August 2024 – Page 3 – The Blog Pros

August 26, 2024September 9, 2024

Generating Unique Random Numbers In JavaScript Using Sets

JavaScript comes with a lot of built-in functions that allow you to carry out so many different operations. One of these built-in functions is the Math.random() method, which generates a random floating-point number that can then be manipulated into integers.

However, if you wish to generate a series of unique random numbers and create more random effects in your code, you will need to come up with a custom solution for yourself because the Math.random() method on its own cannot do that for you.

In this article, we’re going to be learning how to circumvent this issue and generate a series of unique random numbers using the Set object in JavaScript, which we can then use to create more randomized effects in our code.

Note: This article assumes that you know how to generate random numbers in JavaScript, as well as how to work with sets and arrays.

Generating a Unique Series of Random Numbers

One of the ways to generate a unique series of random numbers in JavaScript is by using Set objects. The reason why we’re making use of sets is because the elements of a set are unique. We can iteratively generate and insert random integers into sets until we get the number of integers we want.

And since sets do not allow duplicate elements, they are going to serve as a filter to remove all of the duplicate numbers that are generated and inserted into them so that we get a set of unique integers.

Here’s how we are going to approach the work:

Create a Set object.
Define how many random numbers to produce and what range of numbers to use.
Generate each random number and immediately insert the numbers into the Set until the Set is filled with a certain number of them.

The following is a quick example of how the code comes together:

function generateRandomNumbers(count, min, max) {
  // 1: Create a Set object
  let uniqueNumbers = new Set();
  while (uniqueNumbers.size < count) {
    // 2: Generate each random number
    uniqueNumbers.add(Math.floor(Math.random() * (max - min + 1)) + min);
  }
  // 3: Immediately insert them numbers into the Set...
  return Array.from(uniqueNumbers);
}
// ...set how many numbers to generate from a given range
console.log(generateRandomNumbers(5, 5, 10));

What the code does is create a new Set object and then generate and add the random numbers to the set until our desired number of integers has been included in the set. The reason why we’re returning an array is because they are easier to work with.

One thing to note, however, is that the number of integers you want to generate (represented by count in the code) should be less than the upper limit of your range plus one (represented by max + 1 in the code). Otherwise, the code will run forever. You can add an if statement to the code to ensure that this is always the case:

function generateRandomNumbers(count, min, max) {
  // if statement checks that count is less than max + 1
  if (count > max + 1) {
    return "count cannot be greater than the upper limit of range";
  } else {
    let uniqueNumbers = new Set();
    while (uniqueNumbers.size < count) {
      uniqueNumbers.add(Math.floor(Math.random() * (max - min + 1)) + min);
    }
    return Array.from(uniqueNumbers);
  }
}
console.log(generateRandomNumbers(5, 5, 10));

Using the Series of Unique Random Numbers as Array Indexes

It is one thing to generate a series of random numbers. It’s another thing to use them.

Being able to use a series of random numbers with arrays unlocks so many possibilities: you can use them in shuffling playlists in a music app, randomly sampling data for analysis, or, as I did, shuffling the tiles in a memory game.

Let’s take the code from the last example and work off of it to return random letters of the alphabet. First, we’ll construct an array of letters:

const englishAlphabets = [
  'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 
  'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z'
];

// rest of code

Then we map the letters in the range of numbers:

const englishAlphabets = [
  'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 
  'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z'
];

// generateRandomNumbers()

const randomAlphabets = randomIndexes.map((index) => englishAlphabets[index]);

In the original code, the generateRandomNumbers() function is logged to the console. This time, we’ll construct a new variable that calls the function so it can be consumed by randomAlphabets:

const englishAlphabets = [
  'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 
  'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z'
];

// generateRandomNumbers()

const randomIndexes = generateRandomNumbers(5, 0, 25);
const randomAlphabets = randomIndexes.map((index) => englishAlphabets[index]);

Now we can log the output to the console like we did before to see the results:

const englishAlphabets = [
  'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 
  'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z'
];

// generateRandomNumbers()

const randomIndexes = generateRandomNumbers(5, 0, 25);
const randomAlphabets = randomIndexes.map((index) => englishAlphabets[index]);
console.log(randomAlphabets);

And, when we put the generateRandomNumbers`()` function definition back in, we get the final code:

const englishAlphabets = [
  'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 
  'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z'
];
function generateRandomNumbers(count, min, max) {
  if (count > max + 1) {
    return "count cannot be greater than the upper limit of range";
  } else {
    let uniqueNumbers = new Set();
    while (uniqueNumbers.size < count) {
      uniqueNumbers.add(Math.floor(Math.random() * (max - min + 1)) + min);
    }
    return Array.from(uniqueNumbers);
  }
}
const randomIndexes = generateRandomNumbers(5, 0, 25);
const randomAlphabets = randomIndexes.map((index) => englishAlphabets[index]);
console.log(randomAlphabets);

So, in this example, we created a new array of alphabets by randomly selecting some letters in our englishAlphabets array.

You can pass in a count argument of englishAlphabets.length to the generateRandomNumbers function if you desire to shuffle the elements in the englishAlphabets array instead. This is what I mean:

generateRandomNumbers(englishAlphabets.length, 0, 25);

Wrapping Up

In this article, we’ve discussed how to create randomization in JavaScript by covering how to generate a series of unique random numbers, how to use these random numbers as indexes for arrays, and also some practical applications of randomization.

The best way to learn anything in software development is by consuming content and reinforcing whatever knowledge you’ve gotten from that content by practicing. So, don’t stop here. Run the examples in this tutorial (if you haven’t done so), play around with them, come up with your own unique solutions, and also don’t forget to share your good work. Ciao!

August 26, 2024

The Top 4 Roadblocks to Your Team’s Productivity and How AI Can Solve Them, According to Asana’s Head of Corporate Marketing

You open your computer on a Monday morning, and you have a few Slack messages about a campaign you're launching on Tuesday.

After you‘ve answered those, you check your inbox and see you’ve been tagged in some slides for that same campaign.

Once you're done responding, you hop on a Zoom call to chat with stakeholders about last-minute tasks that need to be completed for launch. A few of the stakeholders would like you to email a follow-up from the meeting, so you do.

But others would rather you tag them in the appropriate Google docs, so you do that, too.

Suddenly it‘s 1pm, and you’ve done nothing substantial on your to-do list to get this project launched. Your entire day has been hopping in and out of various messaging apps, slide decks, and Zoom calls, just trying to get everyone aligned.

Sound familiar?

I spoke with Jake Cerf, Head of Corporate Marketing at Asana, to untangle the biggest challenges most teams face when it comes to productivity in 2024 – and how you can solve them.

What Teams Get Wrong When It Comes to Productivity

Jake empathizes with the chaos that can ensue when you don't focus on creating efficient processes for team-wide productivity.

“It can get chaotic,” he told me, adding, “Before I joined Asana, I reflected back on how I spent my time coordinating with folks — and it was a mess. We would be on email, Slack, and Google docs, and slides. And you never really knew who was doing what, and when, and it was too easy to lose sight of the objective we were all after.”

Which sounds painfully relatable. Fortunately, he has some tried-and-true tips for cleaning up your team's processes and creating more scalable options to improve cross-functional collaboration.

1. Each team leader needs to know how their work ladders up to corporate objectives — and they need to make it clear in their workflows.

People always want to know how their work connects to broader strategic initiatives. They want to feel seen, valued, and know they are making an impact. So much of a leader's job is about making sure people are working on the right priorities, and aligning to goals that move the needle.

That’s what makes a product like Asana so crucial. Jake has an easy time ensuring he isn‘t micro-managing his team on specific tasks, and that’s because in Asana he can see how each sub-task his team is responsible for ladders up to the company's key objectives for 2024.

Additionally, to solve for conflicting cross-department goals, it can be helpful to use one centralized productivity tool that highlights the top-down priorities for the company.

“As a leader, so much of our job is making sure people are working on the right things, helping unblock team members and enabling them to have a North star. It's good for productivity because when folks feel like they're working on things that matter, they do better work,” Jake says.

He adds, “You don't have to be as in-the-weeds on the details. You can tell team members the what and the why, and they can figure the rest out. But being clear about big picture objectives unlocks productivity up, down, and across the organization.”

If you‘re dealing with productivity issues, start by ensuring each leader is aligned on the major company objectives for 2024 – and then task them with demonstrating how all of their team’s projects ladder up to that ultimate goal. If a task doesn‘t fit, it’s time to consider re-focusing on the activities that do.

2. Assign your AI a "role" to uplevel your team's productivity.

There's been plenty of conversation surrounding AI over the past two years, but people are still skeptical about the improvements it can make to their daily lives.

In fact, 62% of marketers globally believe people should use some AI in their roles. For Jake, AI has proven much more useful as a teammate rather than just a tool.

"My life changed drastically when I stopped prompting AI with generic requests like, 'Please write this blog post‘, and instead honed in on who I wanted AI to be: ’Please write this blog post as if you're a tech writer at a large-scale SaaS company.'"

Jake highly recommends assigning AI a “role” when leveraging AI for productivity.

“When teams are working on an important initiative, and you give each AI bot its own specific role, the output is much greater. Let's say you're writing a blog post — you can assign AI to be the editor, the fact-checker, or the content strategist.”

“Or,” He adds, “if you use tools like Asana, you’ll have access to AI that is one of the world's greatest project managers. It can help you unblock issues and triage requests and make sure people are working on the right things.”

Ideally, the productivity tools you leverage already have AI capabilities built-in. If not, look into which plug-ins or external tools you might use to increase efficiency.

3. Leverage AI to minimize busywork.

The antithesis of productivity is busywork.

If your team is bogged down by menial tasks, they likely don‘t have the energy or time to focus on the big picture objectives that account for most of your team’s impact.

That's a major roadblock – and one that can be solved with AI.

Jake offers the example of repurposing content as one opportunity for increased productivity. He says, “With AI, you can take a keynote presentation and ask AI to draft a blog post on the keynote. Or, you can take your keynote script and ask AI to design the presentation itself.”

He continues, “Finding new avenues to increase the longevity and impact of your content is one of the best ways to use AI.”

Additionally, Jake encourages marketers to leverage AI for content creation, as well as more creative outputs like manager reviews, sending feedback to teammates, riffing on ideas, role playing scenarios, and more.

4. Have one centralized workspace for teams to work cross-functionally.

Finally, none of this is possible without creating a strong foundation for efficient, scalable cross-functional collaboration.

Remember those slide decks and Google docs and Slack messages and emails I mentioned earlier? Why not try to put more of your work in one centralized place?

“Productivity comes down to visibility,” Jake says. “Your team needs to be rowing in the same direction. Having a tool like Asana has been super helpful for our team productivity — you need a place where you can set your goals and then track all of the team's work and hold people accountable.”

