Blog for B2B professionals

Leveraging Smart Content for Personalized CTAs in HubSpot: A Guide

Written by Lukáš Bárta | Sep 4, 2024 10:08:35 PM

People love it when businesses provide personalized solutions specifically for them. Even a personalized message or notification makes them feel like they are an essential part of that particular business.

Because of this, personalisation plays a vital role in the digital marketing process of your business. HubSpot provides Smart Content features that help in making personalized connections with your customers and significantly improve your conversion rates.

Other than personalized content, customized CTAs even generate a lasting impact on the reader's mind and lure them to click on the button, and engage with the process.

If you are looking for a guide on how to create personalized CTAs using HubSpot Smart Content, you are at the right place. Let's deep dive into the content and learn more about it.

 

What is Smart Content in HubSpot?

Smart Content is a HubSpot feature that allows marketers to show personalized content to visitors based on their interactions and properties, such as language, location, referral source, and device type.

It's generally used to add a personalised touch to Call-to-Action (CTA) buttons, blogs, emails, templates, pages, images, blocks of text, and subject lines.

Smart content, aka 'adaptive' or 'dynamic' content, helps in optimizing the user experience of the system. Ultimately increases the chances of conversion. However, people with blocked cookies will miss the opportunity to enjoy smart content variations.

 

How HubSpot Smart Content Works?

HubSpot Smart Content may seem complex, but it's actually pretty simple! 

When you access any business website, HubSpot will identify you by using the stored cookies in your browser. Without any previous HubSpot cookie, you will be recognised as an unknown contact.

Through cookies, HubSpot takes a look at the visitor's browser settings, such as device type, IP address, and preferred language, to determine their location.

Depending on the defined smart rules, HubSpot displays the relevant smart content to you. Otherwise, it shows the default website content that is visible to each visitor.

So basically, if your browser has a cookie of a site that you visited, HubSpot will extract your information and use it to provide you personalized data.

 

Types of HubSpot Smart Content Rules

Here are different types of HubSpot smart content rules that help you with providing personalized content to your site visitors:

  • Ad Source: Show content to the viewers based on the ads they have clicked.
  • Device Type: Build the user experience based on the type of device (desktop, mobile, or tablet) that they use to access your website.
  • List Membership: Users who are already a part of your HubSpot CRM and access your site will get a unique customized experience through the list category.
  • Referral Source: Did a user find your website through a Google Search, ad, or other form of referral? You can provide them with a personalized experience accordingly.
  • Lifecycle Stage: Display personalized content on the basis of the value of the visitor's 'lifecycle stage' property.
  • Location and Language: Displays personalized content to the visitors based on their preferred language and current location.

Now, let's see how these HubSpot smart content rules are used to create unique CTAs and other personalized content.

 

Personalized CTAs - One of the Key HubSpot Smart Content Use Cases

There are multiple use cases of HubSpot smart content like CTAs, Mobile forms, mobile CTAs, emails, and more. Here, we will primarily focus on creating personalized CTAs using HubSpot Smart content. Let's first see the power and benefits of a personalized CTA.

Personalized CTAs are an essential part of modern marketing campaigns. It contains a message that is customized on the basis of a person's behavior, interests, and preferences. These CTAs are used in different marketing channels like email marketing, websites, and social media.

Here are the key benefits of using personalized CTAs:

  • Enhanced conversions
  • Better user engagement
  • Improved user experience
  • Shows a sense of urgency
  • Helps with lead nurturing and more

Now, let's see how to create a personalized CTA by using HubSpot smart content rules and strategies.

 

Creating Personalized CTAs Using HubSpot Smart Content

Personalized CTAs are buttons, messages, or links made to resonate with particular segments of your audience. Through HubSpot smart content, you can build dynamic CTAs that change depending on who is viewing them. This approach improves user engagement, making likely chances of CTA conversion. Let's see the steps to build personalized CTAs using smart content.

 

HubSpot Smart Rules for Personalized CTAs

Here are the primary smart rule criterias used for building personalized CTAs:

  • Device type
  • Country
  • Referral source
  • Contact list membership
  • Preferred language
  • Lifecycle stage

As discussed in the prior section, these rules will gain access to visitor's data through cookies or similar options. Then, this information will be used to build variable content for personalized CTAs.

 

Build a Personalized CTA using HubSpot Smart Content

by implementing the below-given steps:

  • Open your HubSpot account and navigate to Marketing, then to CTAs
  • Click on the dropdown menu on the top left and choose CTAs (Legacy)
  • Select the CTA you want to edit and click on Actions, then Create Smart Version. This CTA will display default content if a user is an unknown contact.
  • Now, in the right panel, select the Criteria you want to make intelligent rules on. You will have to choose the radio buttons next to the criteria that you wish to include here.
  • Click on the dropdown menu and start configuring your smart rules for personalized CTAs.
  • Once you are done configuring one rule, click on the Next button at the bottom.
  • Continue setting up other CTA legacy rules.
  • Once you complete configuring the needful rules, click on Save.

In case you want to review and manage your completed smart CTAs, you can follow these steps:

  • Click on Add Another Smart Version to add a new smart CTA button
  • You can reorder rules by clicking on Reorder Rules
  • Once you are done with everything, click on Finish for the final commit.

 

Real-World Examples of Smart Rules Personalized CTAs

Here are some real-world examples to precisely understand personalized CTAs:

  1. Lifecycle Stage CTAs

There are different lifecycle stages of a visitor like the Subscriber stage, Lead stage, Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) stage, Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) Stage, Customer stage etc. Its CTAs can be written as:

  • Subscriber stage- ‘Join Our Free Webinar to Learn More’
  • MQL stage- ‘Schedule a Free Consultation’
  • Customer stage- ‘Access Your Exclusive Rewards’
  1. Location-Based CTAs

If a visitor is visiting your site from a specific region, you can build a CTA tailored to that location.

  • For users in the Czech Republic- ‘Explore HubSpot Services in Czech Republic’
  • For users in Asia- ‘Connect with Our Asia-Pacific Sales Team’
  1. Device-Specific CTAs

When a visitor is visiting your site from different devices, different variations of CTAs are shown. For example:

  • For mobile users- ‘Tap to Call Now for Support’
  • For Tablet users- ‘Swipe Through Our Services’

 

Best Practices to Create Personalized CTAs

Here are some best practices to keep in mind while creating personalized CTAs for marketing purposes:

  • Use clear, structured, and compelling language
  • Know your Audience and their needs
  • Maintain consistency
  • Analyze CTA's performance regularly to know which tactic is more beneficial to grow your business sales
  • Make mobile-friendly CTAs
  • Test different CTAs through the A/B testing process to know which variation is performing better and bringing more conversions

 

Final Verdict

With HubSpot Smart Content, creating personalized CTAs gets easier. You just have to set up some Smart rules and fetch visitor behavior. This data will then be used to tailor CTAs according to the specific preferences of your website visitors. Each visitor (except unknown contacts) will see personalized content when they access your website. This process ultimately brings more conversions to your website, increasing its loyal customer base.

At Buldok Marketing, we are passionate about helping our clients harness the full potential of HubSpot and add feathers of success to their digital marketing wings. Unlock the complete usefulness of HubSpot Smart Content and improve your personalized marketing strategies to attract new and more customers.