Hubspot vs Mailchimp

May 5, 2021/in Articles, Blog, Directors, Marketing Automation /by Nicole Wagner

There are hundreds of different tools available for every aspect of online marketing. Such tools can be used to automate basic tasks, provide aesthetic options, analyze performance, and much more. However, choosing the right tool can be difficult, especially when it comes to email marketing. For instance, two of the main email marketing tools currently on the market include HubSpot and Mailchimp. Both have a stellar reputation for user-friendly interfaces, customization options, and automation features. But how do you choose between HubSpot vs. Mailchimp? The following is a breakdown between HubSpot vs. Mailchimp:

What Is HubSpot?

HubSpot is essentially an all-in-one marketing platform. As such, email marketing is just one of its components. The HubSpot ecosystem also includes inbound marketing, analytics, CRM, and sales tools. Using their email marketing service, you will be able to segment your email lists and use a variety of automation features to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your email campaigns. Although HubSpot’s most basic plan starts at $45/month, they do offer free tools, including email marketing tools.

What Is Mailchimp?

Unlike HubSpot, Mailchimp’s primary focus is on email marketing. They have built a reputation as one of the premier email marketing services on the market. Like HubSpot, MailChimp does have a free service that includes their marketing CRM, form and landing pages, website builder, and creative assistant. However, access to additional email marketing features, such as custom branding, A/B testing, and more, requires a paid plan (plans start at $9.99/month).

What Are The Differences Between HubSpot vs. Mailchimp?

As email marketing tools with a large set of customization capabilities and automation features, HubSpot and Mailchimp may seem very similar. The following is a closer look at some of the differences between the two, which should help guide you in making your decision:

Price – Although both HubSpot and Mailchimp offer free plans, you’ll likely want to pay for access to more email marketing features. Mailchimp is going to be cheaper at every tier. HubSpot’s plans range from $45 to $3,200/month, while Mailchimp’s plans range from $9.99 to $299/month. Of course, you’ll be getting a more comprehensive marketing suite for the price if you go with HubSpot.
CRM – Both HubSpot and Mailchimp offer list segmentation tools, as well as pop-up and embedded forms. However, HubSpot also offers standalone and collected forms. On the other hand, HubSpot only allows up to 60,000 contacts compared to Mailchimp’s 100,000 contact limit (although 60,000 is arguably more than enough).
Email Building Features – Both tools offer drag-and-drop features along with customizable templates and A/B testing. HubSpot does have a design manager that makes its tool particularly user-friendly for building your emails.

Learn More about Hubspot

Automation Capabilities – Automation is essential to any successful email marketing campaign. Mailchimp’s automation features include data-based and behavior-based automation, welcome messages, product recommendation, and retargeting emails, as well as in-depth multi-step automation (such as pre-built journeys). HubSpot offers most of these features in addition to complex branching logic, follow-up campaigns, multi-channel automation, score leading, workflow templates, and more. However, access to these features on HubSpot requires their professional plan.
Analytics – Mailchimp includes a dashboard with real-time performance and analytics. Additional features include ROI tracking, a click map, advanced audience insights, and more. HubSpot has arguably more comprehensive email analytics capabilities, including up to ten reporting dashboards and custom reports for their starter plan. Higher tiered plans include more dashboards and report options. HubSpot’s data analytics are more detailed as well.
Landing pages – Landing pages are essential to building your email list. Not to mention that they are also needed for your emails to convert. HubSpot has an easy-to-use landing page builder that allows you to choose from various customizable templates. However, this feature is not available in their free plan. On the other hand, Mailchimp doesn’t have a landing page builder at all. Instead, it offers integrations with other third-party tools that you can use to build your email landing pages.

Both HubSpot and Mailchimp are excellent options when it comes to email marketing tools. However, when taking into account the differences between HubSpot vs. Mailchimp, we believe that HubSpot does edge Mailchimp in terms of its quality and capabilities. On top of that, HubSpot has an entire ecosystem of marketing tools and platforms, making it easier to integrate all of your marketing capabilities and to run your efforts from a single hub. As such, you should strongly consider HubSpot for your email marketing needs.

When Are the Best Times to Post On Social Media?