“Plus,” he adds, “It's crucial you use the same centralized workspace when you're setting strategy so that you have alignment around the tasks and initiatives that will help you achieve your goals.”

In other words – jumping between 30 different messaging and content creation apps and tools isn‘t conducive to long-term productivity. As a leader, it’s your job to figure out how to centralize as much as you can in one place – and then use AI to supercharge it all.

To learn more about how HubSpot and Asana are helping marketers drive productivity, take a look at the HubSpot and Asana integration available today.

August 26, 2024

AI Email Marketing: How to Use It Effectively [Research + Tools]

Email marketing is integral to any marketing strategy because it’s a great way to generate leads and convert audiences.

Whether you’re creating your first strategy or looking to modify your process, AI email marketing tools can help you save time, optimize your strategy, and meet your email goals.

In this piece, I’ll go over how AI email marketing tools work, new data about how marketers currently use AI for email marketing, and a list of tools you can leverage in your role.

Table of Contents

What is AI email marketing?
Why should you use AI email marketing?
What are the challenges of AI in email marketing?
How Marketers Are Using AI in Email Marketing [New Research]
15 AI Email Marketing Tools

What is AI email marketing?

AI email marketing is a machine-learning-powered process that helps marketers create email campaigns that reach the right audiences at the right time with the right messages.

AI email marketing tools use data (like your historical performance data) to help you optimize your email strategy, automation to help you save time on repetitive tasks (like triggering an email workflow), and generative AI to help you create email content.

When using AI in email marketing, you can do things like:

Analyze past email performance to identify how to optimize your email strategies, like the best time to send your emails or the subject lines that get the most clicks.
Compile email analytics so you understand the health of your campaigns.
Trigger email workflows after people take a specific action.
Clean up your email lists to improve deliverability.
Write compelling copy that speaks to your audience.
Personalize email content to specific audience segments.

Some tools have one specific function, like a generative AI email tool, while others offer multiple features.

Why should you use AI in email marketing?

I've found that the most significant benefit of using AI in email marketing is that it saves time while improving performance. The routine processes you spend time on can happen instantly, and you can launch your optimized campaigns faster.

Most AI email marketing tools are also powered by machine learning, meaning that they use data points (from your business and sometimes your industry) to help you optimize your email strategy.

You won’t be left to guess what works best because the AI can look at your past emails, and you can benchmark your performance against competitors to see where you can improve.

If you’re interested in learning more about the impact of AI on marketing, check out this Marketing Against The Grain episode about marketing opportunities that AI unlocks for business.

Click here to listen to the full episode.

What are the challenges with AI in email marketing?

Of course, using AI in email marketing is not without its challenges. AI tools are still relatively new in terms of technology, so they’re not perfect.

Here are a few challenges marketers face when using AI in email marketing and how they solve those issues.

Tone

Anyone who’s asked ChatGPT to write an email for them knows the first output will usually sound formal. Tone is undoubtedly the biggest challenge marketers face when using generative AI for email marketing.

Most AI tools need to be trained to match your brand’s voice and tone, and even then, you’ll probably still need to edit it to sound exactly how you want.

Meg O'Neill, co-founder of Intuitive Marketing Collective, gets around this challenge by using clear and specific prompts.

“I want [my emails] to sound like I’m talking to a friend,” says O’Neill. “I’ve added this requirement to my prompt, and it’s helped a lot. Sometimes, I’ll give [the AI tool] the name of a famous business person and ask it to write in a similar tone.”

Quality

Whether you use AI to write the body copy of your email, generate subject line ideas, or outline an email funnel structure, the quality of the overall content isn’t going to be perfect the first time around.

“The quality is not always there,” says Jeanne Jennings, Founder and Chief Strategist for Email Optimization Shop, an email marketing consultancy.

To overcome this challenge, Jennings takes a collaborative approach by “micro-managing the AI tool at each stage to get the quality content I need. Without my collaborative approach, the output is usually junk,” she states.

Data Accuracy

Ben Schreiber, Head of ecommerce at Latico Leathers, says the biggest challenge he’s faced using AI in email marketing is data accuracy and integration.

“Good quality data is paramount to the success of using AI systems since any inaccuracies may lead to wrong output results,” says Schreiber.

“We have had issues with outdated or incomplete data, which directly affects how well or poorly our campaigns perform.”

How Marketers Are Using AI in Email Marketing [New Research]

Our State of AI in Marketing report surveyed 1,062 U.S. marketing and advertising professionals about how they’re currently using AI.

For starters, AI usage for marketing has increased significantly since 2023.

74% of marketers who responded to the survey said they use at least one AI marketing tool.

While chatbots are the most popular marketing tool used by marketers, 25% of marketers use AI through existing CRM and marketing tools with AI-enhanced features.

Here are a few specific ways marketers are using AI for email marketing.

Content Creation

By far, the most common use case for AI tools among marketers is content creation. Of respondents who report using AI, 43% say they use it for content creation.

While marketers use AI for everything from creating images to creating outlines, the most popular type of content to create is written content.

There’s no denying AI’s ability to generate text — both long-form and short-form — in an instant, making it a great tool for email campaigns.

In fact, 47% of marketers use AI to create email marketing content such as newsletters or campaigns.

Testing

From subject lines to body copy to design elements, testing is essential to increase engagement and ultimately improve your email marketing performance.

Of marketers, 27% say they use AI tools for brainstorming, and it’s safe to say testing email content falls into that category.

Not sure how to use AI for experimenting or brainstorming?

“Ask AI to provide you with specific testing ideas so you always have a fantastic list to choose from to continue improving your email performance,” recommends email marketer Bethany Fiocchi Root, CEO and founder of Oceanview Marketing.

Data Collection

Email marketing relies on data, but data collection can be a time-consuming process for busy marketers. That’s where AI comes in.

Not only can AI tools help automate data collection — decreasing time spent on these tasks significantly — they can be more precise with the information.

A majority of marketers (including those who don’t currently use AI) agree that AI can help their organizations share data more effectively.

From a leadership standpoint, 39% of marketing directors agree that AI and automation tools help employees make data-driven decisions.

And the more data you have, the more you can personalize your email marketing.

In fact, 69% of marketers agree that AI tools can help them personalize the experience their customers get.

Automation

Finally, marketers use generative AI to automate their processes. With AI, everything from scheduling email campaigns to email data entry is taken care of.

Of the marketers surveyed, 75% say using AI for automation helps them reduce time spent on manual tasks and more time on critical or creative tasks.

In other words, AI helps them focus on the aspects of the job they enjoy rather than on administrative tasks.

15 AI Email Marketing Tools

1. HubSpot AI Tools

Click here to learn more about HubSpot AI tools.

HubSpot has multiple email marketing tools and features to leverage to drive clicks and conversions.

AI Features

Email Marketing Software that helps you easily create email workflows and triggers to reach your target audiences with the right messages at all stages of their journey.
Inbox automation tool that scans your emails and recommends tasks based on email content and can auto-populate contact properties (like name and phone number) from every first-time email to create a customer profile.
Content assistant uses generative AI to help you write high-quality email content, and you can ask ChatSpot to quickly write things like professional follow-up emails or thank you notes to prospects.

Price: Free tools are available. Starter plans cost $20 per month. Professional plans cost $890 per month. Enterprise plans cost $3,600 per month.

2. Mailchimp

Mailchimp’s email automation software helps ecommerce businesses create automated email workflows that reach audiences at the best possible time.

AI Features

Its Content Optimizer compares your email data to industry benchmarks to give you recommendations for optimizing your campaigns and email content.
You can choose from different versions of AI-generated content that match your intent and brand tone.
Its Creative Assistant leverages your brand assets to create unique email designs you can personalize to different contacts.

Price: Free forever plans are available. Essential plans cost $13 per month. Standard plans cost $20 per month. Premium plans cost $350 per month.

3. Sendgrid

Sendgrid helps you create an automated email marketing process with custom workflows and triggers.

AI Features

Its real-time API scans your email lists and removes junk or undeliverable email addresses to lower your bounce rate and ensure you reach more people.
Get data-driven insights and recommendations for improvement based on your historical metrics and email performance.
AI paces your email send and monitors your reputation with ISPs.

Price: Free trials are available. Basic plans cost $15 per month. Advanced plans cost $60 per month.

4. Phrasee

Phrasee uses AI to help you create effective email campaigns and content to share with your audience.

AI Features

Its deep learning model and language insights leverage your historical data to tell you what works best with your audience and what inspires clicks for an optimized campaign.
The Magic Button helps you generate email content (like subject lines or in-email CTAs) that will resonate with your audience.
It always uses your custom guidelines and messaging to ensure everything you create is on-brand.

Price: Contact for pricing.

5. Drift

Drift offers an AI-powered inbox management tool that helps you clean up your email lists and improve deliverability.

AI Features

Its Email Bots leverage machine learning to interpret emails and help you reply with engaging, conversational emails that inspire responses.
AI can qualify a lead as ready for sales and automatically introduce the prospect to the right salesperson for seamless marketing to sales handoff.
Use different Email Bots for your unique business need, like the follow-up email bot, abandoned chat email bot, and webinar email bot.

Price: $2,500 per month.

6. GetResponse

Use Get Response to design behavior-based email workflows to engage with audiences at key moments with content personalized to their needs.

AI Features

Share keywords or phrases, email goals, and tone with the GPT-powered email generator that leverages industry data to produce emails most likely to increase your conversions.
Display different images, text, or AI-driven product recommendations in each email.
The AI subject line generator helps you test subject lines and learn what stands out in your subscribers’ inboxes.

Price: A free 30-day trial is available; paid plans start at $19 per month.

7. Levity

Levity’s software helps you manage your inbox, understand your email health, and save time.

AI Features

Build an AI tool unique to your business by uploading your data that it will learn from and use to make human-level decisions.
Create different AI blocks for every email workflow you want to run (like a workflow for responding to emails).
Share unique categorization criteria with your AI to automatically sort emails as soon as you receive them.

Price: A 30-day free trial is available. Startup plans cost $49 per month. Business plans cost $139 per month.

8. Superhuman

Superhuman is an AI-powered inbox management tool that helps you streamline your processes. Best for teams that use Gmail or Outlook.

AI Features

Immediately sort incoming emails into a split inbox based on your custom rules so you can sort spam from genuine humans and focus on what needs attention.
Use its Snippets tool to create pre-built templates for phrases, paragraphs, or entire emails that you can quickly add to emails to automate responses.
Set reminders for email tasks, like following up on unanswered emails or a reminder to respond to a message you snoozed for later.

Price: Starter plans cost $30 per month. Growth plans cost $45 per month. Enterprise pricing is available.

