How and Why You Should Run a Customer Panel for Your Marketing Team

As a marketer, we typically ask ourselves the following question at least a dozen times a day: "Would our prospects and customers like this?"

Ideally, you'll use a mix of qualitative and quantitative data to arrive at the answer to that question.

But one great place to know what your customers like (and love … and hate … ) is directly from the customers themselves.

At HubSpot's department-wide marketing team meetings, for instance, we often host customer panels. There's good reason for this.

As Senior Product Marketing Manager, Katriona Heaslip, notes, "A good marketing strategy should always incorporate the voice of the customer — you could have the best product in the world but you won't see any growth unless you're positioning it in a way that appeals to the customer."

Additionally, Amanda Whyte, HubSpot's Director of Voice of the Customer, says, "Customer panels are such an important way for feedback to be heard, especially for teams that are non-customer facing in their day-to-day job responsibilities."

Whyte adds, "Hearing from a customer what their experience has been, in their own words, creates empathy among decision-makers in a way they couldn't get from looking at data alone. It drives more customer-centric content and communications."

A customer panel is an exceptional opportunity to learn more about your customers' points of friction and success stories. And, along with using that material to inform your future marketing strategy, it can also inspire your marketers to work harder by reminding them why what they're doing matters.

Here, we'll dive into best practices when hosting a customer panel — including what makes a "good" customer for a panel, how to ask effective questions during a customer panel, and why a customer panel is critical for creating alignment across your marketing team.

Let's dive in.

How to Choose Participants for Your Customer Panel

When you begin curating a list of potential customers to host in a customer panel, there are a few factors you'll want to consider.

First, as Lauren McKenzie, HubSpot's Director of Product Design, points out, "A 'good' panel has a wide range of experiences and feedback to offer. For instance, the panel should represent your customer base. If 50% of your customer base is based in Latin America, you'll want 50% of your panelists to be based in Latin America. A thoughtfully curated panel allows you and the team to hear from a diverse set of customers, offering a breadth of experiences and opinions."

Plus, McKenzie adds, "Gabby Thomas, our Program Manager for DI&B, always asks whose voice are we not hearing. This is important to consider when creating a panel, as well."

"It's our job to give all of our customers a platform to have their voices heard, and often that means seeking out the customers we don't hear from as much. You don't just want your fans or ambassadors — instead, you want customers that are going to push you to think differently and improve."

Ultimately, when you're curating a list of customers to host, you'll want to consider whether your panelists deliver a wide range of perspectives to get the most out of your panel.

Laurie Aquilante, HubSpot's Director of Customer Marketing, echoes this perspective, adding that diversity in your panel is critical. She says, "Make sure you have a panel with diverse perspectives. Do you have a mix of industries, use cases, and backgrounds represented? What about titles? Company size? Racial and gender diversity? High NPS and low NPS?"

Additionally, consider curating a group depending on the questions you want to ask during your discussion. If you're releasing a product meant to help enterprise customers, make sure your panelists are enterprise-level. Within that group, you might include a marketer, developer, and IT person to offer a range of perspectives on the enterprise product. 

It's also important to consider which panelists will offer the most constructive feedback to truly enable your company to grow.

Shauna Carroll, HubSpot's Program Manager of Voice of the Customer, says, "When selecting your customers for the panel it is important to understand the customer's ability and willingness to provide candid feedback. When recruiting for HubSpot's Customer Advisory Board this is one of the most important factors for us — we want members who are invested in our success, but not afraid to share their honest opinion."

Of course, it can be difficult to pre-determine which customers will offer helpful, constructive feedback.

For this reason, Carroll advises, "You can determine this by having quick screening call with each of the participants. This screening call is also a great way for the facilitator to understand the various personalities joining the panel and he/she can start to build a plan for how to get the most from the panelists."

As if this doesn't seem specific-enough, there's one more thing you'll want to consider when choosing a panel: how well they speak on-camera. 

Kinzie Trompak, HubSpot's Manager of Customer Stories, says, "You'll want to find speakers that are comfortable on camera. Do your speakers have a sample talk they can share?"

"Are they comfortable speaking on Zoom where they can't necessarily see faces or pick up on non-verbal cues? This piece is part of doing research and effectively preparing your speakers."

Once you've found customers that can offer a wide range of perspectives and opinions, it's time to host the panel.

But when it comes to hosting the panel … what questions should you even ask?

Effective Questions to Ask During a Customer Panel

I spoke to Katriona Heaslip, a Senior Product Marketing Manager at HubSpot, to learn what types of questions you should ask a customer during a panel. She told me, "Customers have the answers to the questions we as marketers spend a lot of time agonizing over: who is our persona, what's the perfect price point, what category should we be in, what's the best tagline to use."

"Your customers have the answers, you just have to unlock them by listening."

So — how do you unlock them?

Heaslip says, "Always have a goal or objective in mind: this will help you develop questions and add more focus to your time with customers, giving you better insights."

For instance, at HubSpot we often host panels a couple weeks or months before a new product launch. This enables the marketing team to uncover concerns revolving around that type of product, and how our marketing materials might mitigate those concerns.

You might consider doing the same thing at your own company. If you've just added some new features to your product, perhaps you host some existing customers and ask them how those features might help them — as well as any apprehensions they might have.

McKenzie also suggests creating open-ended and specific questions, to ensure your customers can stay on-track, while still broad enough to give them an opportunity to provide any anecdotal information they'd like. She says, "Focus more on asking questions that start with What and How rather than Why. Ideally, questions should focus on their actual experience, rather than asking them to project into the future or imagine what they would do in a hypothetical scenario."

To get you started, here are a few potential questions I'd recommend asking:

• What was the decision process like when buying [our product]? Did you look at or use other tools?

• How long have you been using [our product]?

• What were the earliest successes you saw? What sort of long-term impact have you seen?

• Which features or tools do you like the most? How do you learn from them?

• Which resources do you use most? (Blogs, ebooks, whitepapers, video, etc.)

• Did you have to convince stakeholders to buy? What was that process like?
• If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about our product or overall buying process, what would it be?

In terms of distribution, Aquilante told me, "Consider having a set of questions you've sent the customers in advance, so they can prepare best for the discussion. Then, during the panel, have attendees at your company write down questions that come to mind and save them for the end of the meeting."

Additionally, you'll want to ensure your questionnaire is consistent across the board. Heaslip advises, "Make sure you ask each customer the same questions (where relevant) in order to compare answers and ascertain trends and patterns in feedback."

4 Best Practices Before, During, and After a Customer Panel

Before the Customer Panel

1. Decide whether or not you'll take live questions, and how long your panel will be.

Once you've got your customers chosen and questions planned, you'll need to plan logistics. For instance, will you accept questions in-the-moment from the audience, or provide some time after the prepared panel for audience questions?