May 3, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Social Media /by Nicole Wagner

There are currently more than 3.6 billion people using social media. In 2025, that number is expected to grow to around 4.41 billion. Additionally, those people spend an average of 145 minutes a day using social media. If these numbers tell you anything, it’s that your business has to use social media as a way to reach and expand your target audience. Most businesses have some kind of social media presence at this point; however, to successfully grow that presence, you need to remain active by regularly posting to your social pages. The thing is, to reach as big of an audience as possible, you need to know the best times to post on social media.

The Importance Of Engagement

When you post to social media is important because it directly affects the level of engagement you’ll receive. Although you may have numerous social media marketing goals, increasing engagement is arguably the most crucial. Engaging your followers is what’s going to keep them interested in your brand. Engaged followers will be more likely to share your content, visit your website, and, eventually, convert. If the content you’re posting isn’t relevant, it won’t be engaging. Additionally, if your followers simply miss your posts, you miss your chance of engaging them.

How to Increase Your Social Media Presence in 2021

When you post content to your social pages, you’ll want to make sure it’s seen by as many people as possible. If you post content at a time when none of your target audience is online, it won’t do very well. Timing is everything. There are a number of factors to take into consideration when figuring out when to schedule your posts.

First, different social media channels have different user bases. People may be more active at night on one platform than they are on another. Second, you need to know your target audience. Different demographics tend to use social media at different times of the day. With this in mind, the following is a general breakdown of when to post on various social media platforms:

Facebook – Many people will check Facebook towards the end of their workdays as they wind down and get ready to stop working. As such, posting between 3 PM and 4 PM will often result in a lot of exposure. You’ll likely reach that same audience between 1 PM and 4 PM at the end of the workweek as well, on Thursdays and Fridays. However, typically speaking, users are less active before 2 PM.
Twitter – Like Facebook, Twitter gets the most engagement during regular work hours. It’s especially active from 12 PM to 1 PM and during commuting times. Basically, people check Twitter when they have some free time available away from home. Twitter posts see less engagement outside of working hours, especially in the evenings and on weekends.
Instagram – Instagram does have a younger audience than Twitter and Facebook. As such, you’ll get much more engagement in the evenings from 7 PM to 9 PM. Midday (11 AM to 1 PM) is also a good time to post to Twitter. Instagram engagement also tends to spike on Wednesdays. However, like Facebook and Twitter, Instagram posts see less engagement on the weekends.
LinkedIn – Because LinkedIn is a professional social platform, posts tend to do best during work hours. There tends to be a significant drop-off in activity after 5 PM. Posts due best on LinkedIn when published between Tuesday and Friday. People often stay away from LinkedIn on weekends and are too busy on Mondays to engage on LinkedIn substantially.

Schedule Your Posts Appropriately To Improve Engagement

Use this general breakdown to get an idea of when the best times are to post to social media. Just keep in mind that your specific audience plays a big part in when you should post. For instance, older audiences are less likely to engage on social media late at night, while younger audiences are.

How to Share Your Message With A New Brand Strategy?

April 30, 2021/in Articles, Brand Development, Brand Positioning, Directors /by Mark Beebe

Brands fight to gain attention. Brands need communication without words. Brands are psychology and science brought together as a promise mark as opposed to a trademark.

Products have life cycles, but brands outlive products. Brands convey a uniform quality, credibility and experience. Brands are valuable.

Without branding, there is no differentiation. Without differentiation, there is no long-term profitability. People don’t have relationships with products, they develop relationships with brands.

Up Your Email Engagement: Consumer-Oriented Strategies

April 29, 2021/in Articles, Blog, Directors, Email Marketing, Emails /by Nicole Wagner

Email marketing may be one of the oldest forms of online marketing, but it has not lost its relevance. Despite the fact that many businesses are focusing more on social media marketing and SEO, email marketing should still be a priority for any online marketing strategy. The use of email can help you deliver valuable resources and promotional offers to your audience. However, it’s vital that you keep your leads engaged in order for your email marketing strategy to be successful. With that in mind, the following are a few tips to help boost email engagement.