Most of the tools listed above have multiple AI features, like email writing help to automated inbox sorting. Below, we’ll go over AI email marketing tools that only offer generative features.

9. Hive

Hive offers an easy-to-use and time-saving tool for your email marketing. Simply share a brief prompt of what you’re looking for with its Notes AI, and it’ll help you generate a perfect response.

Price: There is a free forever plan. Teams plans cost $12 per user a month. Enterprise pricing is available.

10. ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a generative AI tool that you can use to write your marketing emails, and all you have to do is enter a descriptive prompt into the chat. It’s a conversational tool, so you can ask it to rewrite the email until you’re satisfied.

Price: There is a free research preview. ChatGPT Plus costs $20 per month.

11. Zapier

Zapier runs on Zaps, automated workflows you can customize to your needs. You can create an email-based Zap to generate email copy with an API key from OpenAI.

Whenever you receive an email matching your Zaps rules, it’ll prompt GPT-3 to write an appropriate response.

Price: A free forever plan is available. Professional plans cost $19.99 per month. Team plans cost $69 per month. Contact Zapier for Enterprise pricing.

12. Copy.ai

Copy.ai is an email copywriting tool you can use to create high-converting emails. It can write email content for you, suggest subject lines, and help you stay on track with suggestions to improve email quality.

Price: A free forever plan is available. Starter plans cost $36 per month. Advanced plans cost $186 per month. Enterprise pricing is available.

13. Compose.ai

Compose.ai is powered by GPT-3 and helps you write personalized and on-brand emails.

Its autocomplete feature suggests how you can finish what you’re writing, and its suggestions and generations are always tone- and brand-relevant because it learns your unique brand voice.

It’s an always-free Chrome extension, so you can easily use it on your favorite sites.

Price: A free forever plan is available. Premium plans cost $9.99 per month. Ultimate plans cost $29.99 per month. Enterprise pricing is available.

14. Grammarly

Grammarly’s machine-learning copy-editing tool recognizes in-text errors and suggests how to fix them. I use this feature all the time to assist in my content writing.

GrammarlyGo extracts the context from short prompts and helps you instantly generate appropriate email replies. Leverage the tools on its website, as a Chrome extension, or within your favorite email client.

Price: A free forever plan is available. Premium plans cost $12 per month. Business plans cost $15 per month.

15. Jasper

Jasper Commands helps you create effective marketing emails quickly with machine learning algorithms.

Use it to write entire emails or email subject lines, and its outputs always match your business’ unique writing style and tone for brand consistency.

Price: Free trial is available. Creator plans cost $39 per month. Pro plans cost $59 per month. Custom business pricing is available.

Leveling Up Your Emails With AI

From writing copy to generating subject lines and even collecting and organizing data to improve personalization, a majority of marketers agree that using AI for email marketing makes their job easier.

When AI tools are used as just that — tools — they can improve your email marketing campaigns and give you more time to spend on creative tasks that make you better at your job.

August 26, 2024

Marketing for the lulz

It often surprises people to learn just how unfunny making comedy can be. I worked with this week’s master of marketing some years ago out of The Onion’s HQ, so we’ve both been behind the scenes. A business is still a business, and marketing is still marketing.

Which isn’t to say it can’t be a helluva lot of fun.

I talked to Hassan S. Ali, the creative director of brand at Hootsuite, where he describes his job as “leading a team of creatives to ruffle B2B marketing feathers for an equally feather-ruffling product.”

Case in point: His team recently produced a (mostly) SFW commercial that promises to “uncover social media insights” by repositioning a local green space as a nudist park.

Lesson 1: Comedy begins with empathy.

Since I last saw him, Ali’s had stints as the brand creative director for Potbelly’s and now Hootsuite. At both places, he’s brought his sometimes wry, sometimes absurdist humor into play.

I ask him to spill his secrets. What can I tell our readers that will make them funnier marketers?

His answer is no joke: If you want to successfully use humor in marketing, start by building trust and practicing empathy. He gives me this example:

Say you’ve got an idea for a hilarious new ad campaign, but you keep hearing that the stakeholders “don’t want to have fun.” (Cyndi Lauper weeps.)

Ali asks, “Is it that, or is it that they’re kind of worried that they’re going to spend money on this,” and if it flops, they’ll be reprimanded — or worse?

“That’s a very human emotion. So if we go into these conversations with, ‘Listen, I hear this might be a little outside of your norm,’” you’re immediately showing empathy, even if the person hasn’t voiced their fears.

Lesson 2: Data can make you funnier.

“Data helps inform and persuade and build that trust,” Ali says. He’s “definitely gotten a CEO who’s shifted in their chair a little bit” during a pitch, so he knows something about persuading the risk-averse.

When you’re asking stakeholders to work outside their comfort zones, you “oftentimes need the data to show to them that this is actually what surveyed people want.” Ali points me to Hootsuite’s 2024 social media consumer report: 55% of the 6000+ respondents enjoy brand content that “makes me laugh.”

Image Source

A practical tip ties this all together: Ali will sometimes shoot a funny version and a straighter version of an ad, and test both. Building trust means showing “that you’re able to communicate the needs of the business in a way your audience cares about.”

Lesson 3: Use the peanut butter method.

“Everyone hates advertising, but they're okay being sold to,” Ali says.

It’s like using peanut butter to sneak your dog a pill. “If people are willing to be sold to, pitch the pill in something yummy. People will watch it.” (Let’s ignore for a moment that we are all the hapless dogs in this analogy.)

“I often think that the best ads are ones we can't measure, because they're shared in a group chat with friends.” I sincerely hope nobody is working on a pixel that can track my group chats, but it’s true that if somebody shares an ad, it’s because it’s both funny and emotionally resonant.

Maybe you see a funny ad for diapers. Your sister’s just had a baby, and you share the ad in the family group chat. “All of a sudden, there’s a bond formed through this piece of advertising.” And it goes beyond “here, buy this thing,” Ali says.

Without that (hopefully imaginary) group-chat tracking pixel, traditional marketing metrics won’t necessarily be of much use.

“But what did you solve for the customer?” Ali asks. “Those are the real results.” The more we can focus on that, “the better we’ll be as marketers.”

Lingering Questions

Each person we interview gives us a question for our next master of marketing. Last week, Wistia CEO Chris Savage asked:

What’s something you’re doing that’s working so well, you’re afraid to tell others about it?

Ali: I have to say that the creative brand team at Hootsuite is working so well that it‘s like a secret. Just to watch the collaboration and the teamwork that occurs here — it’s something I’ve never experienced before.

And Ali’s question for our next master in marketing:

What advice would you give yourself when you were first starting out?

Come back next Monday for the answer!

August 24, 2024

How to Fine-tune the OpenAI GPT-4o Model – The Wait is Finally Over

On August 20, 2024, OpenAI enabled GPT-4o fine-tuning in the OpenAI playground and the OpenAI API. The much-awaited feature is free for fine-tuning 1 million daily tokens until September 23, 2024.

In this article, I will show you how to fine-tune the OpenAI GPT-4o model for text classification and summarization tasks.

It is important to note that in my previous articles I have already demonstrated results obtained for zero-shot text classification and zero-shot text summarization using default GPT-4o model. In this article, you will see that fine-tuning a GPT-4o model improves text classification and text summarization performance significantly.

So, let's begin without an ado.

Installing and Importing Required Libraries

The following script installs the Python libraries you need to run codes in this article.


!pip install openai
!pip install rouge-score
!pip install --upgrade openpyxl
!pip install pandas openpyxl

The script below imports the required libraries into your Python application.


import os
import json
import time
import pandas as pd
from rouge_score import rouge_scorer
from sklearn.metrics import accuracy_score
from openai import OpenAI

Fine-tuning GPT-4o for Text Classification

In a previous article, I explained the process of fine-tuning GPT-4o mini and GPT-3.5 turbo models for zero-shot text classification.

The process remains the same for fine-tuning GPT-4o.
We will first import the text classification dataset, which in this article is the Twitter US Airline Sentiment Dataset.

The following script imports the dataset.


dataset = pd.read_csv(r"D:\Datasets\Tweets.csv")
dataset.head()

Output:

Next, we will write the preprocess_data() function, which takes in a dataset, the start index n, and the number of records as parameters. It then divides the dataset by sentiment category and returns the number of records beginning at the specified index. This approach ensures we have an equal number of records for each sentiment category.

We will fetch 600 records (200 positive, negative, and neutral) for training and 99 records (33 for each category) for testing. You can use more number of records for fine-tuning if you want.




def preprocess_data(dataset, n, records):

    # Remove rows where 'airline_sentiment' or 'text' are NaN
    dataset = dataset.dropna(subset=['airline_sentiment', 'text'])

    # Remove rows where 'airline_sentiment' or 'text' are empty strings
    dataset = dataset[(dataset['airline_sentiment'].str.strip() != '') & (dataset['text'].str.strip() != '')]

    # Filter the DataFrame for each sentiment
    neutral_df = dataset[dataset['airline_sentiment'] == 'neutral']
    positive_df = dataset[dataset['airline_sentiment'] == 'positive']
    negative_df = dataset[dataset['airline_sentiment'] == 'negative']

    # Select records from Nth index
    neutral_sample = neutral_df[n: n +records]
    positive_sample = positive_df[n: n +records]
    negative_sample = negative_df[n: n +records]

    # Concatenate the samples into one DataFrame
    dataset = pd.concat([neutral_sample, positive_sample, negative_sample])

    # Reset index if needed
    dataset.reset_index(drop=True, inplace=True)

    dataset = dataset[["text", "airline_sentiment"]]

    return dataset

The following script creates training and test sets.


training_data = preprocess_data(dataset, 0, 200)
print("Training data value counts:\n", training_data["airline_sentiment"].value_counts())
print("===========================")
test_data = preprocess_data(dataset, 600, 33)
print("Test data value counts:\n", test_data["airline_sentiment"].value_counts())

Output:

Next, we convert our dataset into the JSON format required to fine-tune OpenAI models.


