Everything You Need to Know About Segmentation Bases

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

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

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

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

Segmentation Bases in Marketing

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

Benefits of Using Segmentation Based in Marketing

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

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

Segmentation Bases in Marketing Operations

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

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

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

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

1. Psychographic Segmentation

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

2. Demographic Segmentation

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

3. Geographic Segmentation

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

4. Firmographic Segmentation

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

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

5. Behavioral Segmentation

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

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

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

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

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

Using Multiple Segmentation Bases

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

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

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

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

Why Use Multiple Segmentation Bases

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

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

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

How to Use Multiple Segmentation Bases

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

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

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

Use Segmentation Bases to Grow Better

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

Everything You Need to Know About Segmentation Bases  was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

What is Lead to Account Matching, and Why It Matters

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

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

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

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

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

What is lead to account matching?

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

Why is lead to account matching important for your business?

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

Minimize Wasted Time

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

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

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

Minimize Customer Annoyance and Loss of Trust

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

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

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

Increase Efficiency

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

Measure Smarter

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

How does lead to account matching work?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is Lead to Account Matching, and Why It Matters was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

The Beginner’s Guide to Usability Testing [+ Sample Questions]

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

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

What usability testing is

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

What is usability testing?

Usability testing is a method of evaluating a product or website’s user experience. By testing the usability of their product or website with a representative group of their users or customers, UX researchers can determine if their actual users can easily and intuitively use their product or website.

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

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

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

What is the purpose of usability testing?

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

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

Benefits of Usability Testing

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

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

Usability Testing Scenario Examples

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

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

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

Usability testing can uncover points of friction from customer feedback.

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

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

2. Stress test across many environments and use cases.

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

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

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

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

3. Provide diverse perspectives from your user base.

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

For example: "I can't find where I'm supposed to click."

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

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

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

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

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

Two scenarios are possible based on that feedback:

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

5. Inspire you with potential future additions or enhancements.

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

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

Usability Testing Examples & Case Studies

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

1. User Fountain + Satchel

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

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

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

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

2. Kylie.Design + Digi-Key

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

They conducted more than 120 tests and recorded:

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

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

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

3. Sparkbox + An Academic Medical Center

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

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

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

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

The 9 Phases of a Usability Study

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

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

2. Pick your study’s tasks.

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

3. Set a standard for success.

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

4. Write a study plan and script.

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

5. Delegate roles.

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

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

6. Find your participants.

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

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

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

7. Conduct the study.

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

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

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

8. Analyze your data.

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

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

9. Report your findings.

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

The 3 Most Common Types of Usability Tests

1. Hallway/Guerilla Usability Testing

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

2. Remote/Unmoderated Usability Testing

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

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

3. Moderated Usability Testing

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

Usability Testing Script & Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. How do you use [feature]?

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

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

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

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

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

6. If you could change one thing about [feature] what would it be?

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

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

Here's another tip from Julie Fischer:

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

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

Your Work Could Always Use a Fresh Perspective

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

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

The Beginner’s Guide to Usability Testing [+ Sample Questions] was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

Best Mailing List Software to Improve your Email Marketing Strategy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mailing List Software

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

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

1. HubSpot Email Marketing Tools

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

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

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

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

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

2. Zapier

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

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

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

3. OptinMonster

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

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

4. Campaign Monitor

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

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

5. Mailchimp

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

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

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

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

6. Constant Contact

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

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

7. ActiveCampaign

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

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

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

8. Mad Mimi

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

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

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

19. AdRoll

Price: Free, $19/mo (Growth)

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

Start Using Mailing List Software

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

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

Best Mailing List Software to Improve your Email Marketing Strategy was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

How RevOps and the ‘Rhythm of the Business’ Drive Alignment at HubSpot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How I Became a 'Rhythm of the Business' Believer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3 Ways 'Rhythm of the Business' Helps HubSpot Scale Better

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

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

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

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

1. Map the milestones.

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

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

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

2. Look long-term.

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

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

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

3. Be a theme player.

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

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

Q1: Kickoff Season

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

Q2: Think-big Season

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

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

Q3: Compass Season

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

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

Q4: Planning Season

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

Alignment Over Strategy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

How RevOps and the ‘Rhythm of the Business’ Drive Alignment at HubSpot was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

The 20 Best Email Newsletter Tools for Engaging Subscribers in 2021

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

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

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

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

However, not all email newsletter tools are created equal.

What's the best newsletter software?

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

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

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

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

1. HubSpot's Email Marketing Tool

Pricing: Starts Free

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

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

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

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

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

2. Moosend

Pricing: Free up to 2,000 subscribers

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

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

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

3. Benchmark

Pricing: Free up to 250 emails per month

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

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

4. SendInBlue

Pricing: Free up to 300 emails per day

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

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

5. Stripo

Pricing: Starts free

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

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

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

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

6. GetResponse

Pricing: Starts at $15 per month

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

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

7. Mailjet

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

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

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

8. Pabbly Email Marketing

Pricing: Starts free

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

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

9. MailChimp

Pricing: Free up to 2,000 subscribers

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

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

10. Constant Contact

Pricing: Starts at $20 per month

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

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

11. MailUp

Pricing: 470 € per year

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

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

12. Zoho Campaigns

Pricing: Starts at $3 per month

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

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

13. AWeber

Pricing: Free up to 500 subscribers

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

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

14. Campaigner

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

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

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

15. Drip

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

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

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

16. Postcards

Pricing: Starts free

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

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

17. Campaign Monitor

Pricing: Starts at $9 per month

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

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

18. BEE Pro

Pricing: Starts free

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

19. MailerLite

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

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

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

20. ConvertKit

Pricing: Free up to 1,000 subscribers

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

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

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

Growing Your Newsletter

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

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

The 20 Best Email Newsletter Tools for Engaging Subscribers in 2021 was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

How to Create a Wikipedia Page for Your Company

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

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

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

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

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

1. Create an account.

Go to Wikipedia's homepage and click "Create account" in the top right.

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

2. Get promoted to an autoconfirmed user.

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

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

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

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

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

3. Create the page.

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

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

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

For our purposes, we'll click "Next":

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

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

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

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

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

We'll look at more examples later on.

4. Provide citations.

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

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

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

5. Submit the page for review.

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

6. Update it regularly.

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

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

Examples of Company Pages on Wikipedia

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

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

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

World Wide Technology

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

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

Urban One

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

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

Getting Your Company on Wikipedia

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

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

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