HubSpot Personalization Strategies That Aren’t Totally Creepy [HubHeroes, EP75]
George B. Thomas, Ellie Mirman, Max Altschuler, Devin Bellamy, and Salim discuss how to personalize marketing in HubSpot without crossing into creepy territory. They share examples of effective personalization, explore the privacy line, and explain how to enhance customer experience without feeling intrusive.
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace Lord Lack, lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt knowledge. Never fear, Hub Heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action and become the Hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the League of Extraordinary Inbound Heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute Hub Heroes. It's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that Devin is currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode. Recording this podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin during the show are that of his own and in no way represent those of his employer.
I mean, I was torn if I wanted to hear it this week or if I wanted to shut it off. And then I was like, well, I guess I'll leave it play. And then it played for a while and I was like, well, there's no sense in shutting off now. And actually I just kind of got confused over the last 35 seconds. So.
George, do you need a hug?
He needs a.
He needs a potato.
Maybe I. Yes. Or if I. If there could, I have a life sized potato that I could just like walk over to every so often in my office and just give it a hug, hold it and like hug the potato. That would be fun.
This is the benefit. This is the benefit of folks like Chad who join us every week in.
The live studio audience.
When we recorded this, we. We love you, man.
If you ever want to hang out.
With US Community Hub Heroes.com youm can.
Always watch us live because he got the.
He always sees like the chaotic gremlin energy that we open show with before we even get to the theme song. Because my favorite thing that is already in the chat pane is how hard is it to become a potato? I don't think it's that difficult.
George.
You have different thoughts. I understand that.
I just. I just wanted to see Chad.
This is what happens when Devin isn't here.
I just wanted to see Chad's face when the live flipped on and we were literally just saying, yeah, no, you could become a potato for an entire week. Chad was probably like, why? Why am I doing this again? I have important roofing company projects to deploy HubSpot to. And I'm listening about how George could become a potato for a week. What's happened?
It's a new HubSpot integration, actually. If you just plug your head into the starch hub. Coming soon from HubSpot, you become a potato.
Potato hub.
Oh, the star hub. Like, now, see, I'm getting, like, an infographic, like, HubSpot sales infographic of, like, the star chub and these, like, little spuds on their couch and, like. Anyway, let's.
Let's actually talk personalization opportunities.
Oh, well played.
See what I did?
There's the thing. Yeah, that is a good segue. But now, for some reason, I'm thinking about Arby's sauce and curly fries, and I'm not sure why.
Did you forget now?
I am today.
I did.
Oh, I did not eat lunch today. I thank you for reminding me of that.
This be literally. We were talking about this when we hopped on. George is like, how you doing? And I just go, I'm hungry.
And that was Max's first words, by the way. Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Well, when I was a baby.
You know what we're not talking about today? Food. We're talking about personalization.
All right, I'm out.
It was good to see you.
No, I am excited for today's conversation because, George, you and I started talking about this earlier this week. And Max, even after you were talking about the fact that you were unfed and unloved, you did say you had a little twinkle in your eye about this topic. Because this week we're talking about HubSpot personalization strategies that are influential instead of totally flipping creepy.
And I want to share two stats.
As we open up today's conversation. We 1, 80% of buyers prefer brands that use personalization, and 90% of marketers say that personalization significantly contributes to achieving sales and other business objectives. But here's where it gets a little bit tricky. There is a very, very thin line between successful personalization that fosters meaningful connections and buyer engagement and stuff that is, like, off putting and makes me feel wildly uncomfortable and questioning whether or not the call is coming from inside the house.
We wanted to have this conversation today because HubSpot provides a ton of personalization features and capabilities. Some are obvious, right? Like the naming tokens you can use in email and other places. But some are not so obvious and also criminally overlooked. So this week, we are throwing ourselves down the personalization rabbit hole. We are going to be talking about what folks are getting right with personalization, what so many of us are getting wrong, and the fact that Devin just joined Us and now the world is a happy place. And I feel so much better. We're also going to be talking about what most inbounders are totally.
What's up? What's up?
What's up, boy? How you doing?
Good.
Look at that big smile. Look at that big smile.
I'm excited. I like personalization. It's such a fun topic. It's one of my favorite ways.
Personalization Polo rant today. Six seconds and yep, Devin's already coming for heads.
The hot takes dropping from the sky. Everybody take cover.
So, gentlemen, let's go ahead and get into this conversation. I opened it up with a couple of maybe potentially persuasive data points about personalization, but I want to hear your takes either as a marketer or as a consumer. When you're off the clock, how effective is personalization for you? I'm going to open the floor. Whoever wants to jump in.
Personalization is highly effective when done correctly. I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole yet. I'm just going to say it's highly effective for me when both as a marketer and a consumer. As a marketer, it's highly effective for. For me because it helps me guide my content strategy as well as create enablement materials and other things that are collaterals geared specifically towards those people. But then also as a consumer, I like it because my time is valuable and I don't like irrelevant things. So it's always fun to be surfing on someone else's Facebook scroll and seeing what their ads are and just imagining if that's all I saw on my phone, I'd be so angry.