# JSON file path
json_file_path = r"D:\Datasets\airline_sentiments.json"

# Function to create the JSON structure for each row
def create_json_structure(row):
    return {
        "messages": [
            {"role": "system", "content": "You are a Twitter sentiment analysis expert who can predict sentiment expressed in the tweets about an airline. You select sentiment value from positive, negative, or neutral."},
            {"role": "user", "content": row['text']},
            {"role": "assistant", "content": row['airline_sentiment']}
        ]
    }

# Convert DataFrame to JSON structures
json_structures = training_data.apply(create_json_structure, axis=1).tolist()

# Write JSON structures to file, each on a new line
with open(json_file_path, 'w') as f:
    for json_structure in json_structures:
        f.write(json.dumps(json_structure) + '\n')

print(f"Data has been written to {json_file_path}")

To fine-tune the OpenAI model, you need to upload training files to the OpenAI server. To do so, create a client object of the OpenAI class and pass the JSON file to the files.create() method of the client object.


client = OpenAI(
    # This is the default and can be omitted
    api_key = os.environ.get('OPENAI_API_KEY'),
)


training_file = client.files.create(
  file=open(json_file_path, "rb"),
  purpose="fine-tune"
)

Finally, as shown in the script below, you can start fine-tuning using the client.fine_tuning.jobs.create() method. Here, you must pass GPT-4o model id gpt-4o-2024-08-06 to the model attribute.


fine_tuning_job_gpt4o = client.fine_tuning.jobs.create(
  training_file=training_file.id,
  model="gpt-4o-2024-08-06"
)

You can see fine-tuning events for your fine-tuning job using the following script:


# List up to 10 events from a fine-tuning job
print(client.fine_tuning.jobs.list_events(fine_tuning_job_id = fine_tuning_job_gpt4o.id,
                                    limit=10))

Once fine-tuning is completed, you will receive an email with the fine-tuned model ID. Alternatively, you can retrieve the fine-tuned model ID using the following script.


ft_model_id = client.fine_tuning.jobs.retrieve(fine_tuning_job_gpt4o.id).fine_tuned_model

Once you have the fine-tuned model ID, you can use it like any default OpenAI model. The following script defines the find_sentiment() function, which uses the fine-tuned model ID to predict the sentiments of the tweets in the test set and finally prints the overall fine-tuned model accuracy.


def find_sentiment(client, model, dataset):
    tweets_list = dataset["text"].tolist()

    all_sentiments = []


    i = 0


    while i < len(tweets_list):

        try:
            tweet = tweets_list[i]
            content = """What is the sentiment expressed in the following tweet about an airline?
            Select sentiment value from positive, negative, or neutral. Return only the sentiment value in small letters.
            tweet: {}""".format(tweet)

            response = client.chat.completions.create(
                model=model,
                temperature=0,
                max_tokens=10,
                messages=[
                    {"role": "user", "content": content}
                ]
            )

            sentiment_value = response.choices[0].message.content

            all_sentiments.append(sentiment_value)
            i += 1
            print(i, sentiment_value)

        except Exception as e:
            print("===================")
            print("Exception occurred:", e)

    accuracy = accuracy_score(all_sentiments, dataset["airline_sentiment"])
    print(f"Accuracy: {accuracy}")

find_sentiment(client,ft_model_id, test_data)

Output:

The above output shows that the fine-tuned model achieved an accuracy of 92.92%, significantly better than the accuracy achieved via the default GPT-4o model in a previous article.

In the next section, you will see how to fine-tune GPT-4o for text summarization.

Fine-tuning GPT-4o for Text Summarization

We will use the News Articles with Summary dataset to fine-tune the GPT-4o model.

The following script imports the dataset.


dataset = pd.read_excel(r"D:\Datasets\dataset.xlsx")
dataset = dataset.sample(frac=1)
dataset['summary_length'] = dataset['human_summary'].apply(len)
average_length = dataset['summary_length'].mean()
print(f"Average length of summaries: {average_length:.2f} characters")
print(dataset.shape)
dataset.head()

Output:

The rest of the process remains the same as text classification. We will filter a subset of data for fine-tuning (in this case, records 101 to 200) and convert the dataset into OpenAI-compliant JSON format.


selected_data = dataset.iloc[101:201]

# Function to create the JSON structure for each row
def create_json_structure(row):
    return {
        "messages": [
            {"role": "system", "content": "You are analyzing news articles. Use the provided content to generate a concise summary."},
            {"role": "user", "content": row['content']},
            {"role": "assistant", "content": row['human_summary']}
        ]
    }

# Convert selected DataFrame rows to JSON structures
json_structures = selected_data.apply(create_json_structure, axis=1).tolist()

# JSON file path
json_file_path = r"D:\Datasets\news_summaries.json"

# Write JSON structures to file, each on a new line
with open(json_file_path, 'w') as f:
    for json_structure in json_structures:
        f.write(json.dumps(json_structure) + '\n')

print(f"Data has been written to {json_file_path}")

Next, upload the training file to OpenAI servers.


training_file = client.files.create(
  file=open(json_file_path, "rb"),
  purpose="fine-tune"
)

Finally, you can start fine-tuning using the following script.


fine_tuning_job_gpt4o_ts = client.fine_tuning.jobs.create(
  training_file=training_file.id,
  model="gpt-4o-2024-08-06"
)

Once the model is fine-tuned, retrieve the model ID using the following script.


ft_model_id = client.fine_tuning.jobs.retrieve(fine_tuning_job_gpt4o_ts.id).fine_tuned_model

We will use the ROUGE scores to evaluate the text summarization performance of the fine-tuned model. The following script defines the calculate_rouge() function that allows you to calculate ROUGE1, ROUGE2, and ROUGEL scores.


# Function to calculate ROUGE scores
def calculate_rouge(reference, candidate):
    scorer = rouge_scorer.RougeScorer(['rouge1', 'rouge2', 'rougeL'], use_stemmer=True)
    scores = scorer.score(reference, candidate)
    return {key: value.fmeasure for key, value in scores.items()}

Finally, the following script demonstrates how we generate the summaries of the first 20 articles in our dataset using the fine-tuned model.



%%time

results = []

i = 0

for _, row in dataset[:20].iterrows():
    article = row['content']
    human_summary = row['human_summary']

    i = i + 1
    print(f"Summarizing article {i}.")

    prompt = f"Summarize the following article in 1150 characters. The summary should look like human created:\n\n{article}\n\nSummary:"

    response = client.chat.completions.create(
        model= ft_model_id,
        messages=[{"role": "user", "content": prompt}],
        max_tokens=1150,
        temperature=0.7
    )
    generated_summary = response.choices[0].message.content
    rouge_scores = calculate_rouge(human_summary, generated_summary)

    results.append({
    'article_id': row.id,
    'generated_summary': generated_summary,
    'rouge1': rouge_scores['rouge1'],
    'rouge2': rouge_scores['rouge2'],
    'rougeL': rouge_scores['rougeL']
    })

The following script prints average ROUGE scores.


results_df = pd.DataFrame(results)
mean_values = results_df[["rouge1", "rouge2", "rougeL"]].mean()
print(mean_values)

Output:


rouge1    0.579758
rouge2    0.417515
rougeL    0.431266
dtype: float64

The above script shows that the fine-tuned GPT-4o model achieves significantly higher ROUGE scores than the default GPT-4o model.

Conclusion

Fine-tuning can significantly improve a model's performance on a specific task. This article explains how to fine-tune the OpenAI GPT-4o model for text classification and text summarization. The results show that the fine-tuned GPT-4o model significantly outperforms the default GPT-4o model on both tasks.

August 23, 2024

Quick Hit #12

Giant kudos to Scott Jehl on releasing his new Web Components De-Mystified online course! Eight full hours of training from one of the best in the business.

Quick Hit #12 originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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August 23, 2024

Basic keyboard shortcut support for focused links

Eric gifting us with his research on all the various things that anchors (not links) do when they are in :focus.

Turns out, there’s a lot!

That’s an understatement! This is an incredible amount of work, even if Eric calls it “dry as a toast sandwich.” Boring ain’t always a bad thing. Let me simply drop in a pen that Dave put together pulling all of Eric’s findings into a table organized to compare the different behaviors between operating systems — and additional tables for each specific platform — because I think it helps frame Eric’s points.

That really is a lot! But why on Earth go through the trouble of documenting all of this?

All of the previously documented behavior needs to be built in JavaScript, since we need to go the synthetic link route. It also means that it is code we need to set aside time and resources to maintain.

That also assumes that is even possible to recreate every expected feature in JavaScript, which is not true. It also leaves out the mental gymnastics required to make a business case for prioritizing engineering efforts to re-make each feature.

There’s the rub! These are the behaviors you’re gonna need to mimic and maintain if veering away from semantic, native web elements. So what Eric is generously providing is perhaps an ultimate argument against adopting frameworks — or rolling some custom system — that purposely abstract the accessible parts of the web, often in favor of DX.

As with anything, there’s more than meets the eye to all this. Eric’s got an exhaustive list at the end there that calls out all the various limitations of his research. Most of those notes sound to me like there are many, many other platforms, edge cases, user agent variations, assistive technologies, and considerations that could also be taken into account, meaning we could be responsible for a much longer list of behaviors than what’s already there.

And yes, this sweatshirt is incredible. Indeed.

Basic keyboard shortcut support for focused links originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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August 23, 2024

How to Determine Your A/B Testing Sample Size & Time Frame

I remember running my first A/B test after college. It wasn’t till then that I understood the basics of getting a big enough A/B test sample size or running the test long enough to get statistically significant results.

But figuring out what “big enough” and “long enough” were was not easy.

Googling for answers didn’t help me, as I got information that only applied to the ideal, theoretical, and non-marketing world.

Turns out I wasn't alone, because asking how to determine A/B testing sample size and time frame is a common question from our customers.

So, I figured I'd do the research to help answer this question for all of us. In this post, I’ll share what I’ve learned to help you confidently determine the right sample size and time frame for your next A/B test.

Table of Contents

A/B Test Sample Size Formula
A/B Testing Sample Size & Time Frame
How to Determine Sample Size for an A/B Test
How to Choose the Right Timeframe for Your A/B Test for a Landing Page
Choosing the Right Timeframe for Your A/B Test for Email

A/B Test Sample Size Formula

When I first saw the A/B test sample size formula, I was like, woah!!!!

Here’s how it looks:

Image Source

n is the sample size
𝑝1 is the Baseline Conversion Rate
𝑝2 is the conversion rate lifted by Absolute “Minimum Detectable Effect”, which means 𝑝1+Absolute Minimum Detectable Effect
𝑍𝛼/2 means Z Score from the z table that corresponds to 𝛼/2 (e.g., 1.96 for a 95% confidence interval).
𝑍𝛽 means Z Score from the z table that corresponds to 𝛽 (e.g., 0.84 for 80% power).

Pretty complicated formula, right?

Luckily, there are tools that let us plug in as little as three numbers to get our results, and I will cover them in this guide.

Need to review A/B testing key principles first? This video helps.

A/B Testing Sample Size & Time Frame

In theory, to conduct a perfect A/B test and determine a winner between Variation A and Variation B, you need to wait until you have enough results to see if there is a statistically significant difference between the two.

Many A/B test experiments prove this is true.

Depending on your company, sample size, and how you execute the A/B test, getting statistically significant results could happen in hours or days or weeks — and you have to stick it out until you get those results.

For many A/B tests, waiting is no problem. Testing headline copy on a landing page? It‘s cool to wait a month for results. Same goes with blog CTA creative — you’d be going for the long-term lead generation play, anyway.