If you do leave time for audience questions, consider requesting that your employees send their questions to a pre-determined Slack channel, so the moderator can sift through and choose the ones best-suited for the panel. This provides an additional level of control over the questions asked.

As Trompak suggests, "I'd collect questions ahead of the panel. There is nothing more awkward than asking for audience participation, followed by silence. By collecting questions ahead of time, you're setting your speakers up for success as they have time to prepare and think through their answers."

Another logistical factor you'll want to figure out pre-panel: How long do you want your panel to last?

As Aquilante puts it, "You'll want to prepare ahead of time and make sure the customers and the people at your company are aware of how things are going to go. Ensure they understand how long the panel will go, and whether or not you'll take live questions. If you choose to take live questions, figure out whether or not you'll take them during or after. For us, we've found about 45 minutes to be a good length of time for a panel of 3-4 customers."

During The Customer Panel

1. Invest in recording software to turn the customer panel into a case study.

If you're conducting a customer panel via video conferencing, consider how you might record and transcribe the call after-the-fact. Alternatively, even if your customer panel is in-person, consider whether you can access video equipment to record the chat and transcribe it later.

Katriona Heaslip told me, "It's useful to record the customer call using a tool like Gong, which also provides a transcript, so you can engage fully with the customer in-the-moment without typing furiously trying to keep up. This way you can reference the call afterwards and pick up things you may have missed, or even share it with some other stakeholders internally if there's some particularly useful feedback."

Additionally, Heaslip advises using the content from the customer panel and turning it into a case study. This way, you can leverage the customer panel as a lead generation opportunity and demonstrate to prospects how your existing customers' have found success with your product.

2. Have a good moderator to facilitate various points-of-view.

Ultimately, a customer panel is only as good as your moderator. It's your moderator's job to keep the conversation flowing, encourage alternate perspectives, and simply facilitate which customers answer in which order to ensure everyone is heard equally.

As McKenzie told me, "A good moderator asks open-ended questions, involves all panelists in the discussion, and moves the discussion along rather than offering up their own opinions."

Additionally, she adds, "A potential pitfall of a customer panel is when one loud voice dominates the conversation or causes other panelists to second guess themselves."

"A good moderator can counteract this by not only encouraging differing opinions, but actively seeking out different points of view throughout the discussion."

3. Follow a few Zoom best practices to create an ideal audience experience. 

Whyte recommends a few tips she follows whenever her customer panels are entirely remote. 

"If the panels are over Zoom and we have a larger audience, we recommend the following tips to ensure the best experience for everyone:

• Hide Non-Video Participants (Go to Preferences > Video > Check the box for 'Hide non-video participants').
• Everyone who is not a panelist or moderator can Turn Off Video & Mute.
• To see the panelists at the same time as slide content, use Side-by-side Mode (Go to View Options & turn on "Side-by-side Mode" to see slides + gallery view of customers).
• During any Q&A portion, turn your video back on and unmute yourself so the panelists can see who is asking the question."

Of course, if you're using an alternative video conferencing tools, you'll want to explore the options you have to mute or hide non-video participants.

Ultimately, you'll want to decide what works best for your marketing team and panelists, but it's a good idea to iron out the details before going live with your customers. 

After the Customer Panel

1. Thank your customers for their time with a note or gift.

Once your customer panel has ended, you'll want to follow-up with participants to thank them for their time.

Laurie Aquilante suggests sending along a thank-you note or gift to show customers you appreciate their time: "How are you going to thank customers for their time? Consider delivering a hand-written thank you note from your team or a small gift. Alternatively, perhaps participating in a customer panel is part of a greater advocacy and rewards program."

2. Provide panelists with networking opportunities.

After the panel, consider how you might encourage further interaction between your customers to facilitate long-term professional connections.

For instance, Carroll suggests, "After the customer panel, it can be a nice gesture to provide the panel with the opportunity to network further with each other and with employees from your company. Many customers will be grateful for this opportunity, and offering to facilitate/host this is a nice way to thank them for their time."

Ultimately, there are a variety of other channels you might leverage to learn more about your customers, so it's up to you to decide whether or not a customer panel is the best-fit for your team.

As HubSpot's Director of Customer Marketing, Laurie Aquilante, puts it, "Getting your customer's perspective is incredibly important for any business. There are lots of ways to do that — you can look at reviews, NPS, various feedback channels, a user/customer research function, focus groups, and customer panels. Ultimately, you'll want to consider which method you need for which program."

A customer panel is a fantastic option to demonstrate how much your company cares about your customers' perspectives — and enables you to align your team under one shared vision: the customer.

Additionally, Trompak told me, "The majority of marketers rarely speak directly to customers. Panels are a great way to infuse the voice of the customer into your work without bombarding your customers with asks from multiple teams."

She adds, "As an example, At HubSpot, we ran two panels in January to inform marketers' work for 2020. The Super Admin panel helped my teammate Lucy Alexander design the offerings for HubSpot's Power User Community."

Hopefully, with these best practices in-hand, your team can leave your next marketing team meeting feeling inspired, aligned, and ready to tackle their marketing challenges with a fresh sense of who your customers are. To explore other options, take a look at Customer Feedback Strategy: The Only Guide You'll Ever Need.

How and Why You Should Run a Customer Panel for Your Marketing Team was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

The Ultimate Smarketing Glossary: 67 Common Sales Terms Explained for Marketers

Sales and marketing teams are both responsible for the growth and revenue side of the business -- and yet, many of them still tend to operate like two opposing teams.

The goal of "smarketing" is to help bring sales and marketing together as one team, which involves constant, effective communication.

It's pretty critical that sales and marketing teams learn how to speak each other's language. But while both teams have some shared vocabulary, there are plenty of terms salespeople throw around that, let's be honest, may as well be gibberish.

So we've put together a glossary of sales terms for marketers you can reference each time you encounter sales speak you're unfamiliar with. Keep on reading to brush up on your sales knowledge.

Definitions of Common Sales Terms

1. ABC: Always Be Closing
2. AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action
3. BANT: Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline
4. Commission: The payment a sales rep gets when they successfully sell something
5. Discovery call: The first call a sales rep makes to a prospect
6. Quota: A sales goal; a set amount of selling a sales rep is expect to meet over a given time frame, usually a month and/or quarter
7. Value proposition: A benefit of a product or company intended to make it more attractive to potential buyers and differentiates it from competitors

62 Definitions of Common Sales Terms

ABC

"Always Be Closing." An antiquated sales strategy that basically says everything a sales rep does throughout the sales process is in pursuit toward the singular goal of closing a deal. The implication is that, if a sales rep doesn't close the deal, then everything they did regarding that opportunity was a failure. In the inbound methodology, the preferred ABCs of selling are: Always Be Connecting. Even better, "Always Be Helping." 

