Marketing automation has moved from the “nice-to-have” to the “must-have” list for sales and marketing leaders. Why? Because marketing automation helps businesses align marketing efforts to key sales goals and capture critical metrics that help us understand what truly drives predictable – and meaningful – sales activities.
As a HubSpot Certified partner, we’ve seen firsthand how automation capabilities provide insights about marketing programs and customer behaviors that allow us to quantifiably improve sales pipeline.
Team Blue Sparq Marketing shares this blog to show you how you can leverage HubSpot’s marketing automation capabilities to define and capture key metrics and improve your ability to convert leads into actionable sales opportunities.
1. Lead Scoring and Qualification
Using Automation: One of the most frustrating parts of sales and marketing can be figuring out which leads are worth following up with. Marketing throws any and all leads over to Sales and Sales spends hours filtering through them to find the ones worth pursuing. It’s not a great strategy. HubSpot’s lead scoring feature makes this conundrum so much easier by automatically assigning scores to leads based on their actions — like opening emails, visiting key pages, or downloading content.
Capturing Metrics: You can track how often a lead interacts with your emails, whether they’re checking out your pricing page, or if they’ve grabbed a download. Based on the activity, each contact receives a score, typically called an MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead). MQLs helps marketing and sales leaders quickly decipher which leads are showing serious interest and which ones need more nurturing.
Igniting Predictable Sales Activities: With properly nurtured and scored contacts, your sales team can focus on the leads that are most likely to convert. And with automation, those hot leads are automatically passed along to your sales reps for a timely follow-up while the leads that need more time can be added to nurture workflows delivering personalized and relevant content as they warm up to a conversion —no one slips through the cracks.
2. Tracking Email Engagement
Using Automation: Ever wonder who’s actually reading your emails? HubSpot’s email marketing automation lets you track exactly that. Whether someone clicked a link, ignored your message, or only skimmed the content, automation can trigger follow-ups based on those behaviors.
Capturing Metrics: Keeping an eye on open rates, click-through rates (CTR), and what content gets the most engagement can give you some serious insights into what’s working—and what’s not.
Igniting Predictable Sales Activities: When someone’s consistently opening your emails and clicking links, that’s a pretty good sign they’re interested – and that you are delivering content they care about. With automated follow-ups, you can turn interest into action, like scheduling a demo or reaching out for a sales consult.
3. Behavioral Tracking on Your Website
Using Automation: HubSpot’s tracking codes are like having a magnifying glass on how visitors use your website. You can set up automation workflows to trigger certain actions when visitors engage with the most important content on your site, like returning to your pricing page or downloading a resource multiple times.
Capturing Metrics: By tracking things like page views, how long someone stays on a page, and what content they’re downloading, you can really understand where a lead is in their buying journey and what content is most interesting for your target audiences.
Predictable Sales Activities: The data you gather from this tracking can trigger sales activities—like sending a personalized follow-up email or making a direct sales call when a lead is showing serious buying intent. The key here is timing, and automation makes sure your outreach is spot-on.
4. Workflow Analytics
Using Automation: Automation isn’t just about sending out emails or scoring leads—it’s also about improving your entire process. HubSpot’s automated workflows allow you to nurture leads with personalized content, task assignments, and more. Tracking how well these workflows perform is key to understanding what’s moving leads through your sales funnel – and what isn’t so you can make continuous improvements.
Capturing Metrics: Pay attention to things like workflow completion rates, how engaged people are with your emails during a sequence, and how well your leads are moving from one stage to the next. These are the metrics that tell you whether your workflows are hitting the mark.
Igniting Predictable Sales Activities: Once you figure out which workflows are driving the most conversions, you can double down on what’s working and replicate those successful strategies. For instance, if a particular email sequence leads to a lot of demo requests, that’s a good sign to lean into similar content for future campaigns.
5. Form Submissions and Lead Attribution
Using Automation: HubSpot’s forms do more than just collect information — they kick off automation workflows that help you manage those leads efficiently. Plus, they let you attribute leads to the specific campaigns or content that brought them in.
Capturing Metrics: It’s important to track not just the number of form submissions, but also which channels (like organic search, paid ads, or social media) are driving the most leads. This helps you see which marketing efforts are performing the best and which efforts need refinement.
Igniting Predictable Sales Activities: Knowing where your best leads are coming from allows you to focus your sales efforts on the most effective channels. If you notice a certain whitepaper is generating high-quality leads, you can prioritize follow-up outreach with those contacts.
Wrapping It All Up
Marketing automation with HubSpot is a must-have tool in the MarTech toolkits of today. It gives you the tools to capture crucial metrics that provide a deeper understanding of your prospects’ behavior and engagement. When you have these insights at your fingertips, you can create more predictable sales activities—whether that’s focusing on high-quality leads, setting up smart follow-ups, or making sure your workflows are running smoothly. With the right strategy in place, HubSpot can help you streamline your sales process, boost conversions, and drive consistent growth for your business.
Our advice, don’t go it alone! HubSpot is an amazing tool that will drive marketing and sales alignment and performance! But it takes an expert to set it up and activate it correctly. Consider bringing in a HubSpot certified partner like Blue Sparq Marketing to get it implemented and optimized correctly from the start. You’ll be up and running faster, and you’ll minimize the all-too-real risk of making errors that lead to long-term frustration.
If you have any questions or would like help with your Marketing Automation, contact us! As a certified HubSpot partner, we would love to partner alongside you as you pursue your growth journey.
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