Personalised marketing through segmentation in HubSpot

By applying personalised marketing, you build a relationship with your (potential) customers. Sharing valuable content that matches the needs of your target audience also makes your marketing more effective. But where do you start? With HubSpot, you can use segmentation to match the perfect marketing message to the right audience.

You make sure you share content that matches where the interest lies. It is naturally important to decide for yourself how far you want to take the segmentation. Here you need to consider what fits within your industry and within your company.

What is a list in HubSpot?

Your customers and prospects are constantly giving you information about what interests them, and every data point can help you fine-tune your marketing efforts to their needs. You can gather this information through forms on your website, emails, or a chatbot, for example.

The purpose of list segmentation is to deliver content to your subscribers that is relevant and meaningful to them, in order to keep engagement high.

With list segmentation, you can create lists of contacts based on a wide range of criteria. Think of age, but also the most recent content downloads or the expected deal size. Some SaaS companies, for example, may choose to create a segmented list specifically for people who signed up for a trial and never took action on it.

With HubSpot’s integrated list segmentation tool, you can pull information from within your HubSpot CRM and build hyper-segmented lists using multiple parameters. This lets you reach specific groups from your database in the way that fits best. 

What segmentation options are available in HubSpot?

Within HubSpot, there are two list types: ‘active lists’ and ‘static lists’. We explain the difference below.

Active lists

Using active lists is crucial within your email marketing campaigns if you use multiple emails. In this case, your contacts need to be updated frequently. You mainly use active lists for:

• Customer lists: whatever update you want to send in a newsletter to your customers, you will need an active list to make sure new customers are added to it and any contacts are removed to stay as relevant as possible.
• Interest targeting lists: an active list of people interested in a specific topic can be useful for future emails about this topic.
• Block list: you may not want to send too many emails to specific contacts. With an active list, you can identify people who have registered for an event or webinar and thereby prevent them from receiving even more emails about this event.
• Free trial list: when you have a product or service with a free trial, you could create this list to share information to help people get the most out of their trial. This way, you stay in touch with these potential customers.

Static lists

Static lists remain unchanged unless you update them manually. When new contacts meet the criteria, they are not automatically added or changed. It is therefore purely a snapshot of a specific group at a specific moment.

Static lists may not be as dynamic or adjustable as active lists, but they still play an important role in email marketing. They are often used for one-off emails, infrequent campaigns, or contact lists that do not update regularly. Think of:

• Employee lists: if you want to set up internal email newsletters or other communication with your team. These lists generally do not change often.
• Event registration lists: when you have an event, this list can be useful for following up once the event is over.
• Networking event lists: a static list is a good place to store information on prospects, so you can follow up with this group later on. 

How do you create a list in HubSpot?

1. Navigate to ‘Contacts’ in the bar at the top left.
2. Then click ‘Lists’ in the dropdown menu.
3. Create a new list by clicking the ‘Create list’ button at the top right.
4. On the left, you can choose to create a list based on contacts or companies. Make the choice that applies to you.
5. In the screen in the middle, you can give your list a name. Make sure it stays short and consistent, while still being immediately recognisable as to what kind of list it is.
6. Below that, you can choose between an active list or a static list. Make the choice that applies to you.
7. Click the ‘Next’ button at the top right.
8. In this new window, select the criteria for contacts, companies, deals, or activities you want to work with within this list.
9. Once you have chosen the criteria, click ‘Apply Filter’.
10. The data that meets your criteria will then appear on the right. This is a preview of the records that will be added to this list.
11. Finally, click the ‘Save’ button to save your list. It may take a while before the list is built.

A few examples of segmentation lists: 

List for specific life cycle stages

When someone is an MQL, SQL, or perhaps a customer, the content and information needs differ per group. By creating active lists for these life cycle stages, you actively track which people are in which stage of the life cycle. The ultimate goal here is to offer personalised content that drives higher conversion, because it fits the buyer’s journey.

List for inactive contacts

It can happen that you have not heard from some contacts on your list for a while, or that contact has suddenly stopped. By creating a list for this, you can exclude these people, or you can decide to reach out to them and reactivate them.

List for unsubscribes

Naturally, you want to keep complying with all GDPR guidelines. That is why it is important to have unsubscribes from your email newsletter flow automatically out of your list. When they no longer want to use your services, it is also essential that you remove them over time.

List for hard bounced contacts

When you send an email newsletter and get a ‘hard bounce’, it means the email did not arrive. That clouds your figures, so it is useful to create a list of hard bounced contacts. With this, you can remove these ‘hard bounced contacts’ from your database at the touch of a button. This not only leads to better figures, but also a cleaner database.

Even more segmentation?

Within HubSpot, it is possible to create custom properties. These properties can be set up as needed at different levels, such as contact, company, or deal.

In this case, you could create a contact property focused on a contact’s marketing budget. When you then place a form on your website, you can include this custom property in it. When a potential customer fills in this form with this specific field, you have data you can use in your segmentation.

As you can see, the segmentation possibilities are essentially endless!

Getting started with segmentation?

Segmentation can be a key to success for your inbound marketing campaigns. With relevant content, forms, and properties at your disposal, you can determine your tactics for gathering data and applying segmentation.

Want to know more about HubSpot and segmentation for your company? We are happy to help you set up segmentation and achieve results.