Welcome to My Blog

Enterprise data modeling is nothing new. This tactic has been around for years, but it is still relevant to modern businesses today.

It can feel like an abstract, complex concept at times, but it is an important part of data governance, which helps manage and secure a company’s data assets.

In today’s world, data security is important, as is boosting productivity and efficiency with up-to-date applications and digital processes.

Enterprise data modeling can help ensure company apps and data are standardized, secure and in-line with the business mission.

What is an Enterprise Data Model?

Simply put, an enterprise data model is a visual representation, or graph, of an enterprise business’ data. It focuses on high-level, more abstract components as it tries to define and standardize an entire enterprise business’ data.

That means enterprise data modeling can be a massive task, but it will be important to help reduce duplicates, inaccuracies, and errors in a business’ data.

Why Do You Need an Enterprise Data Model?

There are numerous reasons why you might need an enterprise data model. Let’s dive into four, now. 

1. Improve Data Quality

Even small companies handle a lot of data on a daily basis. Over time, this data can quickly become irrelevant. Errors can slip in unnoticed, as can redundancies. The more issues in the data, the less accurate it becomes. When companies revisit data to inform decisions, data riddled with errors and redundancies can impact company sales and growth. By taking an overarching, comprehensive look at the data and defining it via enterprise data modeling, these issues can be addressed appropriately.

2. Defining All Data

Enterprise data modeling is a massive task, but that’s because it addresses all of an enterprise business’ data. A company can clean up data and align applications, so everything is cohesive and running smoothly, with an enterprise data model.

3. Managing Data

Similarly, managing data is easier when it is all addressed and defined in one graph. The enterprise data model will be more high-level, so deeper dives and more intensive data modeling will be needed to define the specifics. But overall, a company can better manage all the data assets it has when they are all placed in one data model.

4. Data Governance

Businesses rely heavily on technology, as do consumers. The more we move online, the more regulations that need to be in place to maintain privacy and security. Businesses that do not protect consumer data will find themselves in hot water. An enterprise data model can help identify a business’ data, better manage it, and ensure the business is complying with data and privacy laws.

Benefits of an Enterprise Data Model

The benefits of an enterprise data model are similar to the reasons a business needs it.

First, if a company wants to ensure high-quality data, it must remove redundancies and errors, and also apply any business-specific rules regarding the data. This can all be done through the extensive enterprise data modeling process.

An enterprise data model can also help a business be more cohesive and standardized in its processes by aligning the various applications and technologies the company uses daily.

Finally, a huge benefit to enterprise data modeling is its ability to help a business align its data with data governance. For example, GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, addresses how companies use customer data and gives more privacy and data control to the consumer.

When this regulation was implemented, companies needed to ensure that they were properly handling data. This regulation is still in effect, so newer businesses also must comply. Not complying with government data policies can lead to legal implications, which is what makes an enterprise data model so invaluable.

How to Create an Enterprise Data Model

The enterprise data model consists of a few smaller models. Starting with the enterprise subject area model, you’ll move through each of the following steps to create the enterprise data model.

1. Enterprise Subject Area Model

The ESAM is a high-level model that defines the main subject areas of a business as well as the relationships among these subject areas. For example, this could include Accounts, IT, Billing, Finance, Sales.

2. Enterprise Conceptual Model

Next, each ESAM is broken down further into enterprise conceptual models, which consist of major business concepts and how these concepts are related.

3. Enterprise Entity Model

Finally, the enterprise entity model includes the main interests for each business concept and details their relationships with one another.

Enterprise Data Model Example

The enterprise data model can be visualized as a pyramid. The entire pyramid is the enterprise data model, which, let’s say, is a retail store with a brick-and-mortar location and an online shop.

The top of the pyramid is the enterprise subject area model, with 10-20 business subjects defined. Those could include Stores, Staff, Warehouses, Products, Payments, and Customers, to name a few. Arrows would show how these subjects relate to one another.

Below that, the middle of the pyramid is a slightly more fleshed out enterprise conceptual model, which defines eight-15 main business concepts per subject area model. For example, Products could be broken down by ID and type, or Payments could be broken down by credit cards, debit cards, and cash.

Finally, the base of the pyramid is the enterprise entity model, which would identify the main areas of interest for each conceptual model.

Enterprise Data Model Tools

Now that you have a better understanding of enterprise data modeling, you might be ready to dive into this project. These data model tools will help make this process less taxing on your team.

1. Lucidchart

Teams can work together on Lucidchart to create collaborative diagrams and data models. It meets international privacy and security standards, making it a safe option.

Drag-and-drop components allow team members to build data models with ease, and each person can select portions of the diagram and leave feedback comments. You can test it out for free, and prices range depending on business size.

2. Erwin Data Modeler

The Erwin Data Modeler is specifically tailored to visualizing and standardizing enterprise data assets.

All data, whether from a data warehouse or in the cloud, can be handled in one interface, and automated models can help reduce redundancies and errors to improve data quality. Pricing varies by business needs, but you can explore this modeling tool with a free trial before committing.

3. Diagrams.net

Diagrams.net (formerly draw.io) is a free data modeling tool that allows you to make flowcharts and graphs for your enterprise data. Drag-and-drop features make it easy to place shapes, lines and arrows exactly where you’d like on the gridded, blank diagram.

You can also draw free-hand shapes. Newly added in February 21, diagrams.net also offers data governance options, and you can store all data models on your enterprise-level storage platforms, like Dropbox or Google Drive.

4. ER/Studio

Ideal for enterprise businesses, ER/Studio handles company data with ease. This enterprise data modeling software allows for forward or reverse engineering, source and target mapping, naming standards and more. You can model data from various sources and define and enforce standards within this tool. This is a paid tool, and prices vary depending on needs; you can also request a demo.

5. Ab Initio

Another popular tool for enterprise businesses, Ab Initio incorporates self-service and automation into your data models to improve efficiency. Users can model and catalog data securely, complying with data governance. The tool will even generate automated operational data quality rules for data processing. Licensing rates vary.

Improve Data Management With an Enterprise Data Model

Sure, enterprise data models can be intimidating. But they are more important than ever in our data-driven world. Enterprise data modeling can help standardize data assets for a business and better manage and secure these assets.

Most importantly, an enterprise data model can help a company avoid legal troubles by complying with data governance. By using one of many tools for data modeling, this arduous but crucial task can be made simpler and more collaborative.

Troubleshooting an HTTP 500 internal server error is like solving a mystery.

You don’t know what exactly happened or why it happened — all you know is that something’s wrong and you need to fix it.

To guide you through the hassle of troubleshooting the dreaded HTTP 500 internal server error, let’s go over what it exactly means and its most common causes and solutions.

Here’s what your 500 error page might look like in your browser:

How to Fix a 500 Internal Server Error

Unlike other server-side errors like a 502 code or a 503 code, a 500 internal server error is it doesn’t immediately tell you what the problem is, nor does it tell you how to fix it. If the error persists for too long on your site, it could even negatively impact your SEO.

So, let’s dive into a few potential causes of the error. Then, we’ll present some solutions so you can try to fix the issue.

Potential Causes of a 500 Internal Server Error

A 500 internal server error is, as the name implies, a general problem with the website’s server. More than likely, this means there’s an issue or temporary glitch with the website’s programming.

Some potential causes of a 500 internal server error include:

• Corrupted or broken .htaccess file
• A permissions error
• Faulty third-party plugins or themes
• The PHP memory limit being exceeded

Fortunately, there are a few effective solutions for fixing most of these problems.

If You’re Trying to Load a Page with a 500 Internal Server Error:

1. Refresh the page.

This might seem obvious, but if it’s a temporary loading issue, you might find success if you refresh the page. Before trying anything else in this list, reload the page and see what happens.

2. Come back later.

Since the error is on the server side, I’m willing to bet the website owners are working as quickly as possible to resolve the issue. Give it a few minutes or up to an hour or so, and then reload the URL and see if the development team has fixed the issue.

3. Delete your browser’s cookies.

If clearing the browser history doesn’t work, you might try deleting your browser’s cookies. If the cookies are associated with the error-prone webpage, deleting the cookies might help reload the page.

4. Paste your URL into the website “Down for Everyone or Just Me.”

Head to downforeveryoneorjustme.com and paste in the URL where you’re seeing the internal server error. You’ll either be told that the website is only down for you, or that the website is down for everyone.

If it’s a problem with your server, this should help assuage any concerns that it’s an issue with your own computer.

If the 500 Internal Server Error is on Your Own Website:

1. Deactivate a plugin or theme.

Newly activated software, add-ons, or third-party scripts might be conflicting with your current server configuration. To determine this, try (carefully) deactivating or uninstalling your software add-ons one at a time to identify what exactly is causing the internal server error.

If you run a WordPress website, this is easy to do with plugins. From your dashboard, choose Plugins > Installed Plugins, then deactivate the first plugin. If the error resolves, you know this plugin is part of the issue. Reactivate the first plugin, then repeat this deactivate-reactivate process one at a time for all plugins to determine which ones are causing your error.

You might find that having fewer active plugins on your site helps things run more smoothly.

Alternatively, if you just upgraded your software, your current plugins or themes might not be compatible with the new upgrade. Deactivating plugins or themes one at a time until the error disappears is the best way to find the root cause of your problem.

2. Use a plugin like WP Debugging to identify the issue.

If your site is powered by WordPress and you’re comfortable with WordPress debugging processes, consider installing a plugin to help you identify the issue with your server.

The debug plugin WP Debugging, for instance, helps you figure out exactly what’s wrong with your site, which will result in a speedier fix.

Image Source

3. Ensure your PHP setup is configured correctly.

If the issue is related to a PHP timeout, consider creating timeout rules or error handling in your script to resolve the issue. Here’s a full list of php.ini directives to configure your PHP setup.

Additionally, wrong permissions on a file or folder that has a script, like a PHP or CGI script, won’t allow the script to run. Check your permissions and make sure you set them correctly on your server.

4. Check the code for your site’s .htaccess file.

Incorrect coding or improper structure with your .htaccess file could be the reason you’re seeing the 500 internal error. The .htaccess file helps you manage how long resources should be stored in a browser’s cache. Try editing the file if you’re seeing a 500 internal server error.

To locate your .htaccess file, access your website files through a file manager like cPanel or via FTP/SFTP. The file will probably be located in your public_html directory. There’s a good chance your server will hide this file from view by default and you’ll need to toggle hidden files on to see it.

Image Source

Coding errors in .htaccess and custom scripts can also cause an HTTP 500 internal server error.

5. Ensure your new software is installed correctly.

Finally, check to see if your recently installed or upgraded software actually failed to install or upgrade. To refresh your software, check the vendor’s website for instructions.

Last Resort: Ask a Server Administrator for Help

If troubleshooting popular software problems or debugging server-side scripts doesn’t fix your HTTP 500 internal server error, you should read about the most common causes for this type of issue in your server’s documentation — an HTTP 500 internal server error can occur in different operating systems for a multitude of reasons.

You can also ask your service provider to access your error logs and find evidence for the root cause of your problem.

Internal server errors are irritating because they’re unhelpful — it’s basically the web server’s way of saying, “Eh, I’m not sure.” Hopefully, one of the above steps will resolve the problem so you can get back to life as usual.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

If your website is like a house, then your website’s URL is like that house’s address. It defines where your website lives online, similar to how your home address determines where you live in a neighborhood, helping your visitors easily find your site. URLs also help Google understand what your website’s pages are about.

There are technically five elements of a URL, and they’re discreetly important for optimizing your site’s user experience (UX) and SEO. To help you develop a concrete understanding of every part of a URL, let’s explore each of them in detail.

Below is an illustration of the different parts of a URL. 

Let’s break down this URL structure below. 

URL Structure

Scheme

The scheme tells web servers which protocol to use when it accesses a page on your website.

Nowadays, HTTPS — which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure — is the most common scheme. It tells your web browser to encrypt any information you enter onto the page, like your passwords or credit card information, so cybercriminals can’t access it. This security protocol protects your website visitors and implementing it will help your site rank better on Google. That’s why implementing SSL is a must-do on any technical SEO guide. 

Other schemes you might see are mailto://, which can open your computer’s default email service provider to help you draft an email to the email address you entered in the URL, and ftp://, which is a standard protocol for transferring computer files between a client and server on a computer network.

Subdomain

If your website is like a house, your subdomains are like specific rooms in that house. A subdomain in a URL indicates which particular page of your website the web browser should serve up. For instance, subdomains like “blog” or “offers” will provide your website’s blog page or offers page.

Subdomains also bucket your website into its main content categories and shows Google and your visitors that there’s more information on your site than just a homepage.

Second-level Domain

Your second-level domain (SLD) is the name of your website. It helps people know they’re visiting a certain brand’s site. For instance, people who visit “mlb.com” know they’re on Major League Baseball’s website, without needing any more information.

Top-level Domain

The top-level domain (TLD) specifies what type of entity your organization registers as on the internet.

For example, “.com” is intended for commercial entities in the United States, so a lot of American businesses register with a top-level domain of “.com”. Similarly “.edu” is intended for academic institutions in the United States, so a lot of American colleges and universities register with a top-level domain of “.edu”.

Subdirectory

A subdirectory — also known as a subfolder — helps people as well as
web crawlers understand which particular section of a webpage they’re on. 

For instance, if you own an online store that sells t-shirts, hats, and mugs, one of your website’s URLs could look like “https://shop.yourstore.com/hats”. Notice that the subdomain is “shop” and the subdirectory is “hats.” That means this URL would serve up the “Hats” page, which is a subfolder of the “Shop” page. T-shirts and mugs would be other subfolders of this page.

URL Structure: Subtle Yet Essential

Even though URLs might seem simple and frivolous, they’re actually important for your website’s UX and SEO. And now that you understand the anatomy of a URL, check out the blog posts below to learn more about technical SEO.

A great way to share more about your background is to have a prepared document, like a professional bio.

A professional bio can be shared with prospective employers, shared with your colleagues, included in your social media profiles, used for speaking engagement announcements, or used as an author bio on a blog.

Writing about your professional background for the first time may feel challenging or awkward, but it doesn’t have to be.

Here, we’ll explore some tips to help you feel more comfortable when writing your own professional background. Let’s dive in.

Your professional background includes previous jobs you’ve had, successful projects you’ve worked on, significant accomplishments like promotions or awards, professional networking organizations you belong to, and anything else you’d share with someone who wants to know more about you professionally.

Not only is sharing more about your background a great way to tell more about yourself to others, it’s also an opportunity to wholly reflect on your professional journey and the goals you’ve achieved — plus, what you hope to achieve in the future.

Next, let’s dive into how you can get started.

1. Don’t start from scratch.

If you’re having trouble figuring out where to start, try using a professional bio template to guide you. Templates, like the ones featured below, make it easier for you to focus on your personal information and accomplishments, without having to worry as much about the structure.

Featured Resource: Professional Bio Templates and Examples

Download the Templates

2. Know your audience.

Take into consideration who will be reading your professional bio and cater to your reader.

You may also want to draft different versions of your document to best fit specific audiences. For example, the version you post on your LinkedIn may not be as detailed as the version you post on your personal website, and if your reader is a potential employer, it would help to include details that specifically highlight why you’re the best candidate for the role for which you’re applying.

HubSpot Founder Dharmesh Shah uses different bios for different platforms. On Twitter, for instance, Dharmesh’s bio is short and sweet, which is perfect for Twitter’s character limit.

Alternatively, on INBOUND’s website, Dharmesh’s bio is written in third-person for attendees. This bio makes Dharmesh’s current role clear while providing some key background information.

Finally, in his OnStartups bio, Dharmesh’s voice is personable since he’s speaking directly to the reader. This gives readers more insight into Dharmesh’s background directly from his perspective.

The best part about this approach is that you can create as many versions of your bio as you’d like, or simply recycle a general version whenever you need it.

3. Show professional progression.

As you’re writing, think about structuring your professional bio in a way that creates a timeline to show your progression. Explain what your different roles were like, and emphasize responsibilities that set you up for success in your latter roles.

It’s important to note that your timeline doesn’t have to be linear.

“Look for a theme that runs throughout several of the jobs you’ve held, and present your choices in a way that shows common threads running through each of your career decisions,” explains career strategist Jenny Foss.

The goal is to clearly show your audience the different roles you’ve had, and how all of your experiences have contributed to your overall professional development.

4. Highlight your accomplishments.

One of the best things about writing your professional background is that it’s the perfect opportunity to brag about yourself — and I don’t mean humble brag.

Think of the most successful projects you’ve been part of, the strategies you’ve helped develop and execute, the deals you’ve closed, the revenue you’ve generated, and anything else that stands out as a major accomplishment.

“A former manager once told me to keep a ‘brag sheet’ in a document on my computer. The idea was to create a running list of noteworthy accomplishments, media mentions, awards, and letters of recommendation that I could reference to make it easier to write about myself. It also doesn’t hurt to open up this document whenever you’re having a tough day to remind yourself what you’re capable of,” Carly Stec, HubSpot’s Team Manager of Content Conversion, told me.

It’s also important to consider how success was measured in your previous roles — and how that might shape the way you write about it.

If success for you tends to be measured in quantifiable metrics, include strong statistics. It might look something like this:

• “In my first six months, I was able to sign up X amount of customers that generated an average monthly recurring revenue of $X.”

• “I helped boost customer retention by X percentage.”

• “With the strategy I developed, my team was able to lower customer acquisition costs by X percentage.”

If your role is primarily measured through qualitative goals, share a highlight that speaks to skills you excel at. For example:

• “I successfully executed a major project using strong time management skills and communicated the results to C-suite stakeholders.”

• “I was able to complete a project that was projected to take an entire quarter in half the time because of my organizational skills.”

• “I was selected to lead a database cleanup project due to my attention to detail and strong team collaboration skills.”

5. Be personable.

Timelines and accomplishments are great, but being personable is even better.

Readers should feel like they’re getting some sense of who you are from your professional background. This gives readers the opportunity to know more about you beyond a professional scope. If you have any cool niche hobbies that you enjoy outside of work, this would be the time to share.

Here’s a list of prompts to help you brainstorm the right “fun facts” to highlight:

• What TV show are you currently binging?
• Do you have any pets?
• What’s something most people don’t know about you?
• What languages do you speak?
• What are you most proud of yourself for?
• What’s something you’ve done that’s bucket-list worthy?
• What do you do to relax?
• What are three of your must-have apps?
• What would your favorite colleague say about you?
• What’s the best advice you’ve ever received and how do you apply it to your life?

Being personable is also a great opportunity to address any unconventional moments in your professional background. For example, maybe you’ve made a drastic shift in your career path, or you took a sabbatical at some point.

These types of stories can make you more relatable to your audience, and you never know who you may end up connecting with over one of your hobbies or more personal moments.

6. Ask for feedback.

Constructive feedback is key when you’re writing about yourself. While many choose to source feedback after completing a draft of their bio, it’s just as beneficial to get feedback from your peers at earlier stages of your drafting process.

Oftentimes, our peers can help identify our strengths and where we have opportunities to improve. If you’re having trouble developing a clear timeline or pinpointing which highlights you should mention, get together with a peer to brainstorm ideas.

Reflect on successful assignments that you’ve collaborated on and ask your peer to provide honest feedback about what you did best — and include that feedback in your bio.

If you need help getting started, here’s a list of discussion questions to use with your peers to uncover professional strengths you might be overlooking in your own self-assessment:

• What role do you think I tend to play in group work?
• How have I helped you be more successful?
• What do you think my most impressive project has been?
• What was your first impression of me?
• What do you think my strengths are?

If you’re feeling stuck, don’t be afraid to leverage our free professional bio templates to help you get started.

Next, let’s go over professional background examples from both tenured and early-career professionals.

Professional Background Examples

1. Bozoma Saint John

Bozoma Saint John opens her biography by covering her most recent role at Netflix, then goes all the way back to the beginning of her career. From there, she provides a detailed overview of her accomplishments, inserting the names of the most notable organizations she has worked with.

Notice how she familiarizes us with her by using her nickname, “Boz,” throughout her professional background. In the same way, you can use your nickname throughout your bio (if you’re writing it in third person).

We’d recommend writing a background like Saint John’s if you’re seeking speaking or presenting opportunities.

2. Jim Kowalski

Jim Kowalski walks us through his passions before describing his work experience and accomplishments. He makes it a point to connect his love of the automotive industry to his ethos in his work. Another notable feature of his professional background is that he mentions a brand he invigorated (it was “almost dead,” he asserts). He closes with his fascinating adventures around the world, including building a home in Thailand.

Mention ways that you’ve prevented clients and other companies from failing. If you’ve had noteworthy adventures, consider bringing them into your professional background as well. A background bio doesn’t have to be wooden; it can be fun, too, as long as you remain within reason. Plus, it gives the reader a chance to connect with you.

3. Katherine Gundlach

If you’re a college student, you might not have a long list of professional accomplishments, but you can take note from Katherine Gundlach’s example and write about what you love to do — and why you love to do it.

Katherine Gundlach opens her professional background with her current status as a college student, then goes into an anecdote that describes why she became a photographer. In the latter half of the bio, she describes her mission when photographing others. In your own bio, describe the purpose of what you do (or the reason why you want to pursue a certain field).

