Thalox Blog | Data-Driven Marketing Insights

Increase Your Sales Qualified Leads Conversion in HubSpot with Thalox

Written by Laura Tussi | Feb 8, 2024 6:36:24 PM
As digital marketers in today's online landscape, few challenges are as significant as converting sales qualified leads (SQL) on platforms like HubSpot. Recently, we partnered with OMB Digital to host a webinar titled "How to Triple Your SQL Conversion in HubSpot", focusing on addressing this pressing issue. Our goal was to dissect the prevalent concerns of marketers in 2024 and offer practical solutions for immediate implementation. The webinar showcased a success story from one of our clients and included an interactive live Q&A session with insights from industry experts.
 

Central to our discussion was the transformative impact of AI-driven marketing on enhancing lead conversion processes. We delved into actionable strategies for harnessing AI to refine audience segmentation, foster deeper engagement, and drive measurable results through personalized campaigns. Throughout the webinar, we explored methodologies and tactics aimed at tripling SQL conversion rates, with a spotlight on Thalox, a certified audience segmentation tool for maximizing HubSpot's capabilities. For those who couldn't attend or wish to revisit the content, we've included a recording of the webinar below, allowing you to glean insights and strategies at your convenience. 

 

Strategies for Increasing Sales Qualified Leads Conversion in HubSpot

In the following paragraphs, we'll explore the proven techniques discussed in our recent webinar to increase sales qualified lead conversion efforts in HubSpot.

To begin, we identified six main challenges that marketers are currently grappling with:

  1. Audience Segmentation
  2. Low Conversion Rates
  3. Email Marketing Performance
  4. Leveraging AI Tools in HubSpot
  5. Lead Handover to Sales
  6. Data Standardization in HubSpot

Each of these challenges presents unique obstacles in the journey towards maximizing lead conversion. Let's explore how our webinar addressed these issues and provided actionable solutions.

 

Audience Segmentation

Segmentation is the first step companies should take but so many don't. And it becomes their first mistake. 

Segmentation is a crucial aspect of effective marketing. One-size-fits-all messages are no longer effective. Your message needs to be adapted to your audience. However, segmentation can be a challenge due:

  • Poor data quality;
  • Lack of understanding of customer behavior;
  • Difficulty in tracking customer journeys;

Luckily, HubSpot allows you to connect various data sources, making segmentation easier. But to make segmentation even better, we can leverage artificial intelligence (AI) tools like Thalox. AI can help identify patterns in the data that humans may not be able to recognize, enabling us to create more accurate and targeted segments.

 

Low Conversion Rates

Low conversion rates can be an indicator that something is amiss in our lead nurturing and sales process. This could mean you're not making as much profit as you could, you're struggling to really connect with your customers, and your growth isn't moving at the pace you'd hoped for. Essentially, it's a sign that something's not quite right in the way people are experiencing your website or the journey you've laid out for them. It could be a result of ineffective communication, a lack of understanding of customer needs, or a mismatch in lead qualification criteria.

By using AI tools like Thalox, we can optimize our campaigns, improve our lead qualification process, and ultimately increase conversion rates.

 

Email Engagement Performance

Smart marketers know that the key to great results is keeping customers interested with relevant and targeted information. Email engagement is always a challenge for marketers. We constantly strive to improve open rates, click-through rates, and overall engagement.  We can employ various strategies such as:

  • Optimizing subject lines
  • Including engaging preheader text
  • Personalizing content
  • Leveraging transactional emails
  • Conducting A/B testing
  • Ensuring mobile-friendliness
  • Using segmentation for targeted campaigns

Thalox can help us further enhance email engagement by identifying inactive contacts and segments that need re-engagement. By targeting the right audience with personalized messages, we can significantly improve email engagement.


Leveraging AI Tools

AI tools are increasingly popular in the marketing industry but let's face it: we're all a bit weary of the constant buzz surrounding AI. At this point, what we truly crave is a tool that simplifies our lives and delivers tangible results. We're not interested in mastering a slew of new functionalities; we simply want to optimize our current practices.

Top AI sales and marketing tools are no longer a luxury.