Adoption process

Another way of saying "the buying process." The stages a potential buyer goes through, from learning about a new product or service to either becoming a loyal customer or rejecting it. The potential buyer may or may not end up purchasing/adopting that product or service.

AIDA

An acronym used in Sales that stands for Attention/Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action. They are the four steps of the now somewhat-outdated Purchase Funnel (although most agree the funnel is much more complex than what is represented in this traditional model), wherein customers travel from awareness to purchase.

ARR

Annual Recurring Revenue. For recurring revenue companies, ARR provides a high-level look at how recurring revenue or subscription business is growing over time. It's a good metric for models that have longer term subscription durations. It's also great for long-term planning. See also MRR.

B2B

Business 2 Business. B2B is a term that describes the transactional relationship between provider and client where the provider is a business and the client is another business. e.g. "Our B2B marketing strategy targets organizations in the manufacturing niche." See also: B2C.

B2C

Business 2 Consumer. B2C is a term describes the transactional relationship between provider and client where the provider is a business and the client is an individual consumer. e.g. "Our B2C marketing strategy targets new moms." See also: B2B.

Benefit

The value of a product or service that a consumer of that product or service experiences. Benefits are distinct from features, and sales reps should sell based on benefits that are supported by features.

Bad Leads

Leads that are unlikely to become paying customers -- and a sales rep's worst nightmare, because they are a waste of time. A tough challenge for most marketers is how you separate good, high-quality leads from the people who are just poking around your site. Learn more about lead scoring here.

BANT

An acronym used in sales for lead qualification that stands for Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline. It's a famous tool for sales reps and sales leaders to help them determine whether their prospects have the budget, authority, need, and right timeline to buy what they sell.

• B = Budget: Determines whether your prospect has a budget for what you're selling.
• A = Authority: Determines whether your prospect has the authority to make a purchasing decision.
• N = Need: Determines whether there's a business need for what you're selling.
• T = Timeline: Determines the time frame for implementation.

The BANT formula was originally developed by IBM several decades ago. We don't think BANT is good enough anymore, though: Learn more here about the better qualifying formula, GPCTBA/C&I.

Bluebird Sales

A "bluebird" is a sale that came seemingly from nowhere or with unexpected ease. A sales rep might say, "Fortunately, a bluebird flew right in at the end of the quarter, helping me reach my goal."

One thing to keep in mind with inbound sales is that many of these sales may not be true bluebirds since your inbound engine is actively building awareness and helping prospects along a buyer's journey. With high-performance sales organizations, you'll want to have some control over your pipeline forecasting and be able to look at lead attribution, so it's best not to rely on bluebirds.

Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)

A stage of the buying process leads reach when they're just about to close into new customers. They've identified a problem, have shopped around for possible solutions, and are very close to buying. 

Buyer Behavior

The ways a consumer identifies, considers, and chooses products and services. Buyer behavior is often influenced by the consumer's needs, desires, aspirations, inhibitions, role, social and cultural environment.

Buyer Persona

A semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. While it helps inbound marketers like you define their target audience, it can also help sales reps qualify leads. Learn more about developing buyer personas here.

Buying Criteria

All the information a consumer needs to make a buying decision. It can be written or unwritten, and often answers questions like, "what is it?; "why should I buy it?"; "what is the price?"; "why do I need it?" and so on.

Buying Process/Cycle

The process potential buyers go through before deciding whether to make a purchase. Although it's been broken it down into many sub-stages to align with different business models, it can universally be boiled down to these three lifecycle stages:

1. Awareness: Leads have either become aware of your product or service, or they have become aware that they have a need that must be fulfilled.
2. Evaluation: Leads are aware that your product or service could fulfill their need, and they are trying to determine whether you are the best fit.
3. Purchase: Leads are ready to make a purchase.

Buying Signal

A communication from a prospect indicating they are ready to make a purchase, either verbal or non-verbal. An example would be them asking the sales rep, "When can it be delivered?"

Churn Rate

A metric that measures how many customers you retain and at what value. To calculate churn rate, take the number of customers you lost during a certain time frame, and divide that by the total number of customers you had at the very beginning of that time frame. (Don't include any new sales from that time frame.)

For example, if a company had 500 customers at the beginning of October and only 450 customers at the end of October (discounting any customers that were closed in October), their customer churn rate would be: (500-450)/500 = 50/500 = 10%.

Churn rate is a significant metric primarily for recurring revenue companies. Regardless of your monthly revenue, if your average customer does not stick around long enough for you to at least break even on your customer acquisition costs, you’re in trouble.

Closed Opportunities

An umbrella term that includes both closed-won and closed-lost opportunities, although some people use it to mean only closed-won opportunities.

Closed-Won

When a sales rep closes a deal in which the buyer purchases the product or service.

Closed-Lost

When a sales rep closes a deal in which the buyer does not purchase the product or service.

Closing Ratio

The percentage of prospects that a sales rep successfully close-wins. This ratio is usually used to assess individual sales reps on their short-term performance, but it can also be used to evaluate profits, forecast sales, and so on. Improving a closing ratio usually requires efforts to bring better-qualified leads into the funnel.

Cold Calling

Making unsolicited calls in an attempt to sell products or services. It's also a very inefficient way to find potential customers.

Commission

The payment a sales rep gets when they successfully sell something; usually a percentage of sales revenue. If you want more info on sales compensation, check out this article.

Consumer

A person who uses a product or service. They may not be the actual buyer of that product; for example, if I buy my brother a pair of basketball shoes, then my brother is the consumer of those shoes, not me.

Conversion Path

The "events" on a company's website that help companies capture leads. In its most basic form, it'll consist of a call-to-action (typically a button that describes an offer) that leads to a landing page with a lead capture form, which redirects to a thank-you page where a content offer resides. In exchange for his or her contact information, a website visitor obtains a content offer to better help them through the buying process.

Conversion Rate

The percentage of people who completed a desired action on a single web page, such as filling out a form. Pages with high conversion rates are performing well, while pages with low conversion rates are performing poorly.

Cross-Selling

When a sales rep has more than one type of product to offer consumers that could be beneficial, and s/he successfully sells a consumer more than one item either at the time of purchase or later on. An example is when Apple sells you an iPhone and then successfully sells you an Apple iPhone case or a pair of Apple headphones. In this case, a sales rep identifies a need the customer has, and fulfills that need by recommending an additional product. (Cross-selling differs from up-selling; see up-selling.)

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

This is your total Sales and Marketing cost. To calculate, follow these steps for a given time period (month, quarter, or year):

1. Add up program or advertising spend + salaries + commissions + bonuses + overhead.
2. Divide by the number of new customers in that time period.

