Using the free Hubspot Marketing plugin can boost conversion to subscribers and jumpstart sales
Hubspot Marketing Free is a lead capture and analytics tool for web sites. It enables a pop up or slide in subscription request that lets your visitors become subscribers to your web site. The subscribers are added to your e-mail marketing system (using many common systems like Mail Chimp and Constant Contact). You can then use these new contacts in your e-mail marketing. E-mail marketing is still the most effective form of digital marketing – and even moreso when it’s sent to completely opt-in contacts. You’ve gotten them to your site through your marketing efforts – blogging, social media and SEO – and this powerful “sign up for great information” is a key next step in the lead generation process.
Once visitors subscribe, their visit data is captured in the analytics portion of the application. These analytics allow you to view users’ behavior (number of pages visited, when they activated their subscription, pageviews and original source such as social media or referring site). The subscriber data can be automatically integrated with MailChimp and Constant Contact or exported for third party application use.
Hubspot Marketing Free works by overlaying a popup or a slide in based on a percentage of screen scroll as they make their way through your content. This approach allows them to read a percentage of content before the popup or slide in appears on the site.
How is Hubspot different than an e-mail signup?
A conventional signup for an e-mail subscription service won’t connect site visit metrics to your subscriber. With Hubspot, even if their first four visits were anonymous, on their fifth visit, they subscribed, and on their 10th visit they’re still coming back, Hubspot will connect and track this data against the user – using cookies to track their visits – providing you with a much better picture of prospect engagement on your site. What do they like? How often do they visit? What are they looking at? This data goes way beyond just collecting an e-mail, and that’s precisely what makes it so valuable.
Hubspot Marketing is an entry-level lead capture and analysis system for clients. The plugin is very easy to install in WordPress – as is using the code snippet on other sites, if you know a few module or code tweaks (or are savvy enough to Google “install Leadin tracking in SquareSpace.”)
Hubspot Marketing Free works on the principle of inbound marketing – strangers visit your web site, are converted by a compelling offer (subscribe for style tips! Get weekly marketing updates you can put into place right now!) and become leads. Then those leads are tracked to determine optimum methods of future engagement. What content is most popular? What page did the visitors initially land on? How do we create more engaging content just like this?
When we first began testing it, one of the early testers referred to it as “the gateway drug to the full version of Hubspot”. Full disclosure here: we love Hubspot professional. We use Hubspot professional. Our clients use Hubspot. But Hubspot Pro is a tool that takes investment – not only the software but the process, content and management. Hubspot Marketing Free takes the big pressure investment off the table and allows businesses to try out the concept of attract-convert stage of inbound marketing with zero risk.
How are these analytics different from Google?
Simply put, they’re attached to a subscriber – an actual person who has opted in to your web site. And that lack of anonymity is precisely why Hubspot metrics are way more fun than Google Analytics metrics. You’ll still need Google Analytics – that’s a subject for another post.
Can I run Hubspot on my website?
Hubspot Marketing Free runs on WordPress, SquareSpace and any site where you can add a custom tracking code (pretty much any site). It has a standalone web interface to check statistics (and a built-in one in WordPress.) And, it’s free. Did we mention it’s free? It is, indeed, FREE.
How is it working? (Actual client results!)
And early experiences are very positive. Within days of deployment on a moderate traffic web site (2500 visits/month) the client saw 9 conversions tracked on the site, with pageviews of up to 18 per user. Prior to use, the client averaged about 13 subscriptions per week and they had only anonymous page view data from Google. After Hubspot, they averaged 18 new subscribers per week. A conversion increase of 41% within just a week of deployment is impressive! Plus, with Hubspot, they can look to see precisely what content is appealing to what prospect.
The chart above shows that in the last 30 days, this client, who is brand new to Hubspot Marketing has increased their subscription rate to 119 (from 91) in a 30-day period. This trumps all other subscription/popup/signup features they have previously used by a factor of 10.
The clients that have been using it over time show similar, really good results, building their subscriber base organically over time just from having good conversion tools on their website:
It distills the BEST of Hubspot, at a really attractive price point
The best part of Hubspot’s flagship product (Hubspot professional) is it’s data and analytics. Hubspot Marketing Free is the essence of that tool. You can set up a site in WordPress, you can create workflows in MailChimp, but the data analytics from the site presented as cleanly as Hubspot does is a real winner. And yes, it’s a gateway drug to Hubspot Pro, because it primes you to begin loving the concept of tailoring your marketing to your customer’s behavior, to the idea that you develop content and nurture people who are already searching for your product or service. And that is what loveable marketing is really all about!
Want to know more? Check out our Hubspot Marketing Assessment:
