PDFs, PPTs and various document based collaterals are widely used by sales & marketing teams. While HubSpot offers great marketing capabilities, the same may not extend to its document sharing-related features.
CloudFiles offers a specialized, deeply integrated, file-sharing solution in HubSpot. In this article, we explore lead generation, qualification, campaign automation, sales alignment & content reporting for file-based collateral in HubSpot. We refer to CloudFiles in each of these sections to see how the app enhances the HubSpot capabilities.
Lead generation is the process of getting people into your HubSpot. Regulatory provisions and changing customer preferences have made the process challenging today. Marketers often use file based collateral for lead generation in various ways.
File based collaterals such as e-books, case-studies, whitepapers etc. are often used to generate leads. These files may be hosted prominently on websites, shared via email or downloaded after a HubSpot form submissions.
For example, a whitepaper may be available as a link on the website’s homepage. Visitors would be directed to a HubSpot form to fill their personal details. Once submitted, the whitepaper would either get downloaded, or served as an attachment in a follow-up email.
CloudFiles offers various file features that work with HubSpot to collect quality leads -
Lead qualification is the process of selecting the best fit leads to unburden your downstream pipeline. HubSpot offers various segmentation and scoring features that enable qualification. Files add more metrics and hence more complexity to the qualification process.
If you are sharing PDFs & PPTs with your audience, metrics such as reading time, content coverage, and number of repeat sessions can help decide lead quality. Feeding this data into HubSpot’s workflows and dynamic lists can help segment and score leads better.
For example, a prospect might have spent a couple minutes on the pricing page of the presentation before exiting. Here, the logical next step would be to send info about discounts or at least let the sales executive know this, so they are better prepared for the next meeting.
CloudFiles can help gather and utilize these metrics right inside of HubSpot. Here are a few relevant features -
Your website and it’s content is working 24x7, unlike your team. Various HubSpot features can be used to set fully automated, hyper-personalized marketing campaigns. However, a focus on file collateral adds some new flavor to this.
Having access to lead’s previous file analytics can enable highly refined automated emails campaigns. Some common internal and external use-cases include -
CloudFiles offers a number of file based trigger, filters & actions for HubSpot. Here are a few key ones for marketing -
A continuous communication between sales & marketing is important so as to align with the revenue goal. The problem grows complex when teams deal with external storages that sit outside the CRM.
While marketing teams need to develop, maintain and update content, sales needs to access the latest versions for sharing. Pushing the consumption analytics back to marketing may help them further optimize this content.
The backend storage may be Google Drive, SharePoint, Dropbox, HubSpot storage etc. Since sales team is most often on the HubSpot records (Deals, Contacts etc…), this access & collection of analytics is even more difficult.
CloudFiles integrates HubSpot with cloud storages, collects analytics and pushes it back. It enables better sales - marketing alignment using following features -
Marketing teams often deal with multiple variables such as which content is working, what can be improved, or what’s putting off leads. A good reporting dashboard is always required. This becomes even more complicated when talking about files.
File reporting is the analytics on the PDF / PPT content such as E-books, whitepapers etc… File reporting can encompass similar metrics as content reporting including including reading time, drop-points, bounce stats and number of repeat sessions, users and sessions.
Special file engagement metrics can include download stats, exit pages, page-wise time spent, percentage of document covered (bounce depth) etc…
CloudFiles provides detailed and drill-down analytics at various places in HubSpot. The HubSpot Cookie integration can be used in special ways for making HubSpot reporting file-aware -
To summarize, all aspects of marketing, from generation & qualification of leads, to campaign automation & reporting, to aligning with the sales team, have many file related touchpoints. So file-centric thinking is important for marketers.
HubSpot being the #1 marketing CRM, does offer some file-centricity, however the CloudFiles-HubSpot integration takes it to a whole new level. The 23 features covered in this article can be used in combination with each to streamline all types of marketing file sharing.
Siddharth is the co-founder & head of growth at CloudFiles. He loves reading epic fictions, eating great food and talking about quantum physics. He also loves providing great customer service.