Monthly Archives: July 2022

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A 2021 Mckinsey & Company report found that 78% of consumers are more likely to make repeat purchases from brands that personalize. Nearly 80% are also more likely to refer their family and friends to these companies.

As we know, personalization is the name of the game in customer experience nowadays. In this post, we’ll dive into key personalization trends you should know in 2022.

Demand for personalization is increasing.

According to Twilio’s 2022 State of Personalization Report, 62% of consumers say a brand will lose their loyalty if they deliver an un-personalized experience, up nearly 20% from 2021.

Another report by Zendesk suggests that customer experience is more important to consumers now than it was before.

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This uptick in a need for personalization didn’t just start recently, it grew in part due to the pandemic in 2020. This was a time of uncertainty that forced most consumers indoors and online for an extended period of time.

The Mckinsey & Company report reported that 75% of consumers tried a new shopping behavior during the pandemic. Consumers are seeking more valuable experiences from the brands they engage with.

In fact, the same study revealed that over 70% of consumers now expect personalization and are frustrated when they don’t find it – making personalization a must-have for today’s brands.

Online personalization is prioritized.

According to a 2021 Zendesk report, 65% of customers want to buy from companies that offer quick and easy online transactions.

The report also found that online companies are outperforming, with ecommerce brands leading in consumer engagement.

Here’s why: Online offers many more opportunities for personalization than in-person. You can target users to see your ad then follow them through their journey, as they discover your products and consider purchases.

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In-person, customers typically see generic displays followed by generic store experiences. Meanwhile, brands are unable to collect any data regarding items customers viewed and considered unless there was a purchase.

With these obstacles, many brands find it easier to personalize their marketing efforts online.

Omnichannel is the main way forward.

Only 35% of companies feel they are successfully achieving omnichannel personalization, up 13% from 2021 – according to Twilio’s 2022 State of Personalization report.

With consumers now actively engaging across multiple channels, effective personalization depends on an omnichannel approach that meets consumers where they are, not where brands expect them to be.

When it comes to personalized marketing, this is pretty badass.

Kudos @JetBlue! pic.twitter.com/sly4OEuKBl

— Cole Cook (@cwcook22)
June 24, 2022

One 2021 report by Vonage revealed that 26% of consumers are very likely to stop buying from a business if they can’t switch between communication channels.

However, McKinsey & Company notes some roadblocks to a seamless omnichannel strategy. Here are the two main ones:

Traditionally, digital and customer-facing channels work independently so changing requires interlinking software and hardware.
It involves changing the customer journey flow, which involves retraining staff and updating the process.

While these aren’t minor challenges, they can be addressed with the right team and resources.

Companies will prioritize first-party data as privacy concerns mount.

With the end of third-party cookies and the recent data privacy laws, brands have had to pivot their approach to collecting data. This shift has caused a domino effect, impacting personalization strategies.

According to Twilio’s 2022 State of Personalization Report, 37% of brands exclusively use first-party data to personalize customer experiences, a six percentage point increase compared to 2021.

Why? The first reason is higher quality data, according to 54% of respondents. The report shows that accurate data is a particular challenge for brands, keeping them from fully implementing personalization strategies.

Other reasons include better privacy and easier management.

Collecting first-party data enables companies to make better decisions more quickly and integrate their systems more easily for a seamless experience – for both marketers and consumers.

Key Tips About Personalization

Customization is not personalization. Customization is explicit, while personalization is implicit.
You can achieve intent-driven personalization by understanding what people engage with on your site.
Never forget that no matter how much technology changes, the key to great marketing is having an in-depth understanding of users.
The future of marketing is in making websites, products, or experiences personal in a deeply meaningful way.
The personalization of search results offers an opportunity to increase your visibility for really relevant searches.
The potential to engage customers contextually based on a need and serve that in real-time will drive mobile devices as they become payment vehicles.
Personalization has moved beyond segmentation to algorithmically-driven content.
Personalization is about leveraging what you can from individuals when they come to your inbound customer touch-points.
Don’t think about the different groups you want to market to. Think about the power of one and how to reach that person in the most customized and creative way.
The three-step approach to personalization is: listen, educate, and engage.
Think in terms of customer-centric recommendation engines rather than company-centric selling engines.
Personalization is about creating a natural conversation between companies and customers.
The three keys to balancing personalization and privacy are company transparency, consumer choice, and accountability.
With personalized ads, the goal is to reach the highest point of relevance at the lowest sense of intrusion.
Instead of thinking of data privacy as a limitation, consider that what needs work might be the value proposition.
Marketers can get too focused on the details and forget to focus on the most important aspect: relevancy.
Personalized marketing is not just for customers and prospects – it can affect change within an organization.
We’ve moved from opt-in, permission-based, and customized address fields in personalization to online relevant conversations that engage and excite.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in Dec. 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

According to a 2021 HubSpot Blog Marketing Trends Report, 69% of marketers surveyed say they use automation in their marketing role.

Whether automation is a new or standard practice in your company, we want to help you avoid common traps marketers often fall into.