Yeah.
Yeah. So I. I like personalization. I think personalization is effective when it doesn't look like, smell like, or taste like personalization.
Yeah. Then it's stalking and it's an invasion of privacy.
Right.
You know, personalization, I think it's so interesting. Like, I'm. I think I'm much more interested in personalizing experiences versus personalizing communication.
Right.
Which sometimes can go hand in hand.
Right.
But you know, I feel like a lot of people go, oh, I made the email say, hi, first name. I heard that you're an X industry. And that's where they stop.
Right.
And that's also where I think, you know, when you're not doing it carefully.
Right.
And you're just kind of relying on that being the extent that you take it. You also introduce all of these, like, really great opportunities to embarrass the hell out of your salespeople and turn their crappy outreaching email into a funny LinkedIn post that someone else, you know, goes and blazes them online for. So, you know, I think it should. You got to be careful when you're doing it right. You want to make sure it's not shoddy, you want to make sure it's thoughtful. And you want to start asking yourself the question, like, how can I. How can I shift this person's experience and deliver more relevant content, not just words that I think are relevant to somebody, you know, in an email template. Right. And we just got to do more with like, Smart content on HubSpot and stuff like that, which also you can get really, really creepy if you do it wrong. Like, I'd freak out if I went to a website and it said, hi, Max. I'd be like, see you later. Clear history.
Hi, Max. Have you eaten lunch today? We know you haven't.
Yeah, unless. Unless you had logged in and it was like the greeting that you expected. Because that's the other thing. Like, if it's personalization that I expect to happen, then that's also where I think it's really effective.
Oh, my gosh. I'm taking a look at our chat.
Right now, and Chad is talking about.
One of the not so great examples he's seen. One of our customers had an automated.
Sequence that emailed the exact same email.
Template to their customer in the same email thread seven times in a row. It was personalized with their first name, though, so that's good.
Listen, if there's one thing we like here, it's persistence. Yeah, consistent. We call that consistency.
He just doesn't want to take no for an answer. No. Well, what are some of our favorite examples of personalization that you've either created or experienced?
I've said this a thousand times in the show, but, like, one of the best things that I think you can do right away is smart content on your homepage when customers show up versus prospects. I mean, think about it. When people come to your site, they want to be able to get help super quickly, right? They don't want just another avenue of someone trying to sell them something that they already own. So it's like, listen, you know, if you've got the opportunity to change that CTA button from get in touch with sales to go to our knowledge base or get in touch with support, do that right away.
Right?
Like, you know, when people have problems and they go, oh, crap, I got to go deal with this again. They like to self solve. They're going to go to their website and if all they're kind of faced with is, hey, buy this thing again, you've already bought.
Right.
You're just putting barriers in the way of, like, changing that person's experience to get what they need quicker based on the context of what you know about them.
Right?
So that's my favorite one.
Just.
Just make it easy for your customers to get to the customer people, not the folks trying to sell them again.
So, Max, I love that yours was external, because I'm actually going to flip the coin over and go the exact opposite way, literally working with a client earlier this week. And first of all, let me back up for a second, ladies and gentlemen. Anything that you put into HubSpot as a property, default or custom property, can be a personalization token, therefore, meaning if we're talking about communication, it can be fed back into said communication. Now, that other thing I'll add on to this as a layer is most people, when they think about personalization, they think about what they can do to somebody on the exterior of the team. What we did is actually created a dope internal notification using personalization tokens to deliver exactly what a particular lady in the organization needed at exactly the right time. She needed it. Therefore, she didn't have to go dig. And look, she just got this notification. It wasn't a default HubSpot notification. And. And it was very specific to seven pieces of information that she needed to see every time somebody made a purchase in their organization. And that's. That's delation, but it's internal delation, right? It's. How can you use personalization to make my life easier as an employee of your organization?
Say delicious one more time, please.
Well, if I'm going to do that, I should probably be like delicious of the.
Oh, my God.
Wow.
I have seen.
Oh, feeling so delicious.
I'm just saying if we're gonna throw it out there, we might as well just throw it out there.
I'm feeling. I'm feeling sufficiently deloisted at the moment.
I'm delighted.
Right now.
How you feeling, Seven? Or are you just politely abstaining for making a comment on white people nonsense?
Devin. Devin Deloist Bellamy over here. Come on.
Canceled.
Yeah.
Is that an edit? I don't know if that's an edit. No, you can leave that in because we're ridiculous.
We're ridiculous.
It's fine.
We are full of nonsense.
Anyway.
The thing is, we're good. If I call this out every time something like that happened, we never get anything done. Really? So.
So that's some Constructive feedback I wasn't ready for. Okay, but fair, fair, fair. Let's talk more about romantic comedies anyway. I'm just kidding. Devin, do you have any favorite examples of personalization that you've either created or experienced?
Yeah, I absolutely do. It's just. It's so interesting to me. The Netflix thumbnail algorithm is my favorite bit of personalization. So the way it works is that Netflix will go through every single frame of a movie and then identify, you know, what's in it, and then they will pick out the ones that are most impactful as thumbnails, but then they will take different thumbnails for different people because they think that they'll react for you. So my Netflix does not look like your Netflix, even though they're showing.
