HubSpot Email Marketing Guide

Why choose HubSpot for email marketing?

An all-in-one marketing and sales platform

HubSpot offers email marketers and sales teams all the tools they need to run their email campaigns from start to finish:

HubSpot email marketing simplifies everything by letting you build, manage, and react all under one dashboard.

Robust email automation

With Hubspot email automation, even beginners can create and fine-tune email sequences for unique audiences.

Automation alleviates workload and stress by letting you customize actions and email sends based on how your customers interact and respond.

Built-in, user-friendly email design tools

You don’t need developer or designer skills to do email marketing with HubSpot.

With its easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, you can create attractive, mobile-responsive, and accessible emails in minutes.

Comprehensive analytics and email testing tools

Insights drive successful email marketing. HubSpot email marketing gives you a wealth of user analytics, including:

You can filter your analytics by audience, customer, campaign, and more. You can also export your email marketing reports for use on other platforms.

How to run successful HubSpot email campaigns: a step-by-step guide

Ready to maximize your email campaign performance? Here’s how to do email marketing with HubSpot in eight mandatory steps.

Step one: clean your contact lists

Rule number one: you can’t create ROI with email if your emails aren’t delivered.

Here’s the deal: as much as 28% of your email addresses may be invalid. That means those addresses are fake or expired, and your email is going to hard bounce. Too many hard bounces (around 3% or higher) create HubSpot email deliverability issues.

Here’s how you can fix it:

1. Get an email verification tool

ZeroBounce is a HubSpot-certified app that you can integrate with your HubSpot CRM and Marketing account.

2. Select a contact list to clean

Using the app, you can verify all of your HubSpot contact lists or specific lists. You can also use Contact Monitoring/Auto Validation to automatically verify every new email address you add to the list.

3. Delete any invalid email addresses

Removing invalid emails from your list will reduce bounce rates, boost inbox placement, and give your future emails the best chance of success.

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Step two: set a goal or objective

Effective email marketing always has a specific goal and intention. Blasting generic emails to customers is a thing of the past, and it's more likely to earn spam complaints than sales.

When planning your next email, ask yourself these questions:

• What do I want to achieve with this email? – Build brand awareness, draw traffic to your website, share relevant education, boost promotion sales, etc.
• Who would find this email relevant? – Not every person on your list is the same. Consider their familiarity with your company, stage of the buyer journey, and other attributes that can help you create a customer persona.
• What are my metrics for success? – Attribution for email marketing isn’t easy. That’s why you should define your performance goals first. For example, you’ll want link clicks when promoting a free eBook, but in this lead nurturing step, expecting a boom in sales isn’t realistic.
• How can I increase my chances of success? – Now you have a game plan. Take notes of what you want to emphasize or highlight in your email. Always emphasize the customer, not yourself, to help them understand why this email benefits their interests, needs, and pain points.

Step three: write and design your email

Now that you’ve laid the groundwork, it’s time to create.

There’s no wrong way to create HubSpot email templates, and you start with two options:

If you’re new to HubSpot email marketing, we recommend experimenting with HubSpot’s drag-and-drop editor. First, it will familiarize you with the platform. Second, you’ll be able to customize and tailor your emails to be unique as opposed to using the same template that other companies are using.

Here are some step-by-step tips to help you get started:

1. On the left, select a template category. You can start browsing by matching your business type or by selecting a specific type or style.
2. Once you find a template, click ‘Choose template’ to begin editing.

3. The HubSpot email editor is made up of two sections:

The content and design editor is on the left. Here, you can select widgets or layouts to drag and drop on the right side.

The existing template is on the right. If you hover over any element or section, you can drag and drop, edit, or delete it.

To move a specific element, hover over and drag it to the right spot. If you want to move an entire section, hover over the left until a blue edge appears. Click and drag this edge to move the section to where you prefer.

4. Design your email and write your copy.

While we can’t write the perfect email for you, there are some HubSpot email practices you should keep in mind:

Because HubSpot email marketing connects directly to your CRM, you can automatically fill useful details for every instance of the email, such as name, details about any related deals in your pipeline, or customer support tickets.

With an Enterprise account, you can also create customized personalization fields as you become more familiar with the builder.