She also says where she’s from. Mentioning personal information in your professional bio can be a way for readers, hiring managers, and colleagues to relate to you.

4. Erick Rheam

Erick Rheam’s professional background effectively outlines his path to becoming a motivational speaker. He also cements his expertise by stating that he speaks regularly across the U.S. After, he outlines his vision and purpose for doing what he does. Like some of the other examples on this list, he includes personal information about himself: that he’s a runner.

This professional background is done well because it’s succinct and balances professionalism, expertise, and personality. Consider achieving a similar balance in your own background document by dedicating 1-2 sentences to each aspect of your professional and personal life.

5. Dr. Houyuan Luo

Dr. Houyuan Luo’s professional background is a classic example of a bio that’s inspirational, professional, and persuasive.

In the medical industry, education is immensely important — how long you studied can determine your level of expertise. Dr. Luo immediately lists his academic background, then details how passionate he is for his field. He emphasizes his humanitarian values most, cementing him as an excellent candidate for clinical training and speaking opportunities.

If you work in the healthcare, non-profit, legal, educational, or environmental industries, consider emphasizing your values and ethos in your professional background. Like Dr. Luo, you can leave mention of your current position for the last sentence.

6. Claire Buswell

Claire Buswell immediately establishes herself as a relatable persona by going over her personal history first — then connecting that to her role today. Because she was once in the same position as her clients, Buswell is better prepared to help them professionally. She makes that clear in her professional background and is vulnerable about how hard it was to find a job.

If you’ve created a business that solves a problem that you experienced, consider bringing that into your professional background. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. In fact, being vulnerable can make you more relatable, and your level of success now will be testament to your methods’ effectiveness. 

Ready to start writing?

Keep these tips and examples in mind as you’re writing about your professional bio. Your final product should be a written statement that boasts your most notable skills and achievements. As you continue to progress in your career, take time to update your bio like you would your resume, and continue to impress your readers.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Studies show that 76% of consumers research a business online before visiting in person. That means having a website is as necessary for companies today as having a phone number.

Maybe you’re starting a new business venture or developing your personal brand.

Or, maybe you’re looking to update your company’s outdated website. Whatever the case, creating a new website can feel overwhelming, particularly without technical expertise or a budget for web developers.

Steps to Make a Website

We’ve put together a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to creating a website. Best of all, you won’t need a coder, web designer, or big budget to create one — you’ll just need to follow the steps below.

In general, you’ll carry out these steps before launching your site. But before you get started, you’ll need to choose a platform.

We’ll walk you through the two options you have: a website builder or a content management system (CMS).

Start building your website by choosing a platform.

The first thing you’ll need to decide is whether you want to create a website using a website builder or a CMS.

Let’s take a look at the definitions of each below.

Both website builders and CMS platforms provide the out-of-the-box features, pre-designed templates, and extensions required to create a custom site without coding, but they offer different experiences for creating and managing a website.

Below, we cover some of the differences you should consider before making a choice.

Website Builders vs. Content Management Systems

Website builders provide everything you need to launch a site. You get website building tools, hosting, domain registration, SSL certification, templates, and support in one place, often for a low monthly rate.

This ease of use and pricing appeals to many site owners; however, free website builders, as well as the more expensive alternatives, tend to be limited in flexibility. For example, you can’t add your own custom code, or drag and drop elements anywhere on your posts and pages.

If you want more control over the functionality and appearance of your site, use a CMS. A CMS will provide the content management features, advanced functionality, and customization options required to build larger, more complex sites.

If you decide that a CMS is the best option for your business, consider the software, ease of use, customizability, security, and pricing of different platforms to narrow down your selection.

Let’s look at some examples of both website builders and CMS platforms you could potentially use.

Here are some resources comparing some CMS systems with popular website builders:

• HubSpot vs Drupal vs WordPress vs Joomla: Which Is the Right CMS for You?
• WordPress.org vs WordPress.com: What’s the Difference?
• Which Should You Use, Wix or WordPress? Things to Know
• A Head-to-Head Comparison of Weebly vs. WordPress
• The Most Critical Differences Between Squarespace & WordPress
• Shopify vs. WordPress: Where Should You Set Up Shop?

Below, we’ll walk you through the steps to build a website using both a website builder and a CMS.

How to Build a Website with a Website Builder

Have you decided that you’d like to use a website builder? Excellent! This is the easiest way to start for most beginners.

You won’t need to know how to code, and everything you need is typically included in one convenient package — so if you don’t want to go through the hassle of finding a hosting service, domain name, and SSL certificate, this is the option for you.

Let’s go through the process of creating your site using a website builder.

1. Choose a website builder.

First up, choose a website builder that fits your needs and budget. You’ll need to consider the following:

• Cost: Your budget will be by far the most important factor when choosing a website builder. Most require a paid subscription to include premium features such as domain names and increased storage.
• Features: Website builders typically offer different features depending on their target market. Shopify, for example, is specifically designed for ecommerce websites, while WordPress.com is primarily known for blogging.
• Extensions: Check out the extensions and add-ons library for each website builder you’re considering. If they don’t offer something you need for your site, skip that builder.
• Themes and Templates: Some website builders provide more themes and templates, while others provide less variety but more well-designed choices. Check out the template library so you can see what your site could potentially look like once it’s finished.
• Ease-of-use: All website builders are designed to be easy to use: simply sign up on the platform and start building. But some are more intuitive than others. Play around with different builders to find out which one you prefer.
• Support: Is the website builder’s support team known for its responsiveness? Do some research beforehand to ensure the premium subscription will also get you premium support.

No matter what, you’ll want to start with a free trial — that way, you can give the platform a test run before committing.

While most website builders come with a free subscription tier, it doesn’t offer a free domain name or the features you need to build a strong website. Our recommendation is to opt for a paid subscription once you’ve decided on a platform.

Below, we break down some of the most popular website builders you could choose.

Here are a few more resources to help you choose a website builder:

• Best Website Builders Today and How to Choose One
• Best Free Website Builders to Check Out This Year
• Top Ecommerce Website Builders

And here are some posts listing alternatives:

• Wix Alternatives & Why You Might Want Them
• Squarespace Alternatives & Why You Need One

2. Sign up for a subscription plan that meets your budgets and needs.

As we mentioned above, you won’t want to go for a free plan because those typically don’t include enough features to launch a professional website. You’ll want to upgrade, but you’ll need to take a close look at the features included in each tier to choose the right subscription for you.

Consider the following questions before choosing a subscription plan:

• How much storage will you need?
• Do you want ads to be removed from your site?
• Will you be setting up an online store?
• Will you want a professional email with your domain name?
• Will you want to customize the site using CSS and HTML?
• How much support do you expect you’ll need?

Most website builders have a pricing page that lays out the differences between plans in an easy-to-scan list. The best part is that you can start with the simplest subscription, then upgrade as you require more features and functionalities.

3. Choose a short and catchy domain name.

Some website builders offer a free subdomain for your site, but you’ll want to upgrade to a paid subscription to get a custom domain.

A custom domain name is one of the easiest ways to appear more professional and legitimate as a company. Imagine you were looking for a freelance writer.

Are you more likely to hire me if my website address is carolineforsey.weebly.com or carolineforsey.com? An extension like “weebly.com” can confuse visitors and dilute your brand identity.

Worst case scenario: a visitor might assume you can’t afford a premium hosting service or custom domain, and draw conclusions that your business is not fully established.

The good news is that after you upgrade, your premium website builder subscription will include a domain name for free, at least for the first year. You’ll be able to choose it as you’re setting up the site, or do it later.

When choosing a domain name, pick something short and descriptive. The .com top-level domain will work for most websites, but if you’re planning on launching an organization, you can also consider the .org domain.

Domain names are a surprisingly complicated art — you must choose something memorable that doesn’t yet exist. As you make your choice, avoid the following:

• Including dashes
• Using numbers
• Using a trademarked name

Before signing up on your website builder platform, consider looking up available domain names using a service such as GoDaddy. That way, you can make sure the domain you want is available before you pay for a subscription on the website builder platform.

Here are some more resources for picking the perfect domain name.

• The Plain-English Guide to Domains & Domain Names
• Tips for Choosing the Perfect Domain Name
• .net vs. .com, and More: What’s the Best Domain Extension?

4. Pick a premade website template.

During your setup process, the website builder will take you to a template library, where you can choose a premade layout to set up your site.

Most website builders will create a different template depending on the type of business or brand you run. For instance, you can choose a template that’s specifically made for:

• Freelancers
• Bloggers
• Local Businesses
• Creatives
• Resume Websites

Every template should have essential features such as a built-in responsive setting and drag-and-drop page editor.

Your website builder should also allow you to import demo data, so that you only have to replace the images and text and not tinker with anything else during the setup process.

5. Customize the template.

You don’t want your site to look like anyone else’s, so you’ll need to customize the template to your liking.

On most platforms, you’ll be able to change the color palette, replace the images, insert social media icons, add personalized forms and menus, and change the size, colors, and fonts of buttons.

Have fun, and don’t forget to use your brand colors. This will be the best part of building your website: making it look like you want it to.

6. Add pages to the site.

Next, it’s time to add pages to your site. You’ll need to create, at a minimum:

• A home page
• An about page
• A contact us page
• A services page, if you’re offering any
• A product page, if you’re selling any
• A blog page

You’ll also want to create specific service pages.

For instance, if you’re selling “Digital Marketing Services,” you’ll want to create pages titled “Social Media Marketing Packages” and “Search Engine Marketing Services” under the digital marketing services umbrella.

Our top suggestion would be to put the topic of your page — or your target keyword — in the title of these new pages.

Instead of having a page titled “Services,” you would title it “Digital Marketing Services.” You’ll want to do the same thing for your home page. You don’t want it to be titled “Home.” Instead, title it “Freelance Digital Marketing Specialist – Your Name.”

Your title shows up in the search results, so it plays an important role in telling visitors what you do.

Here are more resources on creating great page titles:

• What’s a Website Title (Title Tag) & Why Does It Matter for SEO?
• How to Write the Perfect Page Title With SEO in Mind

7. Write optimized content.

This is arguably the most important step. Now that you have your pages set up, what will you put on them?

It’s time to write optimized content to put on all of the pages you’ve created. Get content ideas from your competitors, and don’t forget to aim for at least 800 words per page.

Remember, however, that you can always come back later to write more content. So if you have to write short pages at first, it’s totally fine. Set a date for when you’ll return and add more copy.

Write your content in an editor such as Google Docs and use a grammar checker such as Grammarly to ensure your copy is error-free. When you upload images, be sure to compress them beforehand with a tool such as Toolur or TinyJPG. These steps will ensure your content helps you rank on Google and other search engines.

Check out the following articles on how to write optimized content:

• The Ultimate Guide to Content Creation
• What Is Content Writing? Plus Tips to Take Your Content to the Next Level
• The Ins and Outs of Writing Long-Form Content
• The Ultimate Guide to On-Page SEO
• How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Beginner’s Guide

8. Fill in general settings.

Before pushing your site live, you’ll want to fill in general settings. It’s the same list you would run through if you were setting up your site on a CMS platform.

Here’s what you’ll want to adjust:

• Page titles
• Headings
• Meta descriptions
• Image alt-text
• Structured markup
• Page URLs (or slugs)
• Internal linking
• Mobile responsiveness
• Site speed

Make sure you include a site title and tagline in the “Settings” of your website builder. Go through, and check out the URLs — are those optimized for search?

Any website builder you’re using to build your site should make it easy to optimize these elements on every post and page. With HubSpot, for example, you can add image alt-text, meta descriptions, headings, and custom URLs right in the CMS.

Source

9. Install extensions and apps.

Last but not least, install add-ons that will increase your website’s functionality. Each website builder typically has a library of extensions and add-ons that you can choose from.

For instance, in the HubSpot App Marketplace, you can filter for, browse, and add a number of different CMS apps and integrations.

Once your pages, content, and plugins are in place, it’s time to push your site live!

The website builder will typically have a button you can click to launch your site into the web. After, simply watch your organic traffic grow.

And remember: if your website builder doesn’t work for you, you’ll always be able to switch over to a CMS. Speaking of CMS, let’s review the steps involved in building a website with a CMS next.

How to Build a Website with a CMS

Have you chosen to go with a content management system instead?

The process of building a website with a CMS is a little different than setting up a site with a website builder — mainly because you’ll have to buy a domain name and web hosting on your own.

But the process is just as simple, and the powerful customization options make the extra steps worth it.

Here’s some advice from HubSpot’s CMS Hub Senior Product Marketing Manager, Alex Girard, about building a website:

When building a website, you want to make sure your content helps your customers achieve their goal with your business. If you sell professional services, can customers learn more about the services you offer and easily get in touch with your team if they have specific questions? If you’re an ecomm business, how easy is it for your customers to purchase something right off your website. Interview your customers about their experience on your website, and don’t be afraid to run experiments on your copy or on other elements of your website. Constantly iterating on the experience you provide your customers will help you perfect your website over time.

Below, we cover the process of building your website using a CMS from start to finish.

1. Choose a CMS.

The best CMS system for your business will align with your site’s needs and goals.

Let’s talk about some of the features you’d get from using HubSpot CMS Hub to give you an idea of some of the benefits of using content management software.

Example of CMS Software: HubSpot CMS

Price: $300/mo (Professional), $900/mo (Enterprise)

HubSpot CMS Hub is a web content management system that’s build on HubSpot’s all-in-one CRM Platform As a result, your team will have the tools necessary to offer a delightful and modern digital experience.

Pro Tip:Get HubSpot CMS Hub, the web content management system for marketers, developers, and IT teams that’s built on your all-in-one CRM platform.

Below, we break down some of the most popular website builders you could choose, including CMS Hub.

It’s worth noting that while WordPress.org, Joomla, and Drupal are free, you’ll have to pay for domain names, SSL certificates, hosting, and premium themes and templates, adding to your set-up costs. You might also need the help of a developer if you opt for Joomla and Drupal.

It’ll be hard to choose, but you can narrow it down with a few questions.

For instance, do you need a platform that allows you to add your own custom code or one that supports multiple languages? Would you like a proprietary CMS to help share the responsibility of protecting and maintaining your site, or would you prefer an open-source CMS?

You might also narrow your list by comparing the selection of templates and add-ons offered by each system.

Here are some resources to get you started:

• The Best CMS Systems Today and How to Choose One
• Features Your CMS Absolutely Needs
• The Best Content Management Systems for SEO & Why
• CMS 101: The Beginner’s Guide to CMS Hub
• 8 Things You Need to Know to Get Started With HubSpot’s CMS

Here are some comparison and alternatives posts:

• Drupal vs WordPress vs Joomla vs HubSpot: Which Is the Right CMS for You?
• Sitecore vs. WordPress: Which CMS is Best for Your Business?
• WordPress Alternatives & Why You Might Want Them
• Drupal Alternatives to Check Out This Year
• Joomla Alternatives & Why You Might Want Them
• Adobe Experience Manager Alternatives to Check Out

Once you’ve chosen the best CMS platform for your needs, continue to step two.

2. Select a hosting plan.

Web hosting is a service that enables individuals or businesses to run a website on the internet. The service provider, known as a web host, will store your website files on a secure server that it keeps up and running, and then deliver and display that web content to visitors who type in your URL in their browser.

Website builders include hosting in their packages. Content management systems, however, don’t work this way.

You’ll have to find your own hosting provider, which will take time and lots of research. There are hundreds of web hosts on the market. Each one might offer different types of hosting, including shared hosting, VPS, and dedicated hosting.

Let’s briefly look at the differences below.

• Shared Hosting: In shared hosting, your website shares the same server and resources with other websites. It’s the most popular type of hosting, particularly among new site owners, because it’s the cheapest option.
• VPS Hosting: If you go for a Virtual Private Server hosting solution, your site will sit on the same server as other websites; however, it will isolate server resources for your site specifically. That means your site will be able to handle higher volumes of regular traffic. It’s a pricier alternative to shared hosting.
• Dedicated Server: With a dedicated server, your site will sit on a server whose resources and space is reserved for your site only. If you’d rather not share a server with any other website, you can upgrade to dedicated server hosting.

Virtually every web host offers shared hosting. However, because your website has to share the same server with many other websites, it can’t support high volumes of traffic and is most vulnerable to hackers and other security threats.

Once you’ve decided what type of hosting you need, you can pick a provider. DreamHost, HostGator, and Bluehost are among the most popular third-party providers and offer free domain registration for the first year. That will simplify the next step in building a website.

Here are resources about hosting you’ll want to check out:

• The Ultimate Guide to Web Hosting
• What Is VPS Hosting? Why It Might Be the Best Option for Your Site
• The Best WordPress Hosting Providers This Year
• Best Free WordPress Hosting Providers This Year
• Bluehost Review

And some comparisons to help you choose the best one:

• SiteGround vs. HostGator Review: Which Is Better for Your WordPress Site?
• Bluehost vs. HostGator: Which Is Better for Your Website?

3. Get a domain name from a domain name provider.

No matter what type of CMS you chose to build your site, you’ll likely have to purchase a domain name.

Purchasing a domain name is typically inexpensive — even for those who sign up for a hosting plan that does not include free domain registration for a year. There are two different approaches you can take.

You can visit a domain site, purchase and register a domain name there, and then connect it to your hosting account. Both Godaddy.com and Namecheap.com are cheap, secure, and effective options for buying a domain name, with added benefits such as SSL security and Office 365 inboxes.

Or you can complete the entire domain name search and registration process on your hosting provider’s site.

Here’s where it gets tricky. You’ll need to choose a domain name as similar as possible to the name of your company, but with over billions of websites out there today, your company’s name might already be taken.

If your ideal domain name is already taken, consider using a different extension. Use one of the three most common extensions if you can: .com, .net, or .org. However, if it makes sense for your business, you might want to check out an alternate extension like .us or .shop.

As we covered in the previous section, avoid using dashes, numbers, or trademarked words. Play around with it.

Once you’ve chosen and paid for a domain name, you’ll usually also get personal email accounts attached, so make sure you’re happy to use your domain name as your main online identity.

Below you’ll find some resources about choosing and buying a custom domain:

• Best Domain Registrars to Consider This Year
• How to Choose a Domain Name
• Everything You Need to Know About Custom Domains
• The Simple Guide to Transferring a Domain to Another Registrar (A good read if you’ve already purchased a domain name.)

4. Choose a theme for your site.

Now, for the fun part.

Themes allow you to easily change the look and feel of your site without having to code HTML and CSS from scratch. Themes are made up of templates, modules, images, and global content that control your site’s overall design.

On whatever content management system you chose, take the time to browse through the selection of themes available. Many will come with a directory of free themes, where you can use filters or the search bar to find themes related to your industry, with a specific layout, and more.

Tip: It’s important your theme is responsive, so your site will look the same on all devices.

Other considerations will be specific to your business and site. You might be looking for a static header or a slideshow header, for example.

Or you may need a theme that comes with a front-end builder. Below are some questions you can answer to find the right theme for your site:

• Do you need a variety of layouts or just one?
• Are you looking for a theme with built-in social media widgets or any other functionality?
• Would you like to install a demo site or start from scratch?
• Do you want to purchase a theme that includes its own theme builder?

Ultimately, no one knows your business better than you. Take the time to consider which theme would best represent your brand and most likely appeal to your ideal demographic.

You’ll have a wealth of choices right in your CMS. Take a look, for instance, at the theme marketplace in CMS Hub:

You’ll want to stay away from hard-to-read fonts or flashy backgrounds that could distract a consumer from understanding your core message. When in doubt, you can’t go wrong if you choose something clean with straight lines and a limited amount of text.

If you can’t find a free theme that meets your exact specifications, try looking for premium themes in third-party marketplaces.

Below are some resources to get started if you’ve opted for the WordPress CMS:

• The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Themes
• Best Small Business WordPress Themes
• How to Use Multiple WordPress Themes on Your Web Pages
• Best Clean WordPress Themes

Once you’ve selected and installed a theme on your site, move on to the next step.

5. Customize your theme and templates.

Once you’ve chosen a theme, take the time to customize it and its individual templates. Your site’s design and functionality are your chance to persuade an audience to take a closer look.

It’s imperative your design makes sense to your ideal consumer and works to enhance your product’s success rather than hinder it.

That’s why you should think of your theme and templates as a starting point, rather than the final look. Depending on the website platform you’ve used to build your site, you’ll have different degrees of control over your site’s appearance.

On more flexible platforms like CMS Hub, you’ll be able to edit your theme’s global settings to make sitewide changes. That means you can make changes to your font and other elements in one place and they’ll be implemented across all pages on your site.

Here’s a great resource if you’re using WordPress:

• How to Customize a WordPress Theme [+Themes for New Websites]

6. Add pages to your site.

It’s important to plan exactly which pages you’ll need to include in your site. While it varies from business to business, you’ll need at least a homepage, an “About Us” page, a “Services/Product” page, and a “Contact Us” page.

You should also add a blog homepage. There are serious benefits to business blogging.

While every CMS is different, it’s typically easy to add and remove pages on whichever platform you use. Let’s take a closer look at the process on WordPress, for example.

