need to focus more on neuroscience and less on web metrics and in-person interviews.
Neuromarketing Research
Neuromarketing research commonly uses either brain-scanning technology or physiological measurements to assess consumers’ subconscious preferences. This can help inform advertising, product development, or marketing materials.
Neuromarketing is typically done through brain scanning — either with fMRI or EEG technology — or physiological tracking, including eye movement measurements, facial coding, or body temperature and heart rate measurements.
fMRI and EEG technology have different strengths.
“Normally we use EEG to measure dynamic stimuli, like video, TV shows, commercials, online user experience. In such cases, it is interesting to see the brain responding moment-to-moment,” Dr. Roeland Dietvorst, Lead Behavioral Scientist at NN Investment Partners, told the Neuromarketing Science and Business Association. “We use fMRI mainly for static stimuli, like packaging design, campaign slogans, pay-offs, outdoor messaging.”
Measuring physiological tracking is typically much easier to do. Many tools are available in the marketplace, including FaceReader by Noldus, which measures facial expressions, or the eye-tracking software mentioned above.
However, even though leveraging neuroscience to inform your marketing strategy is an exciting opportunity, the tactic still seems more suited for a time when Black Mirror storylines are a reality.
In fact, people often ask, “Is neuromarketing even ethical?”
Below, let’s dive into that question.
Neuromarketing Ethics
While neuromarketing aims to determine how consumers respond to brands or campaigns – a rather innocuous study – not everyone is convinced that it’s ethical.
The book “Towards Ethical Neuromarketing 2.0 Based on Artificial Intelligence” addresses ethical issues such as, “Will algorithms predict future behavior?” and “Is neuromarketing immoral?”
In and of itself, neuromarketing isn’t unethical. However, companies must hold themselves to a high standard of ethics when studying their consumers.
For instance, brands shouldn’t intentionally promote anything harmful, deceptive, or illegal. Additionally, you shouldn’t study minors to figure out how to get them hooked on a product.
Neuromarketing should be used to create effective ads and eliminate ads that just don’t work, and that’s all.
The main ethical questioning has more to do with your product or service and less with how you market it. If you’re ever in doubt, ask yourself if the product or service is good for the customer.
In actuality, neuromarketing has already permeated the content space.
Advertising agency BBDO collaborates with Immersion to use smartwatch biometrics — including heart rate — to predict the success of their ads. One of Immersion’s studies correctly identified which BBDO’s ad would produce the largest sales bumps with an impressive 83% accuracy.
To help you envision a world where neuromarketing is widespread, here are eight practical ways you can refine your marketing efforts with the help of neuroscience
1. Brands can tell more compelling stories.
In 2019, Renault released the newest version of their CLIO hatchbacks. To celebrate, the company released a commercial to highlight the car’s 30 years in development. The ad followed the love story of a lesbian couple that also took place over 30 years.

The world split into two camps. Haters were sure that the couple’s story had nothing to do with Renault as a brand. Other marketers praised the campaign for its boldness, originality, and the strong emotions evoked.
Neuromarketing settled the argument. The video ad reached very high likeability and brand recognition compared to other commercials, according to Alpha.One’s EEG and eye-tracking study.
“From 31 participants in our EEG and Eye-tracking study who viewed the commercial in a large reel of other commercials, 30 correctly identified the commercial as belonging to Renault,“ wrote Dietvorst on LinkedIn.
The audience’s emotional response peaked when the couple expressed happiness and affection. They developed compassion, becoming invested in love story’s ups and downs.
The audience’s emotional response to this ad suggests that telling great stories — chock-full of conflict, surprise, and emotion — triggers the release of oxytocin, the empathy chemical. You emotionally engage your audience and, ultimately, make them care about your brand.
Pro tip: When creating ad copy, develop stories about overcoming adversity and how that journey changes people to trigger an emotional response.
2. Businesses can focus on ads that boost sales.
Bolletje, a food company that makes healthy cereal, created two TV ads promoting the same product to the same audience. Yet, two campaigns brought drastically different results — one generating 250% higher sales.