Step four: edit your sender information

Accurate sender information is valuable for two reasons. First, it allows the reader to identify who sent them the message. Second, it provides a clear and direct way to continue conversations if the recipient chooses to reply.

Here’s how to customize your email’s sender information from the editor’s settings:

• From name – This is the name that appears first next to your message in the inbox. By default, you’ll want to use your company name. However, it can also be useful to experiment with this listing direct points of contact, e.g., Joe from Company, or the rep’s exact name.

• From address – This is the email address that will appear as the actual sender in the email header. You can use the default email address associated with your HubSpot account or select a point of contact from the business listed in your CRM.

Using different email addresses can be useful for further filtering and targeting your email messaging. For example, your business might use ‘newsletter@company.com’ for its weekly newsletter but may opt to use a different email for different use cases.

• Reply-to address – By default, the reply-to address will match the from address. However, it may be beneficial in some cases to direct all email replies to a dedicated email address like ‘support@company.com’ to assist with managing incoming inquiries.

• Subscription type – Lastly, you can also categorize your new email based on pre-defined types that you’ve created. You can differentiate emails by any attribute, such as newsletter, promotions, customer service, announcements, etc.

HubSpot’s subscription type feature is instrumental for segmenting your audience, which allows for superior targeting and results. We’ll tackle segmentation later in our best practices.

Step five: test your email

After creating your email, you’ll want to troubleshoot it for any potential mistakes or errors. You can do this by clicking the ‘Preview’ button in the top-right corner of the editor.

On this screen, you’ll see a version of your email as it will appear in the recipient’s inbox, including the final design and generated personalization options. You can also use the menu at the top to select different devices and screen types to test your mobile readiness and optimization.

While the initial preview is useful, it may not tell the whole story of how an email is rendered in an actual inbox. That’s where the test feature comes in.

Use the menu to select ‘send a test email’ and enter the inbox you’d like to use for the test. HubSpot will send off a single instance of your email, so that you can preview it in a live environment using different email service providers.

If you detect any issues with your email, revert to step three as necessary.

Step six: choose your audience

If you completed the first five steps, this one will be quick. When ready, hit ‘Review and send’ in the top-right corner.

Under recipients, you’ll have two fields:

• Send to – This is the contact or list that will receive the email. You can select contact lists from your CRM or search for individual contacts.
• Don’t send to – If necessary, you can specify any contacts that shouldn’t receive the email. This is useful if you wish to pause or delay communications with any contacts on your lists for any reason.
• Don’t send to unengaged contacts – Checking this box is useful if you want to maximize opens and clicks. However, it is only beneficial if you have an established sending history and relevant user engagement data. If the user isn’t interested, you can easily remove them from the recipient list.

Step seven: select an optimal send time

On the same screen, you’ll have two options: send now or schedule for later.

If you want to send now, check the option and verify by clicking ‘Send’ once more. However, right now might not be the optimal time for the best results.

Here’s a tough truth – there’s no optimal send time that works for every business or business type. Instead, this is another area that you require testing and observation in order to achieve the best results. Not only will it vary based on the audience, but the differences in B2B and B2C audience behaviors will also play a significant role.

However, there are some tips regarding send time and frequency we can recommend:

• Choose a consistent sending frequency – Sending too many emails feels like spam to the reader. Sticking to a regular schedule has been shown to benefit engagement and improve HubSpot email deliverability.
• Avoid drastic changes to your sending – If you’re looking to ramp up your email game and send to more people, great! However, you need to do it gradually through a process called email warmupⓘUn servicio que ayuda a los remitentes de correo electrónico a mejorar su dominio de correo y reputación de IP mediante el envío de contenido de correo electrónico genuino a direcciones de correo electrónico predeterminadas. Los usuarios aumentan gradualmente el volumen de correos electrónicos enviados y reciben interacción positiva a través de un proceso automatizado. to avoid deliverability issues that will quickly push your emails to the spam folder.

Step eight: Learn from the results

Finally, your HubSpot email marketing culminates with the data you receive after your email is sent. Here’s how you can track your analytics:

How to check overall HubSpot email performance

1. Go to the Marketing Hub and select the email dashboard.
2. Here, you’ll find a wealth of email performance data broken down by sections:

Recipient engagement – This section includes the most commonly-tracked metrics, such as open rate, click rate, and click-through rate. The benchmarks for these vary from B2B to B2C and also by industry type.

