Monthly Archives: February 2023

If you had to guess, how many email newsletters do you think you’re subscribed to? Ten? Twenty? Fifty?

To be honest, I’ve lost count — and I know I’m not alone. Email marketers have a lot to compete within their subscribers’ inboxes. That’s why a solid newsletter template is crucial to designing an email that people are encouraged to click through.

If done well, email newsletters can do wonders to help you build an engaged subscriber base, keep your business top-of-mind, and nurture leads that are already making their way down the funnel.

However, “done well” means more than just serving up great content. In fact, an often overlooked component of the newsletter creation process is the design.

Don’t have time to build out a custom template from scratch? We’ve scoured the internet for the best resources for email newsletter templates and compiled them below. Many of the templates have also been pre-tested for compatibility with major email service providers (ESPs) via Litmus — a web service that allows you to preview the way your email will look on different email clients and devices.

Once you find one you like, download the template and customize it to fit your needs.

1. HubSpot

Price: Free & paid options available

If you’re a Marketing Hub user, HubSpot offers a great collection of email templates you can use on your next marketing email. No need to log out and search for a template in another marketplace; these templates are available to you right within the tool.

Once you choose a template, you can start using it immediately right in HubSpot — no HTML or CSS required.

2. Announcement by Litmus

Price: Free

Litmus offers a free email template collection — from newsletter templates to account management templates. This marketing-specific theme — simply referred to as “Announcement” — is modern and sleek, while still being kind of fun. All of the templates have been tested with Litmus.

While you are required to create a Litmus account with your email address to access the templates, the templates themselves are free of charge.

3. ConvertKit

Price: Free

ConvertKit is a creative email template platform that’s a great option for bloggers, course creators, and more. ConvertKit comes with email automation tools, signup forms, and many more integrations.

To use ConvertKit’s email newsletter templates, you’ll need to sign up for a plan, but the good news is that they offer both free and pro subscriptions. While this platform is more on the creative side, their vast array of templates and tool integrations will help businesses in any industry upgrade their email newsletter.

4. ZURB Ink

Price: Free

ZURB Studios has five responsive email templates available for free, including the newsletter one below. It has a great, fluid layout you can customize with your own colors, images, and wording.

If you want to see how each template looks on different email clients, you can check out screenshots from each template’s email client tests, which are available on the site. These layouts are optimized for most email clients — except for outdated versions of Outlook.

The template kit comes with a separate CSS stylesheet and HTML file to ease the editing process. Most email code editors will place the CSS inline with the HTML itself after both are uploaded separately. If you’re going to add images to your newsletter, keep in mind that you’ll have to create a separate folder and compress it with the CSS stylesheet before uploading.

Pro tip: Once you’ve selected a template, use HubSpot’s free email marketing software to craft your message and send a newsletter out to the world!

5. Flodesk

Price: Free for 30 days

Flodesk is an upcoming email newsletter design platform with over 3,000 email templates and designs to enhance your email marketing. Aside from giving you access to a vast array of templates, Flodesk lets you connect your ecommerce site to help with automation and analytics.

Another benefit of Flodesk is that its subscription price ($38/month) is a flat fee. So, whether you’re sending 200 or 2,000 emails, you’ll pay the same price, and you’ll never have to upgrade your subscription to get all of the perks.

6. 99designs

Price: Free

99designs is a growing online community and collaboration platform for designers and small businesses, and they have a great designer blog and business blog. As a free offering to their blog readers, they released a set of 45 free email templates — perfect for newsletters, promotional messages, and personalized responses. All of the templates are fully responsive and compatible with all major email clients.

7. Moosend

Price: Free for 30 days

Moosend is an email marketing platform that makes it easy to design custom emails with a drag-and-drop editor and over 70 premade templates. Moosend also tracks analytics and sends personalized automated emails to subscribers based on their interest and behavior. If you’re interested in landing pages and subscription templates, it includes those as well.

Moosend analyzes your subscriber base to help with the success of your business. Just like Flodesk, Moosend lets you connect your ecommerce site to attract more subscribers and store all information in one place. Moosend is free for the first 30 days, and then you would have to upgrade to pro status for $9/month.

8. Campaign Monitor

Price: Free

Campaign Monitor is another free email newsletter template and marketing platform. With a variety of email templates for newsletters, welcome emails, and promotional campaigns, Campaign Monitor makes designing emails easy. Campaign Monitor also compiles your analytics and tracks when emails are sent, delivered, and opened.

For many businesses, email marketing needs to connect to their website or ecommerce site, and Campaign Monitor does just that. Campaign Monitor has it all when it comes to templates and helps you maximize your sales by staying on-brand and creating a seamless customer experience. Campaign Monitor is only free for 30 days, but plans start as low as $9/month.

9. MailerLite

Price: Free

MailerLite offers various newsletter templates for promotions, announcements, and more. With its trendy newsletter designs, MailerLite makes sure its customers stay up to date while sending newsletters. You can customize the templates using either an HTML editor or drag-and-drop editor, and connect your MailerLite account to your website. MailerLite also has features where you can grow your audience with landing pages, subscription forms, and pop-ups.

MailerLite provides data insights as well. The advantage of MailerLite is that they will send your emails based on your customers’ time zones, allowing you to send emails that can get the most opens. MailerLite also provides A/B split testing tools so you can identify the best version of every email you send.

10. Sender

Price: Free & paid options available

Sender is an all-in-one email & SMS marketing platform for ecommerce and small to medium-sized businesses who want to reach out to their customers at an affordable and accessible price.