For example, if you spend $500,000 on Sales and Marketing in a given month and added 50 customers that same month, then your CAC was $10,000 that month. (Learn more here.)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Software that let companies keep track of everything they do with their existing and potential customers. At the simplest level, CRM software lets you keep track of all the contact information for these customers. But CRM systems can do lots of other things, too, like track email, phone calls, faxes, and deals; send personalized emails; schedule appointments; and log every instance of customer service and support. Some systems also incorporate feeds from social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others. The goal is to create a system in which sales reps have a lot of information at their fingertips and can quickly pull up everything about a prospect or existing customer.

Data Entry/Processing

The process of obtaining, recording, and maintaining information you can retrieve and use later. In Sales, this usually mean inputting potential buyers' information into a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool to track activity, correspondence, and progress on open opportunities.

Decision-Maker

The person who, or role that, makes the final decision of a sale. They are often "guarded" by a gatekeeper.

Discovery Call

The first call a sales rep makes to a prospect, with the goal of asking them questions and qualifying them for the next step.

Feature

A function of a product that can solve for a potential buyer's need or pain point; usually a distinguishing characteristic that helps boost appeal.

Flywheel

The flywheel is a new way of conceptualizing the sales process, replacing the funnel where customers are thought of as an output. The flywheel demonstrates that awareness, engagement, and delight can happen at any point during the customer journey and that the best way to achieve growth is to apply force and remove friction in each stage.

Forecasting

Estimating future sales performance for a forecast period based on historical data. Forecasted performance can vary widely from actual sales results, but helps sales reps plan their upcoming days, weeks, and months, and helps high-level employees set standards for expenses, profit, and growth. Learn more about sales forecasting here.

Gatekeeper

A person who, or role that, enables or prevents information from getting to another person(s) in a company. For example, a receptionist or personal assistant.

GPCTBA/C&I

Goals, Plans, Challenges, Timeline, Budget, Authority, Negative Consequences, Positive Implications. The lead qualification criteria sales reps should use to qualify prospects -- it's a better tool than BANT to help sales reps and sales leaders to determine whether their prospects have the goals, plans, challenges, and right timeline to buy what they sell.

• G = Goals: Determines the quantifiable goals your prospect wants or needs to hit. An opportunity for sales reps to establish themselves as an advisor by beginning to help prospects reset or quantify their goals.
• P = Plans: Determines the prospect's current plans that they'll implement in order to achieve those goals.
• C = Challenges: Determines whether the sales rep can help a prospect overcome their and their company's challenges; ones they're dealing with and ones they (or the sales rep) anticipate.
• T = Timeline: Determines the time frame for implementation of their goals and plans, and when they need to eliminate their challenges.
• B = Budget: Determines how much money a prospect has to spend.
• A = Authority: Determines who in the organization will help champion and/or decide to make a purchase.
• C = Negative Consequences: Discusses the negative things that'll happen if a prospect doesn't meet their goal.
• I = Positive Implications: Discusses the positive outcomes that'll happen if a prospect meets their goal.

Read about GPCT in more detail here.

Lead

A person or company who's shown interest in a product or service in some way, shape, or form. Perhaps they filled out a form, subscribed to a blog, or shared their contact information in exchange for a coupon. 

Generating leads is a critical part of a prospect's journey to becoming a customer, and it falls in between the second and third stages of the larger inbound marketing methodology, which you can see below.

Landing pages, forms, offers, and calls-to-action are just a few tools to help companies generate leads. Learn more about lead generation here.

Lead Qualification

The process of determining whether a potential buyer has certain characteristics that qualify him or her as a lead. These characteristics could be budget, authority, timeline, and so on. Popular lead qualification criteria acronyms are GPCTBA/C&I and BANT.

Lifetime Value (LTV)

A prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer. To calculate LTV, follow these steps for a given time period:

1. Take the revenue the customer paid you in that time period.
2. Subtract from that number the gross margin.
3. Divide by the estimated churn rate (aka cancellation rate) for that customer.

For example, if a customer pays you $100,000 per year where your gross margin on the revenue is 70%, and that customer type is predicted to cancel at 16% per year, then the customer's LTV is $437,500. (Learn more here.)

Loss Leader

Used in retail to refer to a product sold at a low price (either at break-even or at a loss) for the purpose of attracting customers into the store. The goal is for customers who go into the store to buy other items that are priced to make a profit.

LTV:CAC

The ratio of lifetime value to customer acquisition cost. Once you have the LTV and the CAC, compute the ratio of the two. If it costs you $100,000 to acquire a customer with an LTV of $437,500, then your LTV:CAC is 4.4 to 1. 

Margin

The difference between a product or service's selling price and the cost of production.

Mark-Up

The amount added to the cost price of goods to cover overhead and profit.

Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)

The stage that a lead enters after identifying a problem. Now they’re looking to conduct further research to find a solution to the problem. Typical middle of the funnel offers include case studies, product brochures, or anything that brings your business into the equation as a solution to the problem the lead is looking to solve.

MRR

Monthly Recurring Revenue. For recurring revenue companies, MRR provides a month-to-month look at how recurring revenue or subscription business is growing. Includes MRR gained by new accounts (net new), MRR gained from up-sells (net positive), MRR lost from down-sells (net negative), and MRR lost from cancellations (net loss). MRR may not be ideal for longer term subscription models since there will be natural fluctuation over shorter time periods, but it can be a better metric for recurring revenue companies that aren't ideal for long-term subscriptions. It's also great for short-term planning. See also: ARR.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

A customer satisfaction metric that measures, on a scale of 0-10, the degree to which people would recommend your company to others. The NPS is derived from a simple survey designed to help you determine how loyal your customers are to your business. To calculate NPS, subtract the percentage of customers who would not recommend you (detractors, or 0-6) from the percent of customers who would (promoters, or 9-10).

Regularly determining your company’s NPS allows you to identify ways to improve your products and services so you can increase the loyalty of your customers. Learn more about how to use NPS surveys for marketing here.

Objection

A prospect's challenge to or rejection of a product or service's benefits, and a natural part of the sales process. Common objections often have to do with budget, authority, need, and timing (see BANT). How sales reps handle objections plays a big role in determining whether a prospect will buy. Learn how to tackle common B2B sales objections here.

Opportunity

Though every company has different processes for defining what criteria make someone an opportunity, it's basically when a qualified lead is being worked by Sales. See Qualified Lead for more information.

Pain Point

A prospect's pain point, or need, is the most important thing for a sales rep to identify in the selling process. Without knowing a prospect's pain points, they can't possibly offer benefits to help resolve those pain points.

Performance Plan

Also "Performance Improvement Plan" or "PIP." A sales rep is put on a performance plan if s/he doesn't make a certain percentage of quota over a certain period of time. Performance plans vary from company to company, but it usually starts with a written warning and further disciplinary action, including termination if necessary. The purpose of performance plans is to set clear and specific performance goals, provide a means for feedback, and develop sales skills.

Pipeline

The step-by-step process sales reps go through to convert a prospect into a customer. The sales pipeline is often divided into stages for each step in the sales process, and the sales rep is responsible for moving opportunities through the stages. It can also refer to a visual representation of the sales process, where every open opportunity is arranged based on the sales stage they're in.