Delivery – This section tracks delivery and deliverability data, such as your delivery rate, bounce rate, and spam report rate. These metrics are essential to track as they are the most easily accessible data points that can alert you to inbox placement and sender reputation issues.

There are also different reporting options, including customizing the date range of your campaigns. You can also chart your overall performance to compare open quickly and clickthrough rates over time.

How to check individual campaign performance

1. Go to Marketing > Marketing Email.
2. Click on the campaign you want to view.
3. Two tabs contain email analytics: Performance and Recipients.

Performance – This tab includes user engagement data and deliverability results. In addition to the metrics provided in the overall reporting, it provides enhanced insights, such as an HTML click map and a list of your top engaged contacts.

Recipients – This tab lists specific contact data, so that you can organize who received, opened, and clicked on your email.

How to use your email marketing performance data

Email analytics are critical for two reasons. First, they will let you know that your emails have actually been delivered. Second, it’s your primary guide as to what’s working and what isn’t.

Here are some useful questions to ask when reviewing your latest campaign:

• Did my contacts open my email? – Low open rates can be attributed to various factors, including delivery issues, inbox placement and reputation problems, or an uninteresting, misleading subject line.
• Did my contacts click any links inside the email? – Your email should offer something of value to the reader. Conversely, good open rates but a poor clickthrough rate indicate an issue. Try experimenting with link placement or revisiting your copy to ensure that your reader has a compelling reason to click.

Pro-tip: Use HubSpot’s HTML click map feature to track the specific areas of your email that perform well. If users are clicking links in that area, stay the course. On the other hand, if you’re not seeing interaction in key areas, consider A/B testing options until results improve.

• Am I getting a lot of unsubscribes? Unsubscribes are normal and healthy. If a user is uninterested, you should remove them from your list.
  However, if you’re seeing an unusually high unsubscribe rate, it means that your contacts don’t find the email relevant. Also, be certain you’re only emailing opted-in subscribers. A high unsubscribe rate is a problem that warrants immediate attention.
• Are my emails bouncing? – If your engagement isn’t great, your hard bounce rate is the next metric to check. Users can’t open emails if they’re not delivered.
  Hard bounces are caused by invalid email addresses on your list. However, it can also indicate issues with your sender reputation.

Pro-tip: HubSpot considers a bounce rate of 5% or above to be high. If your campaigns exceed this, HubSpot will likely notify you or suspend your sending abilities until the issue is resolved.

• Is my send time the issue? – Our email marketing analytics are handy tools, but they don’t reveal everything. Before you discredit your email design and copy, consider that the optimal send time for your audience may be a different day of the week or time.

After you gather these insights and draw possible conclusions, it’s time to revisit the editor. Consider possible revisions you can make to your email design, copy, subject lines, and send times before sending your next campaign.

Reading data and testing is the most essential step to great email marketing, so be prepared to revisit this step frequently for best results.

Best practices for HubSpot email marketing

HubSpot email marketing will require continuous testing and optimization. However, there are best practices you can follow to maximize your performance and ROI from the start. Here are our six must-follow practices.

#1 - Always verify email addresses before you send

Never assume that your contact list is clean. To combat list decay, you should verify your email list quarterly. Additionally, you need to check new email addresses before you add them to your CRM, regardless of the source.

Sticking to this best practice as step number one provides you with these benefits:

#2 - Authenticate your emails and monitor compliance

Major email service providers like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft require mass senders to authenticate their emails. If you’re unfamiliar, email authentication records secure your emails, protect your customers, and help ESPs recognize you as the email’s trusted owner and sender.

You can manage your email authentication in HubSpot by connecting your sending domain. It’s encouraged to configure the following before sending

Not only does email authentication protect your HubSpot emails, it boosts your reputation and can lead to priority inbox placement.

#3 - Segment your contact lists to optimize targeting and content creation

It’s been proven time and again that segmented email campaigns perform best. In other words, never send an email to your entire CRM, as it is almost never relevant to every user.

Instead, follow our guide on using HubSpot for email marketing above to refine your goals and create segmented audiences. This will improve your ability to match email content with customer intent and make your performance analytics more reliable in the long term.

Pro-tip: A great place to start with segmentation is by breaking down the customer journey in your current pipeline. Establish sequences for prospects, first-time customers, repeat customers, or lapsed ones. By identifying the difference in the situation, you’re already set up to create better-optimized emails that can deliver better results.

#4 - Leverage automation to create unique sequences

Don’t let all those segmented audiences intimidate you. With HubSpot email automation, you’ll only need to create each instance of an email once. Then, you can set those emails to send out to the right recipients once your established triggers are met.

To further improve those sequences, you can use HubSpot’s personalization features to customize the emails for the reader. By refining the email for a smaller, specific audience and adding unique identifiers, you’ve created personalized content that’s easier to measure and will yield superior ROI.

#5 - Test, review, and test again

Many businesses can create and write attractive emails. However, fewer know how to use data to test and improve. Don’t be that sender.

While you’re starting it, it’s useful to monitor metrics to ensure your emails are being delivered successfully. However, before you can start making informed decisions, you’ll need to send more emails and obtain a larger sample size.

To help your HubSpot email campaigns, take advantage of its built-in A/B testing features like this:

1. When creating an email in the drag-and-drop editor, click ‘Create A/B test.’ You can find this in Marketing > Marketing Email.
2. Your original email is the ‘A’ variation. Name your ‘B’ email and use the editor as normal to create your alternative version. Here are some things to experiment with:
   • The CTA placement
   • The CTA, offer, or description
   • Link placement
   • The image(s) used (or use no image at all)
   • The ‘from’ name
   • Subject line variations

3. Next, set the A/B distribution. This figure shows the percentage of emails that will be sent to different contacts. For example, a 50:50 distribution means that 50% of users will receive email A, and 50% of users will receive email B.
4. Set a winning metric. You should choose this based on the goal you established for your email. For example, if you’re testing subject line performance, open rate is the best metric to select for this A/B test.

Pro-tip: In addition to regular monitoring and testing, you should audit your entire email program twice a year. This gives you a large sample size to identify trends, potential issues, and areas for improvement. It’ll also help you anticipate potential deliverability issues before they lead to more serious consequences.

#6 - Audit your HubSpot sender reputation

There’s one last component you need to monitor: your email sender reputation. Every sender has one, and it’s what ESPs use to tell the story of your email habits and behaviors. Here’s how you can monitor your email health:

1. In HubSpot, check the ‘Email Health’ section. While this doesn’t show your reputation, it’s a great first indicator of potential threats. It will detail your engagement, bounce rate, spam reports, and unsubscribes, all of which impact your sender reputation.
2. If you notice issues, or want to perform a regular audit, use Google Postmaster Tools. This free tool will show you:
• Your IP & domain reputation
• Track email authentication compliance
• Shows your compliance with Gmail requirements

It can also provide you with instructions on how to resolve discovered issues.

It’s best practice to maintain a good sender reputation for these reasons:

Additionally, it prevents any interruptions to your HubSpot email marketing program. If you’re using their platform for sending, they’ll hold you accountable for using best email marketing practices.

Ensuring HubSpot email deliverability with ZeroBounce

If you want a sustainable email program, start with the ZeroBounce HubSpot integration. It offers everything you need to improve your inbox visibility without leaving your HubSpot dashboard.

Want to enhance your inbox placement further?

ZeroBounce is every email marketer’s one-stop answer for optimized deliverability. Take your email program to the next level with:

• Warmup – Build up your business’s sending reputation through an automated, ZeroBounce-managed process that rewards your emails with positive engagement signals.
• DMARC Monitoring –  Let ZeroBounce manage email authentication for you, eliminating the complexity. Set up DMARC, track unlimited emails, and receive automated notifications of any misalignment or suspicious activity.
• Inbox placement testing – Test every email before you send it. The free tester assesses your email’s performance against 20+ popular ESPs to let you know if you’re headed to the inbox or spam.

Elevate your HubSpot email marketing game with ZeroBounce

Bookmark this step-by-step guide to ensure your team gets the knowledge it needs to maximize email deliverability and improve your HubSpot email open rates.

And, by creating a free ZeroBounce account now, we can assist you along the way.

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Access to the
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100 monthly email verification credits

1 monthly Inbox
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1 monthly Email
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10 monthly Email Finder queries

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