Sender provides delivery-friendly text and branded HTML email newsletters to connect with your email subscribers and biggest fans. Choose from a library of 35+ visually stunning, premium-feel newsletter design templates that are fully customizable to your specific business requirement. In addition, all templates have responsiveness baked-in to the design so that your emails are guaranteed to play nice on mobile devices. Besides offering advanced email marketing features such as segmentation and automation, Sender also allows you to design highly responsive and eye-catching popups and forms to attract sign-ups and execute SMS marketing for higher conversions. 

Sender has a ton of affordable price points and capabilities even in their free account. With the Free Forever plan, you can send up to 15,000 emails every month to 2,500 contacts at no cost, with premium features such as segmentation and automation bundled together.

11. Constant Contact

Price: $9.99 a month

Do you run a non-profit? If so, this is the newsletter tool specifically for you. Constant Contact is an email newsletter builder that offers specific templates to help nonprofits raise funds and market their missions. With hundreds of templates to choose from, you’ll be sure to find a design based on the template you need and what type of nonprofit you run.

The great thing about Constant Contact is the business analytics. While using the platform, you can see when emails are sent, delivered, opened, and shared. You will also be able to see top trends and send personalized emails to your clients.

Constant Contact also connects with your social media profiles, includes sign-up forms, and offers text message marketing tools. Contacting your non-profit subscribers via text message can be a great advantage because people check their emails but people check their text messages more. While Constant Contact is not free, its features more than make up for it. You can start at the basic subscription ($9.99/month) or upgrade to a pro account ($45/month) to unlock all the features.

12. Themezy

Price: Free

Download sixteen free HTML, CSS, and PSD customizable email templates on Themezy. You don’t have to submit an email address to get started, and there are various color schemes and layouts to meet your email list’s needs.

Plus, they’re designed to be responsive across devices to ensure that your subscribers can read your newsletter.

13. Drip

Price: Free

Drip offers email marketing and SMS marketing for ecommerce brands. Drip is a new platform that lets you set up email marketing campaigns through hundreds of customizable templates. Along with their email newsletter templates, Drip offers excellent customer relations management tools, data analytics, and trend trackers so thorough that you can see how many of your customers bought red shoes within the last year. As a result, you’ll be able to better market yourself through your campaigns. Drip also has integrations that you can connect to your WordPress website, so you can use Drip without being on Drip.

Drip lets you start with a free 14-day trial, and the cost of your subscription will depend on your number of contacts. For up to 500 contacts, it’s $19/month, and the price goes up from there. Drip is beneficial to creators and ecommerce businesses because of the various marketing and analytical tools it offers. From email marketing to SMS marketing campaigns, Drip lets you effectively engage your customers.

14. MailPortfolio by SliceJack

Price: Free

If your marketing strategy is heavily reliant on visuals, MailPortfolio is perfect for you. It’s a minimalist template with no added background distractions. While it was made for those looking to display personal creative portfolios, it’s also suitable for larger businesses and organizations.

The template has been tested with Litmus, is responsive, and works perfectly on all email clients. (Note: older versions of Outlook may not render all of the fonts, and the Android Gmail app is not fully supported.)

15. Material Design by Paul Goddard

Price: Free

This template is based on Google’s Material Design and has a robotic-retro feel. It is perfect for sending out multi-purpose newsletters featuring new products, events, and other announcements at the same time. This theme isn’t made for a specific industry, but the template is well-fitting for businesses looking for a timeless, technological look.

Material Design has been tested on Litmus, is compatible with all major ESPs, and is responsive. While its main attraction is its unique design, this theme download also includes customizable HTML files.

16. Briar by SliceJack

Price: Free

Briar is the perfect newsletter template for marketers looking for a fluid, minimalist design featuring images and text that don’t overshadow each other. It’s perfect for sending out regular newsletters, and you can customize the Inline CSS files.

The template has been tested with Litmus and works with all major email service providers (ESPs). However, some older versions of Outlook may not render all Google fonts. Also, the Android Gmail app is not fully supported.

17. EmailOctopus

Price: Free

EmailOctopus is a marketing service that launched a series of 11 templates that can be used to create newsletters for a variety of industries. Whether you’re marketing for a fashion brand or a medical supply company, one of the templates will fit your needs.

The templates have the “typical” newsletter look, but allow you to add product announcements, feature stories, and CTAs wherever you’d like. All of the templates can be modified through any WYSIWYG editor, and the downloads include the HTML files.

These templates have been tested through Litmus across all major ESPs and are responsive to all screen sizes.

1. Feshto by Liramail

Price: $29-25/template

Feshto is an email bundle that helps ecommerce companies feature products in their newsletters and share testimonials from satisfied customers. It comes with a weekly digest module, which is their version of a newsletter.

The module features a chic, clean design that ensures your images and copy are not distracting from the other. You can choose from their various layouts, such as “Weekly Digest,” “City Story,” and “Blog Article.”

As mentioned, these templates are perfect for product features and testimonials from satisfied customers. While the default themes are black and white, you can make edits in your preferred WYSIWYG editor.

Feshto’s templates are responsive and compatible with all major ESPs.

2. Bee

Price: Free – $15

Bee is an HTML template tool with thousands of free templates for any professional to use. With a variety of categories, Bee gives you a template for everything, but it also has tools that allow you to build your own email newsletters. The drag-and-drop feature allows you to pick and choose the elements that best suit your personal needs. The versatility also allows you to customize every email you send, then download it as an HTML so you can send your emails to anyone from anywhere. Another great advantage of Bee is that it allows you to save various content from different emails that can then be used in other templates. No need to start from scratch.

With Bee, you do have a 14-day free trial and plenty of free templates to use if you do not want to sign up for an account. If you would like an account, Bee offers different versions of their Pro account depending on the field you are in. For instance, they have Pro Freelancers, Pro Team, Pro Agency, Pro Enterprise, and Pro Nonprofit; Pro Freelancer starts at $15 a month.