The company sent questionnaires about both campaigns to figure out why the skinny jeans ad led to more sales. Surprisingly, the result showed almost identical numbers of likeability, brand recognition, and overall grade.
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So what caused a 250% sales difference? A neuromarketing study using fMRI technology explains.
Eye-tracking and MRI technologies detected the specter of emotions the two ads aroused. As it turned out, the ad featuring aqua yoga elicited negative emotions. Viewers felt disgust, danger, and fear, which distracted them from the product.
Meanwhile, the ad featuring skinny jeans activated positive emotions like value, surprise, and expectations.
Pro tip: Before launching your next campaign, make sure it evokes positive emotions like sympathy, trust, value, or compassion. This prevents negative associations with your brand.
3. Companies can host more engaging conferences.
At a major global conference in Houston, Immersion Neuroscience put INBands on attendees and measured their immersion during certain presentations. They discovered that concise, energetic talks generated the most emotional engagement.
On the other hand, longer talks needed to revolve around a strong narrative, or they couldn’t hold an audience’s attention. Additionally, they realized the brain responds well to multimedia-heavy presentations due to the high variety of stimuli.
What we like: Tracking attendees’ emotional engagement during presentations can help companies refine their conferences by cutting out boring talks. Instead, provide attendees with relevant, compelling presentations.
4. Brands can design more effective ads.
The main goal of neuromarketing is to gain insight into what would make an ad more effective. That includes where ads are placed.
For instance, a recent neuroscience study revealed that positioning of display ads influences buying decisions regarding high- and low-calorie foods.
In a nutshell, researchers asked 57 participants to rate food images that appeared on the center, top, bottom, left, or right side of the screen.
Participants evaluated the desire to eat and buy, their liking, and willingness to pay for each image.
The study results uncovered that a banner for high-calorie food is more likely to draw attention and conversion if placed on the bottom right side. In contrast, ads for low-calorie food are most effective when placed on the top left side.
Pro tip: Leverage neuromarketing to find the ads that resonate most and where to place them.
5. Brands can sell more by using FOMO.
The fear of missing out, otherwise known as loss aversion, is a widely used tactic in marketing and sales.
In fact, 62% of consumers in a study from peer-reviewed publication Science were more likely to gamble their money than lose any money.
Here’s the scenario consumers were given.
If you were given $50, would you rather:

Keep $30.
Gamble it, with a 50/50 chance of keeping or losing the whole $50.

When the experimenter posed that question to the subjects, 43% of the subjects chose to gamble.
Then the options were changed to:

Lose $20.
Gamble, with a 50/50 chance of keeping or losing the whole $50.

With that slight change, there was a 44% jump in the number of people who gambled.
When more studies were done like this, 100% of subjects gambled more when the other choice was framed as a loss.
A 2021 study from University College London also revealed that urgent language leads to sales. Phrases such as “The #Sale is ON!” and “Only a few left in stock” on Facebook ads increased overall memory for advertisement information. In contrast, ads with no FOMO triggers performed worse.
The neuromarketing takeaway is that framing will greatly impact people’s behavior. And people are loss averse.
Pro tip: You can implement this method by changing the language of your ads. If you can pose the outcome of not buying your product or service as a loss, then you can sell more.
6. Brands can ensure their packaging is effective.
Brands might consider using neuromarketing to measure viewers’ emotional reactions to different packaging designs and determine which packaging option evokes the highest level of position emotion and engagement.
Let’s see how Alpro, a Belgium company that markets plant-based milk products, applied neuromarketing to build barista-preferred packaging. Working with neuroscience company Alpha.One, Alpro leveraged eye-tracking to measure engagement.
A change in color scheme and adding a cup with latte art led to a 3.6% growth in logo recognition. These slight changes held the audience’s attention more than the previous packaging.
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What we like: Small changes in color and more straightforward communication through images can evoke a better reaction from the target audience and result in a sales boost.
7. Businesses can determine the right price for a product or service.
Pricing is all about psychology.
For instance, University of Florida marketing professors Chris Janiszewski and Dan Uy wanted to evaluate whether consumers will truly evaluate a product as more fairly priced if it’s $19.95 rather than an even $20. They conducted a range of experiments and found people “create mental measuring sticks that run in increments away from any opening bid, and the size of the increments depends on the opening bid.”
Or, put another way: If you see a product priced at $19.95, you might wish it was $19.75 or $19.50, but you’ll be thinking in terms of nickels and dimes. However, if you see a product priced to the nearest full dollar — such as an even $20 — you instead might wish it was priced at $19 or $18, moving the range further away from the actual price.
Pro tip: Rely on neuromarketing to evaluate consumers’ subconscious reactions and determine the right pricing. Just asking a focus group if your product is priced fairly, can lead to groupthink and obscure the truth. (Check out the Lays pricing study below for more.)
8. Brands can evaluate website performance.
That’s exactly what Taskworld did to boost its site conversion rate by 40%.
To figure out if the site was effective, Shiv Sharma, Marketing Consultant at Taskworld, used heatmaps to see where new visitors clicked when signing up. What fields are they struggling to fill out? What question in the sign-up form causes leads to drop off?