That's why every picture is Henry Cavill on mine. This makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, go figure.
Me too. I was wondering why.
But it's, but it's funny, Devin, because you're, you're mentioning that and I, again, I go back to when you don't know that it is actually personalization because you can't see the other 17 or 17,000 people that it's happening to. But like, and when we dive into that, we really don't know what's happening, but it's happening. Same thing with things like Amazon's product recommendations. Like, it's just happening based off of things that we've done to make our life easier. Spotify. I love Spotify. I'm jamming out all the time when I'm working. The Discovery Weekly is based on, like, our listening habits. Starbucks mobile app has things in there like my daughters, they love Sephora. Right? Because Sephora's Beauty Insider is literally a thing where it's personalization at its best based on that. And like, there's just so many different ways that in our life there is this personalization that is more of experience, some of communication that is just naturally happening. And so it's frustrating when we get on with so many humans and, and Max, you joked about it, but dang gum, if it ain't true. I used first thing today, like, who the who? But you know, like, it's, it's just. It can be so much more. Yeah, but, but you have to have your ish together for it to be so much more too, though.
And it's like a lot of people are picking up.
Go ahead, Max.
Well, I was gonna say a lot of people are, like, picking up on those, you know, low effort personalization tactics. And it's becoming just an easy sort of, like, indicator that, oh, this person's trying to sell something to me.
Right?
Like, think about it. Like, well, one, we don't really email our friends anymore, but, like, when you email, you know, a co worker, do you ever say, you know, hey, Liz, like, I've got, like, what? You know? And people always thought it's like, oh, man, if they see someone's name in it, they'll think it's like, a friend or it'll catch their attention. But now we're just in a mode where marketers ruined it. Like, we do many other things and we just instantly go, oh, I see my name in a subject line. Instant, instant delete.
Right?
Instant, not open.
Peace.
You know, see you later, buddy.
So wait, let's. Oh, well, we got to get to this point, though.
George, go.
Go to sleep in a second because I have to unpack something that just happened. Max said that we don't email our friends, but when we go to email our co workers. Are your co workers, not your friends, bro. Like, what is. What is happening in that statement you just made of, like, who you are willing to email and who you're not willing to email? Just there.
George, shut the all caps. Just you.
We're all friends here. Everyone is happy. Ellie, are we all happy?
Yeah, we're happily, baby.
Everyone's fine. Everyone have a.
Now let's get to Selim. Okay, let's do it.
My God, I got poor Salim. So, first of all, let's just go back to his answer to your question, George, just now, aren't you friends with your. His was a resounding no in all caps. So there's that.
What was interesting, which I know is not true, but he brought up an.
Interesting point about the Netflix algorithm, which has said there has been some quote unquote bad oopsies in the past because.
It'S brought up some profiling microaggressions, let's just say. So personalization can have a dark side to it. Now, the other thing that he brought up that I thought was fascinating is that he said, in a world of algorithms, I personally want some control over. Over the personalization that I receive.
Amen.
So, George, I see you nodding along and we got an amen from Max. George, talk to me about why you're noddling along with that.
What.
What is resonating with you there?
Well, what's resonating is I love that. And I don't think most people are thinking of that. Right? Like, honestly, is there a setting I can go to in the back of HubSpot that allows me to really intensive personalization or very minimal personalization, or better yet, something on my website or the experiences I provide outside of the website where the users can actually say, well, this is how much I'm willing to embrace personalization or even want it versus not want it. Like, there's, there's. I can't go to Netflix and be like, beep, give me default mode because I don't want your algorithm to run on me. Like, it just like, I don't have a choice. And so that's why I was shaking my head of like, yeah, it's always a big win when you can give people the keys to their kingdom back. And if it's the keys to how much they want or don't want the personalization that you're providing, I think that's a good direction to go.
Can I. Can I present a paradox? I don't know if it's a paradox. I don't really know what paradox means.
Hang on, I'll look it up. While you're doing whatever you're going to do.
Break our brains. Do it, Max. Do it, do it.
I. I do. I really want to see ads that aren't relevant to me.
Maybe if it's the right ad. Like, imagine if you.
How could it be the right ad?
These dope hats.
Yeah, right.
And then all of a sudden you got this ad and you went out and you bought like, the latest and greatest rev ops God hat. Because it was like a ad that. For a hat that you didn't know you needed, then it was valuable, but you didn't know necessarily know that you didn't want to see it.
But wouldn't that mean that it's relevant to me, but it.
Not it? Like, well, ooh.
Yeah, right.
Like, why would I want to see something very interesting?
Yeah, I'm just saying, why would I want to see ads about, like, I don't know, horseshoes? Like, like, you know, just.
It's a good game, bro.
So slow your roll. True, true. But, like, you know, like, I, I get the. I get the argument of, like, you know, I want to be in control of my data, but I also think about my experience online. And I'm a consumer just like anyone else. I like to buy things. And I guess if presented of the choice of, hey, when you go on online, you will get completely out of left field. Ads that mean absolutely nothing to you or ads about stuff you might actually care about. I feel like I would choose the second option.
