HubSpot Email Marketing Review: Pro's and Cons of Using HubSpot for Email Marketing

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Many people in 2024 are struggling to keep up with Google's changes and they are unsure if Email Marketing is still effective. These changes were how Google is allowing cold emails through, for more information (as well as how to overcome it) see our blog post here. Continue to read on as to not only how to optimise your email marketing but discover the HubSpot CRM pros and cons why we think HubSpot is the best B2B email marketing software.

With that in mind, email marketing is still alive and kicking today. In fact it's still a strong way to generate leads and business. The best B2B Email Marketing tool we think is out there is HubSpot, available through either their Marketing Hub Professional or Sales Hub Professional depending on what you want to achieve i.e. do you want it to be sales or marketing focussed.

Email Marketing Best Practices in 2024

Before we explain why we believe HubSpot is the best email marketing platform for small businesses, let's go over some best practices. Whilst there are better examples which are more in depth here, these for us are the absolute must haves in 2024.

1. Links- Avoid using links in your opening emails where possible.

2. Opt Out- Ensure you include opt out links in your email or this can impact your deliverability.

3. Photos- similar to links, ensure you're minimizing photo usage during sales email marketing campaigns in the opening emails (later on is fine).

4. Subject Lines- A/B test these consistently to understand what trends are driving open rates.

5. Content- Avoid AI and try to get to the point quickly. We advise 3 lines which are a problem statement, how you can solve it and a CTA.

6. Tooling- Tooling can be the difference between success and failure, really consider setting up proper tooling and tech stack to set you up for success.

7. Data Sourcing- Don't buy contact lists and do ensure email addresses are valid- bounced emails are email marketing killers.

8. Layout- Less is more, consider shortening your emails to a few lines outlining the problem statement, how you can resolve it and a CTA. Really consider this in the light that most emails are read on mobile devices too!

What Is HubSpot?

HubSpot has been around since 2006, starting life as CRM software. The mantra of built by marketers for marketers still rings true today. They believe in focussing on inbound marketing and strategies to help drive growth at scale. Beyond this though, HubSpot is a powerful tool for sales people, enabling them to leverage automations, holistic engagement tools (such as intent data) and dynamic reporting to drive growth opportunities.

On top of that, HubSpot can integrate easily with a large suite of other tools, giving you the insight that otherwise might be hidden. For example you can quickly add in website behaviour through their tracking, so you can personalise based on what your prospect is looking at. HubSpot is unparalleled as an email marketing tool, but what are some of the HubSpot Pros and Cons

Pros

1. Comprehensive Integration with Other Tools: By and large, the Hubspot platform integrates with most of the tools you need. These integrations can provide unique and powerful insights into your data that you otherwise wouldn't get. This was covered off earlier, but it allows you to better achieve personalisation at scale as you can base your outreach on specific behaviours not inferences.

2. User Friendly Interface: HubSpot has the best UI of most of these tools. Whilst UI may not be a top tier feature to put in as a pro without sounding like you're scraping the barrel, their UI is so strong, we believe it deserves a mention. It allows complete novices to begin building their sequences with ease. On top of that, they leverage AI and best practices so you can best optimize your emails for delivery and reply rates.

3. Automation Tools: This is where HubSpot enters a world of its own. You can use their marketing automation tools to build powerful, custom automations to greatly enhance your email marketing. For example, lets say and ICP prospect has been looking at your pricing page but hasn't converted, you could build an automation to auto-enrol them into a pricing email sequence helping you provide relevant content that converts them. The best part is these automations are easy to create and completely bespoke.

4. Analytics and Reporting: Continuing on from HubSpots marketing automation software, reporting and analytics. Due to HubSpots ability to build in other data sources compared to it's competitors, you can analyze your data in a way few other tools can do. You can start to understand what segments are better engaging with different GTM tactics (including email marketing) to better engage them.

5. A/B Testing: This reporting now links to A/B testing. You can use HubSpot to A/B test which content works best for each reader to maximize impact. This works by trying different copy techniques to the same reader to understand what content is really driving conversion and dive deeper into it.

6. Domain Health Tools: For Marketing emails, HubSpot also provides free domain monitoring tools. Whilst this may seem like a gimmick, these tools can be the difference between success and failure.

In fact we've seen clients use the same copy, to the same audience but the open rate has been barely over 20% where domain health is poor. Compare that to clients where domain health is good and that can be over 80%. Clearly the importance of good domain health can't be understated, but HubSpot takes it a step further and gives your free tools to better deliver on it.

Cons

1. Costs: As far as an email marketing tool goes, HubSpot is expensive. If being used in tandem with multiple functionalities such as Marketing and Ops it's a no brainer. On top of this a lot of the tools are not available in their free version. With that in mind though, their small business version is only $90 per month and can achieve a lot of this, perfect for smaller sales teams and individuals.

2. Integration Challenges with Some Products: There are some issues with integrations. This is normally around where there isn't a supported application, then you'll need to use the HubSpot API. On top of this, some of the data flows require mapping which can be tricky too at times.

3. Limits in Customisation: Despite it's bespoke nature there are some issues with HubSpots customization. This isn't so much where it can't be done, more trying to do something can take a while to figure out. An example of this might be wanting to track something unique, you may need to build multiple properties that communicate with each other and build on top of that. This can be challenging for novices, although you should still try!

4. Learning Curve for Advanced Features: Continuing on from customizations, there can be a steep learning curve for newcomers. This curve depends on what you're trying to achieve so it shouldn't put you off trying. That being said the HubSpot Academy can be a great place for learning how to build and optimize your email marketing strategy.

Pricing

HubSpot does have a free platform, but to really benefit we recommend their cheapest package. Their pricing is as follows:

You can start on a cheaper package at $15 per month, however it doesn’t include any email sequencing so wouldn’t help here.

Given the advantages of HubSpot for email marketing, it is a must email marketing platform for small businesses as well as scaling businesses. If you want to move forward, but are not sure on the best next steps, Equanax is a registered HubSpot Partner Agency. We are a RevOps and Sales Development agency (as well as an Email Marketing company), so specialists in setting up your sales tooling, processes and optimizing them. Our customers benefit from the expertise of in house RevOps specialists, whilst also only paying fractional costs. This gives you the RevOps impact without the cost.