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Thanks to heatmaps, Sharma discovered crucial glitches in the sign-up form that took only five minutes to fix. Those minor changes increased their website conversion by 40%.
Companies that Use Neuromarketing
Some world-known brands tested out neuromarketing years ago, ranging as far back as 2009. However, we’ve compiled a list of new neuromarketing case studies so you can gain insights and learn from each of these examples.
1. Frito-Lay
Frito-Lay worked with Neurensics, a neuro market research company, to understand the impact of a price increase of 0.25 Turkish Lira on Lays chips in Turkey. The prime question: Would a price change lead to a decrease in revenue?
To find out, Neurensics used both an EEG to study brain responses to the updated price and a standard questionnaire. The results showcased that what people say can strikingly differ from what people actually think, proving that buying decisions are often made unconsciously.
First, participants answered questions about the likelihood that they would buy a bag of chips after the price increase. Second, the same group answered the “expensive” or “cheap” questions about the same Lays products while an EEG device measured brain activity.
The difference in results of the two methods was staggering. According to the traditional questionnaire, Lays should have lost 33% in revenue. The EEG results showed only a 9% drop in sales.
Once applied, parent company PepsiCo experienced only a 7% loss in revenue from the price change.
Pro tip: Asking people for their opinion on prices, packaging, or ads can lead to incorrect predictions. Instead, you can rely on neuroscience and unconscious behavior to measure changes.
2. Philips
Philips wanted to select packaging for an ultra-light iron that appealed most to buyers and increased purchases. They designed two visuals with left and right hands holding the iron.
With Neurensics, Philips tested out both visuals to determine which one caused a positive emotional response.
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The fMRI study showed that participants found the left-handed packaging disgusting and dangerous. The familiar, right-handed image activated attention, trust, and the same level of expectations. But why?
The Neurensics team explains this phenomenon as a mental simulation: “An unconscious process where the brain simulates using the product or experiencing a situation.”
An iron held with the left hand is a more difficult mental simulation to conjure when 90% of the population is right-handed. This leads to feelings of disgust.
With this new information, Philips pivoted to the packaging with the right hand holding the iron.
3. Steereo and Spotify
Can you use neuroscience to predict the next record-breaking song? Steereo, a platform that plays new music exclusively for rideshare drivers, posed this question to Immersion.
Immersion tracked subtle changes in listeners’ heartbeats to gauge emotional responses to music. The study accurately predicted hit songs with 92% accuracy.
They also estimated the numbers of super fans and followers for those songs on Spotify with 67% accuracy.
Compare this to traditional survey analysis of songs’ likeability, which resulted in no correlation to real hits.
Use Neuromarketing in Your Business
We live in an age of data overload where you can measure almost anything. But Google Analytics will never be able to accurately gauge the most important element of your marketing campaign — its ability to make your audience feel something.
Fortunately, the neuromarketing space is rapidly evolving, and this technology is becoming more affordable and practical for marketers today, leading to its mainstream use tomorrow.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Consumers in every market are constantly receiving a barrage of texts, emails, and ads from different companies trying to get their attention — so how can your brand stand out and stay top-of-mind? One way is via drip marketing.
Drip marketing helps marketers maintain constant contact with both current and prospective customers by constantly reminding them of available products, services, and special offers. But what is drip marketing, and how can it benefit your business? Here’s all you need to know plus a few examples.

In the early days of drip marketing, paper mail and flyers were mailed to recipients on a marketing list or after they made initial contact with the business. Of course, as marketing adapted to the digital age, drip marketing in the form of social media and email marketing became more popular.
Now you know what drip marketing is, but how does it work? Furthermore, how can you company use it to its advantage? Here’s what you need to know.
How does drip marketing work?
The way drip marketing works depends on the medium being used. The three most common mediums are email, social media, and direct mail.
Email Drip Marketing
Email drip marketing typically begins with an online form a prospect or customer fills out. Once the form is completed, that person is entered into an autoresponder program that will send automated emails from that point forward.
The emails can be personalized with the contact’s name and specific mentions of the action they took. For example, “Hi Jane! Thank you for signing up to receive our weekly marketing newsletter.”
Social Media Drip Marketing
Social media’s role in drip marketing is becoming more and more common in a digital world. With this form of drip marketing, social media accounts are consistently updated with texts, photos, or videos surrounding a particular marketing effort.
For example, a social media account for a TV network might market for a particular show premiere by releasing behind the scenes clips, photos, or graphics to build audience excitement.
Direct Mail Drip Marketing
Direct mail has long been used in drip marketing efforts, and has seen many updates over the years in the form of software and digital printing. These advancements have made direct mail more automated, personalized, and easier to manage.
No matter the method used, a common trend in drip marketing is the “Law of 29.” This unwritten rule in marketing says most prospective customers will not buy something until they have seen an ad for it at least 29 times. While 29 may be a bit too specific, the point remains that a key to generating lead generation is staying top-of-mind for potential customers by continuously creating points of connection.

Examples of Drip Marketing
Now that you know how drip marketing works, here are a few examples to help inspire your next campaign.
Disney+ Email Campaign
To keep subscribers in the loop of the latest releases on the streaming app, Disney+ releases frequent email updates — including a weekly “What to watch this week” message. In this email, Disney+ reminds fans that its latest Marvel series, “Ms. Marvel,” is currently streaming and that its season finally is airing that week. It also highlights behind-the-scenes content of the show.

Many companies and networks are dabbling in the world of streaming services. So this method of drip marketing is especially useful for Disney+ because it helps the service stay top-of-mind ahead of competitors like Hulu and Netflix.
Stranger Things’ Twitter Updates/h3>
Ahead of the premiere of the second part of Stranger Things’ fourth season on Netflix, the show’s Twitter account regularly shared posts to remind fans. Finally, on the day of the premiere, the account shared a clip of one of the character’s, fan favorite Eddie Munson, performing an epic guitar solo with the words “Now Streaming” in bold letters.

🤘LET THE SHOW BEGIN. VOL 2 IS NOW STREAMING 🤘 pic.twitter.com/QDO89bnNay— Stranger Things (@Stranger_Things)
July 1, 2022

The video clip was compelling enough to go viral with more than 30,000 retweets and 120,000 likes.
New York Times Email to Win Back Customers
Not only is drip marketing effective for generating new leads, it can also win back old ones. Sometimes customers may invest in a product or service only to stop returning later.
In my case, I was subscribed to the New York Times, but I eventually ended my subscription to cut down on my monthly fees. However, I still get updates from the New York Times, including the special offer below to subscribe for just $1 a week.

Drip marketing is an excellent tactic to keep current customers in the know of your business’ products and services. It can also convince new prospects to commit to buying from your company. Finally, you can also win back old customers by keeping in constant contact with them. Now that you have a solid grasp of drip marketing and its uses, you’re ready to plan your next campaign.

Opening a marketing email is such a regular task, consumers often don’t give it a second thought. As email marketers, though, we know the other side of the story. Finding new HTML email inspiration can be a daunting task.
When you’re an email marketer, your to-do list often looks like this: Generate opt-in leads, segment your lists, set up lead nurturing workflows, draft clear and concise email copy, check your emails for deliverability, optimize for plain text and HTML, and so on. “Where’s the fun in this?” you may wonder.

Thankfully, there are plenty of email marketing geeks out there (ourselves included) that do think all of that’s kind of fun. These less glamorous aspects of email marketing — though critical to your campaign’s success — don’t paint the entire picture of what amazing email marketing really is.
While plain text or bare-bones emails can still be extremely effective, sometimes you want to amaze your subscribers with creative, captivating, or delightfully understated email designs. Some brands out there have also figured out how to create emails that are pretty darn beautiful. If you’re looking to dabble in something a little more adventurous for your next email marketing campaign, check out the examples below for inspiration.
Table of Contents:

Email Newsletter Design Examples
Nurturing Email Design Examples
E-commerce Email Design Examples

Email Newsletter Design Examples
1. Collaborative Fund
In design, red and yellow serve as powerful color choices. While red is known to convey power or passion, yellow is often considered both bright and energizing. Although many companies use a big block of color at the top of their newsletters to draw people in, the folks at Collaborative Fund took it a few steps further by combining red and yellow bursts of color throughout the whole email. Pretty powerful, right?
Color aside, they leveraged clean divides to separate these blocks, while incorporating different textures — like that crumpled paper — to create a really compelling experience.
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Pro Tip: When done well, incorporating an array of textures, via high-quality graphics or photography (like the crumbled paper used above), can make the 2D experience of viewing an email more visceral and engaging.
2. Domino
This newsletter from Domino covers a lot of information: design with storage restrictions, giveaways, a profile piece with Chelsea Handler, bathroom and bedroom design tips, and a call-to-action.
To make this more easily scannable, Domino paired these short descriptions with high-quality images. Like the Collaborative Fund example, they also used clear, horizontal divides to separate each topic.
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Pro Tip: Incorporating contrasting colors can help with creating division between sections and draw the eye from each section with ease.
3. InVision LABS
This is a much more concise email from InVision, which includes a clean design and an eye-catching color. The blue background causes both the call-to-action and the white box near the bottom of the email to command attention. The fanned-out product images help the recipient understand what the announcement entails before diving into the explainer copy.
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The colorful experience doesn’t stop with the email. The bright blue color is carried through to the corresponding website, making this a strong example of seamless branding.
Are you inspired by InVision’s clean design and ready to create your own campaign? Use a free email marketing software like HubSpot to create and send your message to the world.
4. GrubHub
This email from GrubHub is a great example of product promotion … because it doesn’t sound or feel like product promotion at all. Instead of saying, “Hey, you like food. You should order it using our service!”, the email tells a story with the help of a really cool piece of interactive content: a quiz to see what you should serve at your party (see what they did there?).
We especially love the saturated GIF they used to promote the piece of content, as it really commands the recipient’s attention.
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Pro Tip: Motion catches the eye. We see this throughout social media and other forms of media. Adding this feature to your emails can appeal to viewers enticed by the motion factor in public-facing content. Learn how to create a GIF using Photoshop.

Nurturing Email Design Examples
5. Handy
We love this simple welcome email from Handy. The color scheme is consistent, relying on gray for the base, and bright blue to draw attention to the logo and calls-to-action.
There’s a nice balance between text and visuals here, and the tile design makes it easy to skim through. Finally, we love that they used non-cheesy stock photos to represent their brand, which makes them more genuine and lovable from a consumer perspective.
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Pro Tip: Nowadays, most viewers have some level of ability to sense whether an image is a stock photo or originally captured content. If you must use stock photography, take your time when looking through image databases, and filtering for images that represent not only the tone of the email and message but the overall aesthetic and feel of your brand.
6. Litmus
You might expect a beautiful email from a company that’s announcing an email design conference — and Litmus doesn’t disappoint. The email starts out with a bold burst of color, which grabs readers’ attention. Below this, you’ll find a clean design that includes concise copy, whimsical illustrations, and a great use of white space.
At the bottom of the email, you’ll see a live Twitter feed showing tweets that use the conference’s official hashtag. That social media factor is a really cool touch that we’re willing to bet increased engagement, while simultaneously informing folks about how to stay connected at the event.
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Pro Tip: Being imaginative and using icons and illustrations can be a rewarding and simple way of getting messaging across. Consistent look and feel makes the difference, showing intention and design-strategy. You can find free icon packs that include the most commonly used icons, at websites like FlatIcon.com.
7. Uber
As marketers, we know that charts and graphs can serve as an effective way to illustrate information. But what about incorporating graphs into emails?
This email design from Uber skillfully demonstrates the power of data visualization through the use of simple graphs. Rather than relying on words to explain their lowered rates, Uber whipped up a few comparative visuals to do the job. Thanks to the bright blue color choice, it’s easy for recipients to understand how the rates have shifted in just a quick glance.
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Pro Tip: Excitement is more difficult to elicit from audiences than one would think. The above serves as an example of how Uber uses their historical data to galvanize excitement for new offerings from the company. The potential of what’s to come is correlated to what has happened. Show what’s been done before showing what’s to come, letting consumers know their excitement is secure.
8. Cuyana
Here’s a product promotion email Cuyana sent to people who signed up for a new product’s “early access” list. The email is centered entirely around showcasing the new product, but in this case, that’s exactly what the folks who opted in to the “early access” list were looking for.
The design of the email is clean and sophisticated, thanks to a brilliant use of negative space and attractive fonts. This approach is very true-to-brand for a women’s apparel and accessories company. We love the use of consistent coloring — especially the signature orange hue they chose for the call-to-action button at the bottom.
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Pro Tip: This is an example of an email made using HubSpot. Click here to check out more email marketing examples from our library.