Right.
I'M not saying this is where it.
Gets really interesting, but yeah, we're getting into the realm of the declared preferences versus undeclared preferences. And this is something I ran into, not in something with personalization, but this example may talk about this a little bit. So back at a company when we used to do a newsletter, I wrote it three times a week. It went out to 40,000 active subscribers. We were messing around with what it was going to look like visually and we did an A B test. We were convinced, some of us were convinced, and this includes me, that if there was relevant imagery, it would increase the engagement and click throughs to particular pieces of content that we were trying to drive people to. But there was this other group that said, hey, we think actually if we go with a more plain text, streamlined approach and we take out the imagery that I think a lot of us got used to putting into our newsletters, we'd see better performance, like still use images if you have it like in the intro and it's super relevant. But like we're going to take out the. Everything has an image. What was funny is we ran a simultaneous test. We surveyed our readers and asked, do you prefer newsletters with images? Yes or no? It was a little bit more specific. And they said, yes, we prefer images. What was funny is that the A B test results, which we ran three times across three different 60 day periods came back. They would engage more and click more on the ones that were not image heavy, the ones that were almost virtually plain text. So it's fascinating, particularly when we start getting into privacy and data. And to be fair and clear, I am a big fan of data privacy and I don't like massive corporations just selling my stuff to everybody. But what's interesting is we talk a lot about people saying, well, I don't want you to know anything about me. Well, then a lot of the personalization that you do not realize is there, that is making you have a more tailored experience that you do not even realize goes away. And once that goes away, then you get mad at the platform because you're saying, well, I'm not getting the. You're not learning from me anymore. So it's that weird back and forth paradox that I think Max is talking about, right, where it's like we say we want data privacy, we say we don't want these organizations to have access to all of our data, we want more control. But I don't think we always understand how these different types of algorithms and personalization strategies really are happening at A micro level in ways we don't even realize.
That's all I have to say.
So, so it's interesting, though, like, I, I, I wanna, I wanna. Man, there's just so much that freaking my. Okay, come on, brain. You can work. You can work. So the, the thing that keeps, like, punching me in the back of my forehead is this idea of you don't want. You don't know what you want. Like, you really don't know what you want. You think you know what you want, but you don't know what you want. And, and it's like, again, the secondary thing to this would be like, you know, everybody wanted a faster horse until they wanted a car. Everybody wanted an MP, MP3 player until they actually realized they wanted a phone. Like, like, it's all these things where we think we understand what we would be best for us until we realize we didn't know what would be best for us. Or even we think we know how we act until somebody sheds light on this is actually how you act when you're doing the thing. So it's just, it's really weird. And so, by the way, let me circle back around to. I said, max, I would look up paradox for you, because you're like, I don't even know what a paradox is. A paradox is like a puzzle in a sentence. It's when you say something that sounds impossible or silly because it goes against itself. But if you think about it more, it can actually make sense or show you something true. So, like, is it confusing? Is it. Super insightful. By the way, paradoxes are everywhere. And There is a TEDx talk, by the way, of, like, several different paradoxes that we fall into or fall prey of almost every single day. Anyway, we'll leave paradox alone. But we've only said it like mystery Times.
Now it's a mystery wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in.
Yeah, what I'm hearing wrapped in a potato, though, it has to be in a potato.
Fantastic.
Can we, can we. George, I want you to stay on the potato paradox.
100% we can.
100% we can. I love it. George, I want to keep you on the mic for a second. So we've been talking about the paradoxes and the potatoes of personalization. Oh, my gosh.
The two Ps of personalization, paradoxes and potatoes. Yep.
What we're getting at here is this.
Idea of how do we.
What is that line?
Right.
Between Chef's Kiss. Perfection of personalization.
Right.
And keeping it from being Big Brother. Creepy. And you like to say when it comes to personalization, Because I've heard you say it on trainings. I've heard you say it directly to me. You talk a lot about, quote, keeping it human and not creepy. Can you explain what that means? And then I want to hear from the other guys, Max and Devin, about how you view that line between creepy and yay.
We like it.
Yeah. So it's. And hopefully this makes sense. But for me, there's like, a definite. Like, a line that I think, mentally I draw in the sand or whatever. Maybe it's a piece of paper, I don't know, but I draw a line. And at the end of the day, when I think about personalization, when I go in to do things, whether it's experience or whether it's communication, it could be a personalized video. It could be a personalized email. It could. Whatever it is, there's this line of, am I a what I am about to do smart rule or personalization token? Is it leaning into me being more helpful and actually helping them lean into the thing that we're trying to do, or is it just trying to be a blatant, strategic, like, technique that I feel like I'm supposed to check a box on or that I feel like I'm trying to get over on somebody with this thing that I'm doing? And so really, what I. What I kind of think of, if I simplify this for me, is, is it helpful or is it distracting to where they're gonna go and what I need from them? And when I say, is it distracting from where they're gonna go and what I need from them? What I need from them is trust. What I need for them is to move one step closer to where it is that's best for them. And if I try to do some weird, radical, personalized smart rule that, like, freaks people out, by the way, you know, you can't be freaked out and trust somebody. Usually it's just, like, it's almost impossible. So is the thing that you're doing being helpful, or is it being a disservice to you and the potential customer? This is how I would draw the line.