1. Send Emails That Offer Value

The most important thing to remember when building an email marketing campaign is that your content matters. Poor content that offers little value to your recipients isn’t going to do anyone any good. Your emails have to provide value in order to engage your leads. There are two ways you can do this:

Provide Educational Content – Generally speaking, you should avoid sending too much promotional material through email. The more ads you send, the more likely your leads are to unsubscribe. As such, focus on creating content that is informative and helpful. Such content will help build your brand authority, thereby boosting brand trust. The more they trust you, the more attention they’ll pay to what you have to say.
Target Your Promotional Offers – Although you should focus more on educational content, that doesn’t mean you can’t ever promote your products or services. However, when you do email a lead a promotional offer, make sure that it’s relevant to their needs. Target your offers based on the data you have from them (such as purchase history) and the actions they take (such as the type of content they’ve downloaded in the past).

Email marketing continues to evolve with the times. Here is what to expect.

2. Segment Your Email Engagement List

It doesn’t matter how high-quality your email content is if it’s not relevant to the person you send it to. For instance, your email about what to look for in high-quality dog food isn’t going to be useful to a cat owner. Use the data you collect from your subscription forms to segment your email list. This will not only ensure that you send your emails to the relevant recipients, but also that you’re creating content that addresses every different part of your audience.

3. Personalize Your Emails

Personalizing your emails will make it easier for leads to relate and engage with your brand. Segmenting your email list will go a long way towards personalizing your emails. However, there’s more to do than just that. For instance, write in a more personal tone of voice using the second person. Use humor where appropriate. Also, send emails that are neither promotional nor educational every once in a while to celebrate a special occasion. For example, a personalized birthday email is always appreciated. You could also send out emails for specific holidays as long as they aren’t religious in tone.

4. Design Your Emails Effectively

The aesthetic of your email matters. You can’t just send a regular default text email to your leads and expect them to be intrigued by what you have to say. Use colors and images that are relevant to your brand and your content. Use CTA buttons that stick out. You can even add GIFs, which make your emails more visually dynamic and which will draw the eye. According to the results of a Dell email marketing campaign, the use of GIFs increased their click rate by 42 percent and their conversion rate by 103 percent.

5. Send The Right Number Of Emails

This can be tricky to figure out. Send too many emails, and you may be marked as spam. Send too few, and your leads may forget about you. Generally speaking, it’s better to send too many than too few. Monitor your unsubscribe rate to get an idea of whether you’re sending too many. If you have a high unsubscribe rate, you may need to cut back on how often you’re sending out emails.

6. Track Performance And Optimize Your Email Engagement

Finally, analyze your email metrics to identify elements that are engaging and elements that are not. For instance, compare the performance of emails using images versus those that don’t. Compare the titles of your emails to see which results in a higher open rate. Use heat maps to figure out what parts of the email engage readers most. This information can be used to optimize future emails to boost engagement.

These are six effective methods for creating a more engaging email marketing campaign. The more engaged your email recipients are, the better your chances are of converting your leads into customers — and of converting those one-time customers into loyal long-term customers.

The Silent Generation & Senior Real Estate Marketing

April 27, 2021/in Advertising Agency, Directors /by Debbie Szwast

The Silent Generation…they were born between 1925 and 1945 and represent our aging population. According to a study done by the National Association of REALTORS®, they make up about 10 percent—the smallest segment—of the nation’s homebuyers and 16 percent of home sellers. But don’t be fooled, they still have significant buying power.

With a median age of 73, the Silent Generation consists of mostly retirees or those approaching retirement. As a result, their median household income is lower than other market segments. However, more than 30 percent have a household income of $85,000 or greater.
Read more

Newspaper Marketing in 2021 is Still Valid.. Here’s Why

April 26, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Newspaper Marketing /by Dan Gartlan

When thinking of a newspaper, you might think of a boy on a bicycle throwing rolled-up papers onto people’s yards. In other words, newspapers tend to conjure up images of the past. However, they are not a thing of the past, despite the fact that many people believe them to be. Not everybody has access to the Internet, which means the newspaper remains an important source of news for many people. As such, newspaper marketing remains an effective way to reach another target audience. If you’re not convinced that newspaper marketing is worth the cost, consider the following benefits:

Benefits of Newspaper Marketing:

Reach A Bigger Audience – Did you know that despite the fact that newspaper readership is declining, the average newspaper reaches a larger audience than the average half-hour long prime time TV show? TV commercials are still considered an effective way to reach a big audience, which means newspapers should be considered as such as well.
Reach A More Attentive Audience – You can reach a lot of people marketing on the Internet. More than you can through newspaper marketing — and by a large margin. However, the people you reach through a newspaper are much more likely to engage with your marketing materials, especially when compared to Internet users, whose average attention span is roughly eight seconds. The consumers who read the ad in a newspaper will be more engaged with the message involved.
Newspaper Ads Live Longer – One of the challenges of marketing online is that you have to get your timing just right. If you post content to social media at the wrong time, your audience will miss it. When you advertise in a newspaper, your readers will get to it eventually. A newspaper audience will read through the newspaper when they have the time — which means they’ll see your ad eventually.
Fewer Competitors – A newspaper can only hold so many advertisements. Your competition (and direct competition) will not be nearly as strong as it is when you market your business online. This also means that your ads are less likely to be ignored because of ads and clickbait.
Newspaper Advertising Is Affordable – It costs less to reach a thousand newspaper readers than it does to reach that many people through other means. On top of that, newspaper advertising tends to be very flexible, making it easier to customize your ads to meet your budget.

Why Should You Trust Newspaper Marketing?

People Trust Newspapers – There’s a major trust issue in this day and age. People no longer trust what they see on TV or what they read online. And creating brand trust, as you know, is crucial. “Fake News” as it were, has caused significant doubt to be cast over the media landscape. However, people still trust newspapers — far more than any other type of media. This might be due to the transparency of the text with no puns involved. Because people trust newspapers, they’re more likely to take your advertising seriously.
Newspaper Readers Look For Deals – Many people who subscribe to a newspaper actually go through the ads and coupons looking for deals. This means that the newspaper is a great way to advertise a special promotion or discount. Online platforms using this method are considered “spam”.
Newspapers Provide A Tactile Experience – It may not seem like anything worthy of note, but the fact that your audience can touch the newspaper makes a big difference. Studies have shown that the ability to touch the ad increases the response rate. It’s obviously psychological, but it has an impact on the reader’s purchase intent and engagement. That tactile quality is missing from most other forms of marketing, whether it’s TV commercials, billboards, or any kind of digital marketing.

Newspaper advertising continues to be an important medium for marketing. Read more here.

Why Should You Consider Newspaper Marketing?

There are plenty of reasons why newspaper marketing remains an effective way to reach an audience, even in 2021. Although many businesses are focusing a significant amount of their resources on digital marketing, it’s vital that you consider all marketing channels, both online and offline. A balanced marketing strategy is the most successful strategy, after all. As such, be sure to consider newspaper marketing as part of your advertising strategy.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers

hiring a full service advertising agency

Five Reasons To Hire An Advertising Agency Versus Staffing In-House

April 23, 2021/in Advertising Agency, Articles, Directors /by Dan Gartlan

Marketing and advertising are essential for the success of any business. As your company grows, you will eventually be faced with the difficult decision of whether to build your own marketing group or to outsource to an advertising agency. Here are five benefits to hiring a full-service advertising agency. Read more

Home Builder Marketing Tips To Drive Traffic And Sales

April 16, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Homebuilder Marketing, Marketing Strategy /by Debbie Szwast

Any ad agency executive doing homebuilder marketing has undoubtedly heard these words from her clients, “we need more traffic.” And while there’s no magic bullet for homebuilder marketing that’s going to drive a specific number of visitors to a sales center in a given week, don’t underestimate the power of partnerships and focused events.

Drive On-Site Traffic With An Event

Recently, we harnessed the weight of one of our media partners to pull off a successful grand re-opening for a homebuilder in Chicagoland. With a property that has been underway for more than 10 years, we were looking for a way to reinvigorate the community and attract new people to the site. The builder was opening new models and we used that as our launch pad.

Learn How To Tell Your Partner’s Story

Capitalize On A Strong Media Partnership

With a limited budget, we partnered with a multimedia company with a local focus to develop a comprehensive marketing plan. The media mix spanned digital, print, email, and even public relations. For two weeks leading up to the event, we dominated suburban news pages online that covered the geographic area we anticipated buyers would come from. This included high-impact interstials, overlays and page takeovers. Click-thru results were four times that of our standard buy.