• Start by logging into your WordPress dashboard.
• On the left side of the screen, click Pages > Add New.
  
• You can add text, insert images, embed videos, and make any other changes you like.
• When you’re ready, click Publish.

Image Source

Once you’ve decided what pages you need on your site, make sure to add them to the navigation bar. You can rearrange page topics any way you want, or combine them.

You can visit other company websites within your industry to get ideas for how to organize your navigation bar, or which pages to include and exclude if you’re unsure.

7. Write content.

You guessed it: It’s time to write the content you’ll put on your site.

Write rough drafts for pages like your “About Us” page and landing page. Talk with coworkers and stakeholders — what message do you want to put out there? What tone do you want to set? Should you make jokes and be funny, or aim to be more inspirational?

If your online audience stumbled across your site, what questions would they have first?

Imagine your website is your only chance to have a full conversation with a potential customer.

The home page is the preliminary introduction: “Hey, we do XYZ.” Your “About Us” page digs deeper: “We are XYZ.” And your products or services pages are your big push to the finish line: “You want to work with us? Great, here’s how you’ll benefit.”

During this stage, it’s imperative you do your keyword research.

For instance, if you’re selling eyeglasses, and you notice “retro eyeglasses” is a more popular search term than “vintage eyeglasses,” you might use this research to steer the direction of the content on your site.

If you’re stuck, check out competitor’s websites to gauge what other companies in your industry are doing.

We’ve compiled a few more resources to help you get started:

• The Ultimate Guide to Content Creation
• What Is Content Writing? Plus Tips to Take Your Content to the Next Level
• The Ins and Outs of Writing Long-Form Content
• The Ultimate Guide to On-Page SEO
• How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Beginner’s Guide

8. Fill in general settings.

Once you’ve filled in your pages with optimized content, it’s time to fill in the general settings. By adding or adjusting the SEO elements, you can increase your search visibility.

It’s the same as if you were building your site on a website builder. On your pages, you should include:

• Page titles
• Headings
• Meta descriptions
• Image alt-text
• Structured markup
• Page URLs (or slugs)
• Internal linking
• Mobile responsiveness
• Site speed

Each of these elements is essential to your on-page SEO. They not only help to tell Google about your website and how you provide value to visitors and customers — but they also help optimize your site for human eyes as well as search engine bots.

9. Install add-ons.

Lastly, take a look at your site and figure out what you’re missing. Ideally, your platform will offer all the add-ons you need to extend the functionality of your site.

It’s important to note these add-ons might be called apps, extensions, modules, integrations, or plugins, depending on the platform you use.

If you’re running an ecommerce site on HubSpot, for example, you might use HubSpot’s Shopify extension.

Or, maybe you want to ensure your WordPress website is secure, to protect client data. In that case, you might download the Wordfence Security plugin for firewall protection against attacks, malware, and other threats.

If you’re lacking out-of-the-box features for security, SEO, image compression, and social media, check if your platform offers an app or integration to add that functionality to your site.

It’s much easier to do all this work in one place rather than having to log on to several disconnected platforms.

How to Make a Website with HubSpot

Let’s take a look at how to make a website with CMS Hub. If you’re already using HubSpot’s CRM platform, it probably makes the most sense to build a website within HubSpot to integrate all your sales and marketing needs in one place.

CMS Hub offers a variety of plugins and extensions, themed templates, and sophisticated tools for SEO analysis.

If you want to build a website with CMS Hub, it’s easy and intuitive. Don’t forget to get a domain name and hosting before starting to build your site.

Here’s how:

1. Create a homepage.

Within your HubSpot portal, click “Marketing” on the dashboard at the top of your screen. Navigate down to “Website,” then click “Website Pages.”

After that, click the orange “Create” button and choose “Website Page” from the drop-down.

2. Select a theme.

Now, you’ll be taken to this “Choose a theme” page. Scroll through your options, search page templates, or check out the Marketplace. When you’ve found a template you like, select it.

3. Edit the modules.

This is your page. You can scroll over text boxes, images, or other modules to edit them. In the below picture, I scrolled over the “Practice Yoga” Banner Text, and when I click it, it allows me to edit that text.

You can also click the “Contents” tool on the left side of your screen and edit from there. For instance, I selected one “Rich Text” option, which directed me to the “Vinyasa” paragraph on the page.

You can then add text, images, sections, forms, and more when you edit it in the “Expanded” view.

4. Create other pages on your website.

When you’re happy with your landing page and want to move on, go back to your dashboard and click “Marketing” at the top of your screen, and then “Website Pages” again.

Here, you’ll click the orange “Create” button and name your page, just like your home page. Then, you’ll be taken through a similar process of choosing a template and adding content. If you want a more in-depth tutorial, check out a quick tour of website pages.

5. Incorporate social media accounts.

If you want to incorporate your social media accounts, go to “Marketing,” then “Social” on your dashboard. You can monitor all your social media accounts and also publish tweets, Facebook statuses and comments, Instagram pictures, and other content straight from your HubSpot dashboard.

6. View analytics.

If you want to check out your site analytics, go to “Reports” and then “Analytics Tools”. You’ll need to install the tracking code, which is easy to do within the HubSpot platform by clicking the orange “Install the tracking code” button.

If you’re still unsure, check out how to install the HubSpot tracking code.

7. Add a blog to your site.

If you want to write blog posts, go to “Marketing” > “Website” > “Blog” on your dashboard to create, publish, and monitor your website’s blog posts.

8. Install add-ons.

Last, it’s time to install an app from the HubSpot marketplace to extend the functionality of your website. Here’s how.

• In your HubSpot account, click the Marketplace icon in the main navigation bar.
• Under Manage, select Connected apps.
• Click Visit App Marketplace.
• Use the filters in the left sidebar to browse for an app.
  
• Click on an app to see more information.
• On the right, you can review the details of the app. Under Requirements, check whether or not the app is compatible with your HubSpot subscription, and see if there are any app-side subscription requirements.
  
• When you’re ready, click the Install app button in the top right corner of the screen.

Once you’ve completed these steps, just click “Publish” and your site is ready for use.

This is a fairly broad and general overview to get you started building a website with CMS Hub, but there are plenty of more in-depth features and tools you might want to explore with a HubSpot specialist, or by checking out some courses on academy.hubspot.com.

Once you’re done building a website via CMS Hub, it’s important to check that you’re not missing any crucial elements or going live with any glaring errors.

Once you’ve gone through this list above and feel like you’re close to a website launch, check out your website launch checklist for a detailed list of things to check before you go live.

Build a Website: FAQs

Below, we cover some frequently asked questions about building a website.

How much does it cost to build a website?

The cost of building a small business website can range from $500 to $2,500, but the price can be higher if you’re working with a developer. You should also take into account recurring costs such as hosting, domain name registration, and SSL certification.

Here’s a resource to help you gauge costs:

• We Break Down the Costs of Building & Managing a Website

How hard is it to build a website?

Building a website isn’t hard at all, especially if you opt for a website builder that packages everything for you. In general, you won’t need to touch a single line of code.

How do you create a website for free?

You can create a website for free by signing up for a free subscription on a website builder platform such as Wix or Weebly.

However, you’ll have a branded subdomain from the provider (e.g. yourname.weebly.com). You’ll also have the branding on your website, and free websites are often limited in design, features, and functionalities.

We recommend avoiding it unless you’re a hobbyist or only wanting to practice before launching your site.

How do you build a website from scratch?

You can build a website from scratch using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and sometimes, PHP. You compile these files and then upload them to your web host’s file manager. (You’ll still need to purchase a hosting service and register a domain.)

How much does it cost to hire someone to build a website?

Thumbtack reports that a freelance web designer costs from $640 to $1,000. Upwork reports a $15 to $30/hour range for hiring a web developer on their platform. This is on the low end and accurate pricing for building a small website.

For hiring a web developer for a custom or long-term project, you can expect to pay in the $8,000 to $25,000 range.

Here are some more resources:

• How to Hire a Freelance Web Developer
• Web Designer vs. Web Developer: What’s the Difference & Who Should You Hire?

How long does it take to build a website?

A website takes, on average, three to six months to build if your brand is small or just getting started. If you’re creating a custom or complicated project, you can expect your website to take a year or longer before it is up and running.

Build Your Website: Tips

Ready to build your own site? Let’s take a look at tips you can use to guide the creation of your site.

1. Choose a one-page design if you want to launch your site more quickly.
2. Include a high-contrast button on the top right of your navigation bar telling visitors to contact you.
3. Use Lorem Ipsum text to preview what the written content will look like as you adjust the layout. That way, you don’t have to write all the content right away.
4. Buy an SSL certificate if your CMS doesn’t include one already.
5. Make good use of white space to keep your site as simple and easy-to-read as possible.
6. Set your domain and hosting subscriptions on auto-renew to avoid service interruption.
7. Create Terms of Use and Privacy Policy documents if your site gathers user data.
8. Double-check that your website is responsive by accessing it from your mobile device. Most CMS systems and website builders will automatically make your site responsive, but you always want to double-check.
9. Resize your browser window to test what the elements look like at different browser sizes.
10. Access your site from different browsers (Safari, Chrome, Opera, Microsoft Edge) to see how the elements render depending on the browser.
11. Learn basic HTML and CSS so you can more easily customize your site later.
12. Include high-contrast buttons throughout the page that allow visitors to get in contact with you.
13. Stick to five navigation bar itemsat most.
14. Ensure your navigation bar shows up on all pages.
15. Create submenus for your navigation items to effectively group your subtopics.
16. Create an XML sitemap for search engine crawlers to find and index your site.
17. Submit your website to Google Search Console once you’ve launched it. That way, Google can crawl it much more quickly.
18. Use an analytics tool such as Google Analytics to see who’s accessing your site and from where.
19. Link internally from page to page so that search engines understand how the pages are related to each other.
20. Use keyword-rich anchor text when linking to internal pages.
21. Link to other strong sites in your niche to signal relevancy to Google.
22. Add your business or personal brand to social media sites and link back to your website.
23. Research other sites in your niche and get content ideas from them.
24. Compress all images to under 250KB. The smaller, the better.
25. Publish and maintain a blog — we’re serious about that. Try to post once a month.
26. Aim for a minimum of 800 words per page and per blog post.
27. Use a grammar-checker such as Grammarly to ensure your copy is error-free.
28. Avoid duplicate and boilerplate content — even one paragraph can be enough to hurt the credibility of your page.
29. Recheck your site architecture to make sure that your page hierarchy makes sense.
30. Create a backup of your site whenever you make major changes.
31. Seek guest posting opportunities and link back to your site in your author bio.
32. Join industry organizations and link back to your site from your member profile.
33. Avoid duplicating pages to use the same layout. If you do, double-check that your slug doesn’t read .com/original-page-copy. This happens more often than you think. If it happens, change your slug. Here’s how to change your slug in WordPress, in case you’re using that CMS.
34. Keep your page URLs short and user-friendly. If the title of a blog post is “50 Ways to Conquer Your Fear of Heights and Fly Worry-Free,” don’t have a URL that reads example.com/20XX-03-25/blog/50-ways-to-conquer-your-fear-of-heights-and-fly-worry-free. Consider instead: example.com/conquer-fear-of-heights.
35. Add breadcrumbs to your website to clarify your site structure. Here’s how to add breadcrumbs in WordPress.

Build a Website to Grow Your Online Reach

Building a website is a must-do for anyone who wants to be online. Without it, you won’t be found at all, and it can help you look more professional and established. Using this guide, you’ll be sure to publish a site that helps your business or your personal brand grow better.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Market segmentation is a powerful process because it separates your audience into groups so you can effectively target them based on traits such as the challenges they’re facing and/or how they’ll respond to certain marketing efforts.

The most effective way to determine which traits you’ll use to group your audience is by using segmentation bases.

In this blog post, we’ll cover the definition of segmentation bases, how to apply them at your company, and how you can use multiple segmentation bases at once.

Before we dive into the five segmentation bases, let’s cover the basics.

Segmentation Bases in Marketing

Marketing segmentation assumes all of your customers are unique and can be categorized based on common defining characteristics or traits that you establish. Those characteristics or traits almost always fit within the five segmentation bases, which we’ll review below.

Benefits of Using Segmentation Based in Marketing

By using segmentation bases in marketing, you’ll unlock opportunities that will help you:

• Improve the customer experience.
• Effectively market your products.
• Develop targeted marketing and sales enablement materials.
• Identify areas for product development.
• Show your target audience how you can resolve their challenges.

Segmentation Bases in Marketing Operations

Marketing operations is defined as the, “… people, processes, and technology that power a business’s overall marketing strategy and increase chances of success.”

While working on marketing, data strategy, implementation, and reporting, the marketing ops team can associate leads and contacts with your segmentation bases. That means they can surface strategies to effectively target those customer segments as well as reports, relevant dashboards, and metrics to track your success at marketing to those audience members.

As a result, your greater marketing team will have access to more organized marketing segments, contact data, reports, and relevant metrics. That means better customer experiences that convert more audience members.

Now, let’s look at the five segmentation bases and their defintions.

1. Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation refers to someone’s psychological traits. This includes your audiences’ lifestyle preferences and patterns, and why they think the way they do. It also covers their typical activities, interests, and opinions.

2. Demographic Segmentation

Demographic segmentation refers to the statistical description and socioeconomic traits of your audience. This includes age, education, and gender, birth rates, gender, marriage status, income, and employment status.

3. Geographic Segmentation

Geographic segmentation refers to the location in which your audience resides and/ or works. You can go as broad or as granular as you want with geographic segmentation — for instance, you may group your audience by continent, country, state/ city, town, neighborhood, and so on.

4. Firmographic Segmentation

Firmographic segmentation refers to a company’s attributes and is helpful for B2B companies that are developing their segmentation bases. This includes but is not limited to their size, industry, and location.

(You might think of firmographic segmentation as demographic segmentation but for a business.)

5. Behavioral Segmentation

Behavioral segmentation refers to an audience group’s actions, habits, and interactions. If you’re thinking this sounds a bit like demographic segmentation, you’re not wrong. But it goes deeper into one’s buying habits than demographic segmentation does.

For instance, behavioral segmentation provides insight into the benefits that one gets from buying and using a certain product as well as how ready (or not ready) they are to convert into a customer.

Pro Tip: Use HubSpot’s Behavioral Targeting tool to personalize marketing outreach at scale while also making every interaction feel unique.

Other relevant features you’ll have access to with HubSpot’s Behavioral Targeting tool are:

• Insights about the way your audience interacts with your site/ content.
• Active lists for advanced segmentation, targeting, and audience building.
• Event-based triggers for sending audience members messages at the right time.

Using Multiple Segmentation Bases

You don’t have to just use one or two segmentation bases — you can use all five, or a mix of them.

And once you select the segmentation bases you’re doing to move forward with, you aren’t stuck with them forever. As your business evolves, so do your customer base and target audience. That means you’ll naturally want to review, update, add to, and remove from your list of segmentation bases over time.

The key is using the segmentation bases that matter to your business accurately and applying them in a way that allows you to effectively target and reach the audience members within them.

Before we provide some tips on how to use multiple segmentation bases, let’s take a moment to cover why you’d want to use multiple segmentation bases.

Why Use Multiple Segmentation Bases

Businesses use multiple segmentation bases — a process that’s also known as multi-segment marketing — because the product or service that they sell applies to target audience members in different ways.

For instance, a business that sells tennis skirts may sell skirts to customers who play a lot of tennis, and to other customers who don’t play tennis but want a workout skirt for other forms of activity (e.g. running, walking, etc.).

Multiple segmentation bases are also commonly used if your business sells more than one product or service. For instance, the company that sells tennis skirts may also sell tennis rackets and tennis shoes. The customers who need a skirt versus a tennis racket or shoes will need to be targeted differently. Especially if those tennis items are for both men, women, and kids.

How to Use Multiple Segmentation Bases

By using multiple segmentation bases, you’ll get a better understanding of the people who complete your target audience — as a result, you’ll be able to more effectively target them, meet (and exceed) their needs and expectations, and convert more of them into customers.

Here are some tips to remember while using multiple segmentation bases:

• Determine which segmentation bases you want to establish for your unique audience and how granular you want to go within those segments.
• Collaborate internally across marketing (and even sales) while identifying and defining your customer segments to ensure they’re as accurate and helpful as possible.
• Review and update your segmentation bases if and when needed (e.g. take a look at them quarterly to ensure they evolve alongside your business).
• Get feedback from your team members (you can do this across marketing and sales) about the way your segments are organized. You can also survey (and incentivize) your current customers, or those who recently converted in some way, to ask for their feedback around your marketing content and targeting efforts.

Use Segmentation Bases to Grow Better

Using segmentation bases has a number of benefits. You can better understand your audience, target your leads and prospects more effectively, create and offer marketing and sales materials that better meet their needs, identify product development and marketing opportunities, and more. Begin working on your business’s segmentation bases to grow better.

In practically any discipline, it’s a good idea to have others evaluate your work with fresh eyes, and this is especially true in user experience and web design. Otherwise, your partiality for your own work can skew your perception of it. Learning directly from the people that your work is actually for — your users — is what enables you to craft the best user experience possible.

UX and design professionals leverage usability testing to get user feedback on their product or website’s user experience all the time. In this post, you’ll learn:

What usability testing is

• Its purpose and goals
• Scenarios where it can work
• Real-life examples and case studies
• How to conduct one of your own
• Scripted questions you can use along the way

UX researchers will usually conduct usability studies on each iteration of their product from its early development to its release.

During a usability study, the moderator asks participants in their individual user session to complete a series of tasks while the rest of the team observes and takes notes. By watching their actual users navigate their product or website and listening to their praises and concerns about it, they can see when the participants can quickly and successfully complete tasks and where they’re enjoying the user experience, encountering problems, and experiencing confusion.

After conducting their study, they’ll analyze the results and report any interesting insights to the project lead.

What is the purpose of usability testing?

Usability testing allows researchers to uncover any problems with their product’s user experience, decide how to fix these problems, and ultimately determine if the product is usable enough.

Identifying and fixing these early issues saves the company both time and money: Developers don’t have to overhaul the code of a poorly designed product that’s already built, and the product team is more likely to release it on schedule.

Benefits of Usability Testing

Usability testing has five major advantages over the other methods of examining a product’s user experience (such as questionnaires or surveys):

• Usability testing provides an unbiased, accurate, and direct examination of your product or website’s user experience. By testing its usability on a sample of actual users who are detached from the amount of emotional investment your team has put into creating and designing the product or website, their feedback can resolve most of your team’s internal debates.
• Usability testing is convenient. To conduct your study, all you have to do is find a quiet room and bring in portable recording equipment. If you don’t have recording equipment, someone on your team can just take notes.
• Usability testing can tell you what your users do on your site or product and why they take these actions.
• Usability testing lets you address your product’s or website’s issues before you spend a ton of money creating something that ends up having a poor design.
• For your business, intuitive design boosts customer usage and their results, driving demand for your product.

Usability Testing Scenario Examples

Usability testing sounds great in theory, but what value does it provide in practice? Here’s what it can do to actually make a difference for your product:

1. Identify points of friction in the usability of your product.

As Brian Halligan said at INBOUND 2019, “Dollars flow where friction is low.” This just as true in UX as it is in sales or customer service. The more friction your product has, the more reason your users will have to find something that’s easier to use.

Usability testing can uncover points of friction from customer feedback.

For example: “My process begins in Google Drive. I keep switching between windows and making multiple clicks just to copy and paste from Drive into this interface.”

Even though the product team may have had that task in mind when they created the tool, seeing it in action and hearing the user’s frustration uncovered a use case that the tool didn’t compensate for. It might lead the team to solve for this problem by creating an easy import feature or way to access Drive within the interface to reduce the number of clicks the user needs to make to accomplish their task.

2. Stress test across many environments and use cases.

Our products don’t exist in a vacuum, and sometimes development environments are unable to compensate for all the variables. Getting the product out and tested by users can uncover bugs that you may not have noticed while testing internally.

For example: “The check boxes disappear when I click on them.”

Let’s say that the team investigates why this might be, and they discover that the user is on a browser that’s not commonly used (or a browser version that’s outdated).

If the developers only tested across the browsers used in-house, they may have missed this bug, and it could have resulted in customer frustration.

3. Provide diverse perspectives from your user base.

While individuals in our customer bases have a lot in common (in particular, the things that led them to need and use our products), each individual is unique and brings a different perspective to the table. These perspectives are invaluable in uncovering issues that may not have occurred to your team.

For example: “I can’t find where I’m supposed to click.”

Upon further investigation, it’s possible that this feedback came from a user who is color blind, leading your team to realize that the color choices did not create enough contrast for this user to navigate properly.

Insights from diverse perspectives can lead to design, architectural, copy, and accessibility improvements.

4. Give you clear insights into your product’s strengths and weaknesses.

You likely have competitors in your industry whose products are better than yours in some areas and worse than yours in others. These variations in the market lead to competitive differences and opportunities. User feedback can help you close the gap on critical issues and identify what positioning is working.

For example: “This interface is so much easier to use and more attractive than [competitor product]. I just wish that I could also do [task] with it.”