Devin and Max, what do you think?
Where do you draw the line?
Yeah, so I have thoughts. My. My first thing is when it's overly specific. There was a trend on Facebook a few years ago where they will say a job, or they will say, like, they. They call me and then insert job title because blank, blank, ninja, ninja, superstar, man, whatever wasn't available, or it's Too long or something. And people thought, oh, wow, that's an oddly specific shirt about what I do. They were just drop shippers that were targeting like hyper specific job roles and they were doing the same thing with age. It's like, yeah, I'm so cool because I was born in 1980. And it's like, yeah, it's a great shirt, but it's like, wait, how did they know I was born in 1980? Out of coincidence. So when it's like overly specific and creepy, when it's obvious. One of the things I talk about with my LinkedIn is I have the hand waving in my name because that screws up a lot of people's aggregators and I love it. They'll just send me a thing and say, hey, Devin. And have the hand in it or the question marks. Love that. So when it's obvious and then when they get it wrong, when the data is wrong in there, or they have the wrong personalization token in, or the personalization token doesn't take. But I think the worst is when, when I'm finding that the data has been misused ever since that Cambridge Analytica stuff. And just seeing how deep that rabbit hole went, that was, that was scary because before then you didn't really think about data to that extent. Like people, when they thought about privacy, they're like, I don't care because I have nothing to hide. And on the flip side, they would say, well, if you don't want that data out there, don't put it out there. And then, you know, you can take a step further and disconnect the microphones in your phone like Edward Snowden. But the fact of the matter is, is that just based on your activity, they can glean so much information. So that, that is terrifying. But at the same time, I do.
Love my relatives and I'm, I'm now sad because from this day forward, I can no longer wear my 1971 is the best year ever shirt because what the frick you mean that wasn't just for me? That was like, for everybody? Like.
Yes, because 1982 is the best year. I'm so sorry.
No, that's not what I've heard. I've not heard that hurtful.
Like 1996, are you kidding me?
I must just look so young and beautiful.
You know, Max, that's what it is. Both of us are at. When you're going to drop that skincare routine, bro.
Yeah, I remember. Alan, quick aside here. I remember first time I met, like Dax, finally when we were over at inbound, we were giving out ice cream pops to people in the hotel lobby after we had just acquired them. And I don't know where it came up.
Tony? You acquired Tony?
Yeah. No, it was before. Before we. Before I met Tony. But we just had him in the lobby, and there was just some lady talking to Dax, and somehow they started talking about age. And Dax was said to her because she was asking, like, how old we were or something. And Dax goes, I'm 10 years his senior. And I look over at Dax, I'm like, dax, how old are you? He's like, I'm 38. I'm like, I'm 35, dude. Everyone thinks I'm, like, a child. Like, I am. I am.
Anyway, I mean, you do drive places on the podcast.
Listen, hey, you know what? Adults drive cars. So irrelevant anyway when it comes to, like, skirting the line of, like, creepy stuff.
Right.
I think, you know, people don't. Especially when people are on the Internet, right? People don't like to feel like they're being watched, right? Yeah, people like to feel that, you know, they're. You know, they're doing stuff. They're anonymous, they're. There's no one looking over their shoulder and watching what they're doing on the Internet, Right. This is why private browsers exist. Exist.
Wait, there's private browsers?
Yeah, there's a private browsing button. Anyway. Come on, George. So I think, like, when you start to think about, like, oh, what are these things we can do when we know what people are doing on our website?
Right?
That gets super weird, right?
Yep.
Like, the biggest thing that cringes ever is, like, the automated emails that come from a sales rep saying, hey, I saw you were looking at our pricing page. Like, what is that?
Like, remember? But for, like, three months, that was the end thing to do. Like, that was the hot move.
Chill. Don't do that. Don't let me know that you saw me doing something and I was in a vulnerable position.
Right?
Yeah.
Overly specific.
You saw I was doing that.
Saleem threw one of those out. He said Salim just threw. I have heard a Facebook blueprint specialist say we can easily target recently divorced women whose birthday is in March so we can sell them feel good chocolate.
I need a bath. I literally need a bath. Like, just that being red.
Yeah.
You're gonna start getting targeted for Dove soap now.
Just so you know, Max, keep going.
And it's just like, you know, the other kind of creepy stuff, too, is.
Just, like, Irish Spring.
I like soap, too.
We're Just making sure Mark Zuckerberg heard.
Can't wait to get all these weird. I'm gonna be getting, like, ads for, like, oh, from Orida for, like, potato French fries and. Not that there's other sweet potato.
A lot of 1971 pro content. Yeah, it's gonna be real weird.
Let's go.
