As the construction industry became digitalised, numerous experts foresaw the disappearance of one-to-one conversations as we knew them, predicting disruptive and spammy tendencies to take over commercial interactions. Fortunately for building product businesses, those calculations could not have been any further from the truth and high-quality, natural, and organic connections are rewarded more than ever.
According to research carried out by Darren Lester at SpecifiedBy, 98% of specifiers prefer to carry out product research online, interacting almost exclusively through emails. Due to this shift towards email-based communication, ensuring that we transmit a professional image when interacting through email has become essential, playing a huge role when determining the success of a conversation.
Keeping our email interactions professional is not limited to using proper email punctuation or practicing good grammar. Often finding themselves overwhelmed by the number of unopened emails sat on their inbox, construction professionals appreciate clarity, brevity, and transparency. Sending a professional email involves sending the right message at the right time, providing your interlocutor with everything they need from you (and nothing else!) one click away. And achieving that can be a rather time-consuming task…
The solution is not to work more, but to work smarter. Considered on of the most compelling CRM platforms, HubSpot has identified the challenges users are experiencing as standards for email communication keep raising and has come up with different mailing features that make the most of the information in your CRM and guarantees that all your interactions feel human.
A common mistake when looking for quick fixes has been to generalise interactions so they could be easily turned into generic emails. Reducing the personalisation of your emails, while apparently efficient, can lower your email open rates and get some servers to classify your emails as spam, jeopardising your efforts and keeping you from making it into your prospect’s inbox.
Writing all your emails from scratch does not seem plausible either, particularly if you are looking to increase the reach of your building product business. As an answer to this dilemma between personalisation and time-efficiency, HubSpot has come up with personalisation tokens.
Personalisation tokens are fields that automatically vary when an email is sent based on the recipient. A “First name” personalisation token will, as a result, change to reflect the first name of the recipient when the email is sent to them. Within HubSpot, you can create email templates with as many personalisation tokens as you want that will add value to your emails and increase the engagement without sacrificing the quality of the interaction.
If you have tried to attach a document to an automated email sent through HubSpot, you have probably noticed that this option is not available. When attaching a document to an email, we are missing out on getting deeper insights on what our contact does once they access the document. Creating a link that allows you to share a document can provide you with sophisticated intelligence regarding your contacts’ engagement.
You can ensure that your emails come forward as natural and human as possible by syncing your email signature with HubSpot. A single email template can be used by multiple people, and you can set up the signature of your automated emails to vary depending on the member of your team that is owns the record of a particular contact. This feature is particularly important for sales teams that work based on commissions or that split leads based on a specific criteria.
Needless to say, construction professionals see their time as a remarkably valuable resource, and they are not keen to spend most of it dwelling through tedious administrative tasks. Once they have gotten in touch with you and you have managed to get them involved in the conversation, requesting too much of their time can put them off from continuing developing a specification with you.
The process of arranging a meeting, while usually overlooked, can be surprisingly time-consuming, flooding people’s inboxes with an endless back-and-forth of emails trying to find the time that works for everyone involved in the meeting. Setting up a meeting link within HubSpot can save you and your prospects the awkward thread of emails checking each other’s availability and allow you to speed up the conversation. You can add this link to your email signature so anyone can book some time with you right after they read your email.
When setting up a meeting link, you will not only save yourself from spending your days diving through other people’s availability, but you will also avoid having to manually log on your contacts’ records that a meeting was arranged. When a contact books time with you, HubSpot will automatically associate the meeting with the record of the person with the same email address and it will add onto their feed that you met up with them to speak about a certain topic.
HubSpot’s Meeting tool now offers the ability for a contact to cancel or reschedule a Meeting that they booked through the Meetings tool. When needing to reschedule a meeting, the date of the meeting engagement will be updated based on the date the meeting was rescheduled.
Consistently logging your meetings on your contacts’ record and adding any notes that you think you or your team members will find helpful when going over its content can be a real game changer. Not only it will make anyone with access to your CRM aware of the event, but it will also allow them to know what was covered on the meeting and what the outcome of the conversation was. This will allow conversation handovers to happen smoothly, avoiding contacts getting the same information twice and keeping your teammates from asking the same questions twice.