Positioning Statement

Statements and questions that sales reps use when opening a sales call to engage the prospect in conversation around their pain points. Many sales reps are trained to start off every sales call with these statements. Here's an example of positioning statements on a sales call from Advanced Marketing Concepts:

• Sales Rep: I help marketing leaders who are frustrated with the inability of the sales team to differentiate their products in a crowded market.
• Buyer: Yes, that's always been a problem. (If you've done your job well and targeted the buyer effectively with that first positioning statement, then you'll get an engaging signal like this one.)
• Sales Rep: I talk to a lot of marketing leaders, and lately I'm hearing the two biggest problems are weak sales pipeline and an inability to differentiate from competitors. Do these problems sound familiar?

Learn more about positioning statements here.

Profit Margin

A ratio of profitability that measures how much money a company actually keeps in earnings. It's calculated either as a) net income divided by revenues, or b) net profits divided by sales.

Prospecting

The process of searching for and finding potential buyers. Sales reps (or "prospectors") seek out qualified prospects and move them through the sales cycle.

Qualified Lead

A contact that opted in to receive communication from your company, became educated about your product or service, and is interested in learning more. Marketing and Sales often have two different versions of qualified leads (MQLs for Marketing, and SQLs for Sales), so be sure to have conversations with your sales team to set expectations for the types of leads you plan to hand over.

Quota

A sales goal; a set amount of selling a sales rep is expect to meet over a given time frame, usually a month and/or quarter. It's very, very common for sales reps to have quotas, also the form they take can vary from company to company and from role to role.

Sales Methodology

"The 'how' of selling as a skill set," according to John Kenney of Sales Benchmark Index. There are many sales methodologies out there, a few of which are particularly popular, and sales leaders often choose one and use it to teach and motivate his or her team. Popular sales methodologies include SPIN selling, Conceptual Selling, SNAP Selling, The Challenger Sale, Sandler Sales, and CustomerCentric Selling. Read more about these sales methodologies here.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

For salespeople, an SLA is an agreement between a company's sales and marketing teams that defines the expectations Sales has for Marketing and vice versa. The Sales SLA defines the expectations Marketing has for Sales on how deeply and frequently Sales will pursue each qualified lead, while the Marketing SLA defines expectations Sales has for Marketing with regards to lead quantity and lead quality.

SLAs exist to align Sales and Marketing. For companies to achieve growth and become leaders in their industries, it is critical that these two groups be properly integrated. Learn how to create an SLA here.

Smarketing

Used to refer to the practice of aligning Sales and Marketing efforts. In a perfect world, marketing would pass off tons of fully qualified leads to the sales team, who would then subsequently work every one of those leads enough times to close them 100% of the time. But since this isn't always how the cookie crumbles, it’s important for Marketing and Sales to align efforts to impact the bottom line the best they can through coordinated communication.

Social Selling

When sales reps use social media to interact directly with their prospects. They provide value by answering prospects' questions and offering thoughtful content until the prospect is ready to buy.

Sound Bite

A series of words or phrases sales reps use to respond to and overcome a customer objection.

Stage

Parts of the sales pipeline representing each step in the sales process. It's the sales rep's responsibility for moving opportunities from stage to stage. Different companies define their sales stages differently, but each one has behind it a set of requirements that need to be completed in order for an opportunity to move from one stage to the next. Names for sales stages are usually things like "Prospect," "Qualified Lead," "Demo," "Proposal," "Closed."

Top of the Funnel (TOFU)

The very first stage of the buying process. Leads at this stage are identifying a problem they have and are looking for more information. At this point, marketers create helpful content that aids leads in identifying this problem and providing next steps toward a solution.

Up-Selling

When a sales rep sells an existing customer a higher-end version of the product that customer originally bought. For example, if you bought a cell phone plan and a sales rep successfully persuaded you to upgrade to a plan with more minutes or data, then that's an up-sell.

Value Proposition

"Value prop" for short. A benefit of a product or company intended to make it more attractive to potential buyers and differentiates it from competitors.

Weighted Pipeline

A more detailed version of a sales pipeline, in which each opportunity is given a specific value based on which stage they're in in the sales process. For example, potential buyers in the prospecting stage could be assigned a 10% chance of closing the deal, demo stage buyers 60%, closed-won 100%, and so on. A sales rep could say that, instead of having 10 prospects in her pipeline, she has 10 opportunities at 50% or greater likelihood of closing with a weighted pipeline value of $50,000.

As you get familiar with the common sales terms and how to apply them to your business, you'll better be able to manage your organization's sales strategy (or create one).

Editor's note: This post was originally published in November 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The Ultimate Smarketing Glossary: 67 Common Sales Terms Explained for Marketers was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

How to Add a Link to Your Instagram Bio

Every social network makes it clear how to put a link in your bio on their platform -- except Instagram.

Twitter lets you tag other handles in your bio. LinkedIn gives you the ability to link yourself to your employer's official page. Facebook allows you to tag a number of different businesses, interest pages, and people in your "About" section, so you can let friends know who you work for, what brands you like, your alma mater, your relationship status, and so on.

What about Instagram?

Until recently, Instagram didn't give you a ton of space to brand your profile with hashtags and profile handles -- you could only link to their respective pages in photo captions. Websites were the only types of links you could put in your bio (hence the common phrase "link in bio").

"Link in bio" is essentially a call to action, promoting more information available outside of Instagram's parameters.

But Instagram recently gifted us two new features: linkable profiles and hashtags, right in your bio. You can now add them alongside the link to your website.

How to Add a Link to Your Instagram Bio

1. Open your Instagram mobile app.
2. Visit your profile by tapping the person icon on the bottom right.
3. Tap "Edit Profile" at the top of the screen.
4. Write a custom description in 150 characters or less.
5. Add a brief link to your website in the form of yourdomain.com.
6. Add links to other profiles by tapping "@" followed by the profile's handle.
7. Add hashtags by tapping "#" followed by the hashtag you associate with.
8. Tap "Done" to save your bio.

Note: The instructions above apply to the latest version of Instagram -- 37.0 on iOS. You can also edit your bio on Instagram's website by navigating to your profile and clicking "Edit Profile" next to your name.

On the screen to the left, below, you can see how Instagram suggests popular hashtags as you edit the bio text field, just like it would when you add a hashtag to a picture's caption. On the screen to the right, you'll see the profile of a person who uses hashtags, profile links, and websites in her bio.

Images via Newsweek

Things have changed at Instagram as of late, and you now have options to link to other pages you identify with right beneath your Instagram profile picture. But keep in mind that users who don't want their profile tagged in others' bios can opt to untag themselves.

It's best to reserve this space for the accounts you know would agree with the association you're making.