3. ThemeForest

Price: $6-23/template

ThemeForest is an awesome resource for email templates if you have some budget to spend. Their library has over 460 newsletter templates in all different colors, styles, and themes. The templates are rated using a four-star system, and you can filter by rating, price, recency, and popularity.

Here’s one example from its library:

Market – Responsive Newsletter with Template Builder ($19)

This template has eight prebuilt layouts, 24 color variations, 24 full-layered PSD files, and more. Plus, it’s supported by all major email clients.

4. HubSpot Email Copy Templates

Price: Free

If you’re looking for written templates you can input into your email tool, these are the templates for you.

HubSpot offers free email templates that empower you to market and sell your business over email without writing a single line from scratch. These free email template downloads save you time and money.

The templates can be downloaded right to your computer and can be used by any type of business.

5. Mailchimp

Price: Free – $200 per month

Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform that helps small and large businesses scale and grow their business through marketing techniques and automations. Mailchimp has a variety of pre-made templates in their email newsletter tool. Aside from giving you over 100 designs to choose from, Mailchimp also gives you the option to download their Email Blueprints, which allows you to customize HTML templates.

6. ActiveCampaign

Price: Free – $258 a month

ActiveCampaign is a full-service email provider that offers email marketing automation and CRM tools. Its library of newsletter templates allow you to create conversion-optimized, visually impactful emails without touching a single line of code.

ActiveCampaign is free, but you will need to sign up for an account to use and view their email templates. You can use the majority of their templates for free, but if you want some customization, you’ll want to upgrade to a paid account.

7. Canva

Price: Free – 20.00 per month

Canva is an online graphics software that provides free templates for a multitude of things like Instagram posts, resumes, and email newsletters. Canva is a great tool because you can find free templates for specific niches like fashion, tech, culinary, and many more. While there is a paid tier, many of the premade templates are free, and you can add your own customizations without having to pay extra.

8. Adobe Express

Price: Single Application: $33.99 a month | Full Bundle: $79.99 a month

Adobe Express, formerly known as Adobe Spark, is another browser-based graphic design tool that has a multitude of templates and functions to help any company create a newsletter. Similar to Canva, Adobe offers premade templates based on industry categories like photography, architecture, and fashion. To access the templates, you must sign up for an account with Adobe.

9. CakeMail

Price: Free – $200.00 per month

CakeMail is an email marketing tool that includes user-friendly automation tools and allows you to create customizable emails for any person, occasion, and niche. CakeMail offers over 50 free editable email templates that are divided into smaller niche categories. One of the advantages of CakeMail is that you do not have to sign up to use the email templates provided, but if you would like to see how your email campaigns are performing, you can register for an account.

10. MJML

Price: Free

MJML is an HTML-based email designer. They have a wide variety of free templates that are customized for the type of email marketing your company is trying to do, including newsletters, promotions, and seasonal emails. Once you find a template that you like, MJML allows you to see the template and the HTML code in real-time as you edit it. Because MJML is HTML-based, you will have to copy your code and transfer it to the HTML editor in an email marketing service to use the template.

11. TemplateMonster

Price: Varies

TemplateMonster offers a variety of email newsletter templates, such as the Useful Notifications newsletter template pictured below, all of which are available for relatively low prices. Their templates are clean, customizable, and easy to use, and they’re compatible with most major email clients, such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail.

Additionally, the templates come with built-in responsive layouts for screen adaptability, like the ones on the mobile phone pictured below, and PSD sources for a litany of customization options.

12. Microsoft Office Templates

Price: Free & Paid Email Templates

Microsoft Office has a variety of tools, including extensive templates that can be used for Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You can further narrow down your templates depending on the category of your business. While Microsoft does offer free templates, they are limited. For use of the paid templates, you will have to download Microsoft 365 to use them.

Get Started on Your Email Marketing Newsletter

Ready to draft your next email newsletter campaign? Download one of the excellent newsletter templates from the template galleries and landing pages above. Then, grab your free guide below for creating an email newsletter your audience will want to engage with.

Editor’s Note: The post was originally published in December 2018 but was updated for comprehensiveness in December 2019.

If you’re anything like me, a solid portion of your day is sifting through your inbox, sending emails to junk, and responding to time-sensitive emails.

Need some help managing it? We’ve got free email hacks that will help you better manage your inbox so you can focus on the important stuff.

11 Free Email Hacks to Step Up Your Productivity

1. Turn off your notifications or pause emails.

Other than social media, email is where most people get flooded with notifications. This can be one of the biggest blockers to productivity since your attention is being pulled elsewhere.

Solution? Simply turn off email notifications to focus on your more pressing tasks. Better yet, you can pause incoming emails from even showing up in your inbox – if your email provider allows it.

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Outlook users can pause notifications through the Boomerang app and unpause when they’re ready to tackle them.

2. Block out times for batch email review.

Emails can come at all hours of the day and if you’re working with a team asynchronous, there are no off-hours.

So, instead of constantly checking your emails and responding to each one as it comes, set aside blocks of time during your day to review them.

This can be early morning, late afternoon, or whenever when you expect to have some downtime.

Pro-tip: Once you decide on this time block, add it to your calendar to avoid conflicts with other work activities.

3. Create templates.

You know how websites have FAQ sections? In our professional careers, we often communicate the same thing over and over to our clients, colleagues, and stakeholders.

To make this a bit easier, create templates to avoid starting from scratch every time you draft an email.

Your templates will be based on the questions you get most often, the phrases you use the most, and the messages you share the most. Things like:

Cold emails
Redirections to other teams
Weekly team notifications
OOO message

To set this up in Gmail, navigate to your settings, click on the Advanced tab, and click on “Enable” next to the Templates section.

4. Create folders.

Organization is the ultimate key to productivity and emails often fall on the back burner. The irony is they tend to hold some of the most important information we use in our day-to-day.