Two scenarios are possible based on that feedback:

1. Your product can already accomplish the task the user wants. You just have to make it clear that the feature exists by improving copy or navigation.
2. You have a really good opportunity to incorporate such a feature in future iterations of the product.

5. Inspire you with potential future additions or enhancements.

Speaking of future iterations, that comes to the next example of how usability testing can make a difference for your product: The feedback that you gather can inspire future improvements to your tool.

It’s not just about rooting out issues but also envisioning where you can go next that will make the most difference for your customers. And who best to ask but your prospective and current customers themselves?

Usability Testing Examples & Case Studies

Now that you have an idea of the scenarios in which usability testing can help, here are some real-life examples of it in action:

1. User Fountain + Satchel

Satchel is a developer of education software, and their goal was to improve the experience of the site for their users. Consulting agency User Fountain conducted a usability test focusing on one question: “If you were interested in Satchel’s product, how would you progress with getting more information about the product and its pricing?”

During the test, User Fountain noted significant frustration as users attempted to complete the task, particularly when it came to locating pricing information. Only 80% of users were successful.

Image Source

This led User Fountain to create the hypothesis that a “Get Pricing” link would make the process clearer for users. From there, they tested a new variation with such a link against a control version. The variant won, resulting in a 34% increase in demo requests.

By testing a hypothesis based on real feedback, friction was eliminated for the user, bringing real value to Satchel.

2. Kylie.Design + Digi-Key

Ecommerce site Digi-Key approached consultant Kylie.Design to uncover which site interactions had the highest success rates and what features those interactions had in common.

They conducted more than 120 tests and recorded:

• Click paths from each user
• Which actions were most common
• The success rates for each

Image Source

This as well as the written and verbal feedback provided by participants informed the new design, which resulted in increasing purchaser success rates from 68.2% to 83.3%.

In essence, Digi-Key was able to identify their most successful features and double-down on them, improving the experience and their bottom line.

3. Sparkbox + An Academic Medical Center

An academic medical center in the midwest partnered with consulting agency Sparkbox to improve the patient experience on their homepage, where some features were suffering from low engagement.

Sparkbox conducted a usability study to determine what users wanted from the homepage and what didn’t meet their expectations. From there, they were able to propose solutions to increase engagement.

Image Source

For example, one key action was the ability to access electronic medical records. The new design based on user feedback increased the success rate from 45% to 94%.

This is a great example of putting the user’s pains and desires front-and-center in a design.

The 9 Phases of a Usability Study

1. Decide which part of your product or website you want to test.

Do you have any pressing questions about how your users will interact with certain parts of your design, like a particular interaction or workflow? Or are you wondering what users will do first when they land on your product page? Gather your thoughts about your product or website’s pros, cons, and areas of improvement, so you can create a solid hypothesis for your study.

2. Pick your study’s tasks.

Your participants’ tasks should be your user’s most common goals when they interact with your product or website, like making a purchase.

3. Set a standard for success.

Once you know what to test and how to test it, make sure to set clear criteria to determine success for each task. For instance, when I was in a usability study for HubSpot’s Content Strategy tool, I had to add a blog post to a cluster and report exactly what I did. Setting a threshold of success and failure for each task lets you determine if your product’s user experience is intuitive enough or not.

4. Write a study plan and script.

At the beginning of your script, you should include the purpose of the study, if you’ll be recording, some background on the product or website, questions to learn about the participants’ current knowledge of the product or website, and, finally, their tasks. To make your study consistent, unbiased, and scientific, moderators should follow the same script in each user session.

5. Delegate roles.

During your usability study, the moderator has to remain neutral, carefully guiding the participants through the tasks while strictly following the script. Whoever on your team is best at staying neutral, not giving into social pressure, and making participants feel comfortable while pushing them to complete the tasks should be your moderator

Note-taking during the study is also just as important. If there’s no recorded data, you can’t extract any insights that’ll prove or disprove your hypothesis. Your team’s most attentive listener should be your note-taker during the study.

6. Find your participants.

Screening and recruiting the right participants is the hardest part of usability testing. Most usability experts suggest you should only test five participants during each study, but your participants should also closely resemble your actual user base. With such a small sample size, it’s hard to replicate your actual user base in your study.

To recruit the ideal participants for your study, create the most detailed and specific persona as you possibly can and incentivize them to participate with a gift card or another monetary reward.

Recruiting colleagues from other departments who would potentially use your product is also another option. But you don’t want any of your team members to know the participants because their personal relationship can create bias — since they want to be nice to each other, the researcher might help a user complete a task or the user might not want to constructively criticize the researcher’s product design.

7. Conduct the study.

During the actual study, you should ask your participants to complete one task at a time, without your help or guidance. If the participant asks you how to do something, don’t say anything. You want to see how long it takes users to figure out your interface.

Asking participants to “think out loud” is also an effective tactic — you’ll know what’s going through a user’s head when they interact with your product or website.

After they complete each task, ask for their feedback, like if they expected to see what they just saw, if they would’ve completed the task if it wasn’t a test, if they would recommend your product to a friend, and what they would change about it. This qualitative data can pinpoint more pros and cons of your design.

8. Analyze your data.

You’ll collect a ton of qualitative data after your study. Analyzing it will help you discover patterns of problems, gauge the severity of each usability issue, and provide design recommendations to the engineering team.

When you analyze your data, make sure to pay attention to both the users’ performance and their feelings about the product. It’s not unusual for a participant to quickly and successfully achieve your goal but still feel negatively about the product experience.

9. Report your findings.

After extracting insights from your data, report the main takeaways and lay out the next steps for improving your product or website’s design and the enhancements you expect to see during the next round of testing.

The 3 Most Common Types of Usability Tests

1. Hallway/Guerilla Usability Testing

This is where you set up your study somewhere with a lot of foot traffic. It allows you to ask randomly-selected people who have most likely never even heard of your product or website — like passers-by — to evaluate its user-experience.

2. Remote/Unmoderated Usability Testing

Remote/unmoderated usability testing has two main advantages: it uses third-party software to recruit target participants for your study, so you can spend less time recruiting and more time researching. It also allows your participants to interact with your interface by themselves and in their natural environment — the software can record video and audio of your user completing tasks.

Letting participants interact with your design in their natural environment with no one breathing down their neck can give you more realistic, objective feedback. When you’re in the same room as your participants, it can prompt them to put more effort into completing your tasks since they don’t want to seem incompetent around an expert. Your perceived expertise can also lead to them to please you instead of being honest when you ask for their opinion, skewing your user experience’s reactions and feedback.

3. Moderated Usability Testing

Moderated usability testing also has two main advantages: interacting with participants in person or through a video a call lets you ask them to elaborate on their comments if you don’t understand them, which is impossible to do in an unmoderated usability study. You’ll also be able to help your users understand the task and keep them on track if your instructions don’t initially register with them.

Usability Testing Script & Questions

Following one script or even a template of questions for every one of your usability studies wouldn’t make any sense — each study’s subject matter is different. You’ll need to tailor your questions to the things you want to learn, but most importantly, you’ll need to know how to ask good questions.

1. When you [action], what’s the first thing you do to [goal]?

Questions such as this one give insight into how users are inclined to interact with the tool and what their natural behavior is.

Julie Fischer, one of HubSpot’s Senior UX researchers, gives this advice: “Don’t ask leading questions that insert your own bias or opinion into the participants’ mind. They’ll end up doing what you want them to do instead of what they would do by themselves.”

For example, “Find [x]” is a better than “Are you able to easily find [x]?” The latter inserts connotation that may affect how they use the product or answer the question.

2. How satisfied are you with the [attribute] of

?

Avoid leading the participants by asking questions like “Is this feature too complicated?” Instead, gauge their satisfaction on a Likert scale that provides a number range from highly unsatisfied to highly satisfied. This will provide a less biased result than leading them to a negative answer they may not otherwise have had.

3. How do you use

?

There may be multiple ways to achieve the same goal or utilize the same feature. This question will help uncover how users interact with a specific aspect of the product and what they find valuable.

4. What parts of [the product] do you use the most? Why?

This question is meant to help you understand the strengths of the product and what about it creates raving fans. This will indicate what you should absolutely keep and perhaps even lead to insights into what you can improve for other features.

5. What parts of [the product] do you use the least? Why?

This question is meant to uncover the weaknesses of the product or the friction in its use. That way, you can rectify any issues or plan future improvements to close the gap between user expectations and reality.

6. If you could change one thing about

what would it be?

Because it’s so similar to #5, you may get some of the same answers. However, you’d be surprised about the aspirational things that your users might say here.

7. What do you expect [action/feature] to do?

Here’s another tip from Julie Fischer:

“When participants ask ‘What will this do?’ it’s best to reply with the question ‘What do you expect it do?’ rather than telling them the answer.”

Doing this can uncover user expectation as well as clarity issues with the copy.

Your Work Could Always Use a Fresh Perspective

Letting another person review and possibly criticize your work takes courage — no one wants a bruised ego. But most of the time, when you allow people to constructively criticize or even rip apart your article or product design, especially when your work is intended to help these people, your final result will be better than you could’ve ever imagined.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

As an organization gets larger, it becomes more and more difficult for different departments, and different employees within the same department, to communicate. Unfortunately, this can lead to a “left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” scenario.

It’s bad when the communication failure occurs internally, but it’s considerably worse when potential or existing customers are privy to the breakdown.

From a sales standpoint, you may have sent a sales email to a prospect, only to be met with a reply of, “I’m already working with John” or “I’ve been a customer for five years … and no one has gotten back to me from my last question. Can you check into that?“

This is precious time that the salesperson and the organization can never get back. The salesperson could have spent that time emailing actual prospects. Instead, they’re now tracking down the person in charge of that account or someone who can fix the customer’s problem. Plus, they’ve wasted the customer’s time (and potentially irritated them).

If this has become an issue inside your organization, and you’d like your salesforce to do what they were hired to do — bring in more business — it may be time to consider Lead to Account Matching tools.

What is lead to account matching?

Lead to Account Matching is connecting leads to the appropriate accounts through an automated process. When this is enabled, a new lead that comes in will be automatically attached to the organization they belong to, and if that organization is already represented by a sales or account rep from your company, they’ll be connected to their record.

Why is lead to account matching important for your business?

Time is money, no matter what industry or space you exist in, and keeping your customers happy is the only way to create ongoing revenue and a healthy pipeline. If too much time is spent chasing the wrong lead, you may miss out on a quality lead that’s now buying elsewhere. Thankfully, Lead to Account Matching can help you make the most out of the leads you receive and:

Minimize Wasted Time

Any time that sales people spend not making phone calls, not sending emails, and not prospecting for new customers or checking in with their current customers, is wasted time. That means any running around they have to do to find answers to questions or work with other salespeople on that person’s existing customer, is a waste of time and a loss of revenue.

Lead to Account Matching ensures that the right person is notified when a lead comes in and then your salespeople can spend more time bringing in actual sales for your organization.

In addition, massive database cleanups can take days if not weeks to complete. Rather than wasting manpower on a project of this magnitude, allow the program to be consistently working.

Minimize Customer Annoyance and Loss of Trust

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a moment. Your inbox is about to burst. You’ve got sales emails coming out of your ears, and you just got one more. The worst part is that now, you’re being introduced to a company and a product that you already use.

It’s not only infuriating and a waste of time, but it also degrades your trust in the company. After all, if one person doesn’t know what another one is doing, how are they handling your actual business?

Salespeople need to instill trust in the company, the product, and the service … not degrade it. Lead to Account Matching can help you avoid this embarrassing and detrimental snafu.

Increase Efficiency

Paying for leads, or acquiring them through other means, is absolutely useless if you don’t treat them properly. If your sales team is spending time on the wrong leads, that’s money down the drain. A Lead to Account Matching tool helps them to set and follow a good lead flow so potential and existing customers are handled quickly and efficiently for maximum return on investment.  

Measure Smarter

A murky database filled with duplicates and expired contacts will never produce the true data that can help you evaluate your sales performance to improve your processes and provide training where necessary. A clean database, on the other hand, will allow you to gather the data you need to make necessary changes.  

How does lead to account matching work?

Depending on which Lead to Account Matching technology you use, there are different features available to you. However, every tool works off of one basic concept. It will scan your leads for specific characteristics and then match those leads to the correct account. It does this using different fields in your lead record.

For example, this software can associate a contact with a company by matching the domain in a contact’s email field to the company’s domain name field. That means that Bob@thebestcompanyever.com will be associated with www.bestcompanyever.com. Let’s say that another salesperson in your organization is working with another employee at Best Company Ever when Bob’s lead comes in. That lead will be assigned to that salesperson.

Sure, you could do this manually, but why waste your most valuable asset on clerical work that could be handled more efficiently using technology. Products like Leadangel will do this automatically, integrating with your existing CRM and bridging the gap between marketing automation and your CRM.

If you’re using a full suite CRM like HubSpot, this tool is built into the system and ready to work for you. In order to enable this function in your HubSpot account:

1. Go to the settings icon from the main navigation bar.

2. Navigate to Objects > Companies on the left sidebar menu.

3. From the Automation Section, select the checkbox to Create and associate companies with contacts.

4. To allow HubSpot to create new company records and associations based on your existing contacts’ email addresses, click Yes.

This will not only associate new contacts with company records based on their email addresses, it will also go through your database to update existing records.

Lead to Account Matching technology is not only helpful for your business, it’s essential. Why waste time and money contacting people who are already engaged with your company and working with another member of your sales team? Turn your sales department into an efficient, money-making machine and see more sales and happier customers.  

When I first began my marketing career, I was envious of emails.

While this sounds like an interesting quirk, I’m pretty sure most marketers can agree: some emails are hard not to envy.

From sparkling campaigns to flawless design, sometimes I open a newsletter and I’m surprised at how brands segment me into a list that’s so accurate.

Email lists are an essential aspect of any marketing strategy since they enable marketers to target the right subscribers and grow leads.

An example of this would be segmenting blog subscribers and only sending specific blog posts to that list based on criteria you establish such as their interests or past purchases.

To personalize marketing emails and improve ROI, email list management is a crucial step in marketing efforts. It can help your team generate leads while simultaneously creating a more delightful and personalized customer experience.

Mailing List Software

Using mailing list software or other email management tools is an easy way to segment your audience, send targeted emails, and analyze email metrics that matter most to your team (CTR, subscriber count, etc.). Often, mailing list and email management tools provide robust insights and suggestions on how to improve ROI through email.

To save you the hassle of researching the best software tools for email list management, we’ve done the heavy lifting for you. Take a look at the best email list management software tools below.

1. HubSpot Email Marketing Tools

Price: Free; $45/mo (Starter), $800/mo (Professional), $3,200/mo (Enterprise)

With HubSpot’s Email Marketing Tools, you’ll be able to create, personalize, and optimize all of your marketing emails without the need for code, designers, IT, or other technical support.

With HubSpot, it’s easy to increase ROI because the tool helps you create and automate personalized emails for each individual recipient.HubSpot’s Email Marketing Tools are also powered by your all-in-one CRM platform, meaning the data that you need to customize your emails are at your fingertips and up-to-date.

A/B test different versions of your emails to determine which convert the most recipients and then analyze all email campaign data to continually improve upon your email marketing strategy.

Use HubSpot’s Email Marketing Tools to manage your mailing list and create, personalize, and optimize your marketing emails without waiting on designers or IT.

2. Zapier

Price: Free, $19.99/ mo (Starter), $49/ mo (Professional), $299/ mo (Team), $599/ mo (Company)

With Zapier, you can easily build and create email workflows — which sync to apps such as Dropbox and Gmail — to automate your email marketing strategy and campaigns.

Zapier lets you import your subscriber list from Facebook, Eventbrite, or Google Sheets so you can quickly send your emails to the right group of people. Lastly, share and back up Zapier data to Google Sheets to analyze your email campaigns and collaborate with your team.

3. OptinMonster

Price: $14/mo (Basic), $30/mo (Plus), $47/mo (Pro), $49/mo (Growth)

OptinMonster offers an email form template that lets you decide how to set up your emails for different customer segments. The tool supports multiple campaign structures and has different toggles for the metrics you choose to track and analyze. OptinMonster makes it easy to ensure you’re establishing a workflow that works with the type of campaign you’re rolling out.

4. Campaign Monitor

Price: $9/mo (Basic), $29/mo (Unlimited), $149/mo (Premier)

Campaign Monitor is ideal for creative professionals who handle email campaigns — it makes the process of managing email marketing from multiple accounts easy. The tool also offers email personalization, email template builders, RSS email, A/B testing, and analytics so you can handle all aspects of your email marketing strategy from a single tool.

5. Mailchimp

Price: Free, $9.99/mo (Essentials), $14.99/mo (Standard), $299 (Premium)

Mailchimp is a marketing platform with a variety of email, ecommerce, marketing campaign, audience management, and marketing automation tools. The software makes it easy to brand, design, and customize all of your emails.

The pre-made templates and the drag-and-drop builder make the process of creating your emails easy and efficient. You can set up automations so that your emails are triggered and sent based on when certain criteria are met (e.g. when someone subscribes to your blog). There are transactional email options that you can have Mailchimp automatically send after a purchase, sign up, and more.

Mailchimp also tracks and visualizes the success of your email campaigns in real-time via the internal dashboard so you can keep an eye on the metrics that matter most to your team.

6. Constant Contact

Price: $10/mo (Website Builder), $20/mo (Email), $45/mo (Email Plus), $195/mo (Ecommerce Plus)

Constant Contact offers customizable email templates — you can edit the templates with one click, making email creation and design easy. The tool comes with open-rate tracking, click-rate tracking, and social media integration (so your email and social campaigns and contacts are integrated).

7. ActiveCampaign

Price: $9/mo (Lite), $49/mo (Plus), $129/mo (Professional), $229/mo (Enterprise)

ActiveCampaign helps you create customized emails, customer segments and lists, and campaign reports so you can analyze your results. You can create broadcast emails, trigger emails, targeted emails, and email funnels.

Automate the process of sending emails by scheduling them in advance. The tool also lets you test emails before you send them as well as sets up auto-response emails based on criteria that you establish.

8. Mad Mimi

Price: $10/mo (Basic), $42/mo (Pro), $199/mo (Silver), $1,049/mo (Gold)

Mad Mimi makes it easy to create, send, and track email newsletters. All of your emails are automatically mobile-friendly and the user interface makes it simple to design emails no matter your technical background.

In fact, the tool is a great choice for beginners who are interested in diving into the specifics of email creation because it provides walkthroughs of some features that might be difficult to understand, like RSS to email and drip campaigns.

19. AdRoll

Price: Free, $19/mo (Growth)

AdRroll blends email marketing, display advertising, and social media planning — meaning, the tool enables you to establish and maintain a holistic view of your email marketing strategy. Subscriber lists from other platforms can be uploaded onto the platform seamlessly so all of your data is centrally stored.

Start Using Mailing List Software

Identify the right mailing list software for your team and start creating, customizing, sending, tracking, and analyzing your business’s marketing emails.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Educator and computer pioneer Alan Kay once said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

If you work for a growing company, be it a startup or scale-up, you’ll know that attempting to “invent” the future isn’t a matter of waiting around for flashes of inspiration and eureka moments — rather, it requires proactive planning, excellent execution, and awesome alignment. You’ll also know that these ingredients aren’t easy to come by. Not by a long shot.

That’s why I swear by a simple, unique framework to help me and my team at HubSpot prepare for the future. It’s called ‘rhythm of the business,’ and it involves visually mapping out the key events, milestones, and activities scheduled across the business year and ensuring that every team is intimately familiar with the plan — or rhythm — for the months ahead.

As a member of HubSpot’s revenue operations team, understanding the ‘rhythm of the business’ is critical for our success. Our team’s north-star goal is to remove friction for our customer-facing teams and help them to pass that friction-free experience on to customers.

The RevOps model sets us up for success because it breaks down silos between operations professionals, unifies them as a central team, and allows them to work collaboratively on the systems and processes that power a business.

As a result, duplicative work gets weeded out, repeatable tasks get automated, and time is spent proactively improving the customer experience, not frantically reacting to glitches in the system.

As the RevOps model aligns teams around the customer, the ‘rhythm of the business’ framework aligns the entire company around key events in the business year — those moments where outsized impact is possible and execution is everything.

Together, RevOps and ‘rhythm of the business’ are greater than the sum of their parts; a combination of mindset and method that enables growing continually to delight customers, even as their internal operating model becomes more complex.

How I Became a ‘Rhythm of the Business’ Believer

It was during my time working for Amazon that I first embraced ‘rhythm of the business.’ I picked up the habit of keeping a record of important milestones throughout the year, noting on my calendar the “fire drills” that occurred during the year and color-coded them.

Annual kick-offs were highlighted in blue, big customer events were orange. I used a printed wall calendar, which I know is “old school,” but it allowed me to visualize the entire year in a nanosecond.

Later in my time at Amazon, when I was in charge of planning, strategy, and enablement, I looked at the previous year’s calendar and noticed that some events had gone well for my team while others should have been given more preparation time. In short, I realized that we needed to plan better for the next 12 months.

So, when the time came to map out our calendar for the year ahead, I was able to take the learnings from the past 12 months and provide some informed structure to what otherwise would have been, in essence, an act of guesswork.

By structuring my team’s year in this way, not only were we able to kick off earlier than most teams, we gained the time needed to develop and refine our hypotheses, test them, and lay out a defensible data-driven strategy for the future.

This in turn enabled us to pursue better investments, see greater returns on those investments, and then be in a position to make greater investments going forward. The process took the form of a flywheel, feeding off its own momentum.

When I joined HubSpot in 2018, I brought the ‘rhythm of the business’ approach with me. Although the company had been growing well, it was about to hit a new phase of scale and we had the opportunity to improve our operating model by taking a step back from the whiteboard and considering the ebb and flow of the year.

This enabled us to kick off planning at the right time and be prepared for major milestones throughout the course of the year.

3 Ways ‘Rhythm of the Business’ Helps HubSpot Scale Better

At HubSpot, we have an annual planning cycle, and we recently observed that there were some areas of misalignment between teams. That was causing internal friction, and where there’s internal friction, it’s never too long before that friction seeps into the customer experience.

For example, at times our engineering team and product team were at advanced stages of their annual planning before other teams had fully defined what they needed from them.

At best, this type of disconnect can lead to a lot of lost time in meetings trying to re-assess plans, and at worst it can lead to ineffective, disjointed strategic execution — a thought that would keep most operations professionals I know up at night.

We turned to the ‘rhythm of the business’ model to root out this misalignment and implemented it with three straightforward steps that are easy for growing companies of any size to replicate.

1. Map the milestones.

The first thing my team at HubSpot did when adopting the ‘rhythm of the business’ was to note on our physical calendar when other teams were doing their annual planning and when their key milestones were due to occur.

We worked backward from those dates to set deadlines for the deliverables we owned for other teams’ key milestones, and once finalized, we distributed the calendar digitally across the company.

That allowed us to align our activities and priorities with those of other teams, giving us a tightly knit strategy for the year ahead.

2. Look long-term.

As important as it is to have the rhythm of the forthcoming year mapped out, it’s just as important to have a long-term plan in place.

At HubSpot, we recently mapped out a three-to-five-year plan, which is critically helpful from a systems perspective — it enables us to build a business strategy that is consistent, coherent, and clear. It also gives us the opportunity to ensure we’re making investments in the right systems at the right times.

Without this foresight, each team would likely pursue its own agenda and strategy, leading to different departments pointing in different directions, fractured investments, and potentially a clunky, cobbled-together tech stack — something that’s deeply detrimental to the customer experience.

3. Be a theme player.

With the key milestones for the year mapped out, it’s helpful to group them together under certain themes or seasons. This makes it easier for teams to organize their work mentally and remain focused on the overarching business purpose of their activities at any time of the year.

Here’s an example of how we at HubSpot group milestones by theme:

Q1: Kickoff Season

We kick the year off, set targets, and make sure that people have a clear understanding of their goals and feel motivated by them.

Q2: Think-big Season

We step back from the business and explore big opportunities and plan long-term. We look at what’s working well, we think about the future that’s not yet illuminated, and we assess the external factors that could impact our business.

It’s one of my favorite seasons because we consider the trends that might emerge three to five years from now. And that thinking helps inform the company in Q3.

Q3: Compass Season

We plan for the next year and identify the big plays we want to make, as well as the opportunities we will omit.

These choices are made with the learnings from Q2’s “think-big” season fresh in our minds, helping us to make decisions in the short term that will set us up for success in the long term.

Q4: Planning Season

You wrap up the year, finalizing the subsequent years’ targets, goals, investments, and divestments…and take some time to recharge!

Alignment Over Strategy

The ‘rhythm of the business’ framework has allowed the revenue operations team at HubSpot ensure that all teams are aligned on not only our priorities for the year ahead but also our vision of the future.

This in turn allows us to effectively create processes, construct systems, and organize data for our customer-facing teams, setting them up to successfully deliver a friction-free experience to our customers.

As our Chief Customer Officer Yamini Rangan often says, “Alignment eats strategy for breakfast.” This has become a mantra for us RevOps professionals at HubSpot as we ride the rhythm of the year.

After all, a strategy is only as good as its execution, and execution is entirely dependent on alignment, particularly at a scaling company.

To get started with “rhythm of the business” in your organization, start by looking back through your calendar — whether print, digital or memory-based — and mark down when key milestones occurred over the course of the previous year.

Then earmark when you began planning for each milestone and assess whether your team’s preparation was adequate or if it would benefit from more time, information, or support next year.

Once you’ve constructed this simple plan, you’ll be able to give your team a clear sense of the rhythm of your business for the next year. And in doing so, you’ll not only be able to prepare for the future, you’ll be able to invent it.

Final Thoughts

If you’d like to look into visualizing the future with the “rhythm of business” model, explore whether your company has rhythm or how to create a rhythm of business model. I also recommend a book we use at HubSpot, “Playing to Win,” which helped us ensure that we were all using similar nomenclature and frameworks.

Ultimately, the specific nomenclature or framework doesn’t matter. What matters is that everyone is on the same page and uses it – this speeds up communication, decision-making, and results.

If you’re anything like me, you probably mainly consider Wikipedia a good source for a behind-the-scenes look at the production of Game of Thrones, or a collection of random facts on Zebras.

In short, you likely haven’t given it much thought as a channel for brand awareness.

But, if you think about it, Wikipedia is one of the best third-party sources for ranking on page one of Google. Typically, when you search an intended keyword, you don’t have to scroll far before you see its accompanying Wikipedia page:

Additionally, it’s a recognizable website, so it’s often one of the first pages someone will click on if they want to learn more about what your business does.

If you want to boost your business’s visibility online, take a look at this quick guide so you can create a Wikipedia page for your company, today.

1. Create an account.

Go to Wikipedia’s homepage and click “Create account” in the top right.

Enter the necessary information, including username and password, then click “Create your account”.

2. Get promoted to an autoconfirmed user.

When you first join Wikipedia, you’ll see a box pop-up that reads, “Help improve Wikipedia” with a link to start editing an article:

Before creating your page, you’ll need to become an autoconfirmed user.

These are Wikipedia’s typical guidelines for an autoconfirmed user: “Although the precise requirements for autoconfirmed status vary according to circumstances, most English Wikipedia user accounts that are more than four days old and have made at least 10 edits (including deleted ones) are considered autoconfirmed.”

Here, you’ll need to practice patience — spend the first couple days once you open an account editing other people’s pages. Once you click “Edit a page”, there are links on the top right of every paragraph with the word “Edit”, so it shouldn’t be too time-consuming.

Once you’re autoconfirmed, proceed to the next step.

3. Create the page.

Now we’ve reached the most challenging part — creating the page.

First, go to Wikipedia’s “Writing an article” page. As you scroll down the page, you’ll see a blue button that reads, “Article wizard: an easy way to create articles.” Click this button (as long as you’re autoconfirmed):

Next, you’ll be redirected to Wikipedia’s Article Wizard. Here, you have two options — immediately begin creating your page by clicking “Next”, or practicing editing your page in Wikipedia’s sandbox, first.

For our purposes, we’ll click “Next”:

It’s important to note — since there’s likely no Wikipedia page already available for your company, you can include as much or as little information as you want. Additionally, you’ll want to structure the page for easy readability, featuring some of the most important and basic information (like what your company does), first.

For instance, take a look at how HubSpot’s Wikipedia page is structured:

The page starts with a two sentence overview of what HubSpot does, followed by a table of contents on the left, and a “fact sheet” on the right. Below the table of contents you’ll first find HubSpot’s history, followed by a description of HubSpot’s software and services.

On HubSpot’s Wikipedia page, the information that is above-the-fold is likely most useful for a new visitor who hasn’t heard of HubSpot before — a quick glance at the page can tell her, for instance, what HubSpot does, how much revenue HubSpot makes, what third-party sources such as Forbes say about HubSpot, and who HubSpot’s founders are.

While readers can continue scrolling for more product-specific information, it’s critical Wikipedia is mainly used as a broad brand awareness platform.

We’ll look at more examples later on.

4. Provide citations.

Wikipedia is ultimately an encyclopedia, so to prove the validity of your topic, you must include citations to various articles and third-party sources.

Before you begin creating your page, Wikipedia warns you of this, stating — “the topic of an article must already be covered in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. These include journals, books, newspapers, magazines, and websites with a reputation for fact checking. Social media, press releases, or corporate/professional profiles do not qualify”:

Ultimately, citations give your business credibility and allow the reader to trust your company is real. Look for magazine or newspaper articles that mention your company, other websites that backlink to your website as a resource, or directories that link to your company’s profile.

5. Submit the page for review.

When you’re finished with your page, submit it for review. Once Wikipedia deems it a credible source, it will be uploaded as an official Wikipedia page.

6. Update it regularly.

Remember — the hard work isn’t over, just yet. As your Wikipedia page begins ranking on page one of Google for your company name, it’s vital you regularly update it to ensure it provides the most up-to-date information regarding your products or services.

Additionally, by updating it regularly with company developments, you’re maintaining transparency, which is comforting for both your customers and leads.

Examples of Company Pages on Wikipedia

There are over 6 million articles in the English Wikipedia. A good chunk of those are company pages. The best company pages share the following characteristics:

• adequately describe the company
• maintain a neutral point of view
• include references to notable, independent sources
• includes a link to company website

Below we’ll take a look at two examples of company pages that can inspire your own. 

World Wide Technology

World Wide Technology’s wikipedia page is an excellent example of a company page. First, it offers a brief overview describing what type of company it is, how much revenue it earns, and how many people it employs. It then offers a timeline of notable events, starting with when it was founded and ending with its latest recognition in TIME magazine in 2021. 

The page ends with a comprehensive list of independent reliable sources, which have been published about the organization. Such a list helps Wikipedia understand why the organization is notable and avoids the appearance of a conflict of interest. Without such a list of references, your company page could be deleted. 

Urban One

Urban One’s wikipedia page is another excellent example of a company page. It begins by describing what the company is, who its primary audience is, and how large it is. While details like the fact that it’s the largest African-American-owned broadcasting company and one of the highest-earning African-American-owned businesses in the United States are impressive, they are stated objectively and cited properly to avoid the appearance of self-promotion. 

Wikipedia requires significant coverage in multiple independent sources for articles on organizations to be considered noticeable — a requirement which Urban One has easily met. Towards the bottom of the page you’ll find a references section with over 54 entries.

Getting Your Company on Wikipedia

Nowadays, a quick Google search provides us with an abundance of information — including social media profiles, directories, and press releases — on a given subject. By ensuring you have an up-to-date Wikipedia page, you’re covering your bases and giving viewers a trustworthy source of information related to your business or brand.

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

One of the best ways to deliver valve to and engage with your subscribers — those who already like, know, and trust your brand — is through an email newsletter. With the strategy in place, newsletters help you keep your contacts engaged with your business, establish your brand authority and trustworthiness, and ultimately drive more leads.

Once you have an email marketing plan for engaging your subscribers, the next step is choosing newsletter software to support your efforts.

Newsletter software is essential since it allows you to beautifully design a newsletter email and deliver the email to your subscribers with features such as:

• A/B testing
• Smart content
• Templates and customizability
• Analytics

However, not all email newsletter tools are created equal.

What’s the best newsletter software?

There’s no one reigning champion of email newsletter tools. Ultimately, you’ll need to make the best decision for your unique needs based on the following criteria:

• Price – This one goes without saying, but if you want ROI from your email efforts, you’ll need to choose a solution that fits your budget.
• Features – If you’re new to email marketing, you’ll want a solution with a simple interface and easy-to-use features (like drag-and-drop email design). More advanced users may require more robust functionality.
• Subscriber Limits – Many solutions will base their pricing around the size of the database or the number of monthly email sends. Consider the size of your current audience and the rate at which you want to grow to choose a provider that offers plans to accommodate that.

With differences in features, pricing, and availability, choosing an email newsletter can be hard — especially with the number of options available. Additionally, newsletter tools differ in how much of the customer journey they can cover.

Ultimately, when choosing your email newsletter tool, you’ll want to ensure the tool matches your business’s goals — which is why we wanted to take out the guesswork and highlight the top email newsletters out there for your business.

1. HubSpot’s Email Marketing Tool

Pricing: Starts Free

Designing, sending, and analyzing email newsletters has never been easier with the HubSpot Email tool. HubSpot offers a drag-and-drop email editor so you can easily create a polished email newsletter that you can personalize to fit your brand’s design without needing a designer or IT professional.

Additionally, you can experiment with smart content rules, personalization, A/B testing, and advanced reporting — ensuring your email newsletters are optimized for your business. You can also see who’s engaging with each newsletter email and when, what device they’re using, the most popular links and documents, and more. You can use these insights to design tests that will take conversion rates to new heights for your business.

Ultimately, what makes HubSpot’s Email tool so exceptional is its ability to pair with HubSpot’s free forms tool to easily collect email leads, as well as HubSpot’s free CRM to give you insight into how your marketing emails are performing.

For example, you can use an email subscriber’s lifecycle stage, list membership, or any information in their contact records to automatically serve up the most relevant subject lines, content, links, attachments, and calls-to-action.

Best of all, it can grow with you as you grow.

2. Moosend

Pricing: Free up to 2,000 subscribers

Image Source

Moosend is a well-rounded email marketing newsletter tool that requires no technical skill whatsoever. Through Moosend’s email editor, you can easily build personalized email newsletters using interactive elements like videos and images. Alternatively, you can get started immediately by picking one of the ready-made templates available in the platform’s template library.

The tool also comes with landing pages and subscription forms to boost your lead generation efforts. You also get detailed reporting and analytics that allow you to make data-driven decisions.

Finally, to top it off, Moosend’s platform allows you to create or use some ready-made automation recipes to boost conversion.

3. Benchmark

Pricing: Free up to 250 emails per month

Image Source

Benchmark offers the ability to easily create email newsletters via drag-and-drop functionality, giving non-technical marketers the power to create beautiful newsletters. There’s also a good selection of newsletter templates that you can choose from in the Benchmark template library.

Some of Benchmark’s most valuable features include detailed analytics on how each email campaign performs, A/B split testing to ensure you’re sending the best emails, spam testing tools that ensure your emails get to inboxes, responsive designs and templates, list segmentation tools, and auto-responders.

4. SendInBlue

Pricing: Free up to 300 emails per day

Image Source

With SendInBlue, you don’t need technical skills to create well-designed email newsletters. The drag-and-drop functionality, HTML editor, and expansive template gallery gives you the tools you need to create stunning emails.

You can personalize the design of your newsletters with easy builders, choose the form fields for your subscription form, and design many ways for your visitors to opt-in. SendInBlue has a robust automation pipeline, allowing you to send different emails based on specific actions taken by your contacts. However, SendInBlue does not have a CRM, so it’s not the best option for scaling teams.

5. Stripo

Pricing: Starts free

Image Source

Stripo is an email template builder that allows you to design HTML email templates and export them to your email newsletter software of choice. If you’re not a fan of working in HTML, you also have the option to use the drag-and-drop editor, or even combine the two editing formats, depending on your preference. With Stripo, you’ll have access to interactive elements (such as rollover effects on buttons and images) and features for embedded dynamic content and personalization.

Stripo also offers over 350 prebuilt templates with over 100,000 free stock images and 1,000 prebuilt modules that you can use across your campaigns.

You can use the embedded email testing tool so you know how your newsletters will render across your contacts’ email clients.

Additionally, Stripo has a native integration with HubSpot, which allows you to push all your emails from Stripo to HubSpot with just a few clicks.

6. GetResponse

Pricing: Starts at $15 per month

Image Source

GetResponse offers features that become available as you need them, from a range of starter features all the way to enterprise features such as webinars and landing pages. Hosting landing pages in GetResponse will further enable you to capture email subscribers for your newsletter.

GetResponse also allows you to create well-designed email newsletters with their drag-and-drop email editor, segment contacts tool, campaigns creator, and A/B testing tool. With a ton of templates to choose from, you can create an email to match your brand, and send emails more efficiently.

7. Mailjet

Pricing: Free up to 6,000 email sends per month

Image Source

Mailjet offers email solutions for fast-moving teams, especially in Europe, and great scaling opportunities for larger companies. The service is keen on being developer-friendly with a powerful API solution for engineers to build on their email platform. One appealing feature of Mailjet is the ability to create dynamic content that is personalized for each recipient based on data such as name and location.

If your team demands email newsletters are built together and reviewed often before sending, Mailjet’s collaborative tools make it easy for teams to work together on emails. For example, you can create a draft of your newsletter in Mailjet, and your teammates can suggest edits before it’s sent — all within the app.

8. Pabbly Email Marketing

Pricing: Starts free

Image Source

Pabbly Email Marketing is a powerful bulk emailing tool that provides features like built-in email templates, auto-followups, custom fields, subscription forms, integrations, all included in the basic plan.

Pabbly provides the ability to choose from more than 50 SMTPs for sending emails. Using the SMTP routing feature, you can divide your email campaign into smaller segments of subscribers and use different SMTPs for each segment. Sending emails using different SMTPs can improve the deliverability of your emails.

9. MailChimp

Pricing: Free up to 2,000 subscribers

Image Source

MailChimp offers a free email marketing service with a large selection of templates to choose from for newsletters. MailChimp is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses looking to get their feet wet in email marketing but is not suited for scaling teams since it lacks powerful automation and segmenting features.

MailChimp is a valuable tool nonetheless, especially since its free plan generously offers up to 12,000 free email sends per month. You’ll also like the variety of newsletter templates that MailChimp offers, and the drag-and-drop builder that lets you rework the designs.

10. Constant Contact

Pricing: Starts at $20 per month

Image Source

Constant Contact provides a reliable email newsletter solution for small to large businesses. Constant Contact provides a helpful user onboarding for anyone looking to get started quickly and offers easy-to-use features. If you think you’ll be running into complexity with the email marketing tool, you’ll be happy to know that Constant Contact’s multi-channel support system can help walk you through most issues.

In Constant Contact, you can use their email builder to create newsletters that match your brand, select from a variety of templates, and edit to ensure it looks exactly how you want it — although I’m not a big fan of the templates since most of the templates look outdated. Additionally, if you need sophisticated automation features and workflows, I would advise staying away from Constant Contact because it lacks a strong automation system.

11. MailUp

Pricing: 470 € per year

Image Source

MailUp offers plenty of the same functionality as what you’d expect from an email marketing service, including a drag-and-drop email builder, beautifully designed templates, and an HTML editor.

However, it’s critical to note — you get more value from MailUp if you choose to send out emails at a slower pace since the price varies depending on delivery speed. So, if your business has a specific number of contacts and doesn’t mind sending newsletters slower, you could save money by using MailUp. If you use WordPress, MailUp also offers a WordPress plugin that you can use to capture newsletter subscribers on your website.

12. Zoho Campaigns

Pricing: Starts at $3 per month

Image Source

Zoho offers a great email solution for marketers looking to utilize automation features, including auto-responders and workflows. If you’re already a Zoho CRM customer, it might be worth checking out Zoho Campaigns for an email newsletter tool, since they work better together.

Zoho includes many modern and well-designed templates to choose from. If you’re worried about how your newsletter will look on different mobile devices or browsers, Zoho gives you the ability to check to see how your newsletters look on various devices to ensure your newsletter is optimized for mobile, tablet, and desktop.

13. AWeber

Pricing: Free up to 500 subscribers

Image Source

AWeber delivers a well-established email marketing newsletter tool with an array of features for your business, including email designs, list segmentation, automation tools, and detailed reporting. To make design easier, AWeber has more than 6,000 royalty-free stock photos to include in your emails. Of course, you can also upload your own images and gifs.

AWeber is a great solution if your business uses WordPress since AWeber easily integrates with WordPress. However, it’s important to note you can’t specify multiple segments at once when sending an email newsletter — plus, AWeber lacks some powerful automation features.

14. Campaigner

Pricing: $59 per month up to 5,000 subscribers

Image Source

Campaigner is a good option if you work for a growing team since the tool offers robust automation and workflow features available at the enterprise tier. You can set up systems that send email newsletters when contacts fill out specific forms, make a purchase, or engage with a previous email.

As with most of the email newsletter tools in this list, Campaigner offers easy-to-use email builders and a large selection of templates to get you started. If you run into trouble, their support is noted as being helpful at solving technical challenges.

15. Drip

Pricing: Starts at $19 per month up to 500 contacts

Image Source

Drip is ideal for more experienced email marketers since it’s not as intuitive and easy to use as some of the others in the list. For example, there’s a limited email template library, so you’ll have to spend time designing your email newsletter. With that said, Drip comes packed with automation features that could be beneficial for your business, particularly if you work in e-commerce.

With Drip’s “ECRM”, you can run personalized email newsletter campaigns that work with information gathered from contact purchases and checkout information, like abandoned cart details. One thing to note — Drip does not offer phone support, so you won’t have that added peace of mind.

16. Postcards

Pricing: Starts free

Image Source

Used by major brands like Nike, Disney, and T Mobile, Postcards is a drag-and-drop email builder that enables you to create impressive email newsletters. The tool features a “modular system”, meaning you can stack and re-arrange pre-made designs to create a custom newsletter that fits your brand. Customizable modules include a header and footer, CTA, and menu options.

Additionally, the tool enables you to collaborate with teammates to ensure the newsletter is up to everyone’s standards and gives you a 30-day version history if you decide to revert to an older format. Plus, you’ll get unlimited exports.

17. Campaign Monitor

Pricing: Starts at $9 per month

Image Source

Campaign Monitor’s email marketing tool enables you to create an engaging and high-quality email newsletter with a simple drag-and-drop interface. Additionally, the tool includes sign-up forms you can embed on your blog pages to encourage new readers to sign-up for daily content delivered to their inboxes.

Along with unique and customizable templates, Campaign Monitor provides a full analytics suite to help you track the performance of your newsletters over time. You can measure engagement to improve the content you include in your newsletters for the long haul.

18. BEE Pro

Pricing: Starts free

Image Source

If you’re a freelance designer or work at an email agency, this tool could be a good fit for you. BEE Pro lets you create mobile-ready emails quickly with smart design tools — plus, you can save custom templates, and even assign projects to specific clients’ to ensure an easy workflow if you’re using this one email tool for multiple brands. Additionally, the tool enables you to invite clients or colleagues to review and make comments on email newsletter drafts to get approval faster.

19. MailerLite

Pricing: Free up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 sends per month

Image Source

MailerLite is a great free option for starting a newsletter. Its newsletter editor features pre-built design blocks and drag-and-drop functionality, allowing you to build attractive and mobile-friendly emails quickly and easily. To top things off, you get built-in photo editing to help you create without leaving the platform. Mailerlite also has the capability to segment audiences, add personalization, and create dynamic content so you can continually deliver a great experience.

Premium plans include unlimited sends, a custom HTML editor, and the removal of the MailerLite logo. You can also get a Stripe integration for monetizing your newsletter with digital products.

20. ConvertKit

Pricing: Free up to 1,000 subscribers

Image Source

ConvertKit offers a whole suite of products for building and growing an email newsletter. With the free version, you’ll be able to create unlimited landing pages and forms to build your subscriber list. You’ll also be able to draw from a library of templates for email creation.

One interesting thing about ConvertKit is that you can sell digital products and memberships without an integration or added premium, giving you monetization capability out of the gate.

Premium plans include automation, subscriber scoring, and even a referral system through SparkLoop.

Growing Your Newsletter

That’s it! These are the best email newsletter tools that I recommend. You can’t go wrong with any of these tools since they all offer similar features, but there will be one that’s best suited for your business. The great thing about HubSpot is that we offer a free solution to get you started — and then, once your business grows, we have plenty of advanced features you’ll need in order to deliver a successful newsletter marketing strategy down the road.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

When you begin implementing a social media strategy for your business, one of the first questions you’ll ask yourself is this one — Should my business be on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram?

Those three social media sites offer considerable opportunities to connect and engage with a network, increase brand awareness, and drive traffic to your site. But they’re also incredibly different in terms of purpose.

Ultimately, Facebook’s purpose is to connect people with their personal networks including friends and family. People use Facebook to share photos, videos, and general updates on their lives.

Twitter, on the other hand, is used to share ideas, real-time information, and trending news. While people may also use Twitter to connect with friends and family, they largely use it for a bigger purpose — to connect to the wider world and discover what’s happening (in 140 characters or less).

Instagram is used to share photos and videos. People mainly use this app to post their “highlight reel” and follow friends as well as influencers. This is how users become a part of a social media community.

Of course, this still begs the question — where does your business fit into all this? To explore the pros and cons of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, we’ve created a comprehensive breakdown of the three platforms.

Keep reading to figure out which platform is a better business investment for your company.

And what about Instagram?

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Users

Let’s start by taking a look at Twitter versus Facebook versus Instagram users.

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Demographics

To start, let’s consider the potential demographic your business could reach on each platform.

Here are some quick and informative facts:

Twitter Demographic Facts:

• 24% of U.S. adults are on Twitter.
• 40% of Twitter users are between the ages of 18-29.
• Less than 20% of people ages 50 and up use Twitter.

Facebook Demographic Facts:

• 70% of U.S. adults are on Facebook.
• 80% of Facebook users are between the ages of 18-29.
• 65% of people ages 50 and up use Facebook.

Instagram Demographic Facts:

• 37% of U.S. adults are on Instagram.
• 75% of Instagram users are 18-24.

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Engagement

It’s equally critical you determine quality over quantity — how long does each site’s audience stay on the platform? Or, alternatively, how many minutes per day do they spend on each?

Twitter Engagement Facts:

• As of Q1 2019, Twitter averaged 330 million monthly active users.
• About 71% of Twitter users say they use the platform to get news. 
• You have no choice but to engage users with quickly digestible content since the platform has a 140-character limit. 

Facebook Engagement Facts:

• Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide. 
• As of Q1 of 2021, Facebook reported nearly 1.88 billion daily active users. 
• In the U.S., Facebook accounts for over 60% of monthly social media visits. 

Instagram Engagement Facts:

• 59% of Instagram users visit the app daily.

• Accounts with 1,000-5,000 followers typically have a 5.6% engagement rate. On the other hand, accounts with over 1 million followers, average a 1.97% engagement rate.

With all of the above stats in mind, no matter how many followers you have, if you can appeal to your audience with the right content, you’ll likely have the best engagement rates on Facebook. Here’s some research by Statista to prove it. This is a look at the most popular mobile social networking apps in the U.S., as of September 2019, by user engagement (in minutes/ month). Facebook wins by a substantial amount. 

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Usage

Here are some points to consider while choosing the right platform for your business to use:

• With less than 140 characters to convey your brand’s message, you might think of Twitter as your business’ “elevator pitch”. What do you want to get across to your audience quickly and succinctly?
• Facebook is your opportunity to engage more in-depth with an audience. You can create full business pages, share videos, and images, and further incentivize prospects to engage with your brand (by offering 10% off if they “like” your business page, for instance).
• With Instagram, you can create an interactive community. This is the platform where users are more likely to engage. People go to Instagram and expect to see influencers and follow brands they like.

Twitter Ads vs Facebook vs Instagram Ads

In general, advertising on Facebook and Instagram allows you to reach a larger audience. Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, they offer similar ad tools. Additionally, Facebook ads come with some impressive targeting tools, so you’re able to narrow down salary, purchase behavior, hobbies, Facebook communities, and more.

Facebook advertising’s interface is relatively easy and intuitive for the user. Facebook ads can be relatively cheap, as well — in fact, Facebook points out that, “Some people spend more on coffee each day than they do on their ad campaigns”. While it depends on the campaign you’re running, you can often set a budget as little as $2 to $3 per day.

Twitter also offers targeting capabilities, including purchase behavior, language, interest, and followers. However, Twitter advertising is typically more expensive than Facebook.

It may be worth the extra money, though — engagement rates for Twitter ads can be as high as 1-3%, much higher than Facebook’s average CTR of 0.119%.

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram for Business

Ultimately, it’s likely best to try Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for a while if you’re unsure which one works better for your brand. Over time, you’ll gain valuable insights into how well your posts perform on these sites, enabling you to dedicate more time to one over the other. Since they’re free to use, there’s no harm in initially trying all three.

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

Disclaimer: This blog post is not legal advice for your company to use in complying with data privacy laws like GDPR. Instead, it provides background information to help you better understand data privacy best practices. This legal information is not the same as legal advice, where an attorney applies the law to your specific circumstances, so we insist that you consult an attorney if you’d like advice on your interpretation of this information or its accuracy.

In a nutshell, you may not rely on this as legal advice, or as a recommendation of any particular legal understanding.

GDPR instilled a catalyst of real change in 2018 — resulting in a permanent change of the data privacy landscape.

It forced companies to really take stock of their data and privacy responsibilities — and double down on the requirements to map out and account for their data practices and put processes in place to manage data and store it compliantly.

COVID-19 has also unleashed a new set of risks in relation to data privacy that companies are currently confronting.

Both significant events force a strong message to be delivered to companies that privacy and data protection should be of paramount corporate responsibility. The changes have impacted conversations around the world with different territories adopting GDPR as their standard in order to outline an internal compliance program.

Data privacy or, in particular, the application of tenets of privacy to data, is often seen as a massive hurdle to cross for an organization. Companies should embed processes as part of their culture and be willing to pivot in order to adapt to regulatory changes and technological advances.

Systemized processes using tools that are designed to instill compliance can set you up for success as well as continuing to educate internally can help with internal adoption and ensure that privacy is everyone’s responsibility.

At HubSpot, we ensure that data privacy is top of mind and built into our practices and products. Upholding respect to the privacy of individuals who use our products is paramount to our corporate responsibility and internal business model. We are continuously identifying ways in which to improve processes to instill trust in our users and creating tools for our users to be compliant in their organizations.

Below are a few examples of how good privacy can be achieved in an organization.

Data Privacy Best Practices

Privacy Program Management

Setting yourself up for success in the privacy arena requires the establishment of a strong internal team, a united front that will continue to make data privacy and GDPR compliance a priority. Close collaboration on a strategic privacy program that outlines your privacy responsibilities is key to see your business scale compliantly.

Knowing how to conduct processes compliantly in relation to your online activities, identifying risks, managing cookie compliance for your web and app products; creating specific disclosures about the treatment of data; offering visitors information on the rights available to them in a privacy policy are all good practices that every organization needs.

Granularity and types of notices that are needed along with the scope of rights that you must provide to visitors under applicable laws depend on the territories where your visitors reside and it is up to you to demystify these and instill good practices in response.

The scope of domestic and foreign privacy legislation that one company may be obliged to comply with may look different than the scope applicable to another, as there is no “one size fits all” approach to data privacy.

Having a team in place to tackle what these mean to your organization and address compliance obligations can help you communicate your commitment to privacy in this area for your users.

Adopt the Use of Compliance Tools and Practices as Part of your Company Culture

Data privacy is not one person’s responsibility.

By embedding it into your company’s culture, it can make all employees feel invested in keeping company data safe and mitigate risk.

Creating ongoing training and communicating important regulatory changes to keep employees up to date is essential to see your privacy program a success. Charging your privacy team with ongoing monitoring of how changes can affect processes and implementing required changes ensures you are kept up to date with evolving legislation and ahead of any changes in responsibilities.

Did you know that ransomware attacks are often a result of a single compromised password? Doubling down on passwords is the most basic way to operate a good privacy program within your organization.

Identifying risks in this area is key and plugging the gaps that appear can be a constant battle.

For example, having inactive accounts present in your network from a former employee can be a fault that bad actors can take advantage of. It’s a good idea for your org to invest in pass-key software to help implement multi-factor authentication and add additional security to the systems you use to reduce risk in this area.

Using tools that are built with compliance in mind can automate much of these processes needed to affect your program management. These tools can monitor your data collection processes and allow you to implement changes in response.

Integration of third-party systems into this monitoring allows you to extend your privacy controls out into a vendor ecosystem. Automating your processes in relation to subject access requests allows you to be effective within the legal timeframe and generate responses to an individual and carry out your responsibilities when you have a 360 view of the data subject’s data points.

Not only that, but you will be ready to meet any request from a regulator should they need information from you consolidated in one source, allowing you to comply effectively within the timeframe.

Privacy Does Not Stand Still — Keep Pace with Evolving Legislation and Technology 

In the European Union, many consumers are actively making use of their data protection rights granted to them under the GDPR and the ePrivacy Regulation.

In the US and beyond, consumers now have higher expectations about online privacy and are starting to adopt GDPR standards. More and more consumers are now openly concerned about how their personal data is being handled by companies. The newly passed CPRA (amending the CCPA), Privacy Acts being launched in Washington and Virginia as well as similar legislation being rolled out globally in countries like Brazil, India, and China are testament to how territories are making moves to uphold data privacy at a local level.

Some of the latest significant legal developments that companies need to know about are:

• Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) — The European Commission adopted revised Standard Contractual Clauses for International Transfers on June 4, 2021. The revised version replaces those that pre-date the GDPR and are intended to be used for cross-border data transfers outside of Europe, including the US. Although these have an effective date in three months, businesses that are governed by existing SCCs have 18 months to enter into new SCCs or find another lawful means to transfer data.

• Colorado Privacy Act — This Act passed the state’s legislature on June 8, 2021. It will be the third US state – after California and Virginia – with a law that provides its residents with protections when it comes to their personal information.

• China’s Data Security Law (“DSL”) — This law takes effect on September 1, 2021. Many of the practical compliance steps are still to be published over the coming weeks and months but organizations can seek to rely on the draft measures until they do.

Keeping abreast of what these legal developments mean to you and what you need to do with regard to your data in response, is your responsibility. You may need to make adjustments internally to comply and work with your teams to ensure that any privacy issues are addressed.

A thorough examination of what is incumbent on you, with adjustments to processes internally or systematically, has to be done to meet changes at both local and global levels. Making sure your processes are flexible for both and having the capacity to scale with your business with such developments is equally important.

Final Thoughts

As our operations become perpetually digitized, building a privacy-by-design company should be a key priority. Implementing a comprehensive and coordinated approach to data privacy can be challenging and time-consuming but setting it out as a strategic priority across all business activities driven by leadership, is a must for future-thinking organizations.

Organizations should understand and prepare for the reputational risks that extend beyond non-compliance with the myriad of data privacy laws and regulations. Being on the pulse of regulatory change in global privacy laws, keeping up to date with enforcement decisions, and making continuous improvements to privacy programs can help create a privacy-first culture that will set you up for success in the future.

You should be asking yourself some of these thoughtful questions to see if your privacy methods are currently up to standard. Unfortunately, the consequences of failure to improve on matters are not kind, but effectiveness in this area will reward you in the long-term improving your brand image as a trusted, privacy-first organization.

Grabbing — and keeping — your audience’s attention has never been harder. Nowadays, people are bombarded with marketing 24/7, and yet in the last five years, the average attention span has actually dropped — to a mere eight seconds.

Fortunately, there are fun and unique strategies you can implement to engage your audience — and one of those strategies is an online quiz maker.

Similar to the addictive nature of Jeopardy, online quizzes are a fun way for people to engage with your brand. Additionally, consistent online quizzes can help you stay top-of-mind when your consumer is finally ready to buy.

Online quizzes also help you gain a better understanding of your users, and help create stronger relationships with them.

But, whether you’re looking for a professional survey tool or a more lighthearted quiz maker, there’s a range of options to choose from — which one will help drive the best long-term results?

We’ll explore our favorite 18 quiz makers shortly, but first, let’s take a look at the key features of great quiz makers.

Online Quiz Makers: Key Features

Quiz makers come in all forms. Some are incredibly professional, while others are pretty casual. Some are intended for fun, and others are meant to drive real business growth.

Whatever your goal, you should always look for the following key features in your quiz maker.

Easy Promotion Options

You’re trying to gather as many responses as possible, right?

Choosing a service that has built-in sharing options should be a top priority, as it’ll help increase reach.

Data Collection / Analysis

How are you going to collect and use the data?

This is a huge issue. If the data that’s collected is difficult to sort through and doesn’t help you identify key trends, then it’s useless. Make sure the data you collect can be exported or analyzed in-app in a way that’s easy for you.

Lead Capture

In nine out of 10 instances, you’ll also want your quiz to capture lead data from the user.

Make sure there’s a built-in method to collect more than just respondent’s answers — and ensure it can integrate with your primary CRM or ESP.

Time Efficiency

Quiz makers speed up the process needed to put them together.

By using a quiz maker, you can choose from pre-existing layouts or templates, to make a clear and engaging quiz — without the fuss of starting from scratch. They also provide step-by-step guides on how to build them, so you don’t have to do any second guessing.

Now that we’ve covered that, let’s get into our favorite quiz making solutions.

The 18 Best Online Quiz Makers in 2021

1. HubSpot Forms

Price: Free

Even though it’s one of the more advanced form builder tools, you don’t need any technical expertise when you use HubSpot’s free form builder. You can quickly create forms with the drag-and-drop form builder and convert anonymous website visitors into leads with unlimited forms, fields, submissions, and custom forms that all connect to your contact database. This flexibility and customization means it’s easy to create quizzes using the tool as well.

Once someone fills out your form, they’re automatically routed to HubSpot’s free CRM. Once they’re in your CRM, you can set reminder tasks, call them, and send them one-to-one personalized emails, letting you better manage and nurture relationships with your contacts.

HubSpot Forms is also available for WordPress via HubSpot’s WordPress plugin.

2. Survey Anyplace

Pricing: Basic Plan, $39/month per user; Professional Plan, $59/month per user; Enterprise Plan, contact for pricing

Survey Anyplace is one of the more advanced tools in the market, with skip logic, outcomes, and custom scoring that allow you to create quizzes with a high focus on personalization. Combine that with full customization to your branding and the ability for respondents to download a personalized feedback report at the end of the quiz, and you’ll see why this tool is so popular among HR companies.

Image Source

3. Typeform

Pricing: Basic Plan, $25/year per user; Plus Plan, $50/year per user; Business Plan, $83/year per user

Typeform takes quizzes and makes them intuitive for both the creator and the user. By offering one question at a time and delivering the quiz in an attractive, responsive interface, Typeform has become a leader in the world of online quizzes and surveys.

The platform is easy to use with its drag-and-drop editing tools. It’s also versatile, offering customer surveys, quizzes, lead generation tools, and more. There are numerous templates to choose from which can be customized to your individual needs.

Using Zapier, Typeform can be seamlessly integrated into CRM services like HubSpot. This way, all the data you collect is automatically added to your existing contacts.

However, it’s important to note some people might feel frustrated when receiving questions one at a time, since it can be more time-consuming. Additionally, the free version limits you to collecting only 100 responses per month.

Image Source

4. SurveyMonkey

Pricing: Team Advantage Plan, $25/month per user; Team Premiere Plan, $75/month per user; Enterprise Plan, contact for pricing

With Survey Monkey, you can create basic polls and questionnaires in minutes, and the basic version is free to use. The software features hundreds of templates and questions written by ‘survey methodologists,’ and are specifically designed to draw the right information out of respondents.

Although you can customize the design and layout of your quizzes and surveys, a common criticism is that you can’t fully brand the surveys because the Survey Monkey logo remains.

Image Source

5. ProProfs Quiz Maker

Pricing: Free Basic Plan; Essentials Plan, $25/month per user; Premium Plan, $50/month per user; Enterprise Plan, contact for pricing

ProProfs Quiz Maker is a useful tool for creating scored quizzes, public quizzes, personality quizzes, opinion surveys, polls, online tests, and exams. The tool offers 100+ quiz templates, 100,000+ ready-to-use questions, as well as 100+ configurations and an easy-to-use quiz editor.

ProProfs Quiz Maker allows for 10 different question types so you can easily build online quizzes, exams, tests, and surveys. The quizzes can be integrated with major marketing automation tools like ActiveCampaign, Constant Contact, MailChimp, and more.

The tool offers three plans with an option to bill monthly or annually. However, some of its advanced features are confined to the enterprise plans.

6. Outgrow

Price: From $14 per month

Pricing: Freelancer Limited Plan, $14/month per user; Freelancer Plan, $25/month per user; Essentials Plan, $95/month per user; Business Plan, $600/month per user

Using Outgrow you can easily create interactive quizzes as well as calculation quizzes, contests quizzes, tests, recommendation quizzes, and chatbot-styled quizzes. Outgrow’s highly-intuitive drag-and-drop builder allows you to build from scratch or choose from more than 1000 templates.

These templates can include recommendation quizzes helpful for B2B, B2C, and eCommerce businesses. Outgrow allows users to embed their quizzes in 10 diverse ways including Email, Popup, Adverts, Sidebar, Floating Rectangle, Full page, Inpage, Chatbot, ExitIntent, and FacebookTab.

7. Qzzr

Pricing: Basic Plan, $25/month per user; Pro Plan, contact for pricing; Enterprise Plan, contact for pricing

Qzzr was built by inbound marketers with the specific goal of bringing in qualified leads. It creates fully customizable quizzes and surveys through its simple, elegant interface.

Users can also leverage its comprehensive data analysis of the responses, and use its social sharing integrations to reach a larger audience.

One of the most impressive features is the ability to target offers based on the users’ answers. For example, you can add a ‘Buy Now’ CTA on the results page for a product a user expressed interest in.

It’s one of the cheaper options on the list, but lacks the advanced logic features of some of its competitors.

Image Source

8. GetFeedback

Pricing: Pricing available upon request

GetFeedback prides itself on its aesthetically-pleasing interface — both customer-facing, and the back-end. It’s one of the more advanced options for quiz and survey creation but is still relatively easy to use for novices. It offers integration into Salesforce CRM software, and detailed analytics so you can put your newfound data to use.

Offering full customization to your branding and coming very highly-rated, GetFeedback is one of the premium options on the market, ideal for larger teams and companies that really want to drill down into their audience data.

Image Source

9. Google Forms

Price: Free

Google Forms is a free and easy-to-use form tool that runs within G Suite. The functionality is on the basic side and the interface isn’t very customizable, but you can make decent forms and create quizzes to capture customer data. Since Google Forms is part of G Suite, you can pull data straight into Google Sheets for analysis.

Image Source

10. Riddle’s Quizmaker

Pricing: Basic Plan, $29/month per user; Pro Plan, $49/month per user; Team Plan, $199/month per user

Riddle’s Quizmaker is another easy-to-use tool with a focus on capturing email addresses. You can collect data from leads and send it directly to your lists in MailChimp or other software. Riddle’s Quizmaker is particularly good value for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

The tool is available as a WordPress plugin, or quizzes can be embedded into your site via an embed code. The quizzes are fully customizable, so you can stamp your branding all over them.

Image Source

11. Playbuzz

Price: Free

Full of cheap-looking ads, but absolutely free, Playbuzz is a great option for those who want to jump in and have a go at creating quizzes without the outlay upfront. Try it out, and if it works for you, move onto a premium quiz maker with more features and a better, ad-free interface.

The tool is quick and easy to get started, so it’s a good beginner’s option. Additionally, it’s easy to share your pro-looking quizzes on social media once you’re done.

Image Source

12. Alchemer

Pricing: Collaborator Plan, $49/month per user; Professional Plan, $149/month per user; Full Access Plan, $249/month per user

Alchemer is a feature-rich quiz and survey creation tool with a user-friendly interface. There are two versions — one geared towards individuals and small businesses, and another for larger enterprises. The former focuses on ease-of-use, while the latter enables deeper analysis of data and focuses more on customer research.

Image Source

13. Wufoo

Pricing: Starter Plan, $14/month per user; Professional Plan, $29/month per user; Advanced Plan, $74/month per user; Ultimate Plan, $183/month per user

A versatile tool for form design, survey creation, and quiz making, Wufoo is a cloud-based platform used by some of the biggest names in the industry. Its most notable feature is the advanced form logic and the ease with which you can collect, store, and organize data.

Not as easy to use as some of the more basic tools out there, Wufoo takes a bit of getting used to if you’re using the more advanced features (basic coding may be required!), but for routine form creation, it’s still pretty intuitive.

The free version limits the number of responses, but above that there are a number of price points, so it’s a good option for businesses that are growing quickly.

Image Source

14. Ask Nicely

Pricing: Pricing available upon request

Ask Nicely is a form and survey creator with a focus on customer feedback and improving your Net Promoter Score (NPS). The software integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, or Slack and allows you to automate customer follow-up to improve ratings and reviews on sites like Google.

Ask Nicely is more than just a quiz maker — it’s an advanced marketing tool suitable for medium to large companies who really value customer engagement. Pricing is based on your needs, but $375 is a rough idea of how much it will cost you. (It’s not cheap.)

Image Source

15. Brandquiz

Pricing: Free Limited Plan; Starter Plan, $25/month per user; Professional Plan, $75/month per user; Business Plan, $195/month per user

Brandquiz is a good option for quickly and easily creating fun branded quizzes with a range of templates available. The platform enables integration with major marketing tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, or MailChimp, to make the most of the data collected.

The free version extends to up to 100 participants per month, while a range of paid plans offer value for growing companies.

Image Source

16. Microsoft Forms

Pricing: Free

Microsoft Forms, similar to Google forms, is a great tool for those who are proficient in Microsoft Office as it has seamless integration with other Microsoft Office software. With easy step-by-step guides for creating basic forms and quizzes, Microsoft Forms keeps it simple.

Image Source

17. Form Crafts

Pricing: Free Limited Plan; Standard Plan, $29/month per user; Plus Plan, $79/month per user; Enterprise Plan, $179/month per user

Although designed for creating simple questionnaires, newsletter sign-ups, and the like, Form Crafts supports multi-page forms so it can also be used to make quizzes. With real-time analytics, conditional logic, and easy integration with WordPress via a plugin, it offers a good alternative to the mainstream options.

Pricing is competitive with a range of options to suit any growing business.

Image Source

18. ClassMarker

Pricing: Professional 1 Plan, $39.95/month per user; Professional 2 Plan, $79.95/month per user

ClassMarker is a quiz maker designed for education professionals with custom plans for business users, too. You can create tests and exams that are accessible to as many users as you like. The test can be customized to your branding and can even include branded certificates. A sophisticated results platform allows you to easily analyze the data and draw conclusions.

This is a good option for large businesses that need to survey a lot of users. Pricing plans are pretty competitive for the level of functionality and customization available.

Image Source

Now I know there are a lot of quiz makers to choose from this list, so let’s figure out which quiz makers are right for you.

Which quiz maker is right for me?

Different quiz makers can serve different purposes — it all depends on what you’re looking for. Figure out your intentions for the quiz, what you hope to gain from it, and then start your search for the best one.

Best Online Quiz Software for Marketers

• Interact

Marketers focus on how their content can generate leads, segment their audience, and drive traffic to their websites — and Interact is the quiz maker just for that.

With built-in analytics, marketers can take real-time data from their quizzes and integrate them with email marketing and automation systems to capture and segment leads.

Best Online Quiz Maker for Teachers

• Typeform

This quiz maker engages students, but also goes a step further with more functionality. For example, if you’re teaching a topic that involves math, Typeform offers a calculator function during quizzes. It also offers subgrouping of answers and questions to divide the types of questions offered, too.

Best Online Quiz Creator for Fun

• Kahoot

To engage quiz takers both young and old, Kahoot is a fun and interactive quiz maker because it makes quizzes into a game.

Boost Your Engagement with Engaging Quizzes

Sharing engaging quizzes is a solid way to capture more leads. With the help of a great quiz maker, you can make the great ones that showcase your company goals and appeal to your audience.

Check out our comprehensive guide if you want to find out the best ways to capture more leads with quizzes — and good luck in your quest for the best quizzer on the market.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Let’s say a salesperson comes up to you and says, “Here’s something you should know about.” If you don’t see this person as a trustworthy, knowledgeable source, you probably have no reason to listen.

Let’s replace the salesperson with your cousin Dave. The odds of you listening to what Dave has to say likely goes up, depending on your relationship with Dave and the topic he’s leaning into.

Now let’s replace Dave with an expert in the field who has done extensive research on the topic using a variety of credible sources. This expert also has the background to simplify and provide context to the topic. Now you have a reason to listen (and not just because you’re related).

Done well, an email newsletter is like the expert in the field of your email marketing efforts.

The curation serves to up-level the journalistic quality of your content, which results in two things:

• Increases the value you provide
• Improves your authority and credibility in your audience’s eyes

When people first start doing email marketing, they often assume they need an email newsletter. However, newsletters are only effective when done well.

“It’ll have everything our customers care about, all in one place,” they rationalize. “Our list will be different — people will actually look forward to getting our newsletter,” they argue. “Since we’re only sending it once a month, it’ll be a breeze to put together,” they say.

And while all of those things may become true for a few lucky individuals, lots of email newsletters flop. They become an uninteresting mush of content people automatically ignore, archive, delete, or straight up unsubscribe from. And this isn’t great for you, your metrics, or your company’s success.

So if you’re thinking about creating an email newsletter, keep on reading. In this post, we’ll cover:

• Ideas to make your newsletter an effective one
• Design tips that help ensure a great reading experience
• Examples of newsletters that are crushing it (to draw inspiration from)

Email Newsletter Ideas

Email newsletters can include a weekly round-up of blog posts, case studies regarding your product or service, upcoming company events and webinars, or even a behind-the-scenes look at your company.

Of course, you don’t want to create a newsletter just for the sake of creating one — instead, you should do thorough research on what your audience might prefer, and what your company is well-suited to offer.

If you’re looking for general email newsletter inspiration, you’re in luck. Here’s a list of some of our favorite ideas for email newsletters:

• Round-up of popular or recent blog posts or videos
• New job openings at your company
• New case studies or product launches
• Membership/customer deals and promotions
• New best practices or tips
• Industry news
• Quotes
• Recent survey results related to your industry
• Internal employee news, including anniversaries, promotions, and birthdays
• Listicles (i.e. “10 Best Vacation Spots of 2020” if you work for a Travel publication)
• A team spotlight with pictures and bios
• Photos or stories customers have shared
• Behind-the-scenes at your company, or interviews with company executives
• Monthly business recap
• New training opportunities
• FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and answers
• Upcoming webinars, or recordings of past webinars

Next, let’s explore some newsletter designs to inspire the aesthetic of your newsletter.

Featured Guide: Email Newsletter Design Examples Lookbook

Learn how to build an email newsletter from scratch, and see dozens of email newsletter examples from real businesses with this free guide.

Email Newsletter Design

While you can get creative with the structure of your email newsletter, the general anatomy typically includes:

• Your logo or masthead
• A featured image and other eye-catching visuals
• Top stories featured at the top
• Additional content and promotions following
• An email footer with social links and subscription information

From a design standpoint, your company’s newsletter should be a true reflection of your brand. For instance, if your website features minimalist design and clean, plain black-and-white text, then you don’t want to create a super colorful newsletter, which might confuse new subscribers.

There are a few best practices, however, you can employ to ensure your design is up-to-par regardless of your audience’s preferences:

• Clean, crisp images (no blurry images)
• Text (use same text throughout), company logo, and icons
• Try filters, memes, or video
• Make the CTA clear and obvious — and just have one (i.e. “Click here to shop” or “Click here to read”)
• Create a hierarchy with CTA early-on
• Mobile-responsive
• Test the length of your newsletter to ensure it’s not too short or too long for your audience

Of course, the design of your newsletter will depend on your brand, as well as the message. For instance, you might want to create a colorful, attention-grabbing newsletter if it largely focuses on visuals of new products — alternatively, if it’s a round-up of recent blog posts, perhaps you try a more minimalist look to mimic the appearance of a letter.

Of course, you’ll want to A/B test whichever design(s) you choose, to ensure they resonate with your audience.

I’d also recommend looking into pre-made templates if you’re not familiar with designing emails. If you’re a HubSpot customer, you’ll have a bunch of pre-made templates in the email tool.

However, if you’re still unsure about your newsletter design, there’s nothing better than looking at examples for further inspiration.

Take a look at the following newsletters that knocked it out of the park, and consider using some of their design elements as inspiration for your own.

Each newsletter on this list is fabulous for different reasons. Some have exceptional design, some have exceptional copy, some have exceptional calls-to-action … but all are exceptional at solving for their subscribers’ needs.

1. The Hustle

The Hustle is a daily newsletter that promises “business and tech in 5 minutes or less.”

While there are a ton of business and tech newsletters out there, what makes The Hustle remarkable is its tone at the intersection of informational and hilarious.

Take two of their most notable headlines from 2020 as an example:

• “The man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship”
• “The economics of vending machines”

The Hustle also allows subscribers to customize the content they receive to fit their interests (see the “Snippets” section in the example below).

The formula of great content + unique tone + personalization works well for The Hustle’s audience as they’ve grown to more than 1.5 million subscribers.

2. NextDraft

NextDraft is a daily email written by a man named Dave Pell, which is a curation of the best web content of the day. As Pell describes it, “Each morning I visit about fifty news sites and from that swirling nightmare of information quicksand, I pluck the top ten most fascinating items of the day, which I deliver with a fast, pithy wit that will make your computer device vibrate with delight.”

You can tell he’s a great writer. His copywriting is one of my favorite things about the newsletter. It starts with the subject line, which is usually a play on words or a clever one-liner on the top news of the day. It then extends to the body of the email itself, which is always descriptive, accurate, and clever. Finally, the minimalist design is fantastic.

Not only is content delivery is clear, organized, and digestible, but also the inclusion of social share buttons underneath each story is brilliant. Rather than assuming that the reader is going to make it to a social sharing option at the bottom of the newsletter, Pell provides them with multiple opportunities throughout. Social engagement can play a big role in growing your newsletter, as every share on social opens up a valuable opportunity to attract more subscribers.

For those who’d rather read news like this in a mobile app, the NextDraft app is free in Apple’s app store.

[Click here to see the entire email.]

3. REI

REI, the recreational sports outfitter, is a model of success in several areas of content marketing — and their membership email is no exception.

We included this email newsletter on our list because it does what many ecommerce and consumer product vendors find challenging: promote good products with good content. In the newsletter example below, you’ll see how REI delivers many different types of material to its subscribers, and each type relates to one another. Following the seasonal product offerings at the top of the email, the company offers trainings to help educate readers on its new products and blog posts for even more insight into the outdoor lifestyle.

Did you notice something else about this newsletter? It’s dedicated entirely to runners. Catering your email newsletter to a single audience — even if that audience belongs to an even bigger buyer persona — can help you tell a story in your email that resonates with the recipient from start to finish.

4. Austin Kleon

Not to play favorites, but this newsletter from Austin Kleon is one I really look forward to. First, I love the simplicity. It’s not flashy, nor is it overly promotional. That’s the hallmark of a successful email newsletter: The most effective newsletters aim to educate, not sell.

I also love the overall informal tone he takes, as it makes it feel as though you’re hearing from a friend. If you’re looking to lower the barrier between your company and your audience, consider using language that is friendly and inviting, not buttoned-up and jargony.

[Click here to see the entire email.]

5. FandangoNOW

FandangoNOW is a movie streaming app that allows you to build a library of purchased and rented movies around your interests. And it uses the below email newsletter as part of its customer retention strategy.

The email below offers movie suggestions for the weekend, making it a well-timed newsletter if it lands in your inbox on Friday afternoon. In addition, its design is easy to digest, despite being so graphic-intense. Using numbered icons and consistent “Buy” and “Rent” CTAs in corners of each movie tile, the email compartmentalizes a lot of content while still connecting each movie to the FandangoNOW brand.

6. InVision

InVision’s newsletter is a weekly digest of their best blog content, a roundup of their favorite design links from the week, and a new opportunity to win a free t-shirt.

Not only is their newsletter a great mix of content, but I also love the nice balance between images and text, making it easy to read and mobile-friendly. They make great use of animated GIFs in their emails. I also love the clever copy on their call-to-action buttons:

• “Cat GIFs on Every Page”
• “Set Your Sights”
• “Why So Serious?”

In addition to classic CTA buttons, they engage their audience at the bottom of every newsletter with a “You tell us!” text CTA.

7. Community.is

Community.is is a handcrafted newsletter created for people who “put people at the center of their work.” This unique concept attracts a variety of readers from executives at ad agencies, to community managers at startups, to marketers and creatives of all shapes and sizes.

In an effort to cater to their melting pot of subscribers, Community.is adopted a three-tier format: Short, Mid, and Long. While an executive may only have time to skim the short stuff, a marketer might be looking for a more in-depth read to spark some inspiration for their next campaign. Organizing a newsletter in this way helps ensure that you’re serving the distinct needs of your audience without it being too confusing.

[Click here to see the entire email.]

8. Vox Sentences

Vox Sentences is a nightly email meant to quickly get its readers up to speed on the best stories from the day. The content ranges from the day’s top news to fun stories from all over the web. They do a great job balancing their own content with external sources, and the stories they choose are always really high quality.

You can read Vox’s entire newsletter from start to finish and get a great sense of the stories they’re covering — but you can also click through to any of the linked stories to get a more in-depth approach.

9. Fizzle

Fizzle’s newsletter is aimed at entrepreneurs who want weekly tips on building a business sent directly to their inbox and all in the email itself. Although they have a business blog and a podcast, what makes Fizzle’s newsletter unique is that the email content is independent from those other content assets. In other words, it’s written entirely for their subscribers.

The copywriting style makes the newsletter unique and appealing, too: It’s casual, honest, and written like the author is writing to a friend. The writing gives off the vibe of real, down-to-earth business advice — without the fluffy stuff. At the same time, it’s written with clear headers and sub-headers to break it up, and the important stuff is bolded, making for easy skimming.

10. TheSkimm

If you want to stay up on what’s happening in the world and have some delightful writing delivered to your inbox first thing in the morning, look no further than TheSkimm. It’s a daily roundup of what’s happened in the news in short, punchy paragraphs.

The best part? You don’t have to click out of the email to read the news if you don’t want to — although they do link to their sources if you want to read further.

For your own email marketing, TheSkimm is the place to go if you’re looking for writing inspiration or for emails without much visual content.

11. Medium

Medium is a blog-publishing platform that has been continuously building momentum since its launch in 2012. Publishing on the site has really picked up in the past few years, and nowadays, there are a ton of people publishing posts on the site every day.

Of course, that means there’s a lot of content for the average person to filter through. To help bring great content to the surface, Medium uses email newsletters. And after I open this newsletter every day, I end up going to visit several Medium posts without fail. (Mission accomplished for Medium, right?)

Here’s why: The newsletter feels pretty minimal. Because of the way that Medium uses colors and section dividers, they’re able to give you a ton of content in one email without it feeling overwhelming. Plus, they offer both a daily and a weekly version of the digest, allowing users to opt in for the email frequency they feel most comfortable with.

12. BrainPickings

BrainPickings is one of the most interesting newsletters out there. In fact, the folks who write it call it an “interestingness digest.” Every Sunday morning, subscribers get the past week’s most unmissable articles about creativity, psychology, art, science, design, and philosophy — topics that are really appealing to a wide audience. At its core, it explores what it means to live a good life.

This is one of the longest newsletters I’ve ever read, but what makes it still work well is how high quality and well packaged the content is.

(Bonus: Check out the delightful microcopy in the top right-hand corner.)

[Click here to see the entire email.]

13. Litmus

You’d hope that an email marketing testing company would have great emails … and Litmus definitely does. While the content of the emails is certainly interesting, I’m especially digging the design. The blocks of color help break up the newsletter into sections that are easy to differentiate.

I also like that the text calls-to-action at the end of each post’s description don’t just say something generic, like “Read this post.” Instead, they are matched with specific actions related to the post’s content, like “Get the checklist” and “Discover why you should test.”

14. General Assembly

There are a lot of creative things you can do with images in your emails, from designing your own custom graphics to creating animated GIFs. General Assembly, an organization that helps expand professionals’ skill sets, likes to employ tactics like these in their newsletter.

From their attractive and minimal layout to their concise copy and helpful information, this is a great example of a newsletter that gives subscribers quick information in an easily scannable format.

15. The Ringer

Remember Grantland, the sports and pop culture blog owned by ESPN that was started by sports journalist Bill Simmons? In October 2015, ESPN announced it would be ending the publication of Grantland. Shortly thereafter, Simmons formed Bill Simmon Media Group and recruited a whole bunch of former Grantland staffers to launch a brand new newsletter in March 2016 called The Ringer.

Although The Ringer is written and run by many former Grantland employees it’s a different project than Grantland was. Where Grantland focused on sports and pop culture, The Ringer branches out into other areas like tech and politics. Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama, is among the contributors. I like how focused they are on experimentation: “We want to have fun, take chances, analyze, theorize, obsess, and try not to take ourselves too seriously,” said Editor-in-Chief Sean Fennessey.

Another differentiator? The Ringer’s website was developed in partnership with publishing platform Medium — which means the newsletter reflects that clean, minimal design.

[Click here to see the entire email.]

16. Hacker Newsletter

Many marketers don’t frequent Hacker News, but they should still check out this hand-picked curation of the social network’s top stories of the day.

Why? The newsletter is clean and minimal, but still sends a ton of really great content its subscribers’ way. The way it distills potentially overwhelming information is by bucketing content into sections. The newsletter also looks very similar to the site, so for those who love the site and how it’s laid out, the newsletter feels like a comforting, familiar way to consume content.

[Click here to see the entire email.]

17. Below the Fold

Below the Fold is a weekly newsletter (from Acciyo) that surfaces important and interesting stories that simply aren’t making headlines due to the crowded, never-ending news cycle we all experience day in and day out.

Acciyo’s editorial team handpicks great news stories that they believe deserve “front-page love” but are being beaten out by an “infinite scroll of breaking headlines” — stories that range from how investors are profiting from emergency room bills, to how one Mexican company turned prickly pear into sustainable fuel.

What I love most about Below the Fold is not just that I get to read super interesting stories that would be hard to find on my own, but that the mission behind their newsletter is unique and creates new value for their readers. They’re not just curating content on a single topic; they’re appealing to an audience who’s tired of reading the same headlines across their feeds and want to know what else is happening in the world.

Some of their most engaged sends are weeks where one story dominates coverage, preventing other important stories from reaching people. It’s easy to get caught up in what’s trending and miss what else is happening in the world. They do a great job of communicating a mission that truly differentiates them and creates value readers won’t get anywhere else.

18. #SEOFOMO

Things can change quickly in the world of SEO, so fear of missing out (or, affectionately dubbed, FOMO) is a real mood among professionals immersed in the industry.

That’s why Aleyda Solis, an expert in the space, started the newsletter: “#SEOFOMO was born with the goal to share the type of newsletter I wished to receive myself as an SEO consultant.”

The newsletter itself is comprehensive, containing search- and algorithm-related news, curated articles, guides and resources, and open SEO jobs.

Image Source

Creating an Email Newsletter Your Subscribers Love

Even though newsletters are one of the most common types of emails to send, they are actually some of the hardest to do right. We hope these examples gave you some quality inspiration so you can create newsletters your subscribers love to get in their inboxes.

The quality of your CRM data impacts your entire organization, bottom to top.

Your marketing teams rely on quality data to segment contacts, personalize messaging, and create targeted campaigns.

Your sales teams require accurate data to speak to your prospects’ biggest concerns.

Your customer support team needs accurate data for context in conversations with customers. Finance teams need accurate customer data for forecasting. Even your executive team relies on accurate CRM data for strategic decision-making.