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

 

How to Add a Link to Your Instagram Bio was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

15 Key Performance Indicators to Help Improve Your Marketing

When I was cooking steak the other day, I had to use a meat thermometer to check and see if the meat was cooked all the way through.

In other words, I had to look for an indicator to see how the cooking process was coming along.

Marketing is fairly similar.

As a marketer, instead of a meat thermometer, you're going to use key performance indicators (KPI) to measure success.

Below, let's learn more about KPIs and review some examples of marketing KPIs that can help you improve your marketing.

Essentially, KPIs are measurable metrics that gauge overall performance over time. A great way to analyze and report on your KPIs is to create custom dashboards in your automation software.

So, now that we understand what a KPI is, let's look at some examples.

For today's purposes, we'll focus on marketing KPIs, but to learn more about sales metrics, check out our ultimate guide.

1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) measures the amount of money it takes to convert a potential lead into a customer.

This metric can be used to improve your marketing because it helps you make important budgetary decisions.

For example, you don't want to spend too much money acquiring a customer if it won't result in a profit. Basically, this helps businesses decide how much money to spend on attracting customers.

2. Lifetime Value of a Customer (LTV)

Another metric that can help determine how much money to spend on marketing is the lifetime value of a customer. This metric indicates the total amount of revenue a business can expect to make from a single customer.

This is a useful metric to compare to CAC. For example, if your CAC is higher than your LTV, then you're probably spending too much money acquiring your customers.

3. Return on Investment (ROI)

Return on investment in marketing refers to the amount of money you gain compared to the marketing cost.

To calculate this, you'll subtract marketing expenses from sales growth and then divide that by marketing cost to get the return on your investment.

In marketing, keep in mind that it can be hard to directly attribute sales growth to a marketing campaign. If that's the case, you can subtract your average organic sales growth and marketing cost from your sales growth and then divide it by your marketing cost.

4. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

Return on ad spend is a more specific KPI that you can use to determine the success of your ad campaigns.

This metric measures the revenue that's generated compared to every dollar you spend on an advertising campaign. It's usually a ratio.

For example, let's say you made $10 for every $1 spent on an advertising campaign. That means your ROAS for that campaign is 10:1.

5. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)

An MQL is a lead that has engaged with your company and could become a more serious prospect if you nurture that relationship.

This is a great KPI to measure because it helps your marketing team understand how many leads they're bringing in.

Additionally, when compared to sales qualified leads (see below), your marketing team can measure how many MQLs become SQLs and then customers.

6. Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)

If an MQL is nurtured correctly, then eventually they become a sales qualified lead. An SQL is a prospective customer that's ready to talk to someone on your sales team.

Usually, these leads have been researched and vetted by your marketing department.

Again, this KPI is helpful because it can help your marketing team understand how many of their leads are talking to your sales team.

7. Follower Growth

As a marketer, one of your duties might be to manage social media accounts for your company. If you work on the social team, a helpful KPI to track is follower growth.

Most likely one of the goals of your social media team is to increase brand awareness and interact with your audience. Increasing your followers is a great way to measure success for those goals.

To grow your follower base, you might consider running sponsored campaigns. One brand added 36X its typical number of followers each day during the 4 days it ran a set of sponsored posts on Instagram, increasing its follower count by 18.15%.

8. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action. The desired action could be anything from completing an online form to signing up for a service or purchasing a product.

This is a helpful KPI to track because it can let you know how successful you are at attracting leads.

For example, if the desired action was filling out a web form, measuring your conversion rate could let you know that your web page isn't converting many leads. If that's the case, then you could start to rethink your strategy.

9. Website Visitors

As a marketer, attracting people to your company is the main goal. A great way to do that is to attract website visitors.

Website visitors is an important KPI because it could track the success of several campaigns.

For instance, if you're tracking organic web traffic, then you'll be measuring the effectiveness of your SEO team.

On the other hand, if you're tracking web visitors from social media, then you could use web visitors to see how many referrals your social team sends to your site.

10. Social Media Engagement

Not to reiterate, but a major role in marketing is social media. One of the main KPIs for social media is engagement.

You could track likes, shares, comments, messages, tags, or mentions. Any way that a customer or lead is interacting with you, you can count as engagement.

Measuring engagement can help you analyze the success of your social media posts.

11. Referral Traffic

Referral traffic is a KPI that can help you understand where your web visitors are coming from.

This is a great KPI to track because it helps you understand how most people find your company. This could be useful information when building your overall marketing strategy.

12. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score is a way to measure customer satisfaction. This KPI measures how likely your customers are to recommend your business to a friend.

When you calculate your NPS, you'll most likely leave additional space for comments. This metric can give you direct, actionable feedback and insights from your customers.

As a marketer, it's important to listen to your customers and truly understand them. This KPI will help you do that.

13. Organic Traffic

It's important to measure the success of your SEO efforts. To do that, you'll likely track the KPI of organic traffic and keyword performance.

With an SEO tool, you can see how well your company is ranking on search engines for certain keywords.

This KPI will inform your overall organic and SEO strategy.

14. Event Attendance

As a marketer, you'll have KPIs for every campaign you're operating.

If you're running an event, for example, then you'll most likely track event attendance. This KPI will let you know how well your marketing team did at attracting people to your event.

15. Customer Retention

While you might think customer retention isn't a marketing KPI, it actually is important to consider.

Customer retention is a great KPI to track for marketers because you can use the information in your messaging for your marketing campaigns.

Additionally, this metric helps you better understand your customers, so you can market to them better.

Ultimately, KPIs are important because they're how you measure success as a marketer. You'll use KPIs in almost every situation because you're going to need to track success for short and long term campaigns.

15 Key Performance Indicators to Help Improve Your Marketing was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

The Best Time to Send an Email (Research-Backed)

Here's a little exercise for you: Check the timestamps on the emails you've gotten in the past day. What have you found? For me, I noticed that most of my emails, especially my subscription emails, were sent between 9-10 AM, or 5-6 PM.

This isn't a coincidence, either.

While the answer to “What’s the perfect time to send an email to my customers?” isn't an exact science, there are some key findings we've discovered through heavy research, and those times listed above are right in line with what we found. Keep reading to find out the best time to send an email, according to our findings.

Why Email Matters For Your Business

Automated email marketing provides a chance for you to improve sales conversions — maybe even by 14%. It’s a way to send customers unique offers — such as product sales or newsletters updates — with information your reader can’t get anywhere else.

Emails should be personalized with what your customers want to see, allowing you an instant way to communicate with them. Your emails should contain information your customers are interested in learning more about, such as discount offers, business updates, or product/service launches.

HubSpot's marketing email tool allows users to create and send automated emails for free. It also gives you the option to schedule your emails according to the preferences you’ve set. Then, your emails will then be sent to the list(s) of contacts you select.