The. The. I mean, the other thing, too, is just, like, following people to places that you just kind of don't belong in, right? Like, if you're a B2B company selling software, why are you bothering people while they're on Facebook trying to get away from LinkedIn? You don't need to. Just. Just. Just leave them alone. Leave Britney alone. All right, Brittany was on LinkedIn looking at stuff. Go ahead, give her a relevant ad there. Right, sure, I get it. She was on your site. You want to remind her a little bit later? Hey, remember when you were looking at us? Cool. Not when she's on Facebook looking at pictures of her niece and nephew.
Right.
Leave her alone. Now. If you're a consumer product and you're in someone's, like, personal, that's fine, right? But, like, the B2B stuff shouldn't be following people out of the B2B watering holes, in my opinion, that. That's a little weird because you're invading someone's space that they like to separate from work. You know what I mean? So it's just because that makes you feel like you're getting followed, right? And people don't like getting left.
Do you want to come back?
Yeah, people don't like getting watched, and they definitely don't like getting followed. That for sure.
Right?
Because that's the worst way to watch somebody.
Right?
You know, so again, it, like, take these. Make these comparisons to real life, right? Much like, you know, we do when we talk about, like, you know, emailing people with the wrong stuff at the wrong time and comparing those to real life human conversations.
Right?
Think about it the same way when you're trying to skirt the line of, like, oh, is this personalization a little bit creepy? Right. What would it be like if it was in real life? Just make that comparison.
I'm sorry, I really got to get this out before I lose this train of thought. What? I'm wondering how effective a marketing campaign would be if you just went the complete opposite direction, Just super creepy. Like, complete with, like, an animated dude peeking out and be like, hey, we know you came to our website and then just goes back away. Like, I. I would absolutely love that.
Yeah.
A cyber security firm or a Marketing firm. Hey, you want to be able to do this, too?
Come on.
Yes.
You know I would watch that.
Yeah, somebody's leaning in, saying, yeah, somebody.
Leaning in and saying, how's your ramen? Someone leaning over and saying, how's that ramen? Is this. Is it as good as the three other times you've had it this week?
For lunch only?
Only if you're eating ramen. Here's the thing, though. I gotta go back to what Ma Max was saying because my brain started to giggle because I was like, okay, so what I would say to anybody watching this or anybody listening to this is if you take a moment and you look at your marketing and sales personalization strategy and then you envision it as a real human being, and you would effectively want to take a baseball bat and hit it over the head, then. Stop it.
That's violent.
Just stop it. I know there was a creeper behind me, and I was, like, trying to protect my family, and the only thing I had was a baseball bat.
Well, okay, so let's stay on this. Let's stay on this. Let's dig a little bit deeper. What are the most common mistakes, George, that you are seeing folks make with personalization, particularly inside the HubSpot platform?
Yeah, and I think we've kind of talked about some of this, to be honest with you. Like, and. And. But that's because it's just generally some of the same things that are happening. First of all, there's not the foundation that they need to actually do it. Right. And. And because you asked me HubSpot specific. Okay, I want. If you're listening to this right now, I want you to go into your settings. I want you to go from Settings to Property Management. I want you to go to. From Property Management to Properties, Contact Properties in Search Persona, and I want you to open up the Persona tool and then email me. No, actually, email Max if the. No, I'm just kidding. Email me if your Persona property is empty. That's one. If you also go to that Persona property and it doesn't have something that starts with I'm a. In the beginning of what you're actually dictating would be filled into that description area. Again, I need you to email me. If you then run over to HubSpot Forms and go and see if the property Persona is used in your forms tool. And the answer to that is no. Again, you can email me, because here's the deal. If you don't know who they are, fundamentally, then your data is wrong and skewed. If you haven't asked second smart questions based on knowing who they are. You don't know them well enough to actually try to do any of this. Just because they downloaded your checklist and you got first name and email and now all of a sudden you want to call them Bobby. That ain't, that ain't it. So lack of a foundation and lack of data structure is where a lot of people are just getting it wrong. The other side of this that I will say too, especially when we go on the experience side is they are not taking time to test this. Like listen, when you go into, let's say the email tool and you're trying to test personalization or test smart content, you can go to preview and you can literally do a drop down in the top left hand corner that gives you the humans to actually test it on. The unfortunate thing is you would need to know what humans fit in. What bucket did you actually created the personalization around to see that it's actually working, Right. So if you do have a great foundation, you just throw it out there and you don't actually test it to make sure it's working the way that it works because well, it'll just be okay. Like because we have that default version.
Yeah. And George, I think you're bringing up like a really good point, like going back and mentioning like that Persona dropdown field in HubSpot, which I think is like one of the. If you're talking about Personalization 101 in HubSpot, that is really the best first thing you should do. Like if you're trying to over engineer all these other wild personalization strategies and you haven't at least done that like you're, you're probably over engineering it, right? Like you don't have to collect all the information in the world about someone to properly create a personalized experience for them. You just need a little bit of info, right? You just need something that's not difficult to collect. Something that you know, you don't have to like steal from a data harvesting service or you know, buy from a data harvesting service, you know, and get without that person's consent. You don't need to ask them a billion questions on a form about, you know, what's your kid's, you know, first kids kid's birthday and like what's your job title and like all this like very specific stuff so you can create these hyper specific experiences. It's like that Persona field where you can simply just have an easy dropdown where someone doesn't feel like they're giving away a lot of sensitive information that just gets a general sense of like, wait, who is this person?