Most organizations know this. Yet, bad data costs U.S. companies as much as $3 trillion per year, and up to 60% of organizations do not calculate the true cost of their bad data.

That signals that there is a lot of room for improvement in data maintenance in many companies. Companies of any size would be impacted by that much inaccurate data in their customer database, although they may be unaware of just how painful the impact may be, with many of the day-to-day issues flying under the radar.

That much “bad” data represents a huge problem for your marketing teams in particular. How do you speak to your customers’ biggest concerns if you can’t be sure that you know exactly who they are and what they care about? You need accurate, reliable data to be confident in your assertions.

Today, companies often lean too heavily on manual work to fix data issues, which can be extremely time-consuming and draining for your teams. Relying on your employees to export data, fix it in Excel using complicated formulas, and import it back into your CRM issue-free is a big ask.

Let’s consider how poor data quality impacts your marketing teams, slowing them down and giving them less creative options when launching new campaigns.

Impact of Data Quality On Your Marketing Efforts

While the impact of poor customer data quality is felt throughout your organization, it has an especially volatile impact on your marketing teams.

Everything that a marketing team does — every strategy employed, campaign launched, messaging delivered, & creative produced — is influenced by customer data. Or at least it should be.

That’s what great marketing teams do — understand their customers deeply and speak directly to them in a way that resonates. You can’t do that if you don’t know them, and you can’t be sure that you know them if you can’t rely on your data.

Let’s look at some of the specific ways that data issues and low-quality data can impact your marketing teams.

Segmentation

A big piece of any marketer’s job is segmentation. Or, the practice of analyzing long lists of customers and breaking them down into smaller lists so that you can more reliably speak to each segment’s concerns.

You wouldn’t market your B2B software product in the same way to both CEOs and Marketing Managers, even though both might be targeted buyer personas for your product. They have different needs and concerns. If you try, the language that you use will never fully resonate with both.

So you break things down. You make the list of people that you are speaking to smaller and more manageable. Then, you can use specific language that will resonate with that segment. But if your data isn’t reliable, you can’t effectively segment it down into those smaller groups.

Marketers cannot properly segment contacts with inconsistent data. With inconsistencies, creating even basic campaigns becomes a complicated analysis effort that requires experts on hand that understand all of the nuances. As a result, it prevents marketers from creating effective campaigns and impedes their ability to execute quickly.

Let’s consider an example. Let’s say you’re a B2B software company, and you want to send out an email campaign to CEOs in your HubSpot CRM.

If you aren’t regularly standardizing and formatting your job title field data, you’ll find that CEOs are listed in your database in many different ways:

• CEO
• C.E.O.
• Chief Executive Officer
• Founder/CEO
• Founder & CEO
• Owner and CEO
• Etc.

And there are likely to be many other variations as well.

To run a thorough campaign, you need to bring all of these different job titles together, as they are all effectively the same title. To do this, you’ll need to either run some creative Excel formulas, create complicated search filters to “catch” all the relevant titles, or enlist the help of a developer. Either way, you are still unlikely to catch every single error in the field.

This doesn’t even include typos and other errors in your data, either. Some people might be listed as “CEOn” or have job titles listed that include other data issues. And these standardization and data quality issues can potentially impact your entire database.

For instance, this standardization problem wouldn’t only affect CEOs, but every job title in your database. Or, what if you wanted to segment your CRM contacts by city, country, area code, or years of experience? Data issues are present in every field.

Every data point in your database has a host of potential issues that could impact your ability to segment your contacts and deliver effective campaigns that meet your KPI goals.

Data issues make your segmentation efforts complicated and unreliable. Ultimately your marketing teams will be forced to segment less often and less creatively until the issues are rectified.

Personalization

Data issues will also impact your ability to personalize your messaging as well. And personalized messages are critical for successful campaigns.

80% of consumers are more likely to purchase a brand that provides personalized experiences. 72% of consumers say they only engage with personalized messaging.

Your ability to personalize messaging is critical and relies on high-quality, consistent data in your CRM. Have you ever received an email and had your name uncapitalized, or been mistakenly referred to by your last name?

Inherently, you probably know that this is a simple data oversight. They didn’t mean to refer to you by your last name. But it does still impact your feelings about the company in question, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s not intentionally rude, but it’s unprofessional to keep your customer data in disarray.

And it’s not just about {FirstName} or {JobTitle} either, although those are important. True, deep personalization may not reference the data so directly, but use conclusions drawn from that data to guide your messaging.

For example, one common personalization issue that arises out of CRM data problems comes from associations. In HubSpot CRM, your B2B contacts are associated with companies.

If that association was missing and a portion of your contacts were free-floating, that would make it impossible to execute account-based marketing strategies. Additionally, personalizing the message based on account engagement becomes difficult when you are missing data.

Inconsistent associations also contribute to inaccurate lead scores in account-based marketing. Because scores are applied on the account level, based on variables for the independent contacts within the account, missing contacts will impact the account scores. Ultimately, the difference in lead scoring could affect the lifecycle stage of the entire account, slowing its movement through your pipeline and potentially derailing a deal.  

Customer Experience

Issues with segmentation and personalization ultimately impact the experience that customers have during their customer journey. With less specific marketing messaging that is less likely to resonate, their experiences and opinion of your brand will suffer.

92% of marketing professionals see personalization as a “crucial” element of the customer experience. And personalization often relies on your ability to segment customer data effectively to deliver relevant messaging. All of these impacts are interconnected, hurting your entire marketing operation.

Duplicate data, for instance, presents a customer experience issue that can potentially harm your brand reputation. If you don’t regularly merge duplicates, many of your customers will receive your messaging multiple times. This drives up the costs of your campaigns, harms your brand reputation, and makes your reporting less reliable.

Deduplication helps achieve a single customer view, which is when your data on your contacts and accounts can all be reliably found in one system. Having one single ‘record of truth’ means that your marketing teams can effectively segment and personalize communications. A single customer view provides your teams with faith in your data, allowing them to focus their attention on other areas.

The quality of your data impacts customers every step of the way. Without reliable data, each of those touchpoints is cheapened. Less data, or less reliable data, limits what can be used and what your teams know about each contact. Across months and dozens of touchpoints, that adds up.  

The only way for companies to fix these issues is to recognize and embrace data management strategy and regular CRM data maintenance.

What is CRM data maintenance?

CRM data maintenance is the ongoing process of auditing your CRM data, identifying issues, and fixing those issues within your database.

The larger process of maintaining your CRM data can be broken down into numerous focus areas, including:

• Data Quality
• Data Cleansing
• Data Operations
• Data Deduplication
• Data Purging
• Data Monitoring and KPIs

Data Quality

Data quality refers to data that is accessible, consistent, and relevant. Your entire organization is impacted by the quality of your data — from individual campaigns through larger strategic decisions.

Accessible means not only that the data is accurate, but that the right people within your organization can access it when they need it. Siloed data creates bureaucratic redundancies that slow your organization down.

Data consistency largely refers to how consistently data is formatted and standardized in your database. Are your phone numbers formatted uniformly? Are your job titles standardized? Are your contact names appropriately capitalized? Consistency allows you to slice and dice data in interesting ways.

Then there is relevance. It doesn’t matter if you have a million perfectly accurate records in your CRM if none of them are in your target market. The data that you collect must be relevant to be useful.

Data quality is achieved through other data maintenance processes like data cleansing.

Data Cleansing

Data cleansing is the process of fixing or removing incorrect, improperly formatted, duplicate, or incomplete data within your CRM.

• Fixing first and last name capitalization issues (jane vs. Jane)
• Standardizing addresses and phone numbers (1234567890 vs 123-456-7890)
• Standardizing Job titles (CEO vs. C.E.O vs. Chief Executive Officer)
• Removing redundant data
• Removing incorrect and fake data
• Removing special characters
• Identifying and fixing outlying issues

The process of cleansing data can be time-consuming. Often it involves breaking out chunks of your database and assigning fixes and tasks to members of your team. Then, they will load the data into Excel and use VLOOKUP and complicated formulas to identify and fix errors in your data. Once complete, the data has to be reimported back into your CRM.

It’s a non-exact process. Unless you have a true Excel wizard on your team, you’re likely to miss many issues and still require ongoing help from developers to update data in bulk.

Data Deduplication

All companies deal with duplicate data. Duplicate contact or company records might be created through manual entry, either by your customers into forms or by your team through your backend CRM. Or, they may be created through data imports or integrations with other software.

No matter how duplicate records are created, they can be a thorn in the side of your marketing team.

Duplicate data leads to increased campaign costs and lost productivity. As your teams spend time ironing out data issues instead of focusing on other areas, leading to missed opportunities. Every second they spend sifting through records to identify the “correct” or most complete record is wasted time. Duplicate data shatters your single customer view, as there is no single ‘source of truth’ that can be relied on.

When you have high duplication rates, your marketing teams will always be aware of that fact. They know that they will have to deduplicate any list of prospects or customers before new campaigns go out, adding a new task to every campaign launch.

Most critically, duplicate data harms the customer experience. Not just because they are likely to receive mixed messages and redundant messaging. But because your ability to understand them will be halved throughout the customer lifecycle, leading to less fulfilling interactions over and over again.

Data Operations

Data operations encompasses the ongoing day-to-day tasks that are required to maintain your CRM data and ensure the usability of that data across your organization.

Data operations tasks include day-to-day bulk updating of data, consolidating fields and redundant data, migrating free-text fields to picklists, importing data (from events or third-party sources), and other tasks.

These tasks are a necessity for high-quality data, and for putting your data in a position where data cleansing can be as effective as possible.

Data Purging

Data purging encompasses the removal of garbage data, outdated data, redundant data, and low-quality data that will only serve to clutter up your database and negatively impact your reputation and email open rates.

There are many types of data issues that could potentially make records a good candidate for purging. Examples include:

• Undelivered emails
• Clearly fake data
• Outdated records
• Unqualified prospects
• Bad records from integrations
• Incomplete Contact Data
• Free and role-based email addresses
• Unengaged contacts
• Unqualified contacts
• Duplicate contacts

Purging this data is critical for improving the usability of your CRM data as a whole. Without having to continually sift through and remove garbage data for campaigns, your productivity will improve.

Without clutter, you’ll be able to keep costs down on data storage and contact-based CRM fees, along with the time that your teams would usually spend dealing with the purged records.

Without low-quality data dragging down your email delivery and open rates, you’ll avoid being penalized and enjoy an improved sender reputation.

Data Monitoring and KPIs

To fix issues in your CRM database, you’ll need to be able to identify where those issues lie. Between the different data issues that you’ll find in your database, understanding what those issues are and what kind of issues there are helps you to prioritize fixing the most impactful problems.

Of course, you could monitor your KPIs and generate reports manually. But that involves running reports or exporting data to Excel and analyzing it. However, some tools can automate diagnostics and collections KPIs.

For example, the CRM Data Grader is a tool that connects directly to HubSpot, analyzes the CRM database, and surfaces specific issues that you need to fix. This ensures you have visibility into the quality of your data and actionable insights for dealing with those issues.  

Having a clear key performance indicator, such as the percentage of clean records in your database, allows you to track your progress and quickly assess the overall health of your customer data.

Image Source

Differences Data Maintenance and Standard Cleanup Projects

Standard data cleanup projects are short-term and tactical. You find a fire, you put it out. Data cleanup projects are reactive because they have to be. Sometimes unexpected data issues can grind things to a halt and need to be fixed immediately. Those needs will always be there, but less often with a data maintenance strategy.

Unlike one-off cleanup projects, data maintenance is an ongoing strategy. It requires consistent investment and attention, but with the help of modern data management tools you can automate a majority of your data maintenance tasks, improving operations across your teams.

As your customer data grows, management of that data becomes more complicated. It requires more focus and planning to ensure your data is accessible, consistent, and relevant.

As this happens, companies tend to move through several stages on their way toward true data maintenance optimization:

1. Undefined and chaotic. No understanding of issues and no processes in place to deal with them.
2. Visibility. Aware of data-related problems have visibility into the specific problems in their database, with reporting generated automatically regularly.
3. Standardization. Established data quality standards and alignment among cross-functional teams about data expectations and goals. To execute effectively, standards need to be enforced automatically.
4. Optimization. Employ automation to proactively cleanse and maintain data, avoid repetitive manual work, streamline data corrections and collaboration, alert about exceptions.

Image Source

Data maintenance isn’t something that you do once and then never again. This process is something that you’ll need to do over and over again. You need accurate documentation and processes in place to minimize your time investment.

New data is always flowing into your CRM database, and with that data will come a range of issues and errors that have the potential to slow down nearly every team in your organization. Tools like Insycle help you to audit your existing data, identify common data issues, and fix them on an automated set schedule.

Improving your CRM data maintenance processes enable your marketing teams to produce more marketing qualified leads through improved segmentation, personalization, and nurturing.

Quality data means that you can represent your brand professionally in all communications with customers while improving their experience throughout the customer lifecycle.

In 1898, Elias St. Elmo Lewis, an eventual inductee of the Advertising Hall of Fame, anonymously wrote a column about three advertising principles he found useful throughout his career in a printing magazine called The Inland Printer, one of the most influential American magazines of the 19th century.

In his column, he states that a successful advertisement should always follow a specific formula.

“The mission of an advertisement is to attract a reader, so that he will look at the advertisement and start to read it; then to interest him, so that he will continue to read it; then to convince him, so that when he has read it he will believe it. If an advertisement contains these three qualities of success, it is a successful advertisement.”

In other words, copy is only good if it attracts attention, generates interest, and creates conviction, in that order.

Over a century later, Lewis’ principles still ring true. They’re expressed as an acronym, AIDA, and widely used in the advertising industry. In the digital age, brands have even based their entire marketing strategy on the AIDA model.

Before we cover how you can apply the AIDA model to your own content marketing strategy, let’s go over what it is and why it works.

Brands use the AIDA model to determine the way they should craft and distribute marketing messages to their target audience at each stage of the buyer’s journey.

The AIDA model is considered a hierarchy of effects model, which means consumers must move through each stage of the model to complete the desired action. Just like a typical marketing funnel, each stage has fewer consumers than the previous one.

How to Apply the AIDA Model to Your Marketing

By creating campaigns and structuring your website with the AIDA model in mind, you can get more control over your prospects’ paths to a purchasing decision.

In theory, as they progress through each stage of the model, consumers who learn about your brand will develop certain feelings or emotions about your product or service, which is what ultimately compels them to act.

Here’s what you can do to implement AIDA:

Attract Attention

If your content can grab their attention and deeply engage them, your target audience will start to become curious about what your company actually does.

In this stage, the consumer is asking, “What is it?”

In order to get to this stage, you must first get your content in front of them. This comes with increased brand awareness and effective messaging.

Example

Effective content marketing is one method of attracting visitors to your website. If you create content that solves their problems and focuses on their passions, you’ll be able to draw them in and provide a solution. When executed effectively, your target audience should be able to discover your content through Google, social media, and other channels.

Wistia does this well with their content marketing, producing not just educational blog posts that drive traffic but also entertaining or inspiring “shows.” This tactic allows them to not just address the pains their prospects have but also go above and beyond to make solving that problem easier (and, in some cases, entertaining). Leaning into video as a medium instead of just blogging ties into their product and mission, keeping Wistia’s solutions top of mind as prospects consume this content.

Image Source

Generate Interest

Once your target audience is interested in your product or service, they’ll want to learn more about your brand, the benefits of your solution, and your potential fit with them.

In this stage, the goal is to get them to think, “I like it.”

In order to get to this stage, your content must be persuasive and engaging. While the first stage of AIDA is capturing their attention, this stage is about holding it. You can do this with a hook.

Example

Let’s say your content marketing was effective in drawing them to the website to learn about a pain, problem, or need they have. You might then “hook” them with engaging storytelling that demonstrates the why behind your solution.

Stories resonate with humans, and it’s a simple way to convey information in a way that stimulates empathy and curiosity.

To generate enough excitement in your prospects to compel them to act, you need to make sure their affinity for your brand hits a certain threshold. The more aligned you are with their needs and values, the more likely you are to achieve success.

Below the Fold is a service that delivers relevant news articles to its users. It generates interest with its hook: “Stories that don’t make it to the front page.” The intrigue in this line opens up a loop (What have I been missing without this service?) while highlighting their value proposition of surfacing stories that aren’t getting coverage but are still important.

Image Source

Stimulate Desire

People do business with those they know, like, and trust. The first two stages of the AIDA model establish the know and the like.

The goal of this stage is to change “I like it” to “I want it.”

And that’s done by cementing in the final piece of the puzzle: Trust.

To do this, keep serving them content. Make sure they subscribe to your blog, follow you on social media, and download your offers. The more prospects interact with your brand, the more they’ll trust you, boosting the chances they’ll eventually buy your product or service.

Example

The prospects you’re most likely to close are the consumers who envision a future with you — they already enjoy consuming your content and think your product or service will be even better.

For this reason, you must institute a gap between where they are and where they could be with your solution. At the same time, you must establish social proof with case studies and testimonials.

“Before and After” style content is a great example of how to stimulate desire while gaining trust. Check out the headline on this case study by Calendly: “Convert 60% more PPC leads into bookings using Black Propeller’s secret weapon.” This helps a prospect envision a future with this product (What would my life be like if I achieved similar results?). The “before” is them at their current stage, and the “after” is the vision of them with a 60% increase in conversions. Then, if they read the full case study, they get exposed to social proof from a customer just like them.

Image Source

Spur Into Action

After you generate enough desire for your product or service, give your prospects the chance to act on it. After all, what’s the point of creating content and building deep relationships with prospects if there isn’t a clear next step?

The goal is to get them to decide, “I’m getting it.”

No matter what the “next step” is, you should compel them to respond with low-friction but high-incentive calls to action.

Example

Whether they’re far away or close to a purchasing decision, the next step that you present should be “high-value.” In other words, it must help them in some way.

If they understand what the outcome of your offer is and find it valuable to them, they’ll be more likely to act (since they aren’t simply committing to a sales call or sales content).

Consider exactly how you can provide that value while motivating them to engage with you.

The CTA for this “next step” or offer should be prominent, clear, and uncomplicated. Perhaps it’s a button or banner that spells out what action they must take and what they get if they do. By eliminating friction in the process, you increase your likelihood of success.

Nerdwallet, a personal finance site that provides resources on everything from credit to mortgages, has such a CTA. The idea is that they can engage their audience and compel them to action by offering a comparison tool. They highlight this tool directly on their homepage with a grabby headline and value-driven subheadline along with a high-contrast button. The setup is uncomplicated and friction-free. Nerdwallet is simultaneously able to generate leads while empowering and delighting those leads with high-value information.

Image Source

AIDA Drawbacks

Now that you are familiar with the AIDA framework and how it operates, you should also consider some of its limitations:

1. It doesn’t take into account non-linear buyer’s journeys.

AIDA does a fantastic job of describing a linear thought process for a purchasing decision. However, not all purchasing decisions are linear.

A prospective customer might get their interest peaked but ultimately choose a different solution, only coming back to the original provider if their needs aren’t met.

More commonly, someone might have a desire for a solution before being aware of it and taking action to find it (thus experiencing the Desire and Action before the Attention and Interest).

2. It doesn’t take into account impulse purchases or super short sales cycles.

In addition to a non-linear journey, a prospective customer might cycle through multiple stages of AIDA at the same time — all four for an impulse buy or emergency purchase.

3. It’s only a small piece of a holistic business strategy.

AIDA is also limited to first-time purchases. Some organizations try to align their strategy around marketing funnels like AIDA, but this is a mistake. Funnels have customers as an output when they should be at the center of a growth strategy. After all, it’s easier to retain and/or upsell an existing customer than acquire a new one. In addition, with a little customer delight, you can earn testimonials and referrals, generating more attention, interest, and (therefore) customers.

AIDA doesn’t accommodate for this, which is why other models — like the flywheel — are more appropriate for holistic business strategy.

4. Focusing on one AIDA element per marketing tactic may not be effective.

Even when using a funnel for one particular aspect of your business rather than a holistic strategy, it can still be easy to fall into the trap of segmenting out the four letters of AIDA and applying one letter per each tactic in your marketing strategy. For example, you might think, “This blog post is to get their attention,” and only focus on that. However, a blog post should ideally attract awareness and generate interest… and at least get them to take some kind of action before they leave your site.

In other words, marketing should be able to cycle a prospect through multiple stages of AIDA. An effective ad, for example, might prompt three or four stages of AIDA, spurring a potential buyer to action.

5. It’s almost too simple.

AIDA might also be effective in conceptualizing the buying process in a consumer’s mind when they are faced with an ad or other piece of marketing collateral. However, AIDA may be too simplistic to describe the stages of a buying process, particularly for decisions that are more involved or nuanced. Today’s buyers have more resources at their disposal to research, comparison shop, etc.

Using the AIDA Framework

Despite its drawbacks, the AIDA model is a sturdy framework for guiding your audience through the buyer’s journey and spurring them to act. And if you apply it to your content marketing, you’ll be leveraging a proven formula that can consistently engage, persuade, and convert an audience into customers. However, it starts with knowing your customer journey.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.