Creating folders within your email will not only make things easier to find but also more manageable when prioritizing your emails.

For instance, you can create categories by:

Priority (e.g. Action required, informational)
Function (e.g. HR, Finance, Insurance)
Teams (e.g. Leadership, direct reports, colleagues, etc)

5. Filter your incoming emails.

Why sort through emails when you can have your email provider do it for you automatically?

The filter feature – available through most email providers – allows you to sort, delete, flag, and forward emails.

You can do so using the following information:

Email addresses
Words and/or phrases
Subject line
Attachment

Once you create the filter, you designate the automated follow-up action.

Use cases include adding emails from leadership to a specific folder, deleting junk mail, marking reminders as read.

6. Use an email scheduler.

Gone are the days of waking up at 6 a.m. just to send an email you couldn’t send at 10 p.m. last night when you drafted it.

Some email providers allow you to schedule a date and time to send your email so you can set it and forget it – worry-free.

If your provider doesn’t have this feature, consider an extension like Boomerang, which you can integrate with your email to schedule emails.

7. Enable the “unsend” feature.

We all do it: Send an email then do the obligatory re-read of the email you already re-read five times before sending JUST in case – even though you can’t do anything about it. Until now.

Gmail and other email providers now allow you to unsend an email for a few seconds after you’ve clicked “Send,” just in case you spotted a mistake or simply changed your mind.

Pro-tip: Only add the recipients once your email is ready to go – this way, you’ll never send an unfinished email again.

8. Learn shortcuts.

Shortcuts allow you to complete your email tasks quickly without skipping a beat.

With email shortcuts, you can:

Compose new emails.
Add cc and bcc recipients.
Insert links.
Open spelling suggestions.
Format text with bold, italic, underline, indents, and alignments.
Archive emails

And that’s just to name a few. If there’s a feature you use often, there’s likely a shortcut to get you there with just one click or keystroke.

Of course, shortcuts will vary by provider and device. So before you start using them, make sure you’re using the right ones.

9. Unsubscribe.

If your inbox is anything like mine, there are a few thousand emails from brands you never interact with.

While deleting these emails is time-consuming, you can start decluttering your inbox by unsubscribing from emails you never read. Unfortunately, not all brands have disengagement workflows that will automatically remove you from a reading list.

In this case, you’ll have to manually unsubscribe yourself. Trust me, your future self will thank you.

10. Get a grammar browser extension.

Most of us draft emails directly from the “New Draft” box. However, that strategy comes with some risks – namely misspelling or awkward phrasing.

Apps like Grammarly will serve as proofreader, catching your mistakes as soon as you make them. Grammarly also has neat features that will tell you the tone of your message and suggest alternative phrases.

With this tool, you never have to worry about how you sound or if there’s a hidden typo. It takes all of the guesswork out so you can just focus on pressing “Send.”

11. Prioritize your emails.

If you’re still struggling with managing the large volume of emails you’re receiving, try following this popular rule: If the email requires a response that will take two minutes or fewer, respond immediately.

If it will take longer, save it for later. This strategy is designed to help you get rid of the clutter without getting overwhelmed.

There you have it – free email hacks that will help you get your inbox under control and maximize your productivity.

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

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Product marketing is essential, even if you only sell one or two products at your organization.

But what is product marketing? How do you market a product, and how does that differ from conventional marketing strategies? Let’s find out.

What makes product marketing unique? How is it different from conventional marketing? Let’s unpack the differences.

Product Marketing vs. Conventional Marketing

Product marketing is strategic whereas conventional marketing is all-encompassing.

Product marketing is considered a component of conventional marketing. In fact, if you look at the seven Ps of marketing, you’ll see product marketing is one of the most important aspects of a business’s marketing efforts.

Product marketing is about understanding a specific product’s audience deeply and developing that product’s positioning and messaging to appeal to that audience. It covers the launch and execution side of a product in addition to the marketing strategy for the product — which is why the work of a product marketer lies at the center of a business’s marketing, sales, and product teams.

Conventional marketing is focused on broader topics under the umbrella of marketing, such as lead generation, SEO, and anything related to acquiring and converting new leads and customers. It’s about promoting the company and brand as a whole, including the products sold. These marketers make sure there’s a consistent, on-brand message behind all of the company’s content.

To understand it better, let’s look at product marketing goals.

Product Marketing Goals

Product marketing is focused on driving demand for and adoption of a product among existing customers. It’s focused on the steps people take to purchase your product so product marketers can build campaigns to support this work.

Usually, product marketing is executed with several goals in mind:

1. Understand your customers better.

When you implement a product marketing strategy, your target audience can see the value of having that specific product in their lives. Understanding how many customers gravitate to your product lets you conduct customer research.

2. Target your buyer personas effectively.

Alongside understanding your customers, you can figure out the type of buyer persona to target in the future. Knowing the exact needs of your target can help you when innovating your product to better suit their needs.

3. Learn about your competitors (products and marketing tactics).

When you market your product, you can compare your strategy and results to your competitors. What features and benefits of their products make a statement within the market? What ideas haven’t they explored? What does their product offer that yours doesn’t? You can use this research to your advantage when crafting your product marketing strategy.

4. Ensure the marketing, product, and sales teams are all on the same page.

Making your product offering abundantly clear for buyers and employees is mutually beneficial. Every team working together in your business can better understand the product’s purpose and better communicate that in their operations.

5. Position the product appropriately in the market.

In product marketing, you want your product, brand image, and tone consistent and evoke the right feelings intended for your audience. When you brainstorm your brand positioning, some questions to consider are:

Is this product suitable for today’s market?

How is this product different from our competitors’?

Can we further differentiate this product from our competitors’ offerings?

Are there any products we’ve sold in the past that we wouldn’t market or sell again? If so, why not?

6. Boost revenue and improve sales.

There are also questions you, as a product marketer, will have to ask yourself and reflect on regregardyour product. Asking yourself these questions will help you ensure your product is successful among customers.

Is this product suitable for today’s market?

Is this product appropriate for our customers today?

How is this product unique from similar productstof our competitors?

Is there a way to further differentiate this product from our competitors? 

Are there any products we’ve sold in the past that we wouldn’t market or sell ever again now that we look back? If so, why not?

As you can see, product marketing requires you to look at your products strategically to ensure they’re successful among customers in your current market.

Why is product marketing essential?

Product marketing is a critical part of any business’s marketing strategy. Without it, your product won’t achieve its maximum potential among your target audience.

To illustrate its importance, let’s look at an example of successful product marketing. During the 1950s, Volkswagen sold a bus. Although now considered a classic vehicle, the bus remains an icon for the car company decades later.

The cool part? Volkswagen announced their new VW Bus — it’s electric and features sleek, modern styling. Volkswagen’s marketing for the vehicle is eye-catching, unique, and fun, and it complements the original “hippie” vibe the company was once known for.

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Volkswagen also released a TV commercial for the bus that’s clever, minimalist, and on-brand. It introduces the new vehicle with the song The Sound of Silence playing in the background (hint: electric cars are silent) and ends with a short message on the screen for viewers to read: “Introducing a new era of electric driving.”

This sentiment touches on the fact Volkswagen is contributing to society’s interest in electric, eco-friendly vehicles. It also relates to this being a new era for the bus.

This is why product marketing is important: Because it highlights not the company but the product itself, ensuring longevity in the market.

But who works on this type of marketing? Who helps create content that excites consumers about new and updated products, like the Volkswagen bus? Who encourages consumers to buy? Product marketers.

Now, let’s take a look at the specific responsibilities that product marketers (or product marketing managers) face in their typical day.

Your responsibilities as a product marketer may vary slightly based on industry, company, products, and company size and resources. If you’re working for a startup, you may be a product marketer who also helps create the content the broader marketing team produces due to limited resources and budget. As the business grows, you may move onto a team whose sole job is product marketing.

Let’s take a look at six common product marketing responsibilities.

1. Identify the buyer personas and target audience for your product.

You must identify the buyer personas and audience for your product so you can target customers in a convincing way that makes them want to purchase. This will allow you to tailor your product and its features to solve your audience’s challenges.

Pro tip: Use templates to create buyer personas for your business. A tangible outline of whom you’re catering to can help align different teams in your business and better position your product in the marketplace.

2. Successfully create, manage and carry out your product marketing strategy.

A product marketing strategy (which we’ll review shortly) allows you to create, build, and execute content and campaigns — this supports the steps that will lead your buyer personas and customers to make a purchase.

3. Work with and enable sales to attract customers for your new product.

As a product marketer, you have to mamusta direct relationship with sales. You’ll work with sales to identify and attract the right customers for the product at hand and provide sales enablement materials to reps to ensure they understand the product inside and out, along with its features.

This way, you and your teams are on the same page in termregarding being shared with customers, allowing you to provide a consistent, on-brand experience for anyone who comes in contact with the product.

4. Determine your product’s positioning in the market.

One of the most important parts of your job is determining the product’s positioning in the market. Think about this process in terms of storytelling — your positioning requires you to create and tell the story of your product.

As a product marketer, you’ll work with the broader marketing team and the product team to tell this story by answering critical questions like:

Why was this product made?

Whom is this product made for?

What challenges does this product resolve?

What makes this product unique?

5. Ensure your product meets the needs of your target audience.

You must also make sure your product meets the needs of your customers and target audience. Through the research to determine your buyer persona and target audience, you should have uncovered the pain points and challenges you’re working to solve with your product.

If your product doesn’t meet thyour customers’ needsthey’ll have no reason to make the purchase or choose your product over your competitor’s.

6. Keep your product relevant over time.

Your product needs to stay relevant over time. As needs, expectations, and challenges change and evolve, it’s your job to ensure your product marketing strategy and the products themselves remain relevant among customers.

This means you may have to manage slight changes in your product marketing strategy (which we’ll discuss next) or updates and modifications to the product itself (you’ll likely work with the product team, which creates the effect, to do this).

7. Guide marketing strategies for new products.

In product marketing, you’ll need to pay close attention to what worked in your strategy and what didn’t so you can better plan marketing strategies for new and future products. Pay attention to where your audience is and what they are looking for. What channels got the most traction and led to more converted leads?

All this information and more should be applied to marketing strategies for new products.

Now, let’s take a look at five steps that can help you optimize your product marketing strategy.

1. Define your product’s target audience and buyer personas.

As a product marketer, one of the main roles you have is to define a specific target audience and create buyer personas for the product being sold (different products will likely have different target audiences). This is the first step to marketing your product.

By understanding your customers and their needs, challenges, and pain points, you’ll be able to end that all aspects of your product marketing strategy (as in the rest of the steps we’ll define below) are tailored to that target customer and persona. This way, the product and the marketing content created for the product will resonate with your audience.

2. Determine the positioning and messaging to set your product apart.

After your customer research and learning about your audience, you’ll have identified their needs, challenges, and pain points. From here, you can think about how to highlight the ways your product resolves those challenges for your customers.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve differentiated yourself from your competitors. After all, they are your competitors because they solve your customers’ needs in a similar way to your company.

The key to setting your product apart is positioning (which we touched on earlier) and messaging. Posi—positioningessaging answers key questions your customers might have about your product and what makes it unique and th,en turns those answers into the main points behind your product’s marketing strategy.

It’s your job as the product marketer to ensure your customers and audience know the answers to these questions and don’t have to dig around for (or make assumptions about) them.

Examples of questions you’ll need to answer to develop your product’s positioning and messaging include the following:

What specifically makes our product unique?

Why is our product better than our competitors’?

Why are our product’s features ideal for our target audience?

What will our fromers get out of our product that they cannot get from our competitors’ products?

Why should our customers trust and invest in us and our product?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can compile these responses into one, impactful and shareable statement that captures your positioning and messaging To do this, follow these steps:

Turn the answers to the positioning and messaging questions into an elevator pitch.

Use action words to excite your customers.

Ensure the tone of your statement captures the style of your brand.

Focus on the benefit of your product as a whole (not just one specific feature).

Pro Tip: As product marketers, you should ensure the sales, product, and (the broader) marketing teams are also aware of your positioning and messaging around the product so they, too, can communicate the same information to prospects and current customers.

This allows you to ensure the entire company is consistent in the content and information they share about your product. Additionally, you can provide this information to your support team if you think it’s necessary, as they may be fielding support calls and working with your customers who’ve already invested in the product.

3. Set goals for your product.

Next, you’ll want to set goals for your product. These will vary based on your specific product, the type of company you work for, your overall marketing goals, and more — your goals will be specific to your business and situation. However, let’s review some common goals product marketers aim to achieve:

Increase revenue

Engage with customers

Improve market share

Gain customers from competitors

Boost brand recognition

Pro Tip: Feel free to combine several goals or choose one to focus on — every company and product will have different plans. The key is ensuring you view and set these targets in the SMART goal format, meaning they’re specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

Use a free template to help you create and achieve your SMART goals.

4. Price your product.

As a product marketer, you’ll also have to contribute to the discussion of the price of your product. Depending on your company, you might work with other teams on this part of the strategy, or it might be a job just for you and your fellow product marketers. Either way, you can consider competitive vs. value-based pricing.

Competitive vs. Value-Based Product Pricing

Competitive pricing means you’re basing your product’s price off similar products your competitors sell. It’s ideal for companies that have an effect similar to one that several other companies sell.

Suppose you believe your unique features warrant a significantly higher price e of your competitors’. In that case, you might price your product above the other similar products on the market. An excellent way to evaluate the fairness of the pricing of all of your competitors is by studying financial reports and industry trends.

Value-based pricing allows you to maximize your profit, although it’s a bit more time-consuming to establish in comparison to competitive pricing. It’s ideal for companies selling a product with very few competitors on the market or one with exceptionally new and unique features.

Value-based pricing quantifies your item’s value in a way your customer can relate to their profitability. It allows you to base your product’s price on its value for your customer rather than whatever the market, industry trends, and your competitors say.

5. Launch your product.

Now it’s time for the most impoessentialt of your role as a product marketer — not to mention, the most exciting: the launch of the product you’ve been marketing.

There are two main parts to the launch to focus on as a product marketer: the internal launch (what goes on within your company upon product launch) and the external launch (what goes on outside of your company, with customers and audience members, upon product launch).

Internal Aspects of a Product Launch

As previously stated, your job as a product marketer entails ensuring the entire organization is on the same page about your product. This way, your customers only receive consistent and accurate details about the product.

The marketing, product, and sales teams at your company should be aware of the following information:

The product’s benefits

Any available product demo information

Sales training opportunities on your product and details about how it’s used

What the positioning and messaging looks like

Who your buyer personas, and ideal customers are

What the goals for your product include

What your product’s features are

The pricing of your product

How your product is being launched to customers

Now, you might be wondering how to provide this information to marketing, product, and sales. Which channels are ideal for sharing these details with your fellow employees?

Here are a few examples of ways to do this:

Sales enablement kit (ideal for sales)

Presentation (ideal for the broader marketing department and product)

Knowledge base (ideal for support)

External Aspects of a Product Launch

Externally, there are many ways to market your product launch so your current base of customers, prospects, and target audience learn about whatever it is you’re selling.

First, determine where you’re going to focus your product marketing efforts. Here are some examples of channels and places to do this (you might choose several of these or just one to focus on depending on your needs, goals, and resources).

Social media

In-store

Product launch event

Blog

Website landing page

Exclusive product preview (prior to the official launch)

Promotional event/ campaign (in-person and/ or online)

On whatever channel you choose to focus your product launch marketing efforts, you should include relevant product information (focused on your positioning and messaging) so prospects and customers can learn all about your product and why they need it. This includes your product’s features, what makes it unique, pricing, demos for customers, training for customers, and any other materials you’ve created and want to share.

Congrats! You’ve just worked through the steps to marketing a product. Remember, this process is one that should be thought about and updated as your products change and evolve so they remain relevant among your customers. (This shouldn’t be an issue as long as you have a member of your team focused on product marketing, considering it’s one of their main responsibilities.)

Now that you know how to create a product marketing strategy, how do you market a product across your channels? Let’s take a look.

1. Create a product marketing deck for other marketing teams.

Non-product marketers — i.e, social media marketers and content marketers — won’t have the full know-how on your product, impeding them from marketing it properly on customer-facing channels. As a product marketer, your job isn’t necessarily to execute marketing campaigns or write content. Instead, your job is to enable specialized teams — such as your social media and content team — to market your company’s products effectively.

The first step is to provide a deck, presentation, or document that outlines your product marketing strategy to other marketers. That way, when it’s time to execute on a strategy, they know the positioning they are aiming for, the wording they are to use, and the personas they are targeting.

2. Publish product-focused content on your blog.

A blog is primarily a place to attract inbound leads. Rather than trying to hammer them with information about your product, you might write content that helps them solve an issue instead, and then offer them a free guide or ebook to help them further.

But did you know that your team can publish content that attracts inbound leads and encourages purchases and sign-ups? At HubSpot, we call this product-focused content. It’s just as helpful as our other content, but with a critical difference: It has a call-to-action to try one of HubSpot’s products.

For instance, our blog post, What is a CMS and Why Should You Care?, aims to inform readers about content management systems, but then includes a call-to-action to try CMS Hub.

While the blog post is still informative and not overtly promotional, it still promotes one of our products. In the same way, you or your content team can write helpful content for your readers, help them the inbound way, and still encourage customers to try your offerings.

3. Insert product mentions naturally in your existing marketing collateral.

If you’ve had a longstanding marketing strategy prior to beginning product marketing, we have good news: You can retroactively market your product in existing collateral. For instance, if you already have an expansive library of blog posts, you can update them with information about your products (so long as the mention is natural).

Recent social media posts can also be candidates for an update, and your website content should also change to show your brand new product. Internal links from related pages can help drive traffic to your new product pages.

In addition, if your marketing team has created marketing offers in the past, you can have them update the offer and add a call-to-action to try your newest product — like in this example from HubSpot’s Case Study Templates offer, where we prompt users to try CMS Hub.

4. Try comarketing with a similar brand.

Comarketing is an excellent way to market your product to a related audience. You can do something as simple as filming a video together, writing a collaborative blog post, posting on each other’s social channels, or running a webinar.

Your product should be an excellent match for the other company’s customers. Ideally, both of your products can be used in conjunction and not compete directly. For instance, Ankor Software and HubSpot partnered for a webinar, but Ankor Software doesn’t compete with HubSpot CRM — it complements it.

5. Launch PPC ads and bid on your and competitors’ keywords.

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an essential product marketing tactic. While content and social media marketing can help you attract inbound leads, you can get the attention of even more potential customers by posting PPC ads on search engines.

When setting up your PPC campaign, bid not only on general product keywords (such as “crm software” or “[insert category]”), but on your own branded terms and your competition’s as well. That way, customers who are considering purchasing the same product from a competitor will consider you as an alternative.

6. Focus on the benefits, not the features.

Regardless of the channel or platform you’re promoting your product on, highlight the benefits customers will experience, not the features of your product. Not only can features feel jargony (like “Customizable attribution models” or “Automated contact workflows”), but they shroud the benefits and alienate non-technical customers.

Try, instead, leading with the benefits, such as “Know where exactly your leads come from” or “Save time by automating tasks using contact workflows.” For instance, on the Marketing Hub page, the features snapshot reads:

“Attract visitors through blogging, social media, ads, and more. Convert visitors into customers with landing pages, email, marketing automation, ABM, and more. Track ROI with revenue attribution reporting. All powered by the customer data in your CRM to enable personalization at scale.”

Using benefit-first language will engage customers and prompt them to try your products. The “how” of the benefit — such as features or functionalities — come after.

Let’s review four real-life examples of stellar product marketing.

1. Apple

Apple is a household name for leading technology products and software. Not only are its products gorgeously well-designed; it’s also super useful. But Apple’s product marketing doesn’t focus on the many product features — it markets the user benefits.

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Apple doesn’t simply list the impressive features of their products; the brand uses those features to tell consumers who they could be and how they could work if they have those products. Apple tells a narrative using its products and encourages people to buy in the process.

2. Billie

Billie is a women’s razor brand. In a highly competitive market, Billie has helped its products stand out. How? It established a sharp competitive edge (no pun intended) by doing what no razor brand had done before — show body hair in its advertising.

Not only did this advertising approach get Billie’s audience talking about the brand, but they also appreciated the brand’s accurate portrayal of women’s bodies and body hair. These differentiators were more than enough to set Billie apart from other razor brands and products.

3. Pepsi Cola

As a brand, Pepsi has positioned itself as one with youthful energy and excitement, and this can be seen consistently through its product marketing campaigns.

Pepsi’s customers are mainly aged between 13 and 35 years old with modern and active lifestyles, so it only makes sense to hire popular celebrities like Doja Cat for a commercial in a homecoming tailgate.

Through highly targeted positioning, repetitive advertising, and consistent branding, Pepsi has become a truly global household name and product.

4. MailChimp

There are dozens of email marketing tools on the market, but MailChimp hasn’t been fazed by competition. In fact, the company has risen above its competition by positioning itself as more than an email marketing tool: it’s an all-in-one marketing platform that helps businesses grow.

Like Apple, MailChimp primarily highlights its benefits for the end-user, not just its product features. A recent rebranding and site redesign further drives this narrative home.

Start Marketing Your Products

Product marketing is the process through which a company brings a product to market. Being a product marketer (or product marketing manager) means you’re at the center of your company’s marketing, sales, and product teams.

You’re an integral part to the success of your product, as you create and manage your product’s specific marketing strategy, but you also serve as a liaison between all three of these departments, ensuring everyone is on the same page with your product, it’s features, capabilities, and more. So, start developing your latest product’s marketing strategy to ensure it’s a success among your target audience and customers.

This post was originally published in February 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

In the business world, there are many forms of marketing that companies can implement to encourage customers to buy. Behavioral marketing is one robust method of gathering data to segment and target audiences.

Behavioral marketing can also help prevent consumers from being inundated with unwanted or unrelated ads. With this type of marketing, businesses focus on individual patterns of engagement to identify their customers’ specific needs.

In this post, you’ll learn what behavioral marketing is, its benefits, and examples of how businesses today utilize the strategy today.

Table of Contents

What is behavioral marketing?
Types of Behavioral Marketing
Behavioral Marketing Segmentation
Behavioral Marketing Examples
Behavioral Marketing Stats

This data is gathered through web analytics, cookies, search history, and other insights.

By finely segmenting audiences based on specific behaviors or user profiles, organizations can provide relevant content and offers rather than sending general messages.