Right?
In general, like you, you know, the people that you attract in general. Or at least, you know, the type of people you want to attract in general. And these, you know, sort of general buckets they fall into, just getting them to be able to select I am a blank, right? And say, okay, I know this person's a marketer, I know this person's a salesperson. I know this person works in support or is a gardener or is a whatever, right? If you can just ask that first surface level question of like, what describes you in general? Not your Social Security number, right? Just what describes you in general? What's the gist of your vibe? What is the cut of your gist, whatever it may be, right? Just so I can make sure when I'm sending you content, I think it's at least a little bit relevant to who I think you are as a person.
Right?
You don't need to, you know, go too crazy, right? But that is such a good first step to take. And almost no one touches that Persona field anymore. And it breaks my heart.
Crazy. So, so here's the thing. I want to add one, a third piece on here because I think it's the third piece that is, is they're all important but like, right, So I, I talked about inaccurate or outdated or non existent data. I talked about failure to test. Because by the way, when you do test, you can optimize and make it better over time. But the third piece that I want us to think about when you're, when you're listening this or watching this, is how are you actually diagnosing or understanding the context? Everybody wants to jump to the conversion and the conversation, but how are you even going to have a conversation if you don't understand the context of where they're at? Like how in what you're doing from an experience standpoint or a communication standpoint, are you paying attention to where they're at in the buyer's journey? Maybe what portion of the sales funnel or flywheel they're in, what page they're on, and what their actual expectations of a human would be at in that moment in time. And so like we just, we do this all from like an experience and communication standpoint. But don't think about the context in which all of this should be threading through. Because by the way, it'd be like somebody comes to my website page and they're on the sushi page for Some reason, I don't know why sushi probably because I'm setting up a joke because like all of a sudden my, like personal personalization goes like, I like pizza and I feel freaking on a roll because you're on, hey, sushi roll. That was a very human things for you to say, Liz. Good joke. But like, that's my point. Like it's, it's completely left field because there's no context to the conversation with the information that you actually have or hopefully have to like, do this thing.
Yeah.
And I guess what I'm really saying by that is like, there are several places in HubSpot where I always say, like custom objects, for instance. This is a stop, slow down and strategize moment. Right. And so when I think about, when I think of hello, I don't know what that is. I don't know.
Where'd that come from?
That was weird.
Spooky aliens at a point.
Yeah. So here's the thing. When, when I'm, when I. This is personalization is every one of those places where I say, listen, you need to slow down and you need to stop or stop and you need to strategize because there is a deeper level of thinking that needs to happen if it's going to be what we've said, meaning it's going to be this situation where it is not really felt like it's happening, or it is something that pushes the envelope to what they actually want, even though they didn't know they wanted it.
I love that. Okay, now I want us to dig a little bit more deeply. I know you guys have already started touching upon this, but George, Max, Devin, are there any other tips or tricks within HubSpot that you love to use when it comes to personalization, no matter how big or small?
Smart content, yes.
Tell me more.
Is the secret sauce of personalization. I could say your name, I could say the year you were born, or I could just speak in a way that I know resonates with you personally, because as a creepy stalker marketer, I know all about you. And you've just supplied so much data to Zuck, and I want to utilize that. But with smart content, what you can do is you can just create unique content that's in the same place that everyone else goes, but they're the only ones.
Yeah, I was talking to someone the other day and they'd asked me, they're like, what are your thoughts like HubSpot CMS, right. And I was like, well, I'm not a web developer. I don't do a lot of work with other CMS platforms, so it's hard for me to speak to that angle. But what other CMS platform is also your CRM? How many other people do that?
Right?
And like, to me, HubSpot, CMS is great not because of like the design tools or the this or the that. It's the fact that you got everything you need sitting right behind the hood to provide these really great experiences for you through smart content and stuff like that. And it's dead easy, right? It's not some crazy integration you're building with some other outside data source. It's not anything like wacky or crazy you're doing. You're literally just, you know, drag and drop and throw it together and you know, you're, you're using the information you have available to you.
Right?
So, you know, I think that the smart content thing is such a huge thing to call out. I think if we're talking about like, you know, my biggest tips around it. I think you also got to remember personalization doesn't necessarily have to mean what is some unique information I gathered from this person because they input it on in a form. You know, sometimes it's just using what you already know about that person to change the experience.
Right.
Personalization could quite literally mean I'm ensuring that if someone's already talking to a sales rep, right, we're shutting off, we're making sure they don't go through like lead rotators that get them in touch with someone else. We're making sure that experience is personalized to the journey they've had with us so far.
Right?