AI can provide:

  • Automation: They handle repetitive tasks, saving time for strategic work.
  • Precision and Personalization: AI ensures accurate data analysis for informed decision-making.
  • Cost Reduction: Despite being affordable, AI improves efficiency.
  • Speed and Agility: AI processes data quickly, enhancing marketing agility.
  • Creativity and Innovation: AI sparks creativity by generating ideas and freeing marketers from mundane tasks.

Data Quality

Data quality is a significant challenge for many businesses. Poor data quality can lead to misalignment between marketing and sales teams, resulting in a low conversion rate of MQLs to SQLs.

Data quality is a significant challenge for many businesses. Poor data quality can lead to misalignment between marketing and sales teams, resulting in a low conversion rate of MQLs to SQLs.

By standardizing contact data, you can:

  • Eliminate duplicates
  • Improve data quality
  • Reduce errors or inconsistencies
  • Enhance business processes
  • Avoid lost sales or poor customer service experiences

This process boosts data integrity, aiding in analysis, segmentation, and targeted marketing. However, manually performing these tasks can be time-consuming and error-prone. This is where AI offers an efficient, accurate solution.

In the webinar we showed how we tackle this challenge for a client, as we performed a data audit using Thalox. The audit helped us identify data issues such as low fill rates, duplicated properties, and inconsistent values. By standardizing and enriching the data, we improved lead prioritization, segmentation, and lead nurturing.

 

Lead Handover and Alignment

The misalignment between marketing and sales teams often leads to accusations and blame games. However, it's essential to remember that both teams need to work together and have a clear understanding of lead qualification criteria and processes. Implementing a clear lead handover process and ensuring that sales teams have the necessary tools and information to follow up effectively can significantly enhance lead conversion. 

The main reasons for this challenge include:

  • Marketing and Sales Teams Misalignment: Are the lead qualification criteria too rigid, or are marketing efforts failing to generate qualified leads?
  • Lack of Understanding of the Customer's Journey
  • Content Targeting the Wrong Audience
  • Ineffective Engagement Channel Strategy
  • Weak Lead Management Framework

Thalox Engagement Score

Thalox provides a unique engagement score that helps prioritize leads based on their likelihood to engage with future campaigns. By categorizing contacts into high engagement, dormant, and inactive segments, we can tailor our messaging and focus on nurturing high-value leads. Regularly updating the engagement score through new data inputs ensures that our campaigns remain relevant and targeted.

 

Results and Actionable Insights

During the webinar, we shared a compelling success story highlighting the transformative impact of Thalox on one of our clients. This client successfully tripled their SQLs in HubSpot by leveraging Thalox's capabilities. Their primary objective was to identify their top contacts for targeted campaigns and ensure seamless handover to the sales team. Facing challenges with unengaged contacts, they sought to re-engage them while simultaneously boosting open rates, click-through rates, and lead quality.

In addition to leveraging Thalox, the client underwent a comprehensive HubSpot instance audit with our team to gain deeper insights into the necessary actions. This audit provided invaluable clarity on optimizing their HubSpot setup for maximum effectiveness. By thoroughly examining their HubSpot instance, we identified key areas for improvement and implemented tailored strategies to address them. This proactive approach ensured that the client was equipped with the necessary tools and guidance to optimize their HubSpot platform and further enhance their lead generation and conversion efforts.

Through the implementation of the Thalox method, the client witnessed remarkable improvements in lead engagement and conversion rates. Over a five-month period, they observed a notable shift in the density graph, indicating a more balanced distribution among engagement segments. The high engagement segment surged from 8% to 20%, while inactive contacts decreased from 62% to 52%. These outcomes underscore the efficacy of the Thalox method in enhancing lead qualification and conversion processes. Read more here.

Watch the full webinar:

 

In conclusion, increasing SQL conversion in HubSpot requires a strategic approach that encompasses segmentation, data quality, lead nurturing, and sales alignment. Leveraging AI tools like Thalox can significantly enhance these efforts and lead to improved engagement and conversion rates. 

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Remember, the key is to align marketing and sales teams, prioritize leads effectively, and continually refine your processes based on actionable insights from data analysis.