In this post, we’ll discuss them and alternatives that solve these challenges.

1. You have dirty data.

In a 2021 state of marketing automation report, 58% of B2B professionals say the number one tactic that most amplifies the success of their marketing automation tool is quality data.

Dirty data can cost brands not only money but also time, as they take actions based on inaccurate information.

This can be anything from duplicate records and naming inconsistencies to outdated contact information and incorrect attribution.

A simple example of dirty data is an email list that’s never been cleaned. Your list likely has disengaged users, spam addresses, and duplicate emails that threaten the integrity of your data.

This will lead to low engagement numbers, damage to your IP reputation, high email marketing costs, and a loss of leads.

For your automation to function properly, it’s essential that you work with clean data to ensure your work will be worth the effort you’re putting in.

2. You picked the wrong automation tool.

A HubSpot Blog research report on media and content planning revealed that finding the right tool is a roadblock for many marketers.

In fact, 45.9% of those surveyed who don’t rely on marketing automation say the biggest obstacle they face is that they can’t find platforms with the capabilities they need.

In addition, 59% of B2B professionals say they don’t feel they’re utilizing their marketing automation tools to their fullest potential, according to the state of marketing automation report.

So, not only are marketers struggling with picking tools, they also struggle to use them.

Picking the right marketing automation tool is essential, as it will determine how successful your strategy is. Here are the top features to look for in marketing automation software:

User-friendly, intuitive interface
Advanced analytics and reporting
Knowledge base and customer support tools
Integrations
Scalable options

Check out this article on the top marketing automation tools available on the market.

3. Your marketing and sales teams aren’t aligned.

The worst thing you can do with marketing automation is operating in a silo. At the end of the day, marketing is a function designed to support sales, products, and other business sectors.

As such, it’s imperative that your marketing team bring in all necessary stakeholders to build workflows that align with teams beyond your own.

This is particularly important with marketing and sales teams who work hand-in-hand to turn leads into marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) then sales-qualified leads (SQLs) and finally customers.

Have you thought about what processes would benefit your sales team? This could look like an automated email from a sales rep once a lead has completed a high-intent behavior.

Of course, to define what that behavior is, you have to define that with the sales team.

Marketing automation software can enable sales reps to focus on converting leads instead of tedious tasks.

4. You don’t train your team.

According to the state of marketing automation report, 31% of B2B professionals say the most significant barrier to using marketing automation tools is lack of training, the most popular answer after lack of resources.

Automation tools are powerful but worthless if your team doesn’t know how to use them.

Holding training sessions will ensure that key stakeholders know your tool’s capabilities, are aware of current workflows and understand the processes to create new ones.

Here are a few tips for training your team:

Curate your training to the team – Information overload is a very real thing. To prevent this from happening and keep your sessions productive, only teach what’s relevant to that team.
Invite service provider reps to participate – No one will know the software better than its reps. Reach out to your provider and see if they provide training sessions.
Hold a multi-step training process – One session likely won’t be enough to efficiently train your team. Make sure you hold multiple sessions, using a combination of various learning strategies to promote learning.

5. You set and forget.

Although automation does suggest a set-and-forget approach, the reality is it’s very hands-on.

The difference is that your attention is going to something else. Instead of focusing on output, you can direct your attention to assessing performance and optimizing.

6. You only leverage only one type of automation strategy.

Too often, marketers start using marketing automation, get familiar with one set of tasks, then focus on that. Never expanding beyond what they already use.

This is how you miss out on opportunities to improve your brand. Take advantage of all of the features your software offers to maximize efficiency.

There are probably a lot of little tasks over the course of your work day that don’t seem time-consuming individually. However, if you add up all of the time you spend posting on social media, updating contact information, and other tasks, you end up with a large chunk of your day spent on things that can probably be automated.

Poke around your marketing automation to see which processes you can make more efficient. For example, in the HubSpot software, users can bulk update lead contact information instead of clicking into each record and changing details there.

The more processes you automate, the more time you’ll have each day to strategize with your team about content, lead generation, and lead nurturing tactics to keep attracting quality leads to your site.

Here are automation strategies you can leverage:

Chatbots
Task management
Lead scoring
Lead nurturing
Contract/quote automation
Lead rotation
Drip campaigns

7. Your automation software doesn’t integrate with your CRM.

A marketing automation system is supposed to make marketing easier. A CRM system is supposed to make managing leads and customers easier.

If your automation software and CRM don’t talk to each other, then you are making a lot more work for yourself.

Before deciding on marketing automation and CRM platforms, make sure they can integrate with one another, and make sure you have the budget to make it happen.

8. You don’t have a goal.

Take advantage of the ease of use marketing automation software provides and invest time and efforts into determining your goals first. Once you have them, you’ll want to assign these goals to each automated effort – social media, email workflows, and so on – to ensure it’s easy to track progress.

After all, marketers need a way to measure success when it comes to marketing automation, and one means of doing so is by evaluating goal attainment. For example, here at HubSpot, the Visual Workflows tool lets you set a specific goal for each automated workflow.

A goal might be a new lead transitioning into a marketing-qualified lead based on certain behaviors, such as downloading a specific number of content offers.

HubSpot Visual Workflows also allows you to track the percentage of contacts in each workflow that achieve the goal, which is another great way to measure the success and ROI of your marketing automation.

9. You don’t segment your email list.

You have a database full of qualified leads, but you’re using marketing automation software to blast out tons of emails that aren’t customized at all. As a result, your leads are churning because your emails aren’t useful to them.

The solution? Develop a lead nurturing strategy that includes email list segmentation so you’re sending specific emails to specific people that they’re more likely to open.

With the right marketing automation software, it’s easy to execute an email list segmentation strategy that delivers strong results. For example, HubSpot customers can use the Visual Workflows App to target their emails based on dozens of criteria, both demographic and behavioral.

Marketing automation is a powerful tool for any company – the trick is knowing how to optimize it and which pitfalls to avoid. By keeping these in mind, you’ll ensure your automation is working at its maximum potential.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in Nov. 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness

Marketing your nonprofit can be challenging.

Thankfully, learning from others that have already engaged with nonprofit marketing, leveraged trends, and found success can be helpful when it comes to developing your own strategy.

In this post, discover expert insight and tips from HubSpot’s Nonprofit Marketing Trends Report for 2022 that will help you build the brand awareness you’re looking for.

Nonprofit Trends to Watch in 2022

1. Collect donations on social media platforms with native donation features.

TikTok has grown in popularity for nonprofits in reaching audiences and collecting donations. In fact, almost 75,000 donations were made within the app in support of various organizations and causes in 2021.

Its donation feature is a native TikTok tool, so it’s valuable for nonprofits looking to use it as you can reach your target audiences on the platforms they already use rather than directing them down a donation path off the app. The image below displays the donation CTA on the Malala Fund’s TikTok profile.

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Other platforms like Instagram and Facebook have charitable donation tools, and Twitter recently launched a profile tipping option that nonprofits can leverage to connect donations on a profile.

2. Championing user-generated content.

User-generated content is content created by your audiences that relates to your business. So, for example, someone posting a picture on Twitter where they’re wearing athletic wear from a company.

According to HubSpot’s recent report, user-generated content is valuable for nonprofits and is a must-have for 2022. When leveraging this trend, a best practice is to share user-generated content from the groups you support. Doing this is beneficial because sharing a direct story from those impacted by what you do demonstrates the results of your efforts and can inspire those you reach out to to contribute because they’ll know you’re actively making a difference.

3. Personalized and segmented campaigns to generate donations.

Segmentation is essential for all businesses because consumers expect to see content related to their interests. When it comes to nonprofit marketing, this can dictate the strategies you use to fundraise for your business.

HubSpot’s Nonprofit Marketing Trends report calls attention to the following statistics when it comes to reaching your audiences:

1 in 4 donors between 18-29 prefer social media communications from nonprofits.
Younger donors prefer recurring donations — almost half of 18-29-year-old donors and more than one-third of 30-44-year-old donors give monthly.
Gen Z and Gen X prefer to donate via Facebook, social media, texting, and mobile apps.
Boomers and Gen Xers want to hear from nonprofits quarterly or yearly rather than monthly or weekly.

Putting the statistics above into practice can look like sending text message donation campaigns to Gen X audiences and creating a social media donation challenge on TikTok to reach your audiences between 18-29. You can also segment CTAs on your website based on user age and past donation behaviors or send different email newsletters depending on recipients’ interaction with your business.

4. Partnering with other businesses.

HubSpot’s report says that, in 2021, nonprofits partnered with tech companies, local restaurants, influencers, and other nonprofits to leverage the power of community to build brand awareness and support for the causes they champion.

A key takeaway for nonprofits is to develop partnerships with businesses relevant to the causes you support. For example, Bed-Stuy Strong is a mutual aid network of neighborhood residents that support other residents. It hosted a free winter market for community members and partnered with Brooklyn Packers and Tamales of Hope to distribute food to those who attended.

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It’s important to note that your partnerships don’t need to be with other nonprofit organizations, though. If you can develop a relationship with a relevant local business that can further your cause, you can still generate awareness and spread your message.

6. Experimenting with NFTs.

Non-Fungible Tokens are one-of-a-kind digital pieces of content that cannot be replicated and belong exclusively to the person that has purchased them.

It’s an emerging channel for nonprofits, but if you’re looking to get in on it, you can partner with artists who can create NFTs relevant to your business and host virtual auction events where you can sell them to people and use profits to support your cause.

NFT4GOOD was a collection of 88 influential Asian-American and Pacific Islanders NFT cards. Each NFT purchase gave the buyer exclusive ownership rights to one of the cards, and all of the proceeds were given to the NFT4Good Community Fund to support Asian American organizations. The NFTs generated $80,000.

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Over To You

When creating your strategy, consider the strategies and trends on this list that other nonprofits are already leveraging. If you choose to use them, you’ll find yourself engaging in conversations with your target audiences, driving donations, and creating an impact for the communities you support.

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