Everything You Need to Know about HubSpot's Email Tool

Resources:

Get started with the marketing email tool:
https://knowledge.hubspot.com/cos-general/get-started-with-the-marketing-email-tool

Create and send marketing emails in the classic email editor:
https://knowledge.hubspot.com/email/create-and-send-marketing-emails

Sending Emails With the HubSpot Drag-and-Drop Editor:
https://blog.hubspot.com/customers/sending-emails-hubspot-drag-and-drop-editor

Full Transcript:

First, let's take a look at the email tool’s main interface where you can review, organize, and manage your emails. 

To get to your email tool, go to the marketing tab in the main navigation bar and select email. Once there, you’ll see that we are in the Manage tab. We’ll explore the Analyze tab in our video about HubSpot Analytics Tools.

In this main interface, there are lots of ways in which you can organize and filter your emails, so that they are easily accessible when you return to the tool later. In the top left corner you find a tab for folders which will toggle from list view to folder view. From there you can create custom folders by clicking the “Create Folder” button or you can select an existing folder to view emails within it. To insert emails into a folder, select 1 or more emails and then click the “Move” button in order to move emails into a desired folder. Also when selecting 1 or more emails, you have the options to delete or archive those emails. 

Speaking of which, on the left hand side of the list view, you will find a set of filters that allow you to filter by email state. By default it is set to all emails (not including archived), but you can switch the filter to only show you emails still being drafted, scheduled to be sent in the future, already sent, or emails that you have opted to archive. 

Below that you will find a “more tools” dropdown that will allow you to manage your contacts who have bounced or unsubscribed from email.

In the main email area, you will find a list of emails you have created, along with several columns of high level data about how each email performed. You can adjust these columns to include more or less data points by simply selecting the “Edit Columns” button and either adding or removing certain fields. In the same toolbar, you will also find options to search for an email, export email data, and filter emails by type and/or campaign.

Now that you know how to manage emails, let’s discuss how to create and edit emails! There are several ways to do this, including editing existing emails and cloning emails, but we’ll be creating an email from scratch as this will show you the full range of tools available to you when building an email. There are also several types of emails you can create, all of which play their own roles in your overall marketing strategy. Let's take a look!

In order to edit or clone an existing email, you would simply hover over the email and click one of these two buttons, but we are going to click the orange button here in order to create a new email. From there you’ll be prompted to choose one of three email types: Regular, Automated, or Blog/RSS.

Regular emails are the typical, one-off emails that you will send to a set list of people at a set day and time. Automated emails on the other hand, will be published and placed inside of a workflow where it will be sent to individuals once they reach a certain set of criteria which we’ll be covering in another video. Blog/RSS emails are usually sent to users automatically when you publish a blog post on a blog they subscribe to. We will also be covering blogs in a separate video. 

Today though, we’ll be creating “Regular” emails. Next you’ll need to select either a Custom template or a drag and drop template.

Each template type has it’s advantages and drawbacks, and depending on the type and complexity of the email you want to create, you’ll find that one type may be better than the other. Generally, Custom email templates are more appropriate for simpler, one-column emails, while Drag and drop is more appropriate for complex emails with a varied layout. Let’s start with “Custom”.

You can use the filters or search bar to find the template you’re looking for, but we are going to select our first template option and give it a quick title.

Once inside the email you'll find that we are in the “Edit” tab and this is where we’ll be doing most of the work. Starting at the top, is the email details section. This is where you’ll insert your name and email, subject line, and preview text that you want to see show up in your contact’s inbox. You can also personalize the subject line and preview text using “Personalization Tokens”, to include things like a user’s name, to give a more personal touch.

Below that, you’ll find the main email body. Clicking into it, you should see this toolbar containing a set of word processing tools and options to insert images, CTAs, tables, personalization tokens, and more! You can even insert emojis! All the content here is fully customizable, and should you make any mistakes, simply click the hamburger icon to view your revision history and revert back to earlier point in time.

On the left-hand side you find several tools for testing your email. The top tool is used to preview what your email will look like on different device types or in your browser, and this tool is used to see what your email will look like in different browsers and email clients. This tool though, is used to send an actual test email to yourself or others and this is the most accurate way to determine if your email looks good across all email clients, browsers, and operating systems. This tool contains suggested ways you can optimize your emails and this one is simply a layout of your email template.

Lastly we have the A/B testing tool, but that deserves a video of its own.

Next, let’s take a look at the settings tab. Here you have options to rename your email, assign the email to a campaign and select a subscription type.

Subscription type is especially important, since it determines what category this email is listed under and by extension, what category of email the user may unsubscribe from. If you select the wrong subscription type, your users may inadvertently unsubscribe from content they want and still receive emails about things they don't. You wouldn't want someone to accidentally unsubscribe from your blog because you selected the wrong subscription type on an event email!

Next, is the Recipients tab. Here is where you can include or exclude lists of contacts you have created, as well as include or exclude individual contacts in your database. Were this an automated email, you would not have to select any lists at all. Here you can also choose to not send the email to contacts that HubSpot has determined to be engaged with your emails in the past.

Finally, we have the review tab. This is where you can double check you have done everything properly, before moving onto the Send or Schedule tab, where you can either send the email now, schedule it for later, or schedule it based on your user’s timezones.

Once you feel everything is complete, click the “Send” button and your email will be sent or scheduled.

Lastly today, we are going to be exploring the drag and drop email creator, which while it has some unique features, is still very similar to regular custom templates. 

To get started, go ahead and create another regular email and select a basic drag and drop email template. Once inside the editor, the biggest change you’ll probably notice is the large editor pane on the left hand side. In the content tab, you can add more content sections such as images and CTAs, as well as add multi-column layouts, to give your email more variety. However, keep in mind that the drag and drop email editor does not let you insert images or CTAs directly into the text editor. If you want text on either side of an image or CTA, you have to sandwich that module between two text modules.

In the Design tab, you have complete control over how the styling of your email in a way that the regular email editor does not offer. You can change template colors, text font and color, button styles, and much more! The downside to this feature, is that the email does not take on your accounts default email styles, which are set under “Settings” > “Email”. 

This means that you will need to reset your styles every time you create a new drag and drop email and is probably the main reason you might opt to use the traditional email editor. You can circumvent this by cloning an old drag and drop email with the styles you want, but this isn't always reasonable.

The last new feature available is located here and it is a quick and easy way to undo an edit you just made. The revision history option still exists but is hiding inside of the “Last saved” link here.

The remaining features of the email editor are exactly the same, but like the revision history, where they are located has changed in some cases. The “Send test email” now lives here.... the options to preview your email on different devices, browsers, and email clients now lives here…. And all of your “Email details” are now under the settings tab, along with your email name, subscription type, and campaign name. The A/B testing option now lives under “Settings” as well.

Finally we have our “Recipients” option under the “Send or Schedule” tab on the left, and the actual send or schedule options on the right.