E-commerce Email Design Examples
9. J.Crew
Sometimes, words can be overrated. Why not let a picture tell the story for you? That’s what J.Crew did in this email, anyway. The email is promoting a sale, but you wouldn’t know it right away: All you see is the copy, “This is worth the scroll,” along with a very long (and very scroll-worthy), high-definition picture of an ice cream cone. We love the subtlety. Yum!
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Pro Tip: If you make it to the bottom, you’ll notice that the tip of the ice cream cone acts like a directional arrow, pointing recipients toward the call-to-action. Photography can serve as more than a static image, it can be an interactive guide, leading the eye throughout the message.
10. Apple
This holiday email from Apple balances white space with product displays to create a really interesting experience.
While the products all share a similar color scheme, what’s really compelling is their positioning. By strategically arranging the products, Apple was able to create visual patterns that alternate throughout the email. This approach is among the best for displaying the confidence of a brand in its products. It allows the products themselves to be the focus of the message, as well as the means through which the messaging is conveyed.
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Pro Tip: Drafting or sketching out the design for an email at the start of the process can make creating eye-catching messaging an easily attainable goal and can save you time.
11. Union Made Goods
Consumers get a lot of emails from e-commerce businesses showcasing holiday gift ideas from their websites, and this is an example of one of these emails done well. They opted for a simple design here, which includes a really nice use of both color and white space, making the copy and images that are there pop a little more.
We really enjoy how the simplicity allows for the mind of the reader to be less focused on distracting elements within the message. Instead, they can fill in the negative space with imaginings of how the products displayed — or others sold by the company — could bring about the desired reaction from the mothers in their lives. It makes one wonder, “What does mom have?”, “What does she need?”, or “What would she like?”
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Pro Tip: Offering something like a discount on a purchase, without overselling, inclines readers to take a look at their own time, with the knowledge that they will receive incentives for engaging further.
12. Casper
This welcome email from Casper does a stellar job of providing an overview of what joining their 1+ million member community will get you. From their community numbers, it is clear they have put a lot of time and work into creating a product and reputation so you can rest assured. (Get it? “Rest,” because it’s a mattress company? Ah, nevermind!)
They list a few of the perks you get from a membership, and then immediately jump into establishing educational value, offering tips for sleeping. This alone isn’t compelling enough to make someone a loyally attentive Casper email-subscriber, but it does further connect the brand and product(s) to consumers’ experiences. We love how they use simple graphics and concise messaging to subtly associate themselves with the solution to sleep challenges.
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Pro Tip: Keep it simple, allowing viewers and consumers to conclude for themselves that they need what you have to offer.
13. Shwood x Stanley
In the e-commerce world, the quality of visuals in your emails can have a huge impact on whether recipients stick around to look through the whole email, or quickly hit the “delete” button. This email from Shwood x Stanley places a big emphasis on those high-quality visuals. We especially adore the textured backgrounds, as well as the ways in which they play with light and shadows.
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Pro Tip: When using multiple images in an html email, consider what colors complement and contrast with each other. This consideration can make the experiences of transitioning from section to section seamless for the viewer, compelling engaged attention throughout the message.
14. Harry’s
For seasonal emails like this one from Harry’s, you might consider using color schemes that go with the season. To promote their winter gift set, the folks at Harry’s cooled down their color scheme with traditional winter colors like green, blue, and brown. They also struck a nice balance between text and visuals, and helped to make their email easier to skim by using a simple tile design.
Another thing we love are those bright red calls-to-action; they look pretty clickable … wouldn’t you agree?
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Pro Tip: Simply put, there is no replacement for good product photography. If you’re diving into the ocean of original product photography, check out this Beginner’s Guide to Product Photography.
What other companies out there have you noticed are creating beautiful email marketing? What stands out about their approach? How can you take this and add your own original spin, making something new for your brand’s messaging?
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in May 2012 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