The joys of logging information on your contacts’ records are not limited to keeping track of your meetings, you can log and track all emails you send to anyone on your CRM. And, when I say you, I mean that HubSpot can do it for you. Depending on whether you use Outlook, Office 365 or Gmail, you will need to download different add-on software pieces to allow HubSpot to log and track emails. The installation of these add-ons is code-free and very quick.
Logging emails will allow you to record a copy of a sent email on your HubSpot CRM. Any attachments included on the email will also be added to your contact’s feed, helping you keep all the documents associated to the conversations with a particular contact stored on a single record. Tracking emails will allow you to monitor when the email you sent is opened and when the contact interacts with its content.
You can customise the settings on your HubSpot portal, so you receive real-time notifications when a contact first interacts when a tracked email. As HubSpot tracks their activity, you will be made aware if they have clicked any links you sent within the email. This can provide you with valuable information that will be visible on the feed of your contacts and can help you tailor the next conversation you have with that contact.
Alternatively, if you are emailing one of your contacts from a device where you do not have installed the add-ons, you can use your own and unique HubSpot BCC address to automatically log an email to the contact’s feed. Your BCC address will be composed of your HubSpot ID number followed by the ending @bcc.hubspot.com. If you would like to log an email you have already sent from a device without add-ons, you can forward it through your HubSpot forwarding address and it will be added to your contact’s feed. Your forwarding address will be composed of your HubSpot ID number followed by the ending @forward.hubspot.com.
HubSpot’s platform was designed with a particular goal, delivering the right message, to the right person, at the right time, and, that is not always possible. Specially if resources are limited! To facilitate this process, HubSpot is one of the main platforms offering a sophisticated automation tool. As less time is spent on basic tasks, automation allows you to focus on more important projects!
Using HubSpot, users can create email sequences which automatically trigger if a prospect hasn't responded to them within a set amount of time. Automating the conversation with set-it-and-forget-it sequences can save salespeople hours of unnecessary work!
On HubSpot, you can create lists based on certain actions that your contacts are taking, like form submissions, page views or CTA clicks. And you should! You can do the same for contacts that have visited a particular page of your website. Once they fit the criterion, they will be included in a list and you will be able to use that list for targeted and personalised automated emailing.
Sequences are series of emails that you can schedule to consistently be sent out to prospects. Once the prospect answers one of your emails, the sequence stops so you can continue the conversation. This is particularly helpful for salespeople that need to prospect a high number of leads everyday. Sequences allow them to pick up the conversation once it has started, saving them the time to really focus on them.
You can use sequences in combination with workflows, another type of automation tools available on HubSpot. If you have not interacted with a target prospect in a while, you can ask the platform to notify you, making sure that you follow-up before the conversation goes cold. Architects and specifiers are busy so silence does not always mean they are not keen to specify you, they might just need a nudge!
One last tip that can elevate the synchronisation of your email with your CRM and ensure that any of your interactions comes across as carefully curated is integrating your most used online meeting platform. Whether you host your meetings within Zoom or Google Meet, you can connect both apps so they automatically sync with your HubSpot portal.
By integrating your go-to platforms, you will be able to easily schedule a Zoom meeting from any contact record or create a Google Meet call without worrying about logging it on your contact’s HubSpot record. If you exclusively use one platform to schedule the majority of your calls, you can configure your meeting link to include a link to your Zoom or Google Meet personal meeting room.
Integrating your Zoom account within your HubSpot portal is highly recommended if you plan on hosting webinars in the future. Not only HubSpot can help you enhance the registration experience and increase the signups that you get for your webinar, but it can also allow you to track your contacts’ behaviour when registering and attending your webinar.
HubSpot will also create a list of all the people registering for your webinar, giving you the chance of interacting with them before, during and after the webinar, reminding them about the event or asking them for feedback. You will be able to find all these insights on your contacts’ feeds, helping you tailor future communication with them and making sure you always deliver the right message at the right
At Insynth we deliver a predictable flow of leads, customers, and specifications for building product brands through our inbound marketing approach, proven to reach a technically demanding audience.
We use the latest marketing techniques such as construction inbound marketing, to equip building product companies to grow sustainability in this era of digital transformation.
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major in construction marketing. We have a proven formula of bringing a variety of functionalities together including CRM Implementation, Web Design, Sales Automation, SEO, and Email Marketing to achieve your ultimate aim: Growing your business and gaining new specifiers and customers.
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