When you reach this option in your automated email tool, you probably spend some time wondering when exactly your audience would like to receive your email, especially if it includes a limited-time offer. You want to make sure the highest number of customers possible are reading your emails. 

How to Measure the Performance of Your Email Sends

If you're wondering about the best time to send a marketing email, there's something you should know first. There's a lot of data out there on the subject that provide differing answers, and one reason is because it depends on your audience and, more importantly, how you're measuring success. 

For example, the best time for people opening your emails could differ from the best time for people to take action. Here is a breakdown of the most important email metrics:

Click-through rate

Click-through rate refers to the number of people who open a link or image in an email. This number will always be smaller than the total number of emails opened, since some people will open your email but then abandon it without engaging with it any further.

Click-to-open rate

When comparing the number of people that opened your email and the number that clicked on any links, that data is called click-to-open rate. This metric helps you identify which information in your emails is relevant to consumers. Finding CTOR is done by diving CTR by the open rate and multiplying it by 100%. For example, if your email receives 200 clicks and 120 opens, your click-to-open-rate is 60%.

Open rate

The open rate, then, is the percentage found from the number of subscribers who opened your email campaign. Emails that have great open rates have short, effective subject lines. Plus, they're optimized for previews and preheader text.

Best Time to Send Emails

If you're sending emails that include a sale or promotion, try sending them during the times your audience tends to take their lunch breaks simply because they may be more likely to check their emails at this time.

If you want something more specific when it comes to what time and day you should send an email, we found some researched-backed best practices.

The following numbers are from GetResponse, an email marketing software that combed its data to compile a report of email marketing benchmarks. They analyzed 4 billion emails from 1,000 active senders.

Image Source

The highest line of the graph represents the open rate. The purple line (i.e., the one below it) represents the click-to-open rate. Below that, the dark blue line, represents the click-through rate. The almost transparent data counts the number of messages sent in percent value.

This gets into the best day to send through an email. CampaignMonitor collected data from millions of emails used on their service. They put together the best day as it pertains to data collection.

Image Source

From this data, it looks like the best days for seeing a good blanket of success fall during the workweek. People are mostly opening and reading through emails in the middle of the week. It's also good to keep in mind the lowest unsubscribe rate: during the beginning of the week.

Keeping your audience in mind is a good tip for figuring out the time to send your emails. If your buyer persona is a professional with a nine-to-five job, sending emails during their ideal downtimes are the best. For instance, HubSpot sends emails between 8-9:30 AM ET to match our audience's daily routines.

Entrepreneur concurs with the above broad strokes recommendations but breaks it down further based on audience type:

The big take-away here is that you'll want to segment your B2B audience down even further, perhaps by job function or seniority, to accommodate different behaviors and modes of working with your email sends. You may even find that other times work better for your list.

B2B is great and all, but does the time you send an email matter when marketing consumer and personal goods?

Again, keep in mind that studies differ, consumer behavior is always changing, and performance varies based on which metric you're using as your ultimate goal. Continue experimenting and seeing what works best with your audience. One way to do this is by using an automation tool like Seventh Sense which will fine-tune your email sends using artificial intelligence. 

Email marketing can be a tricky subject. There are so many industries taking advantage of it in their own way and making an impact. How do you measure up?

Your subscribers are already interested in your content. They appreciate what you are offering as a company, and as long as you're sending them emails that relate to that, you have a good chance of obtaining great metrics.

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

The Best Time to Send an Email (Research-Backed) was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

23 of the Best Email Newsletter Templates and Resources to Download Right Now

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

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

Best Email Newsletter Templates

1. Pook by Litmus
2. Sonata by Web Canopy Studio
3. ZURB Ink
4. Wire by HubSpot
5. 99designs
6. Webinar Invite by WorkCast
7. ThemeForest
8. Resonant by HubSpot
9. Antwort
10. Useful Notifications by TemplateMonster
11. Sonata by HubSpot
12. Themezy
13. Email on Acid
14. Ridge by HubSpot
15. MailPortfolio by SliceJack
16. Magazine Email by 24-7 inc.
17. Material Design by Paul Goddard
18. Briar by SliceJack
19. EmailOctopus
20. Root by HubSpot
21. Postcards by Designmodo
22. Feshto by Liramail
23. HubSpot Template Marketplace

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

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

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

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

1. Pook by Litmus

Price: Free

Litmus offers a free email template collection -- from newsletter templates to account management templates. The marketing-specific theme, below -- referred to as "Pook" -- is modern and sleek, while still being kind of fun. All of the templates have been tested with Litmus, and you can easily check out how the email will appear in different email clients here.

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

2. Sonata by Web Canopy Studio

Price: Free

Sonata is an email template by Web Canopy Studio, available on the HubSpot platform to any HubSpot user, free or paid, looking to promote a special offer or resource to their loyal subscribers. As you can see, the newsletter template below embraces a clean aesthetic with image slots to capture the essence of your brand in three separate tiles.

You can customize almost any component of the template below, from the company logo at the top of the email to the "Get The Checklist" CTA at the bottom. Get this template from the HubSpot Template Marketplace, which includes a full gallery of similar templates linked at the end of this article.

3. ZURB Ink

Price: Free

ZURB Studios has five responsive email templates available for free, including the newsletter one below. It has a great, fluid layout you can customize with your own colors, images, and wording. If you want to see how each template looks on different email clients, you can check out screenshots from each template's email client tests, which are on available the site. These layouts are optimized for most email clients -- except for Outlook 2007, 2010, and 2013.

The template comes with a separate CSS stylesheet and HTML file to ease the editing process, and most clients put the CSS inline with the HTML itself after both are uploaded separately. If you're going to add images to your newsletter, keep in mind you'll have to create a separate folder and compress with the CSS stylesheet when uploaded.

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

4. Wire by HubSpot

Price: Free

Wire is a HubSpot-designed newsletter template, catering to marketers who are rolling out a new product or service they want their prospects and customers to know about. The thin typeface and contrast between the dark background and vibrant product copy can add a sense of intensity to any new campaign.

5. 99designs

Price: Free

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

6. Webinar Invite by WorkCast

Price: Free

The email newsletter template below can promote anything from articles to new products, but it's particularly useful for promoting a webinar you want people to register for.

Developed by WorkCast for the HubSpot platform, the template below offers a healthy balance of text and graphics so you can grab your recipients' attention and give them the where and when of the webinar you think they'd be interested in attending.

7. ThemeForest

Price: $6-23/template

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

There are a lot to choose from, but here are four of our favorites:

Market - Responsive Newsletter with Template Builder ($19)

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

FreshMail, Responsive Email with Template Editor ($18)

Want a more minimalist look? This is a great template with minimalist design that's also flexible and repeatable, so you can easily arrange the layout and use it to build your own unique template. Even better, it comes with helpful documentation and video tutorials to help you make the most of the design. It works for all major email clients and is responsive to mobile.