Not necessarily unique information about them they've shared with us, right? You know, so again, I think a lot of it comes back to the experience using what you know about that person that's even just contained within your own process and what you guys can control. When you're setting up these different customer journeys in HubSpot and taking all that stuff into context and consideration when you're building these workflows, creating these campaigns, creating these CMS pages, whatever it may be, right? You already have a lot of data just by the fact that someone came and filled out a form and they're in your CRM and people are talking to them from your company, right? Use all that to kind of personalize what the next steps of the journey look like.
Right.
You don't need that hyper specific information to do all sorts like personalization is not just that kind of stuff, right. It could be a lot more so.
I'm going to go one side grandiose and one side very micro. Not everybody knows this until it comes out of my mouth and you actually listen or watch this. But I've been working really hard on a brand new website that is about to get launched to the world. And as I've been working on that website, I've been entertaining the idea of entire pages changing based on the fact that we would know what Persona they are. And I'm talking to the point of like the problems that they're facing, the things that they actually would need, down to the pricing of the actual products if I knew they were a small to medium sized business versus like a startup or enterprise organization like. And again, it's the personalization that they don't know that it's actually being personalized because they can't see the seven or 17 other people that it's happening to. But there are some really smart things just from a global website strategy that I can't wait to play around with and do moving forward. The very granular one that I love. If you are not doing smart subject lines in your email based on the segments of people that you're actually talking to, then you need to look at adding in smart subject lines because the power of not, not, not.
Hi Bobby.
But if it's like your farmer list or like Max said, your gardener list and you actually use gardener terminology and the way gardeners would speak versus it's your automotive list and now you're talking like a mechanic. That's real personalization using the language that they actually freaking use and would engage with. That's personalization.
You'll really dig this newsletter.
If you're.
A Just for you.
Anyway, I was trying to figure out who those guys that are like do the like burial plots because I thought that's who you're marketing to. Oh, is that you would really dig this?
Oh, I was. Well, yeah, I was going to the gardener angle.
Okay, moving on, Moving on. Because that was awful.
That was awful.
Yeah, I feel wildly uncomfortable.
So two of us are hungry and Devin has indigested. Good way to end the podcast that gave me what's next.
Anyway, Yep. So here's what I want to ask you guys if, as we wrap up today's conversation, in what ways would you.
Encourage inbounders to think about personalization differently in 2024? Particularly if there's anything that's changed about.
Personalization in the past few years?
I'll keep it simple. Always imagine your personalization, whether it's experiential or communication as the seasoning or the condiment to the actual thing that you're creating. It should be the spiciness that just takes it to the next level, not the whole meal.
Don't do it. Don't overdo it. Just like, I mean, basically repeating what George said. It's to add flavor. It is not the substance. Don't, please don't be creepy. Please don't be overly specific. Please don't send the follow up email after they visited your pricing page telling them that either they or someone from their company visited the pricing page. You can, there's more things you can do with that information than just let people know that you have all this information.
Like salt and acid are, are good to brighten a meal. They are not the whole meal.
Yeah, I'm just gonna say stop making your SDRs look like dips and they're, you know, reach out emails with super irrelevant failed attempts at, you know, personalization. Just, you know, try to try to.
Personal place of hurt Max.
No, no, I've just seen too many, you know, poor sales reps just doing their job because they thought some hotshot sales ops person set them up some sick personalization templates and they're just firing off a billion in a day and then, you know, getting mean messages in their inbox or, you know, worse ending up being a LinkedIn post that everyone's, you know, hitting the laugh emoji at.
Right.
Don't set them up for failure. Don't set them up for failure.
Yeah, that's the worst LinkedIn mine is this. And this may sound a little bit fluffy, it may sound a little bit hokey, but if you're at this stage of the game doing inbound and you are not taking time with every piece of content you create or every page that you make and just leaving personalization tools out of it, just thinking about the humans you're trying to serve and genuinely trying to create a better experience where you're thinking about who they are, why they're there in that exact moment, and what it is that they need from you in their terms. Like, if you're not already doing that work, the personalization isn't going to matter. The personalization like, like, hi, Kevin, would you still like this very irrelevant thing, like it's not going to do anything for you.
I didn't know you had such a good Kermit the Frog impression.
Thank you. Thank you.
Hi Kevin. Can I ebook on that note, Potatoes.
No, no, no potatoes.
Welcome to the paradoxes and potatoes. Of personalization.
Speaking of which. Speaking of which, ladies and gentlemen, in a vibrant market, a marketer with zeal sold his paradoxical potatoes an unusual appeal. He tailored his approach, knew every face, offering potatoes that fit each customer's taste. Mr. Smith Stew, Timmy's Crispy Fries, Mr. Baker's Baked Goods. All paradoxically wise, perfect yet unexpected, he'd proudly state his potatoes were a hit. Truly first rate. This taken underscores a clever notion in marketing paradoxes. Story Motion Understanding your audience with a unique spin can turn ordinary products into a win okay, Hub Heroes, we've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community or or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out. In the next episode, make sure you head over to thehubheroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes. FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend, leave a review if you like what you're listening to, and use the hashtag hubieroes Podcast on any of the socials and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human. And of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.