Target The Right Audience

Layered on top of the digital program was an email campaign, both to past prospects and a new audience. We targeted based on geography, household income, age, gender, and even propensity to buy a home. And we didn’t forget brokers with our homebuilder marketing. We emailed them, as well, and the sales team did “boots on the ground” networking, too.

Build Credibility Through Public Relations

Publicity also played a role in the success of our grand re-opening. A few weeks prior to the event an article appeared in print and online highlighting all the benefits of the community and promoting the reasons to buy as told from a homeowner’s point of view. Then the weekend of the event, a front-page feature—complete with photos—graced the cover of the homes section of the newspaper. The message, of course, enticed people to stop by and visit the brand-new decorated model homes.

Reap The Rewards

Results were amazing. Traffic during the grand re-opening weekend was nearly 10 times that of the community’s weekly average. And, even more importantly, the builder sold more homes in those two weeks than it had the five months prior.

Of course we can’t guarantee an on-site event supported by a strong media partnership will always garner these results. But in this case, it definitely was the right combination for a successful homebuilder marketing plan.

To learn more about how a strategic marketing program can increase traffic and sales at your communities, call Stevens & Tate Marketing at (630) 627-5200 or visit our website at stevens-tate.com.

Marketing Blog tips to Supplement your Digital Strategy

April 16, 2021/in Articles, Blog, Content Marketing, Directors /by Nicole Wagner

Ask any business, big or small, and they’ll tell you how important digital marketing is to their overall marketing strategy. When it comes to digital marketing strategies, most prioritize social media, SEO, and email marketing. While these strategies can be very effective, it’s critical that you don’t dismiss the importance of maintaining a digital marketing blog. For many businesses, their blog isn’t nearly as big of a priority as other digital marketing elements. However, a digital marketing blog has an enormous impact on the overall success of your digital marketing efforts. In fact, a successful blog can have a huge impact on how effective your SEO and social media strategies are.

Why Maintaining A Digital Marketing Blog Is So Important

The following are some of the reasons why you should maintain a blog on your website:

Keep new content organized – Digital marketing requires regular content generation to be effective. A blog allows you to publish and organize all of your content in one place, making it easy for leads to find information that they’re looking for. Leads will also know where to go to find new content, keeping leads engaged.
Educate and nurture your leads – A regularly updated blog allows you to continually educate new leads and to nurture them through the buyer’s journey. The more informed your leads are, the more prepared they will be to make a purchasing decision in the near future.
Generate website traffic – Having a blog makes it easier to improve your website’s SEO. When you routinely publish relevant, highly optimized content on your blog, you’ll end up boosting web traffic. As a result, you’ll bring in more new potential leads.
Build brand authority – A blog full of high-quality content will help position your brand as an authority within your industry. The more you build your authority, the more brand trust you’ll create. It will also help you build your audience on social media as followers will be more likely to share your blog content with others.

Brand Storytelling Examples to Learn From

Tips For Maintaining A Successful Digital Marketing Blog

Now that you have a better understanding of why a blog is so vital to your overall digital marketing strategy, the following are a few tips to help you build and maintain a successful blog:

Know who your audience is – If you don’t know who your target audience is, then you won’t be able to create and publish content that’s relevant. Two of the main goals of a content strategy are to build authority and attract new leads. Neither will occur without an understanding of who your audience is. Develop your buyer personas so that you know who your blog is for.
Perform content research – Once you know who your audience is, you can figure out what kind of information they’re looking for. Do research on trending topics that are relevant to your audience. You should also look at the blogs of various competitors to see what type of content they’re publishing.
Publish new blog content regularly – To maintain your audience, you need to publish new content on a regular basis. This means posting new content to your blog on the same days of the week, at the same times. Doing so ensures that your audience knows exactly when to visit your blog for new content, thereby helping keep your brand at the top of mind.
Monitor the performance of your blog – Use analytics tools to track how your blog posts are doing. You can learn a lot about your blog content this way. For instance, what types of content get the most views, engagement, click-throughs, and conversions. This data is invaluable when it comes to adjusting your content strategy for success.