FancyMail – Responsive Email Template ($19)

If you're looking for something more elegant and sophisticated, this might be the template for you. It comes in seven layout options and eight colors, along with six, fully-layered PSD files so you can customize as you wish. It works with all major email clients, is responsive to mobile devices, and includes helpful documentation so you can make the most of the template.

Rocket Mail – Clean & Modern Email Template ($16)

This template is great for marketers who are going for something that looks like your classic, basic newsletter design. It comes with 72 variations comprised of six color themes with six layouts each, and two backgrounds (light and dark) for each color. It has well commented HTML code to make it easier to follow along and customize. It works for all major email clients.

8. Resonant by HubSpot

Price: Free

Resonant is another free email newsletter template by HubSpot. The template's base design is perfect for welcoming new users to your service. At this stage in the customer journey, you don't want to overwhelm your newest users with too much content right away -- but you do want to give them a taste of who you are. The wide image space at the top and text blurb beneath it help you do just that.

Maybe you want to send this email to help new users complete their registration, or offer them the next tier of your product. The "Download" CTA at the bottom of the email template gives you a modest up-sell opportunity, which you can personalize with any links and copy you'd like.

9. Antwort

Price: Free

Antwort offers three newsletter templates: one single-column, one two-column, and one three-column. They're all responsive to mobile devices, so columns on desktop automatically condense on mobile devices. You'll notice they're pretty minimalist in design, which helps if you want to do a lot of customization work. They were also designed with dynamic content in mind.

On desktop, they work for major email clients like Gmail, Yahoo!, Outlook, and AOL. On mobile, they work for Mail on iOS and Email on Android.

10. Useful Notifications by TemplateMonster

Price: $14

TemplateMonster offers a variety of email newsletter templates, such as the Useful Notifications newsletter template pictured below, all of which are available for relatively low prices. Their templates are clean, customizable, and easy-to-use, and they're compatible with most major email clients, such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail. Additionally, the templates come with built-in responsive layouts for screen adaptability, such as on the mobile phone pictured below, and PSD sources for a litany of customization options.

11. Sonata by HubSpot

Price: Free

Need a quick, simple, and sleek marketing email to make an announcement while showing off a few great photos? Check out Sonata by HubSpot. This template, available in the HubSpot Marketplace, is web friendly and looks great to the mobile reader.

12. Themezy

Price: Free

Download sixteen free HTML, CSS, and PSD sources of customizable email templates on Themezy. You don't have to submit an email address to get started, and there are various color schemes and layouts to meet your email list's needs. Plus, they're designed to be responsive across devices to ensure that your subscribers can read your newsletter.

 

13.<> Email on Acid

Price: Free

Email on Acid offers a free template with a basic, fluid design that's also responsive to mobile devices. In other words, the three different "layouts" you see below trigger based on the width of the recipient's screen.

Although there's only one template here, you can actually mix and match each section of the layout to fit your specific design needs. The layout supports one, two, or three columns, and recipients on mobile devices will see the version that converts to a one-column layout for easy reading.

14. Ridge by HubSpot

Price: Free

This one-column email format is both great for mobile readers and inserting colorful crisp visuals. It's simplistic, so it could be used for multiple industries or purposes. While this preview displays a Thank You email, this type of format is great for a short and sweet announcement or an offer that deserves gorgeous imagery to go along with it. If you like the style but not the arrangement of images and text, you can also find more Ridge themes on the HubSpot Marketplace.

15. MailPortfolio by SliceJack

Price: Free

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

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

16. Magazine Email by 24-7 inc.

Price: Free on HubSpot Marketplace

24-7 Inc’s magazine email pack is a digital version of a broadsheet, making it perfect for marketers looking to deliver magazine and newspaper-looking content to users without losing the traditional print look. There are nine different templates to choose from, differing in column number and image size. 

The theme default is black text on a white background, making it easy for you to feature text and images with little competition. You can even use the hero image feature for content that is more visual-based.

The template is compatible with all major email clients. 

17. Material Design by Paul Goddard

Price: Free

This template is based on Google’s Material Design and has a robotic-retro feel. It is perfect for sending out multi-purpose newsletters featuring new products, events, and other announcements at the same time. There is no specific industry this theme is made for, but the template is well-fitting for businesses looking for a timeless, technological look.

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

18. Briar by SliceJack

Price: Free

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

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

19. EmailOctopus

Price: Free

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

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

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

20. Root by HubSpot

Price: Free on HubSpot Marketplace

Root is a responsive newsletter template that can be used across industries. The template is designed to feature a hero image, which is perfect for promoting product offers and announcing new sales. You’ll be able to display and announce new product deals front and center. The download also comes with instructional text to help you build a high-quality newsletter. 

This template has been tested to work with all major email clients.

21. Postcards by Designmodo

Price: Free - $25

Postcards is a tool that allows you to build your own email newsletters. The drag-and-drop feature allows you to pick and choose the elements that best suit your personal needs, like hero images, eCommerce functions, and CTAs. The versatility also allows you to customize every email you send if you wish.

The default settings include visual contrast that will help your content stand out to readers, but you can customize the templates if you prefer a different look. No matter how you choose to customize your template, you’ll still be able to retain the modern look that the creators intended. 

When you finish designing your template, it’s just a one-click export into your favorite ESP or plain HTML. Not to mention, the modules have been tested with Litmus and work with all major email clients.

 

22. Feshto by Liramail

Price: $29-25/template

Feshto is an email bundle meant to help ecommerce companies looking to feature products and share testimonials from satisfied customers with their users. It comes with a weekly digest module, which is their version of a newsletter. 

The module features a chic, clean design that ensures your images and copy are not distracting from the other. You can choose from their various layouts, such as “Weekly Digest,” “City Story,” and “Blog Article.” These templates are perfect for product featurettes and testimonials from satisfied customers. While the default themes are black and white, you can make edits in your preferred WYSIWYG editor. 

Feshto is a responsive template and is compatible with all major ESPs.

23. HubSpot Template Marketplace

Price: Free & paid options available

If you're a HubSpot customer, HubSpot offers a great collection of email templates you can download or purchase from our template marketplace. Paid templates are available for as low as $1, and once you buy a template, you can start using it immediately right in HubSpot -- no HTML or CSS required.

The second, fourth, sixth, and eighth templates on this list all came from our Marketplace.

Get Started on Your Email Marketing Newsletter

Ready to draft your next 2019 email newsletter campaign? Download one of the excellent newsletter templates from the template galleries and landing pages above. Then, grab your free guide below for creating an email newsletter your audience will want to engage with.

Interested in finding templates for canned responses or pitches related to marketing and sales? Check out these two great resources.

• 15 Email Templates for Marketing and Sales
• Sales and Marketing Email Templates for Startups

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

23 of the Best Email Newsletter Templates and Resources to Download Right Now was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns