HubSpot Personalization Strategies That Aren’t Totally Creepy
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.
Intro: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's recording.
Intro: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.
George B. Thomas: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 kinda got confused over the last 35 seconds. So
Liz Moorehead:George, do you need a hug?
Max Cohen:He needs a he needs a potato.
George B. Thomas:Name I yes. You could 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.
Liz Moorehead:This is the benefit Weird. This is the benefit of folks like Chad who join us every week,
Max Cohen:with Fucking live show.
Liz Moorehead:Audience when we recorded this. We we fucking love you, man. If you ever wanna hang out with us, community.hubheroes.com, you can always watch us live because he got the he always sees, like, the chaotic gremlin energy that we open the 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.
Liz Moorehead:George, you have different thoughts.
Max Cohen:I just
Liz Moorehead:I understand that.
Max Cohen:I just I just wanted to see Chad's face.
Liz Moorehead:Happens when Devon isn't here. I just wanted
Max Cohen:to see
Max Cohen: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
Liz Moorehead:I doing this here? Hard.
Max Cohen:I have I have important roofing roofing company projects to deploy HubSpot to, and I'm listening about how George could become a potato for a week. What's happened?
Max Cohen:No. I
Liz Moorehead:mean, it's a new HubSpot integration, actually. If you just, like, plug your head into the starch hub coming soon from HubSpot, you become a potato.
Max Cohen:Potato hub.
George B. Thomas:Oh, the starch hub.
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Like, now, see, I'm getting, like, an infographic, like, HubSpot sales infographic of, like, the start up and these, like, little spuds on their couch. And, like anyway, let's let's actually talk about the potato
Liz Moorehead:personalization opportunities. Oh, so
George B. Thomas:Well played.
Liz Moorehead:See what I did there?
Max Cohen:Played. See what
George B. Thomas:I did there? That's called the segue. Yeah. That is a good segue. But now for some reason, I'm thinking about Arby sauce and curly fries, and I'm not sure why.
George B. Thomas:I'm not
Liz Moorehead:sure why.
Max Cohen:George, did you
Max Cohen:forget to eat lunch today? I did.
George B. Thomas:Oh, I did not eat lunch today. I thank you for reminding me of
Max Cohen:that. This be be literally, we were talking about this when we hopped on. George is like, how are you doing?
Max Cohen:And I just go,
Max Cohen:I am hungry.
George B. Thomas:And That that was Max's first words, by the way.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead:Okay. Well Well,
Max Cohen:that was a baby too.
Liz Moorehead:We're not talking about today? Food. We're talking about personalization.
Max Cohen:Alright. I'm out.
Liz Moorehead:He's not food. 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.
Liz Moorehead:Mhmm. Because this week, we're talking about HubSpot personalization strategies that are influential instead of totally flipping creepy. And I wanna share 2 stats as we open up today's conversation. 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.
Liz Moorehead: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.
Liz Moorehead:So this week, we are throwing ourselves down the personalization rabbit hole. We are gonna 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.
George B. Thomas:Yay. Yeah, Devin. What's
Liz Moorehead:up? Yep. We're also gonna be talking about what most inbounders are totally What's
Max Cohen:up?
Max Cohen:What's up?
Liz Moorehead:What's up, boy? How you doing?
George B. Thomas:Good? Look at
Liz Moorehead:that big smile. Look at that big smile.
Max Cohen:I'm excited. I'm I like personalization. It's such a fun topic. It's it's one of my favorite ways
Max Cohen:that Oh,
Liz Moorehead:there we go.
Max Cohen:I'm gonna get a good
George B. Thomas:Unconsciously honest. Rant today. 6 seconds and.
Max Cohen:Yep. Devin's already covered for heads.
Liz Moorehead:The hot takes drop him 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 wanna hear your takes either as a marketer or as a consumer when you're off the clock. How effective is personalization for you?
Liz Moorehead:I'm gonna open the floor, whoever wants to jump in.
Max Cohen:Personalization is highly effective when done correctly. I'm not gonna go down that rabbit hole yet. I'm just going to say it it's highly effective for me, when, both as a marketer and a consumer as a marketer, it's highly effective 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.
Max Cohen:And just imagining if that's all I saw in my phone, I'd be so angry.
George B. Thomas:Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. So I I like personalization. I think personalization is effective, when it doesn't look like, smell like, or taste like personalization.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Because then it's shocking.
Max Cohen: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?
Max Cohen: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?
Max Cohen: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 and turn their crappy outreach into email into a funny LinkedIn post that someone else, you know, goes and and blazes them online for. So, you know, I I think it should you you gotta be careful when you're doing it. Right? You wanna make sure it's not shoddy. You wanna make sure it's thoughtful.
Max Cohen:And you wanna 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? Then we just gotta 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.
Max Cohen:Clear history.
Liz Moorehead:Dump it, Max. Lunch today? We know you haven't.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. 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.
Liz Moorehead: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. 1 of our customers had an automated sequence that emailed the exact same email template to their customer in the same email thread 7 times in a row. It was personalized with their first name though, so that's good.
Max Cohen:Listen. If there's one thing we like here, it's persistence. Yeah. It's consistent. Gosh.
Max Cohen:We call that consistency. It just
Liz Moorehead:doesn't wanna take no for an answer. No. Well, what are some of our favorite examples of personalization that you've either either created or experienced?
Max Cohen:I've said this a 1000 times in the show, but, like, one of the best things that I think you can do right away is smart content on your home page when customers show up versus prospects. I mean, think about it. When people come to your site, they wanna be able to get helped super quickly. Right? They don't wanna just another avenue of someone trying to sell them something that they already own.
Max Cohen: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 gotta go deal with this.
Max Cohen:Again, they like to self solve. They're gonna go to their website, and if all they're kinda 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.
Max Cohen: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.
George B. Thomas:So, Max, I love that yours was external because I'm actually gonna 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.
George B. Thomas: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. And 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 it was very specific to 7 pieces of information that she needed to see every time somebody made a purchase in their organization.
George B. Thomas:And that's that's delightion, but it's internal delightion. Right? It's how can you use personalization to make my life easier as an employee of your organization?
Liz Moorehead:Say delishin one more time, please.
George B. Thomas:Well, if I'm gonna do that, I should probably be like Delightion. Of the
Intro:Oh my gosh. Wins. Wow.
Liz Moorehead:I have so
Max Cohen:Feeling so delighted right now.
George B. Thomas:Saying. If we're gonna throw it out there, we might as well just throw it out there.
Max Cohen:I'm feel I'm feeling sufficiently deloiced at the moment.
George B. Thomas:I'm delighted. I'm trying not
Max Cohen:to say it's
Liz Moorehead:calling us
Max Cohen:right now.
Liz Moorehead:How you feeling, Devin? Or you just politely abstaining for making a comment on white people nonsense.
Max Cohen:Devin Devin Deloist Bellamy over here.
George B. Thomas:Oh, we're Come on. Canceled.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Is
George B. Thomas:that an edit? I don't know if that's an edit. No. No. You could leave that empty.
Liz Moorehead:We're ridiculous. We're ridiculous. It's fine. We are full of nonsense. Anyway
Max Cohen:The the thing is
Liz Moorehead:We're good?
Max Cohen:If I if I call the seller every time something like that happen, we we never get anything done, really. So
Liz Moorehead:So that's some constructive feedback I was already for. Okay. But fair. Fair. Fair.
Liz Moorehead: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? Yes. Yeah?
Max Cohen: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 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.
Max Cohen:But then they will take different thumbnails for different people because they think that they'll react to you. So my Netflix does not look like your Netflix even though they're showing
Liz Moorehead:That's why every picture is Henry Cavill on mine. This makes a lot
George B. Thomas:of sense. Yeah. Go figure.
Max Cohen:Me too. I was wondering why.
George B. Thomas: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 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's I love Spotify.
George B. Thomas: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?
George B. Thomas: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 name today. Like, who the who but, you know, like, it's it's just it can be so much
Max Cohen:more. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:But but you have to have your ish together for it to be so much more too, though.
Max Cohen:And it's like a lot of people
Liz Moorehead:are picking up Celine pointed go ahead, Max.
George B. Thomas:What I
Max Cohen: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, like, you all won you don't really email our friends anymore. But, like, when you email, you know, a a a coworker, 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.
Max Cohen: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.
Liz Moorehead:Peace. You
Max Cohen:know? See you later, buddy.
George B. Thomas:So wait. Let's back up. Brought up to Oh, well, I'm
Liz Moorehead:gonna get to this point though, George.
George B. Thomas:Go go to Saleem 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 coworkers are your coworkers 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?
Max Cohen:George, shut the fuck. In all
George B. Thomas:caps just said no.
Liz Moorehead:We're all friends here. Everyone is happy.
George B. Thomas:Ellie.
Liz Moorehead:Are we all happy?
Max Cohen:Yeah. We're happily, baby.
Liz Moorehead:Everyone's fine. Everyone have a lot of sick.
George B. Thomas:Now let's get to Celine. Okay. Let's do
Liz Moorehead:it. My god. My god. Poor Salim. So first of all, let's just go back to his answer to your question, George, just now.
Liz Moorehead:Aren't you friends with you? His was an a resounding no in all caps, so there's that.
George B. Thomas:What was interesting know is not true, but
Liz Moorehead: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 too. 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 the personalization that I receive.
Max Cohen:Amen.
Liz Moorehead:So, George, I see you nodding along, and we got an amen from Max. George, talk to me about why you're nodding along with that. What what is resonating with you there?
George B. Thomas: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 personalization or very minimal personalization? Or better yet, is there 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.
George B. Thomas: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.
Max Cohen:Can I can I can I present a paradox? I don't know if it's a paradox. I don't really know what paradox means.
George B. Thomas:Hang on. I'll look it up while you're doing whatever you're gonna do.
Liz Moorehead:Break our brains. Do it, Max. Do it. Do it.
Max Cohen:I I do I really wanna see ads that aren't relevant to me?
George B. Thomas:Maybe if it's the right ad. Like, imagine if you did not have these dope hats.
Max Cohen:Yep.
George B. Thomas: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 wanna see it.
Max Cohen:But wouldn't that mean that it's relevant to me?
George B. Thomas:But it not at like, well
Max Cohen:oh. Yeah. Right? So Like, why would
Liz Moorehead:I wanna see something very interesting.
Max Cohen:Yeah. I'm just saying why would I wanna see ads about, like, I don't know, horseshoes? Like, yeah, like, you know, just like It's
George B. Thomas:a good game, bro.
Max Cohen:It's so true. Slow your roll. True. True. But, like, you know, I I I get the I get the argument of, like, you know, I wanna be in control of my data, but I also think about my experience online.
Max Cohen:And I'm a consumer just like anyone else. I like to buy things. And I guess I've 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?
Liz Moorehead:I'm not saying it's not clear. Interesting.
Max Cohen:But, yeah. We're getting into
Liz Moorehead:the realm of 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 3 times a week. It went out to 40,000 active subscribers. We were messing around with what it was going to look like visually.
Liz Moorehead:And we did an AB test. We were con 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 when it's super relevant, but, like, we're gonna take out that everything has an image.
Liz Moorehead: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.
Liz Moorehead:What was funny is that the a b test results which we ran 3 times across 3 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 what's fascinating is 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.
Liz Moorehead: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 the I you're not learning from me anymore. So it's that weird back and forth paradox that I think Max is talking about. Right?
Liz Moorehead:Where it's like, we say we want data privacy. We say we don't want these organizations to have access algorithms and personalization strategies really are happening at a micro level in ways we don't even realize. That that's all I have to say.
George B. Thomas:So so it's interesting, though. Like, I I I I wanna I wanna man, there's just so much that freaking might okay. Come on, brain. You can work. You can work.
George B. Thomas:So the the thing that keeps, like, punching me in the back of my forehead is this idea of you don't 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 the secondary thing to this would be like, you know, everybody wanted a faster horse until they wanted a car. Everybody wanted an m pay MP 3 player until they actually realized they wanted a phone.
George B. Thomas:Like like, that that's it's all these things where we think we
Max Cohen:think we understand
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas: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
Liz Moorehead:it, like, 17 times now. It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in
George B. Thomas:a potato. Yes.
Liz Moorehead:Know what
George B. Thomas:I'm hearing. Wrapped in a potato, though. It has to be in a potato.
Max Cohen:Fantastic. Can we can we talk to some of the potato paradox?
Liz Moorehead:A 100% we can. Sick. A 100% we can. I love it. George, I wanna keep you on the mic for a second.
Liz Moorehead:Oh. So we've been talking about the the paradoxes and the potatoes of personalization.
George B. Thomas:Oh my gosh. The 2 p's of personalization.
Liz Moorehead: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?
Liz Moorehead:And then I wanna hear from the other guys, Max and Devin, about how you view that line between creepy and and, yay, we like it.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas: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 what I am about to do, smart rule or personalization token, is it leaning into be 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.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas: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.
Liz Moorehead:Devin and Max, what do you think? Where do you draw the line?
Max Cohen:Yeah. So I have thoughts. My my first thing is, when it's overly specific. There was a trend on Facebook 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 man ninja superstar man, whatever, wasn't available, or it's too long or something. And people thought, oh, wow.
Max Cohen: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, yeah, it's a great shirt. But it's like, wait.
Max Cohen:How did they know I was born in 1980? Not a 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, Devon, and they'll have the hand in it for the question marks. Love that.
Max Cohen: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's 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.
Max Cohen: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.
George B. Thomas:See. 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 freak? Like, I didn't you mean they that wasn't just for me? That was, like, for everybody? Like,
Liz Moorehead:Yes. Because 1982 is the best year. I'm so sorry, George.
George B. Thomas:See. No. That's not what I've heard. I've not heard that.
Liz Moorehead:Purple. Purple.
Max Cohen:That's like, 1996 where it's at.
Max Cohen:Kidding me? I must just look so young and beautiful.
Liz Moorehead:You know, Max, that's what it is with both of us. When are you gonna drop that skin care routine, bro?
Max Cohen:Yeah. I remember oh, 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.
Max Cohen:But
George B. Thomas:then was that from Tony? You acquired us from Tony?
Max Cohen: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 said to her, because she was asking, like, how old we were or something.
Max Cohen: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.
Max Cohen:Like, for some everyone thinks I'm like a child. Like, I am I am Yeah. Anyway,
George B. Thomas:so I mean, you do drive places on the podcast.
Max Cohen:Listen. Hey. You know what? Adults drive cars. So irrelevant.
Max Cohen:Anyway, when it comes to, like, skirting a lot 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.
Max Cohen:Right. Yeah. People like to feel that, you know, they're. You know, they're they're doing stuff. They're anonymous.
Max Cohen: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.
George B. Thomas:And Wait. There's private browsers?
Max Cohen:Yeah. There's a private browsing button. Anyway, Come on, George. And 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 Web Right? That gets super weird.
Max Cohen: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, oh, what the what is that?
Max Cohen:Like
Max Cohen:Remember? But for, like, 3 months, that was the end thing to do. Like, that was the hot
Liz Moorehead:move for for a
Max Cohen:shutdown. Don't do that. Don't let me know that you saw me doing something, and I was in a vulnerable position. Right?
Max Cohen:That's not overly specific. Oh, you saw I was
Max Cohen:doing that?
Liz Moorehead:Salim 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.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:I I'm I need a bath. I literally need a bath, like, just that being red.
Liz Moorehead:Yeah. You're gonna start getting targeted for Dove soap now, just so you know. Max, keep going.
Max Cohen:And and it's just, like, you know, the the the other kind of creepy stuff too is just, like Irish spring. I sorry. Go ahead. I like soap too.
Liz Moorehead:We're just making sure Mark Zuckerberg heard.
Max Cohen:Can't wait
Liz Moorehead:to get all
Max Cohen:these I
Liz Moorehead:can't wait to
Max Cohen:get all these weird ads Can't
Max Cohen:wait to get all these
Max Cohen:I can't wait to get all these weird ads on on on LinkedIn. I'm gonna be getting,
Max Cohen:like, ads
Intro:for, like, you
Max Cohen:know, o from orida for, like, potato french fries and not that there's other oops, sweet potato.
Liz Moorehead:Lot of 19 71 pro content. Yeah. It's gonna be real weird.
George B. Thomas:Let's go.
Max Cohen:The the the I mean, the other thing too is just, like, following people to places that you just kinda don't belong in. Right? Like, if you're a b to b 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 him a leave Britney alone. Alright?
Max Cohen:Britney was on LinkedIn looking at stuff. Go ahead. Give her a relevant ad there. Right? Sure.
Max Cohen:I get it. She was on your site. You wanna remind her a little bit later. Hey. Remember when you were looking at us?
Max Cohen: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.
Max Cohen:Right? But, like, if the b to b 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?
Max Cohen:And people don't like getting watched.
Liz Moorehead:Do you wanna come back?
Max Cohen:Yeah. People don't like getting watched, and they definitely don't like getting followed. That is for sure. Right? Because that's the worst way to watch somebody.
Max Cohen:Right? You know, so again,
Max Cohen:it do
Max Cohen: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?
Max Cohen:Right? What would it be like if it was in real life? Just make that comparison.
Max Cohen:I'm sorry. I really gotta 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 in 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.
Max Cohen:Yeah. A cybersecurity firm or a marketing firm. Hey. You wanna be able to do this too?
Max Cohen:Come on. Yeah. Go. Yeah.
Max Cohen:You know, I I would watch that. Yeah.
Max Cohen:It's like it's
Liz Moorehead:just like Somebody leaning in saying Yeah. Somebody leaning in and saying, how's your ramen?
Max Cohen:First, there there would be a
Liz Moorehead:Someone leaning over and saying, how's that ramen? Is it this is it as good as the 3 other times you've had it this week for lunch? Oh, yeah.
George B. Thomas:Only only if you're eating ramen. Here's the thing, though. I gotta go back to what 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.
Liz Moorehead:That's violent.
George B. Thomas:Just stop it. I know I would agree with that. Creeper behind me and I was, like, trying to protect my family and the only thing I had was a baseball bat
Liz Moorehead: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.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And I think we've kind of, talked about some of this, to be honest with you. Like
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas: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 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, and search persona. And I want you to open up the persona tool and then email me.
George B. Thomas:No. Actually, email Max if the no. I'm just kidding. Email me if your persona property is empty. That's 1.
George B. Thomas: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 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.
George B. Thomas: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 wanna 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.
George B. Thomas: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.
Max Cohen:Yeah. And and and George, I think you're bringing up, like, a really good point, like, going back and mentioning, like, the that persona drop down filled in HubSpot, which I think is, like, one of the if 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 overengineer 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.
Max Cohen: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 and get without that person's consent. You don't need to ask them a 1,000,000,000 for like, questions on a form about, yeah, what's your kid's you know, first 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 drop down 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?
Max Cohen: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.
Max Cohen: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?
Max Cohen: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 jib?
Max Cohen: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.
Max Cohen: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.
George B. Thomas:Crazy. So so here's the thing. I wanna add 1 a third piece on here because I think it's a third piece that is isn't they're all important, but, like right? So I I talked about inaccurate or outdated or nonexistent data. I talked about, failure to test because, by the way, when you do test, you can optimize and make it better over time.
George B. Thomas:But the 3rd piece that I want us to think about when you're when you're jump to jump to the conversion and the conversation, but how are you even gonna 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 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 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.
George B. Thomas: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, personalization goes like, I like pizza, and that feels
Liz Moorehead:freaking weird. On a roll?
George B. Thomas:Because you're on hey. Sushi roll. That was a very Human. Things for you to say, Liz. Good joke.
George B. Thomas: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.
Liz Moorehead:Yeah. And I
George B. Thomas: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, Hello, I don't know what that is.
Max Cohen:Like, weird.
George B. Thomas:I don't know.
Liz Moorehead:Where'd that come from?
George B. Thomas:That was weird.
Liz Moorehead:Spooky aliens.
Max Cohen:At a point.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. So here 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.
Liz Moorehead: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?
Max Cohen:Smart content.
Liz Moorehead:Yes. Tell me more.
Max Cohen: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 they're the only ones
Max Cohen:Yeah. I was talking to someone the other day, and, they'd asked me. They're like, what are your thoughts on, like, HubSpot CMS? Right? And I was like, well, I'm not a web developer.
Max Cohen: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.
Max Cohen: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 of their outside data source. It's not anything, like, wacky or crazy you're doing.
Max Cohen: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 gotta 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.
Max Cohen: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 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.
Max Cohen: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?
Max Cohen:Use all that to kinda personalize what the next steps of the journey look like. Right? You don't need that hyper specific information to do all sort like, personalization is not just that kind of stuff. Right? It it it could be a lot more.
George B. Thomas:So I'm gonna 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 have 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.
George B. Thomas:Like and, again, it's the personalization that they don't know that it's actually being personalized because they can't see the 7 or 17 other people that it's happening to. But there are some really smart things just from a global website strategy that I 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, 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.
Max Cohen:Mhmm. You'll really dig this newsletter. If you're a if you Just
Liz Moorehead:for you.
George B. Thomas: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.
Max Cohen:Oh, I was well, yeah. I was going to the Gardner angle.
Liz Moorehead:Okay. Moving on. Moving on. Because that was awful. That was awful.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead:I feel wildly uncomfortable.
George B. Thomas:So 2 of us are hungry, and Devin has indigested. Good way to end the podcast. That gave me
Max Cohen:a yard yet.
George B. Thomas:What's next? Anyway
Liz Moorehead:Yep. So here's what I wanna 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?
George B. Thomas: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.
Max Cohen:Don't do it. Don't, overdo it. Just like I mean, basically, repeating what George said. It it's to add flavor. It it is not the substance.
Max Cohen: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. Tell 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.
Liz Moorehead:Salt and acid are are good to brighten a meal. They are not the whole meal.
Max Cohen:Yeah. I'm just gonna say, stop making your SDRs look like dip in their, you know, reach out emails with super irrelevant failed attempts at, you know, personalization. Just, you know, try to try to not accept personal.
Liz Moorehead:Personal place of hurt, Max?
Max Cohen: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 1,000,000,000 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?
Max Cohen:Don't set them up for failure. Don't set him up for failure.
Liz Moorehead:Yeah. That's the worst.
George B. Thomas:LinkedIn LinkedIn LinkedIn post.
Liz Moorehead: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 gonna matter.
Liz Moorehead:The personalization, like, hi, Kevin. Would you still like this very irrelevant thing? Like, it's not gonna do anything for you.
Max Cohen:I didn't know you had such a good Kermit the frog, impression.
Liz Moorehead:Thank you.
Max Cohen:Wow.
Liz Moorehead:Thank you.
Max Cohen:Hi, Kevin. Can I get you to see with this ebook? On that note, what? Potatoes.
George B. Thomas:No. No? No. Potatoes. Welcome to
Liz Moorehead:the paradoxes and potatoes of personalization.
George B. Thomas: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. Mister Smith Stew, Timmy's crispy fries, mister 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.
George B. Thomas: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 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.
George B. Thomas:Make sure you head over to the hub heroes.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, hashtag hub euros 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.
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