Do you have an upcoming Hubspot renewal and wonder what do about those dormant contacts? With Hubspot (a powerful email automation software with amazing customer service support) your monthly fee is determined by the number of contacts in your database. If those contacts could make you money, you'll want to keep them around, so here's a strategy to figure out if they will.
With a Hubspot client coming up on their Hubspot renewal this year, it reminded me of a campaign we did a few years back to re-engage their list as a way to justify the cost for keeping the contacts.
Outside of the obvious removal of unsubscribed and bounced contacts, how do we qualify people in different tiers so we can discover which segments are most and least valuable? And then, how do we elevate the least valuable contacts quality to make them worth keeping around? We start by tackling the first problem.
Qualifying Contacts in Order of Targeting Priority
In Path Of The Freelancer, I share a prioritization framework (see graphic below) starting with high impact low effort targets ending with low impact high effort options. When I started my business (while also new to Atlanta) I, unfortunately, started with the bottom of the framework list and worked up. And while there's a place for this approach, it was definitely the harder road. In your initiative, don't follow my example, take the easy road.
Inspired by this framework, I created the following six lists that segmented the contacts for my customer. We now could evaluate our contacts in a more precise way.
- Customers Within The Previous 12 Months
- Customers From Over 12 Months Ago
- Attempted To Purchase, But Failed Or Abandoned
- Inquired, Not A Customer
- Filled Out Any Form, Not A Customer
- No Form Fills, Not A Customer
After creating these lists and evaluating the numbers, we determined number five and six were the group of contacts we needed purge from the system if we couldn't move them from inactive contacts to paying customers.
Nurturing These Contacts Forward
With the renewal a few months out, I requested we run these emails through an existing lead nurturing program (as an easy test) to move them forward. To understand if we were successful, I found out from my client how many customers we needed (4) to justify keeping these contacts for ongoing nurturing & future marketing.
And the results?
For list 6, we converted five contacts to customers. For list 5, we converted eight contacts to customers. I expected list five would convert better than six, and the total number was three times what it needed to be (4) for justifying us keeping the data. We renewed with these contacts and converted another fourteen contacts to customers after the renewal, for a total of 27 new ones.
Another benefit of these email campaigns is how some contacts will unsubscribe and others will bounce. Since we remove these from Hubspot before renewal, it acts as an organic contact purge for low-quality contacts.
A Highly Focused Nurturing Campaign To Generate Higher Conversions
On the next renewal round, this year, my intent is to get more focused on contact nurturing. This will involve targeting all six groups and specifically message them where they are in the journey. It'll require me spending time understanding what would be most appealing for each group to move forward either from one list to another or, ultimately, to become a customer.
As I re-engage these contacts, my plan is to communicate the delivery on the following two intentions.
First, I want to bring the contact along. How do I connect their mutual starting point with where we are today. If they became a contact because they asked a question from Flipkey, I'll want to mention this while also bring our relationship (by bridging the gap with our story) up to speed.
Second, I want to communicate a message that is compelling to them. With existing customers, we can remind them about our customer loyalty discount towards their next purchase. If they didn't purchase, is there some content that would be appealing to them as a way to help them take a step forward while not pushing them to become a customer today? My intent is to find out.
Wrapping It Up
While Hubspot renewals act as an uninvited audit of contact lists, it's really something all companies should be doing with their email contacts.
Clean out unsubscribes and bounces. From there, organize them in tiers based on quality. Engage with those tiers in a personal and relevant way to either move them forward or pull them out of the system. The lessons learned from each iteration of this process will illuminate ideas to leverage on a regular basis to improve future revenue.