With fall on its way, the countdown to September’s INBOUND 2019 event is in full-swing. Every year, thousands of marketers and their peers gather to learn, inspire, and network. That last one — networking — gets a lot of us pretty excited. After all, it’s how 85% of people say they’ve landed a job. And personally, if I’m really into an event and I’m feeling super energetic, I love to network. But I don’t always feel so peppy. Then what?
Sometimes, we have to fall back on an arsenal of conversation starters. It helps to spark a discussion, even when it’s taking every ounce of willpower you have not to go home, turn on Netflix, and order sushi.
We’ve got your back. Here are some of the conversation starters that we’ve tried and have seen succeed. Bookmark them for your next networking event.

Listen to the audio version of this post:

17 Great Conversation Starters to Break the Ice at Networking Events
1. “Hi, I’m ‘X.’”
It actually works. Just be sure you have something to follow your introduction, so that you don’t end up staring at each other in silence. And as you’ll see, that’s the key to most conversation starters — be ready with a follow-up. Saying “hi” is just your way to get the ball rolling, so be sure you can keep the exchange going and take it to the next level.
(Note: Use your first name, instead of “X.”)
2. “Are you having issues with the Wi-Fi?”
Good news: The answer is almost always “yes.” Plus, I don’t know about you, but I think we all have war stories of when the internet stopped working for us at the worst time — those are always great conversation starters.
3. “That [food or beverage] looks great. Where did you find it?”
This question can offer a few different answers. The person might just tell you where they got it, or they could go into a description or a comment on the quality. Not sure where to go from there? Tell them about a place where you once had the best version of whatever they’re drinking or snacking on. But frame it as a question — “Have you ever been to Hawaii? I once had the best fish tacos there.”
This technique also works with neutral compliments, like telling someone that you love their laptop bag or jacket. Most people enjoy receiving positive feedback, and will probably follow up with a story about where or how they got it. (And if they don’t follow up, ask them about it — remember, keep the conversation going.)
4. “Do you know if there’s a coat check?”
I always like to leverage the communal confusion that occurs at every event. When you first arrive, no one really knows what they’re doing. But anyone who does will jump at the chance to be “in the know.”
5. “I can’t believe how cold/hot/beautiful it is today.”
Talking about the weather sounds so cliché, but it actually works — especially if people are visiting from out of town. Maybe someone from sunny California, for example, is traveling to Boston for INBOUND this year. Of course, that would require you to ask the person where they’re from, first. But once you have an answer, you can even make a joke about it — “Boy, I bet you’re glad you left Los Angeles behind for a few days of chilly New England weather.”
6. “Are you here with colleagues?”
If someone you’re speaking with is at the event with a group of people, that can allow your circle to expand — if you’re proactive about it. You can tactfully express interest in meeting someone’s co-worker by asking what the different roles are on that person’s team, and responding with something like, “You know, I’ve always wanted to learn more about X. Would you mind introducing me to your colleague who works on that?”
But if that person is flying solo, you can generate some empathy as a fellow lone wolf. That doesn’t mean you should cling to that person the entire time, but a “me, too” is always nice. Just be sure not to leave it at that — follow up with an idea of where to meet some of your fellow cohorts, like mentioning that there’s supposed to be a great breakout session later.
7. “You guys look like you’re having the most fun over here. Mind if I join this conversation?”
Of course, you’ll probably want to say that to people who actually look like they’re having a good time. And really, who’s going to say “no” to that? If they do, chances are, you’ll want to find another group to hang out with, anyway.
8. “Are you here to see anyone in particular?”
If you’re both interested in meeting the same people or seeing the same sessions, this question will help you establish that common ground. Regardless of the answer, you’ll learn more about each others’ goals and reasons for attending the event, which promotes an exchange of ideas and knowledge. And that can create opportunities, even after the event is over — you never know when that person might need your expertise down the line, or vice-versa.
9. “Did you all come here together, or did you meet here?”
This question is a great one when you’ve joined a group of strangers. It also opens up the conversation to everyone in the group, instead of limiting it to the people sitting right next to you. And the more people chatting, the better — it’s another opportunity for you to learn about everyone’s goals and exchange ideas.
10. “Well, while we’re here, I might as well introduce myself.”
If the event is big enough, chances are that you’ll have to wait in line for something — a keynote, the restroom, or food, to name a few. And, as the least patient person on the planet, I can attest to the effectiveness of using that time to do something other than focusing on how slowly the line is moving. Put that energy toward something productive, like meeting the people around you.
11. “Did you hear X speak?”
Being at the same conference, sessions and speakers are guaranteed common ground, so use that to your advantage. It’s a great starting point that can go in a lot of different conversational directions — did you see that person speak at a different event? Did you read their work? What did you think of the talk?
12. “Have you ever been to X down the street? I’ve really wanted to check it out.”
This question is a great one when you’re attending an out-of-town event. If there’s a restaurant there that you’ve heard good things about, you can ask locals and visitors alike if they want to check it out, too.
And if you’re a local yourself, and you’re chatting with visitors, you can recommend that they see the place while they’re in town. Mention that you haven’t been there in a while, or that you’d love to go back. If there’s a shared interest in going, you can suggest heading over together or sharing a cab.
But if they’re not interested in going to that particular venue, ask them if they can recommend where to go, or if there’s another place they wanted to check out. You could suggest heading there together, too, but make sure you’re not being too pushy — sometimes, people really just want to take a break to be alone, so don’t take it personally.
13. “Are you speaking at this event?”
Be sure to have a quick follow-up if the answer is “no” — like asking if any of that person’s colleagues are speaking, or which sessions they plan on attending. Questions like that can prime you to learn more about what the person does, and how you might be able to learn from each other.
But if the answer is yes — jackpot. That’s a great opportunity to ask them what they’re speaking about, and what made them so interested in the topic. And be sure to mention you’re looking forward to attending, and what you hope to learn from it.
And if that person already spoke, but you missed it — “Bummer,” you can tell them. Just be sure to ask if there’s somewhere you’ll be able to watch it online, or when their next speaking engagement is.
14. “Is this your first time at this event”
If the answer is “yes,” use that to make the person feel like an expert, without overwhelming them. Ask them for insider tips on how to make the most of the event, what was different about it last year, and what they’re hoping to do this year. That can lay the groundwork for uncovering shared interests.
But first-timers can empathize with you, and you can even ask them some of the same questions, like what made them come to the event in the first place and how they’re liking it so far. You’re still opening up the conversation to a potential “me, too” moment, and might find an opportunity to participate in a session together.
15. “Did you understand what the speaker meant when she said, ‘X’?”
This question creates a great opportunity to start chatting with some of the people who were sitting next to you during a session, instead of silently/awkwardly shuffling out when it’s over. If you legitimately didn’t understand something, don’t be embarrassed — it might have confused other people, too. Brainstorming different interpretations of a talk can actually be kind of fun — it gives you a chance to be creative and possibly share ideas with someone who has a fresh perspective.
And even if that person did understand what was confusing you, asking them to explain it might accomplish a little bit of ego-stroking. But keep the conversation going — especially if you actually want to learn more about what that person has to say.
16. “I’m tired of talking to my colleagues — I see them all the time. What are you guys talking about?”
This one is a spinoff of a pickup line from comedian Pete Holmes’ podcast. His original version was, “I’m tired of talking to my friends, what are you guys talking about?”
It’s a line that’s effective in a number of scenarios, because it’s most likely true. It’s not that you don’t like your colleagues — but as long as you’re surrounded by new people, why not gain some of that fresh perspective I mentioned earlier? It shows an interest in getting to know the folks who are there, and sets the tone for you to exchange funny office stories, which is always a great icebreaker with someone unfamiliar.
17. “Alright, I’ve got an awesome marketing joke for you.”
This only works if you actually have an awesome marketing joke. Luckily, my colleague Corey Wainwright wrote a list for you here, so you’re all set.
Ready to Network?
Sometimes, we joke that if all else fails, you can just say to the person standing next to you, “I need a drink!” If it’s been a long day, it’s likely that the person will agree with you, and might even be interested in joining you. (But please, drink responsibly — all of your great conversation starters will go to waste if you end up overdoing it.)
The point is, as long as you’re being appropriate, you can start a conversation about nearly anything. And if it helps to know, I thought I’d mention that my personal favorite icebreaker is the use of those neutral compliments I went over in #3. I figure, if it worked with a celebrity chef I once met at an event, it’ll work at INBOUND, right?
We can’t wait to see you there—grab your tickets, and be sure to say hi.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in July 2014 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

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