Types of Behavioral Marketing

When it comes to behavioral marketing, there are many strategies that a company can implement.

While some tactics are effective, many can be combined to create a robust behavioral marketing plan. Let’s look at a few of the most popular types of tactics.

Product Suggestions

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Everyone has seen it happen when shopping online: You go to check out, and a window pops up showcasing items that are often bought with what’s in your cart. This suggested selling technique is an excellent way to engage potential customers in cross-selling or up-selling opportunities.

And, this tactic is incredibly effective. Cross-selling and category-penetration techniques like product suggestions can increase sales by 20% and profits by 30%, according to McKinsey & Company.

Product suggestions fall into behavioral marketing because an action (putting something into a cart) leads to targeted selling suggestions.

Remarketing

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For companies that utilize Google and Facebook for their marketing efforts, remarketing and retargeting strategies could be a unique approach to driving sales.

Remarketing strategies focus on taking pages or products a customer has viewed and showing them again once the potential buyer has left the website. This additional opportunity for consumers to see your products again could help drive traffic to your website or convert product sales.

Let’s say you visit the Asian Art Museum’s website to plan for your next San Francisco trip.

A few minutes later, you see an ad for the museum when you’re scrolling on Facebook. The ad you receive on Facebook is based on a past behavior (visiting a website). That’s remarketing in action.

Email Marketing

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Many organizations currently utilize email marketing as part of their marketing strategy, but few take advantage of the power of behavioral segmentation. One prime example of a behavioral segmentation email marketing strategy is abandoned cart emails.

By targeting customers who have items currently sitting in their cart for an extended period, your team can send content and emails specific to those products or categories.

Ultimately, this creates a more personalized experience for the consumer.

Demographic Targeting

Of all the behavioral marketing tactics, demographic targeting is one of the most widely used throughout the business world. Ultimately, organizations utilize criteria such as age, geographical location, education level, and even gender to create an image of a user.

Companies are even starting to look at other criteria, such as the website you visit, to help build a better vision of the type of products you might be interested in.

Marketing Automation

Data is precious to marketers, and as companies build out massive information caches, they can get better at generating and serving relevant content to consumers.

With marketing automation and machine learning technology, businesses can leverage their databases to forecast consumer behavior even months in advance.

However, data collection is a complicated and nuanced issue, and online privacy is becoming increasingly important as audience listening tools become more advanced.

Behavioral Marketing Segmentation

An important facet of the behavioral marketing method is thinly segmenting audiences. Behavioral segmentation might be determined differently depending on your organization’s marketing goals and ideal market.

However, there are a few common ways that companies split up markets, including:

Purchase behavior
Customer loyalty
Benefits sought
Customer journey stage
Engagement level
Occasion
Usage

1. Liquor Loot

Effective segmented email marketing isn’t always serious. Just take a look at this abandoned cart email from Liquor Loot. The email has a joking tone as it lists the benefits of buying a bottle of whiskey.

In fact, by providing fun and playful reasons why a potential customer should consider signing up for the Whiskey Loot Box, they are likely to get engagement from those who were on the website but didn’t complete the purchase.

2. Dyson

Known for its incredible lineup of vacuums and sweepers, Dyson has done a great job of utilizing behavioral marketing. In the image above, you can see an example of one of their abandoned cart emails.

By providing a recap of the items that a shopper was thinking about buying and making it easy for them to return to the purchase screen, Dyson can recapture lost sales before they are gone for good.

3. Nike

Nike has long been seen as a leader in the marketing space. Most people know of the company’s creative use of advertising campaigns featuring athletes to inspire millions of kids and adults to get up and be active.

However, Nike has also built out an incredible digital marketing strategy.

The remarketing ad featured above seems simple but can be a powerful tool to drive potential buyers shopping for shoes back to the Nike website.

4. Trivago

In today’s day and age, it’s common for consumers to visit a company’s website multiple times before deciding to purchase. This trend is especially true for businesses that focus on travel and transportation — which is why remarketing ads are essential.

Many people visit Trivago’s website to look up vacation destinations, but most people don’t often purchase the first time they look at a location.

So to ensure that the company stays top of mind, Trivago utilizes remarketing ads on Facebook and Google to showcase new updated offers for hotels in location spots a customer was previously searching.

5. Amazon

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Amazon has cornered the market on effective suggestive advertising. Throughout its website, you’ll see advertisements and sections that recommend products based on items you’ve purchased in the past, looked at, or have sitting in your cart.

You can also see what past buyers have purchased as a complement to the item in your cart.

By creating this level of personalization, Amazon has converted people from buying one item to doing most of their shopping through the online retailer.

Behavioral Marketing Stats

Looking for more proof of the power of behavioral marketing? These statistics demonstrate the growing popularity and benefits of behavioral marketing.

Organizations that leverage consumer behavior data to generate insights outperform their competitors by 85% in sales growth, according to Microsoft.

92% of consumers agree it is important that every interaction they have with a brand is excellent, whenever or wherever they happen in the decision to purchase from a brand or retailer.

49% of customers say they will likely become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience with a retail brand, according to Segment’s 2022 State of Personalization report.
Segment also reports 47% of companies personalize communication based on real-time behavior.

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Companies that grow faster drive 40% more of their revenue from personalization than their counterparts, according to 2021 research from McKinsey & Company.

McKinsey & Company also reports that 71% of consumers expect personalization. That includes product recommendations and targeted promotions.

Implementing Behavioral Marketing

Your customers expect a personalized experience. Behavioral marketing is one way you can get there. As you start your journey, remember the importance of transparency.

Customers should know what data is being collected and what your brand is using it for. With these considerations in mind, you’ll be well on your way to building an effective behavioral marketing strategy.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in Aug. 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.