Keep Your Blog in the Front of Your Audiences Eyes

Publish different types of content.– Make sure you vary the type of content you post so that you keep things fresh. In addition to written content, create and post infographics, SlideShares, and videos
Keep your content interesting – It’s okay to post promotional content to your blog once in a while (such as a product announcement or a sale announcement), but it’s better to stick to educational content so that your blog doesn’t feel like a giant advertisement. However, this doesn’t mean your content should be purely informative. Your content should also be entertaining to keep your audience’s interest.
Optimize your blog for SEO – Proper optimization through the use of high-quality internal and external links and relevant keywords will improve your chances of ranking. By ranking well, you’ll attract more traffic through Google and other search engines.
Promote your blog – Don’t rely solely on SEO to attract an audience. Promote new blog content by posting links in your email newsletters and on social media. You can even use PPC ads to promote specific blog posts you want to showcase.

Building and maintaining a blog is essential to a successful digital marketing strategy. Be sure to use these eight tips to maintain a successful digital marketing blog on your website.

How to Incorporate Email Marketing into B2B Campaigns

April 14, 2021/in Articles, Blog, Directors, Email Marketing /by Dan Gartlan

Email marketing has been a popular strategy for decades, and there’s no sign of it slowing down as an effective marketing tactic. However, as a B2B business, successful B2B email marketing can be challenging. When it comes to B2C email marketing, many companies simply use it to promote new products or to advertise special promotions. This won’t work with B2B marketing. Additionally, because most companies do embrace email marketing, you’re going to have to work a little harder to stand out from the competition and engage your leads. With that in mind, the following are a few B2B email marketing tips:

Focus On Educational Content

Long-term relationships are much more important for B2B businesses than B2C businesses (although you can’t discount their importance to B2C companies either). As such, the bulk of your email content should focus on providing your leads with information that is useful to them. The more informed they are about the problems you solve or about the industry you’re in, the more comfortable they will be making a buying decision down the line. Not to mention that you’ll position yourself as a brand authority that they can trust.

Personalize Your Emails

Don’t make the mistake of assuming email personalization starts and stops with addressing the lead by name. Personalization goes way beyond that. Use the information you have on your subscribers (gained from opt-in forms, questionnaires, purchase history, and more) to segment them into different lists. You can then target specific subscribers using content that is relevant to each list. Doing so will increase the chances of engagement and will make it easier to nurture your leads.

Use Automation

As mentioned, automation can be used to segment your email list to ensure that your email content is personalized. However, automation can be used in a variety of ways to further boost engagement. For instance, you can set up email triggers based on actions your subscribers take. When they download something from your site, make a purchase, or sign up for a webinar via one of your emails, it will trigger a relevant email to be sent right after the action was taken.

You can schedule emails using automation to be sent at specific times and on specific days. This allows you to reach your users based on when they are most active on their email accounts.

Find Out How Marketing Automation Can Help You

Embrace Drip Email Campaigns

Email drip campaigns consist of a chain of emails designed to follow one another in a specific order and on a scheduled timeline. Usually, a drip campaign will consist of around five emails sent at 3 to 5-day intervals. They are effective because they build on one another, thereby ensuring relevance and generating more engagement. Drip campaigns are designed to welcome new leads, educate them, and finally to encourage a purchase.

Don’t Spam Your Subscribers

Even if you’re not sending overly promotional emails, you don’t want to overdo it. Your emails may be chock-full of useful and informative content, but if your recipients are receiving it on a daily basis, they’re going to start ignoring you. When that happens, it will be more difficult to reach them with content that they would actually find helpful. Some subscribers may even unsubscribe, resulting in lost leads.

Re-Engage Inactive Subscribers

Every once in a while, take the time to identify subscribers who haven’t engaged with your emails for some time. Don’t just assume that they are a lost cause. While some may have lost interest, others may simply have forgotten about your brand. Send out re-engagement emails that give these subscribers a reason to re-engage with you. Such emails can include polls and surveys, which can help you identify why they became unengaged in the first place. You can also use special offers based on their purchase history to generate interest in your business again.

Market Your Email Subscriptions

For your B2B email marketing campaign to be successful, you need to have leads to actually email content to. Besides having email subscription forms on your website, you should actively promote your email subscriptions on your blog and on social media. You can even gate some of your long-form content (such as ebooks and whitepapers), requiring leads to sign up to your email list in return for access to your content.

B2B email marketing can be an incredibly effective way to engage and nurture leads. Make sure to keep these 7 tips in mind for a successful email marketing camp