But certain aspects of marketing demand shorter timelines with A/B testing. Take email as an example. With email, waiting for an A/B test to conclude can be a problem for several practical reasons I’ve identified below.

1. Each email send has a finite audience.

Unlike a landing page (where you can continue to gather new audience members over time), once you run an email A/B test, that‘s it — you can’t “add” more people to that A/B test.

So you've got to figure out how to squeeze the most juice out of your emails.

This will usually require you to send an A/B test to the smallest portion of your list needed to get statistically significant results, pick a winner, and send the winning variation to the rest of the list.

2. Running an email marketing program means you're juggling at least a few email sends per week. (In reality, probably way more than that.)

If you spend too much time collecting results, you could miss out on sending your next email — which could have worse effects than if you sent a non-statistically significant winner email on to one segment of your database.

3. Email sends need to be timely.

Your marketing emails are optimized to deliver at a certain time of day. They might be supporting the timing of a new campaign launch and/or landing in your recipient‘s inboxes at a time they’d love to receive it.

So if you wait for your email to be fully statistically significant, you might miss out on being timely and relevant — which could defeat the purpose of sending the emails in the first place.

That's why email A/B testing programs have a “timing” setting built in: At the end of that time frame, if neither result is statistically significant, one variation (which you choose ahead of time) will be sent to the rest of your list.

That way, you can still run A/B tests in email, but you can also work around your email marketing scheduling demands and ensure people are always getting timely content.

So, to run email A/B tests while optimizing your sends for the best results, consider both your A/B test sample size and timing.

Next up — how to figure out your sample size and timing using data.

How to Determine Sample Size for an A/B Test

For this guide, I’m going to use email to show how you'll determine sample size and timing for an A/B test. However, note that you can apply the steps in this list for any A/B test, not just email.

As I mentioned above, you can only send an A/B test to a finite audience — so you need to figure out how to maximize the results from that A/B test.

To do that, you must know the smallest portion of your total list needed to get statistically significant results.

Let me show you how you calculate it.

1. Check if your contact list is large enough to conduct an A/B test.

To A/B test a sample of your list, you need a list size of at least 1,000 contacts.

From my experience, if you have fewer than 1,000 contacts, the proportion of your list that you need to A/B test to get statistically significant results gets larger and larger.

For example, if I have a small list of 500 subscribers, I might have to test 85% or 95% of them to get statistically significant results.

Once I’m done, the remaining number of subscribers who I didn’t test will be so small that I might as well send half of my list one email version, and the other half another, and then measure the difference.

For you, your results might not be statistically significant at the end of it all, but at least you're gathering learnings while you grow your email list.

Pro tip: If you use HubSpot, you’ll find that 1,000 contacts is your benchmark for running A/B tests on samples of email sends. If you have fewer than 1,000 contacts in your selected list, Version A of your test will automatically go to half of your list and Version B goes to the other half.

2. Use a sample size calculator.

HubSpot's A/B Testing Kit has a fantastic and free A/B testing sample size calculator.

During my research, I also found two web-based A/B testing calculators that work well. The first is Optimizely’s A/B test sample size calculator. The second is that of Evan Miller.

For our illustration, though, I’ll use the HubSpot calculator. Here's how it looks like when I download it:

3. Input your baseline conversion rate, minimum detectable effect, and statistical significance into the calculator.

This is a lot of statistical jargon, but don’t worry, I’ll explain them in layman’s terms.

Statistical significance: This tells you how sure you can be that your sample results lie within your set confidence interval. The lower the percentage, the less sure you can be about the results. The higher the percentage, the more people you'll need in your sample, too.

Baseline conversion rate (BCR): BCR is the conversion rate of the control version. For example, if I email 10,000 contacts and 6,000 opened the email, the conversion rate (BCR) of the email opens is 60%.

Minimum detectable effect (MDE): MDE is the minimum relative change in conversion rate that I want the experiment to detect between version A (original or control sample) and version B (new variant).

For example, if my BCR is 60%, I could set my MDE at 5%. This means I want the experiment to check whether the conversion rate of my new variant differs significantly from the control by at least 5%.

If the conversion rate of my new variant is, for example, 65% or higher, or 55% or lower, I can be confident that this new variant has a real impact.

But if the difference is smaller than 5% (for example, 58% or 62%), then the test might not be statistically significant as the change could be because of random chance rather than the variant itself.

MDE has real implications on your sample size in terms of time required for your test and traffic. Think of MDE as water in a cup. As the size of the water increases, you need less time and effort (traffic) to get the result you want.

The translation: a higher MDE provides more certainty that my sample’s true actions have been accounted for in the interval. The downside to higher MDEs is the less definitive results they provide.

It‘s a trade-off you’ll have to make. For our purposes, it's not worth getting too caught up in MDE. When you‘re just getting started with A/B tests, I’d recommend choosing a smaller interval (e.g., around 5%).

Note for HubSpot customers: The HubSpot Email A/B tool automatically uses the 85% confidence level to determine a winner..

Email A/B Test Example

Let's say I want to run an email A/B test. First, I need to determine the size of each sample of the test.

Here‘s what I’d put in the Optimizely A/B testing sample size calculator:

Ta-da! The calculator has shown me my sample.

In this example, it is 2,700 contacts per variation.

This is the size that one of my variations needs to be. So for my email send, if I have one control and one variation, I‘ll need to double this number. If I had a control and two variations, I’d triple it.

Here’s how this looks in the HubSpot A/B testing kit.

4. Depending on your email program, you may need to calculate the sample size's percentage of the whole email.

HubSpot customers, I‘m looking at you for this section. When you’re running an email A/B test, you'll need to select the percentage of contacts to send the list to — not just the raw sample size.

To do that, you need to divide the number in your sample by the total number of contacts in your list. Here's what that math looks like, using the example numbers above:

2700 / 10,000 = 27%

This means that each sample (both my control AND variation) needs to be sent to 27-28% of my audience — roughly ‌55% of my list size. And once a winner is determined, the winning version goes to the rest of my list.

And that's it! Now you are ready to select your sending time.

How to Choose the Right Timeframe for Your A/B Test for a Landing Page

If I want to test a landing page, the timeframe I’ll choose will vary depending on my business' goals.

So let’s say I‘d like to design a new landing page by Q1 2025 and it’s Q4 2024. To have the best version ready, I need to have finished my A/B test by December so I can use the results to build the winning page.

Calculating the time I need is easy. Here’s an example:

Landing page traffic: 7,000 per week
BCR: 10%
MDE: 5%
Statistical significance: 80%

When I plug the BCR, MDE, and statistical significance into the Optimizely A/B test Sample Size Calculator, I got 53,000 as the result.

This means 53,000 people need to visit each version of my landing page if I am experimenting with two versions.

So the time frame for the test will be:

53,000*2/7,000 = 15.14 weeks

This implies I should start running this test within the first two weeks of September.

Choosing the Right Timeframe for Your A/B Test for Email

For emails, you have to figure out how long to run your email A/B test before sending a (winning) version on to the rest of your list.

Knowing the timing aspect is a little less statistically driven, but you should definitely use past data to make better decisions. Here's how you can do that.

If you don't have timing restrictions on when to send the winning email to the rest of the list, head to your analytics.

Figure out when your email opens/clicks (or whatever your success metrics are) starts dropping. Look at your past email sends to figure this out.

For example, what percentage of total clicks did you get on your first day?

If you found you got 70% of your clicks in the first 24 hours, and then 5% each day after that, it‘d make sense to cap your email A/B testing timing window to 24 hours because it wouldn’t be worth delaying your results just to gather a little extra data.

After 24 hours, your email marketing tool should let you know if they can determine a statistically significant winner. Then, it's up to you what to do next.

If you have a large sample size and found a statistically significant winner at the end of the testing time frame, many email marketing tools will automatically and immediately send the winning variation.

If you have a large enough sample size and there's no statistically significant winner at the end of the testing time frame, email marketing tools might also allow you to send a variation of your choice automatically.

If you have a smaller sample size or are running a 50/50 A/B test, when to send the next email based on the initial email's results is entirely up to you.

If you have time restrictions on when to send the winning email to the rest of the list, figure out how late you can send the winner without it being untimely or affecting other email sends.

For example, if you‘ve sent emails out at 3 PM EST for a flash sale that ends at midnight EST, you wouldn’t want to determine an A/B test winner at 11 PM Instead, you‘d want to email closer to 6 or 7 PM — that’ll give the people not involved in the A/B test enough time to act on your email.

Pumped to run A/B tests?

What I have shared here is pretty much everything you need to know about your A/B test sample size and timeframe.

After doing these calculations and examining your data, I’m positive you’ll be in a much better state to conduct successful A/B tests — ones that are statistically valid and help you move the needle on your goals.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in December 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

August 23, 2024

Content Mapping 101: The Template You Need to Personalize Your Marketing

When prospects first come to your business page, they probably won’t just click and buy your offering immediately.

In fact, they may have different goals for visiting your page — some might want to learn about you and your products or services, others may be sold on you but aren’t sure what they need from you. Still, others have a different goal in mind.

That means you’ve got to ensure that they can easily find the content they need. I’ve found one of the best ways to make sure you’re getting the right information to the right prospect is by building out a content map.

Content mapping allows you to create highly targeted, personalized content at every stage of the buyer’s journey, helping to nurture leads and prospects toward a purchase decision.

In this post, I’ll show you what a content map is and how you can start content mapping for your brand. Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

What is a content map?
What is content mapping?
How to Create a Content Map
Website Content Mapping
Content Segmentation Grid
Content Mapping Tools
Tools to Help Implement Your Content Map
Content Mapping Tips From the Pros

For example, if your business is building a brand new website, you’ll have to begin creating a content map based on why the customer is going to your page.

If customers are coming to your website looking for a credible solution worth paying for, they need to establish that you’re trustworthy before making a decision.

At this point, your marketing team begins to map out the kind of content needed to build that trust between the company and the customer.

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Why is content mapping important?

Content mapping helps you plan for content creation that supports the customer journey and creates a more cohesive, personalized customer experience.

When it comes to content, one size rarely fits all. On the contrary, each piece serves a different purpose.

To ensure that your company's content is effective at generating leads, you need to deliver diversified content that covers different topics that your buyers are searching for at each step of the way.

Content mapping is the process of doing just that.

Let’s say your prospects are visiting your website because they already know you but just need to decide what service to go with. If you don’t have any service comparison content, it may detract them from finishing the process.

That’s not to say that it’s mandatory. Many of my clients don’t have and don’t need this. However, if it’s applicable to your business, you may want to consider this strategy.

Here’s the thing. Coming up with topics for a highly targeted content strategy isn't always easy. However, content mapping with the audience in mind can help you put together a manageable plan that you can actually follow.

How to Create a Content Map

1. Download a content map template.

To help you brainstorm and map out content ideas for targeting specific segments of your audience, check out our free template resource: The Content Marketing Planning Template.

Download Your Free Template Now

The template includes an introduction to content mapping, a crash course on buyer personas and lifecycle stages, a content mapping template (plus examples), a website content map template, and bonus buyer persona templates.

With the template, you'll:

Learn how to understand buyer personas and lifecycle stages.
Identify problems and opportunities that your audience needs help with.
Brainstorm highly targeted content ideas that incorporate personas and lifecycle stages.

2. Identify the buyer persona you want to target.

Buyer personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.

They help you understand your customers (and prospective customers) better and make it easier for you to tailor content to the specific needs, behaviors, and concerns of different groups.

The strongest buyer personas are based on market research as well as on insights you gather from your actual customer base (through surveys, interviews, etc.).

Depending on your business, you could have as few as one or two personas or dozens. If you’re just getting started with personas, don’t go crazy! You can always develop more personas later if needed.

So, what’s my take on buyer personas? I love them, but my advice is to keep it simple.

When I work with clients to develop buyer personas, we focus on going as narrow and detailed as possible, because it’s far easier (and more effective!) to market to just one person than it is to market to a segment of a population.

And while each persona doesn’t represent every single person in that segment, you can get pretty close.

3. Consider that persona’s path to purchase (lifecycle stages).

The buyer persona you target with your content is only half of the content mapping equation. In addition to knowing who someone is, you need to know where they are in the buying cycle (i.e., how close they are to making a purchase).

This location in the buying cycle is known as a lifecycle stage.

Our Content Mapping Template divvies up the buying cycle into three lifecycle stages: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.

Awareness: In the awareness stage, a person has realized and expressed symptoms of a potential problem or opportunity.
Consideration: In the consideration stage, a person has clearly defined and given a name to their problem or opportunity and is looking for a solution.
Decision: In the decision stage, a person has defined their solution strategy, method, or approach and is looking for a provider.

By combining buyer personas with lifecycle stages, you can hone in on specific segments of your audience and tailor content to resonate with each of those segments.

4. Brainstorm questions the personas have in the awareness stage.

Your awareness stage content should target prospects early in the buying cycle.

People in this segment are just becoming aware that they have a problem.

At this stage, think of how your content can help people become more informed about the problem in general, and you'll (hopefully) find that they continue moving closer to a purchasing decision.

Important questions to start thinking about:

What problem are they likely trying to solve, and what are the symptoms that are causing this problem?
What information will help them identify their problem(s) and that our product or service is designed to solve them?
How can we build trust and provide more value than our competitors from this early stage in the journey?

5. Identify awareness stage content.

Taking your buyer personas' questions into account, you can turn them into topics for awareness stage content.

The content you want to provide them should speak to their current needs, not jump straight into product-focused content.

This can take the form of insightful blog posts, webinars, ebooks, or social media posts that give information to solve initial concerns and slowly familiarize prospects with how your product can help them.

Looking for advice? I recommend putting yourself in your customers’ shoes and thinking of questions you’d ask in your place.

What information would you look for? And here’s the kicker — you already know these questions because you probably answer them every day!

6. Brainstorm ways to position your solution as your persona enters the consideration stage.

At this point, you’ve provided your prospect with enough information to become fully aware of their problem, and they know it can be remedied.

This is when you should begin trying to move them closer to a purchasing decision and become more interested in your product offering, using consideration stage content.

7. Identify consideration stage content.

Your consideration stage content can more explicitly mention how your product or service could potentially solve a problem.

At this point in the buying cycle, people are still evaluating their options. Your purpose now is to help them narrow down the solution that works the best and provides them the most value.

The types of content used for the consideration stage can look like this:

Videos comparing and contrasting offerings
Whitepapers
Charts and infographics

8. Brainstorm objections that would stop them from buying in the decision stage.

Now that you’ve identified the “why” behind your prospect choosing your solution, it’s time to consider the “why not”.

Some competitors may have a more affordable solution, different methods of remedying issues, or more authority (popularity) in the market.

While some of these aspects cannot be changed, you can still appeal to the prospect and move them closer to purchase if your offering is a real value add, regardless of the rest.

Pro tip: You don’t always have to be the cheapest! Quality wins over quantity. I’ve made choices that have been more expensive or not as well-known due to how well the solution met my needs, overcame objections, or added value.

9. Identify decision stage content.

At the decision stage of the buyer journey, you can primarily lean into marketing your products or services.

If someone has reached this stage, they've already identified a problem and a solution, and are now getting ready to pull the proverbial trigger toward a purchase decision.

This is where you can directly present the prospect with examples of positive experiences or success derived from your product or service offering, with decision stage content like:

Case studies (social proof)
Customer testimonials
Product demos

10. Determine how these content pieces work together.

Now that you’ve identified all the different types of content that buyers of each stage are looking for, it’s time to map the ideas.

Content Mapping Template

This content mapping visualization keeps the marketing strategy focused on the goal specified with all the steps necessary to gradually reel in buyers.

Our template can also help you to schedule when you want content published on a monthly or quarterly basis if you want to manage it in one place.

You can approach content mapping to serve more specific strategies this way, too. I’ll discuss content mapping for your website in more detail below.

Website Content Mapping

Website content mapping is the process of planning the pages, blog posts, and offers you’ll publish on your site and identify which buyer personas those pages and posts will serve.

Website content mapping also identifies which pages and posts address different lifecycle stages.

Website content mapping is a key element of website personalization. In essence, you’ll create different pages, posts, and offers to address different buyers at different points in the buyer’s journey.

To give you a better idea of website content mapping, I will walk you through a simple example.

Content Map Example

The buyer persona (and a key problem or opportunity that the persona is struggling with) is at the start of the grid.

Jenny is opening a gym. Her problem is that she needs gym equipment but has a limited budget. She has taken to the internet for a solution.

In the awareness life cycle stage, she’ll be looking for introductory content to gain knowledge about the types of equipment necessary to bring customers into her gym.

In the consideration life cycle stage, she’ll have a better understanding of her need for equipment and price expectations.

She'll be looking to create a clearer budget for different items and should consider how long this investment will last — seeking templates that outline that information.

Finally, in the decision stage, Jenny has identified her needs and is looking for a provider to fill them.

She will feel inclined to request demos, consults, or quotes from a company that has guided her through her journey to their solution of cost-effective gym equipment.

This type of content map works because it segments personas as they progress through the buyer lifecycle. If you have more than one persona, you can expand your map into a segmentation grid.

Content Segmentation Grid

A content segmentation grid is a tool to help businesses plan the content they will produce based on the different types of audiences they want to reach.

A common mistake I see marketers make when it comes to content planning is that they’ll understand the need to make personalized content for customers as they navigate the buyer stages.

But they'll ignore the need for individualized messaging.

A content segmentation grid solves that problem as marketers will be able to better serve every customer segment at each stage they reach.

So, instead of writing messaging for one buyer persona, you can potentially increase engagement and conversions across different audiences.

Now that we’ve explored what content mapping is and you’ve seen how to get started, you might be wondering what type of tools you can use to start content mapping.

Content Mapping Tools

Content mapping may seem like a difficult task that requires highly specialized software. It’s not true. All you need to get started are simple business tools you may already be using in your day-to-day.

We’ll start with the most basic tools you need to start content mapping, such as word processors and visualization tools.

Pro tip: When looking for the right content mapping software for your business, take into account the size of your business and your budget.

You’ll also want to make sure you have at least one tool to visualize your content map and one to research your personas.

1. Google Docs

Pricing: Free

First up in your content mapping tech stack is your preferred word processor, Google Docs.

It has the feature to draw and insert different types of diagrams into documents, which can be translated into a content map to align your marketing mix with your goals.

I highly recommend this tool because it makes it easier to share work across your team, and you never have to worry about backing up your content map once you’ve created it.

What I like: Not everyone has the funds to buy software from the beginning if they’re starting a business. With Google, you get access to Docs along with an entire suite of tools that can help you with your content mapping process.

In fact, Google apps may be enough to run most of your business and content operations.

2. Lucidchart

Pricing: Free basic plans are available. Individual plans cost $9 a month. Team plans cost $10 a month. Enterprise plan pricing is available upon request.

If you’re more of a visual person, then a flowchart tool is a must. Also, if you’d prefer to create a content map with lines and diagrams, then you need a more sophisticated tool than Google Docs.

Lucidchart’s flowchart maker is a top-of-the-line tool that also allows you to connect different apps and services.

Like Google Docs, it allows you to work collaboratively, but Lucidchart takes it a step further and provides users with more visually appealing formatting.

What I like: Lucidchart’s integration allows you to directly embed your flowcharts into other tools, and even edit the charts in the external tool like Microsoft Powerpoint, for example.

3. Buyer Persona Tool

Pricing: Free

Before you can even begin to create a content map, you need to identify the buyer persona(s) you’re creating content for.

HubSpot has a buyer persona tool made to build and save professional buyer persona documents with its intuitive generator. The generator is easy to use and allows you to add a name and avatar to humanize your persona.

And if you want to take it a step further, HubSpot also has a list containing even more buyer persona resources to build out your customer profiles for your business, too.

What I like: The persona generator is visually appealing, making it easy to understand. And while there are only 7 sections it has you fill out, you can add and customize your own sections to flesh out your personas on a deeper level.

4. Marketing Hub

Pricing: A free basic plan is available. Starter plans cost $15 a month. Professional plans cost $800 a month. Enterprise plans cost $3,200 a month.

In the Marketing Hub, there is an SEO Topics tool that provides content mapping capabilities to help users organize their ideas for organic-focused awareness stage content.

With this capability, your team will be able to collaborate and execute your content map once it’s ready for deployment.

What I like: The tool also has a performance tab, so you can regularly check how your topics are doing and help you determine if those topics are working for you or not.

5. Miro

Pricing: Free plans are available. Starter plans cost $8 a month. Business plans cost $16 a month. Contact Miro for enterprise pricing.

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Miro is a visual workspace with versatile functionality. I like it for content mapping because it’s easy to use and allows you to lay out your buyer’s journey and its respective content with graphics and other assets to make it easy to understand.

It’s intuitive and easy to use, and I love how colorful it is.

The platform can easily integrate with over 100+ apps and lends itself to collaboration, so you can work with teammates on the project together.

Miro also has a number of tutorials on their site so you can learn how to get the most out of the platform.

What I like: If you don’t know where to start, Miro houses a large library of over 2500+ workspace templates to choose from.

6. ClickUp

Pricing: Free plans are available. Unlimited plans cost $7 a month. Business plans cost $12 a month. Contact ClickUp for enterprise pricing.

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ClickUp is a project management tool great for businesses of every size. It’s one of my favorite tools and I use it everyday in my own business.

The platform has a feature called ‘Whiteboards’ that can be used to brainstorm and plan out workflows. ClickUp is a great collaboration tool and through the “Whiteboards” function, you can work on the same board at the same time.

This platform also has a native docs feature, so you can also use that to build out your content if you’d like to keep everything in one place.

If you’d like to use it in conjunction with your existing suite of tools, ClickUp can be easily integrated with over 100 tools.

What I like: Since ClickUp is a project management tool first and foremost, you can actually take your “Whiteboard” and create tasks for your team members within the feature. This makes it easy to go from planning to execution.

7. SurveyMonkey

Pricing: Team advantage plans cost $25 a month. Team premier plans cost $75 a month. Contact Survey Monkey for enterprise pricing.

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Before you start mapping out all the content you’ll create for your customers, it’s important you get to know those customers first.

This is where a tool like SurveyMonkey comes in handy. SurveyMonkey is an online software platform designed for creating surveys and data collection.

This is one of the most widely used survey tools and is a great option to gather data about your customers to build out your personas.

I like exploring their extensive library of templates that you can choose from if you’re not sure what kind of questions to ask and features an easy-to-use interface.

SurveyMonkey also offers Market Research Solutions if you need in-depth data.

What I like: To make sure their customers are as educated as possible on surveys and data collection, they provide blogs, a resource center, and a help center.

8. SEMRush

Pricing: Pro plans cost $129.9 a month. Guru plans cost $249.95 a month. Contact SEMRush for business pricing.

SEMRush is one of the most used SEO tools out there.

SEO is very important in the content creation process as it can drive more traffic to your website, but it also has a place in the content mapping stage.

With SEMRush, I like to do keyword research to see what customers are likely to search and use that information to create personas.

This platform features a user-friendly interface and includes a variety of tools like a backlink checker, competitor analysis, and organic research, so you’ll get access to tools you can use during content mapping and in other areas of your business.

What I like: SEMRush has a search intent feature that tells you not only what people are searching for, but why, which is a fantastic bit of information to collect.

9. Qualtrics

Pricing: Pricing must be requested.

While most businesses might be able to use platforms like SurveyMonkey that I mentioned earlier or even Google Forms to collect information from their customers, some companies may require more robust solutions.

Qualtrics is a customer experience company that offers three solution suites: Customer Experience, Employee Experience, and Strategy & Research.

Because of its complex interface and high price point, Qualtrics is best suited for companies requiring large-scale market research and high-level data collection.

What I like: Qualtrics is capable of delivering incredible results because of its ability to be customized and can be integrated with a wide range of tools.

Tools to Help Implement Your Content Map

1. HubSpot CRM

Pricing: Free

HubSpot’s CRM is the one tool you need to compile all of your data from current and prospective customers.

The CRM will allow you to discern different lifecycle stages and pinpoint commonalities between customers who are ready to purchase based on lead scoring.

Your content map can help someone build a lead scoring system to identify high-value leads who have consumed the content close to a purchasing decision.

What I like: HubSpot’s CRM has the ability to create contact lists using customized criteria. When used together with the lead scoring, you can create multiple lists of your personas to deliver content to in a streamlined fashion.

2. Content Hub

Pricing: Professional plans cost $800 a month. Enterprise plans cost $3,600 a month.

A content management system is probably the most important tool for your content mapping efforts.

A CMS will allow you to publish personalized content that targets different site visitors at — you guessed it — different stages of the buyer’s journey.

With Content Hub, you can continue testing and retesting your content for better results.

What I like: Content Hub is fully integrated with HubSpot’s CRM platform and Marketing Hub, allowing you to create a seamless experience for your customers as they receive the content you’ve designed for them.

It will help you execute your content map flawlessly.

So, are you ready to begin creating your own content map? Before you start, let's hear some tips from marketers who attribute part of their success to this strategy.

Content Mapping Tips From the Pros

1. Educate your audience.

When it comes to content mapping, creating high-quality material is important. Just ask Adanna Austin, a business coach and consultant at Marketing Dynamics Business Solutions.

“We all have to create compelling content to attract our ideal clients, build an active and engaged audience, and get daily sales. Spend time building your audience by educating them and engaging with them,” Austin says.

Austin also emphasizes that variety is key.

“No one has built a business by posting the same image or type of image every day on socials and not having convoys with their audience. It is not just about showing up, but doing so with intention so you can attract your ideal clients who will buy from you,” she says.

2. Give your prospects the information they need before they ask for it.

When asked about the benefits of content mapping, Digital Atlas Marketing Founder Laura Hogan focused on the importance of foresight.

"With content mapping, you can give your prospects the information they are asking for before they even ask for it. Buyer personas and lifecycle stages allow you to be one step ahead of the game by mapping out what your prospect's next steps are and delivering them the content from numerous different avenues,” Hogan says.

Hogan says her team creates buyer personas as part of their onboarding process.

From there, “everything we do — from content offer to daily tweets — is centered around that document. We also always ask ourselves, ‘Would business owner Bob open this email, click this tweet, or download this offer?’” Hogan explains.

3. Provide different conversion paths for different personas.

No two customer journeys are cut and paste. Everyone’s path looks different. Marc Herschberger, director of operations at Revenue River Marketing, explains.

For example, Herschberger notes, when mapping out content for a site's visitors, teams have to remember that some personas would rather speak to someone on their terms, rather than fill out a form for a consultation.

“Understanding how they are most comfortable when it comes to making decisions can help you understand what points of conversion will be the most relevant and successful for that persona,” Herschberger says.

He continues, “Optimizing your site pages (landing and thank you pages, as well)...and workflows with direct contact information (phone #, email, etc.) is a great way to ensure that visitors, prospects, and leads who may shy away from form submissions still have readily available, alternate means of converting.”

4. Create specific content that appeals to specific personas.

Mapping out buyer personas and lifecycle stages is extremely important when creating content, shares Spencer Powell, CEO of Builder Funnel.

“In terms of buyer personas, it‘s easy to see that a marketing director will have different questions, information needs, and interests compared to a CEO,” says Powell. “Both of these personas may be searching for your product or service, but they’ll be looking for different topics.”

To get around this, Powell recommends creating content that appeals to each audience. That allows you to be more effective in attracting that specific audience.

“By the same token, each persona of yours may be in a different stage of the buying process, so it's important to think through and create content that appeals to someone looking for basic, high-level information such as an ebook, as well as specific information like a pricing guide or case study,” Powell says.

Powell also suggests that teams dedicate an entire section of their site to each audience. This allows them to curate content for that specific audience.

“We actually took this concept and went a step further by creating unique brands for each one of our vertical markets. Each brand has its own section of the website, its own blog content, and its own premium content (downloadable offers).

It's really helped us attract and convert visitors at a higher rate because all the content is more relevant to that persona,” Powell says.

5. Pull content topics from your sales process.

"By taking the buyer and buying stage into account when creating content, you can be sure that you're designing content to help move them through the buying process,” notes Diona Kidd, a managing partner at Knowmad.

In addition to mapping content to the buyer profile and buying stage, Kidd’s team regularly pulls topics from the sales process.

“Then we offer the content in later sales calls. This helps us not only evaluate the relevancy of the content but also the interest of the buyer. We encourage clients to do the same,” Kidd says.

Content Mapping is Key to Your Company’s Growth

Delivering the right content at the right time can do wonders for your company’s growth.

By meeting prospects’ needs based on their persona and lifecycle stage, you’re delighting them at every turn, boosting your chances of winning a loyal customer and turning them into a brand evangelist.

I’ve walked you through the importance of having a content map and the tools I recommend you use. The most important part of the process, and the one you’ll want to spend time on, is persona building.

Remember, everything you do in the content mapping process hinges on your personas.

If you’re ready to start researching your personas and building your content map but still need a little more guidance, remember you can always use HubSpot’s content planning template.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in March 2014 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

August 23, 2024

How to Perfectly Manage a PPC Campaign [Template]

In the world of search engine marketing (SEM), I’m seeing a growing number of marketers turn to PPC campaigns. That’s how Google has significantly grown its advertising revenue every year.

In 2023, 77.8% of Google’s revenue came from advertising on Google properties and YouTube.

Why? Well-run pay-per-click or PPC campaigns help you generate leads by nearly guaranteeing ad placement in search engine result pages.

And if your ads tool is tightly integrated with your CRM, you can use insights from your ad data to nurture leads across their buying journey.

In this post, I’ll walk you through what makes a successful campaign and the best practices for optimizing your PPC campaigns.

Table of Contents

What is a PPC campaign?
How to Build a PPC Campaign Strategy
What is PPC management?
PPC Campaign Management Template
How to Manage a PPC Campaign
Effective PPC Campaign Management Strategies
How to Optimize Your PPC Campaign
PPC Campaign Management by Platform

So, how can you win a PPC campaign? Success starts by using research, data, and insights to create an effective strategy.

If you jump into a PPC campaign without an effective strategy, it’s easy to waste money, attract the wrong leads, and set yourself up for frustration without much to show for it.

Here are a few ways I’ve seen marketers go wrong with PPC campaign management:

Building one basic campaign without using Google Ads’ Ad Groups tool.
Coming up with keywords by relying on gut feeling instead of doing research.
Not adding “negative keywords” or monitoring campaigns to avoid wasting budget.
Using unengaging landing pages or a homepage that generates no leads for the campaign.
Creating campaigns, setting budget caps, and going live without informing internal or external stakeholders.

Building an excellent campaign structure can help you avoid these obstacles. Luckily, building an excellent PPC campaign structure can help you avoid these obstacles.

PPC Campaign Management Template

To help you succeed with your next campaign, we’ve created a free PPC campaign management template.

What I love about this template is that it allows you and your clients to set up a full-funnel campaign structure that follows PPC best practices.

Once you do that, you’ll be better positioned to maximize the return on your PPC investment. The template is broken into two sections: Ads Planner and Ads Results.

Ads Planner Template

In this section of the PPC template, you’ll record your ad campaign information.

The first three columns contain your campaign name, keywords, and negative keywords (keywords you don’t want ads shown for).

Enter your ad variations in the next section. There’s room for multiple headlines, descriptions, and URL paths to help you keep track of your running ads.

Download this Template

Ads Results Template

This part of the PPC template allows you to track relevant campaign metrics. Use it to record your total ad cost and analyze the performance of impressions, conversions, cost-per-click information, and more.

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Now that you’re familiar with the template’s components, let’s look at managing your PPC campaign.

How to Manage a PPC Campaign

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I’m going to show you how to use the PPC template in this blog post — so download it now and follow along with me.This template acts like a checklist that can help you manage the steps along the way.

Pro tip: Here’s what you need to know to make using this template easy:

You’ll want to clear out the example data in the template. That includes placeholder keywords, campaign and ad group names, ads, and final URLs.
Be careful not to alter the variables in columns F, J, and N of the ads planner. They contain the number of characters required by Google Ads for headlines, descriptions, URL paths, and Final URLs.

Now, let’s dive into PPC campaign management.

Step 1: Choose your PPC campaign management tools and software.

There are several platforms for managing your PPC campaign. I recommend starting with one platform and mastering it to keep your costs low in the initial stages of PPC planning.

To simplify managing your campaign, you can natively manage it in the platform you’re already using for running the ads, rather than paying for an external campaign management tool.

However, as you expand your strategy to include more sites, I’ve found that I’ve needed the features of a more robust PPC campaign management software.

These more advanced tools allow you to keep track of each platform, budget, and set of ad creatives in one place.

Pro tip: Here are some of my favorite tools for the job:

Marin Software: AI-powered management and analytics to monitor and optimize cross-channel campaigns.
WordStream Advisor: Analyzes Google and Facebook ad performance to improve reach, results, and ROI.
SpyFu: Analyzes your competitor’s campaigns to help you build a well-rounded strategy.

Optmyzr: Offers one-click optimizations, custom reporting, and rule-based automations for managing PPC campaigns across multiple platforms.

Step 2: Understand PPC campaign structure.

Don’t fall into the trap of setting up an account, creating an ad, directing the ad to a website’s home page, picking some keywords, and hitting go.

Running a successful PPC campaign is all about organizing your campaigns and ad groups effectively, choosing the right keywords, and targeting your audience with precision.

You’ll want to manage your budget wisely, craft relevant ad copy, and continuously optimize based on performance data.

And remember, PPC isn’t a one-time setup; it’s an ongoing process where staying updated and making tweaks will keep your campaigns driving results.

Chances are, the account you’re managing will have more than one PPC campaign. Your campaigns may contain several ad groups, each based on a set of related keyword groupings.

Each ad group may contain multiple ads with similar targeted keywords.

Managing multiple campaigns allows you to set daily budget caps, ad schedules, and select geo-targeted regions at the campaign level. If you're bidding on generic and branded keywords, you’ll want to put these in separate campaigns.

The parameters around these two types of keywords will likely be different.

As you’ll see below, your template reflects these best practices, providing cells for several campaigns, ad groups, and ad variations within those ad groups.

Download this Template Free

Step 3: Identify your landing pages.

A landing page is the web page where your PPC traffic goes after they click on your paid ad.

Don’t drive PPC visitors to your home page or blog, hoping they’ll see and fill out a lead generation form. That’s the role of organic search. Instead, drive your audience to a landing page with messaging tailored to your campaign goal.

It should contain a form that collects their contact information in exchange for an offer or asset. Be sure to add a tracking token or UTM parameter to the page so you can identify your lead sources.

Pro tip: Keep in mind that the final URL within an ad group will be the same regardless of the keyword or ad. You can create another ad group if you want to drive a keyword to a different landing page.

If you want to get even more specific, create another campaign for that keyword.

Step 4: Build your keyword strategy.

Always select keywords that are relevant to your landing page and offer. Relevant keywords are important because they increase the chance of the right prospect seeing your ad, clicking on it, and visiting the landing page.

It’s tempting to want to rank for multiple keywords, but you shouldn’t try to do this using a single landing page. Why? An effective landing page has focused messaging that addresses only a few targeted keywords.

If a keyword is irrelevant to your landing page messaging, you’ll end up wasting your ad budget, as visitors are much less likely to convert.

It’s better to create another offer and landing page that specifically addresses those additional keywords with relevant messaging.

Pro tip: To understand search volumes and costs around keywords you want, use tools like the Google AdWords Tool or the HubSpot keywords tool.

If it’s your first time managing a PPC campaign, I recommend checking out this article on how to design a keyword strategy. For Google Ads, you’ll want to learn more about keyword quality scores, too.

Step 5: Create your ads.

This is the fun part.

Most PPC campaign management software allows you to create one or more ads for each ad group (hence the “group” terminology).

After creating multiple ads, these platforms display the ad variations to your audience to test which version leads to a higher clickthrough rate (CTR). This is called A/B testing.

While running A/B tests is optional, I highly recommend taking advantage of it. I’ve seen time and again that A/B testing insights significantly improve campaign performance and ROI.

Pro tip: One of the most effective A/B tests is testing variations of your ad’s call to action (CTA), the phrase that encourages your prospect to take a specific action, like downloading a resource or signing up for more information.

If you need more detail, read how the HubSpot team A/B tests our own CTAs.

Writing Your Headline

When writing your ad, give special attention to your headline. The headline has the greatest influence on an ad’s CTR. Be sure to include a keyword in your headline to draw a user's attention.

An even better practice is using dynamic keyword insertion to make your ads even more relevant to people searching for what you offer.

Keep in mind that you have 30 characters for each ad headline, 30 characters for the display URL (the URL that's displayed in the ad, not to be confused with the final URL), and 90 characters for each line of copy.

If you're using this template, you can easily keep track of these values.

Download this Template Free

Choosing Your Display URL

Finally, there’s the tricky matter of the display URL. You‘re only allowed 30 characters here, but it’s unlikely that your final URL, the actual URL for your landing page, will be that short, especially after adding UTM parameters.

For this reason, search engines like Google allow you to create a display URL, which may not be an actual URL on your website. However, the domain in your display URL must be the same as the domain in your final URL.

This allows users to know they’re in the right place when they click your ad and visit your landing page.

Step 6: Share the completed template with stakeholders.

Your completed template needs to align with stakeholders’ expectations and the elements of a productive PPC campaign.

If you’re a PPC campaign stakeholder, this template will help you with two things.

First, the ads planner template gives you a bird‘s-eye view of what the person running the ads is doing. Second, the ad results template shows how much you’re spending on PPC.

With this, you can reallocate and swiftly modify your budget as you respond to changes in the marketplace.

Effective PPC Campaign Management Strategies

When I first started managing PPC campaigns, I quickly realized that there’s a lot more to it than just setting up ads and hoping for the best. You need to fine-tune every element to get the best results.

Over the years, I’ve honed my approach, and I’m excited to share my top recommendations for effective PPC campaign management strategies that can drive serious revenue, results, and ROI.

Set Clear Campaign Objectives and Goals

Clear, measurable objectives ensure every dollar you spend is working toward driving tangible business outcomes, like boosting sales or generating qualified leads.

When your goals are laser-focused, you’re setting yourself up to maximize ROI by putting your efforts into what truly matters for revenue growth.

Nail Your Audience Targeting

By honing in on precise audience segments, you can run hyper-targeted ads that minimize wasted spend and maximize conversions.

When you reach the right people at the right time, your traffic quality improves, leading to more conversions and better ROI.

Master Keyword Research and Selection

Keywords are the backbone of any PPC campaign. Choosing high-intent keywords ensures your ads appear when people are actively searching for your products or services.

This not only increases your chances of conversions but also helps drive more sales or leads, giving you the best bang for your PPC buck. If you need help, check out our video on using ChatSpot AI for keyword research.

Write Ad Copy That Converts

Developing compelling copy that speaks directly to your audience’s needs can skyrocket your clickthrough rates and conversions.

Effective messaging doesn’t just attract clicks — it persuades potential customers to take action, which means more revenue and better ROI.

Optimize Your Landing Pages

When your landing pages are relevant and persuasive, they guide visitors smoothly toward conversion, lowering bounce rates and increasing sales or leads — ultimately giving you a bigger return on your ad spend.

Manage Your Budget Wisely

Allocating your spend to the highest-performing campaigns minimizes waste and maximizes ROI. When you manage your budget efficiently, you can scale successful campaigns, driving more revenue over time.

Continuous Optimization

PPC isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it game.

Ongoing optimization is the secret to getting better results over time. Regularly testing and tweaking your targeting, bids, and ad creatives help you refine your campaigns, driving more results and revenue as your efforts compound.

Analyze Competitors Regularly

By keeping tabs on what others in your industry are doing, you can spot gaps in the market and seize opportunities they’re missing. This intel helps you outperform competitors, capture more market share, and drive higher revenue and ROI.

Scale Your Campaigns Strategically

Once you’ve found a winning formula, it’s time to scale.

Expanding your reach and increasing ad spend on high-performing campaigns can amplify your results without compromising performance. Strategic scaling leads to substantial revenue growth and maximizes ROI.

How to Optimize Your PPC Campaign

PPC campaign management isn’t a one-time thing. You’ll need to adjust your methods continually for optimized results. Keep these factors in mind to maximize the performance of your PPC campaigns.

Location

Geographic targeting, or geotargeting, allows you to focus your ads on specific locations. This can be as broad as an entire country or as specific as a single city or even a particular ZIP code.

Track the performance of your ads by location to identify the most high-performing areas where you may need to adjust your strategy.

You might reallocate the budget to more profitable locations or test new geotargeted ad copy to improve performance.

For example, if you own a bike shop, the ad performance data may show that targeting urban and densely populated areas may be better than targeting rural areas where most folks residents rely on a car to get around.

Performance by Device

In my experience, conversion rates can vary significantly by device. Campaigns that are effective for desktop users may not perform so well with mobile users.

Consider targeting each group separately and note any differences in conversion rates, cost per click, or return on ad spend (ROAS) for each device type.

If a campaign works better on mobile versus desktop, allocate funds towards your mobile efforts while you try a different campaign for desktop users. This way, you ensure you’re spending on campaigns that guarantee the highest ROI.

Evaluating Keywords

When running campaigns, every keyword you choose won’t prove useful. You’ll need to evaluate and remove the low performers. These could be keywords that:

Are not converting.
Are converting at a very high cost.
Have a "below average" quality score rating.

Remove these keywords and stick with those that are performing well. This allows you to get maximum value from your ad budget.

Examine Keyword Bids

When bidding for keywords, you’ll want to determine how much you can pay for each conversion and still make a profit. To do this, I recommend using Google Ads tools to optimize your bids, like:

Bid simulator: This allows you to see how higher or lower bids can affect your ad’s performance.
First-page bid estimates: This shows how much you likely need to bid to get your ads on the first page of Google search results.

After determining the maximum you can pay for a keyword, these tools will help you make the most of your budget.

Performance by Day and Time

Campaign performance will fluctuate depending on the time of day or day of the week. So, observe your campaigns to see when they perform well.

If they aren’t performing during a specific timeframe, adjust your campaign so that you are only bidding on the most profitable times.

Now, let’s explore the platforms available to run your PPC campaigns.

PPC Campaign Management by Platform

Besides figuring out the ads that work best for your business, understanding where your audience spends most of their time online is key.

That’s why you need to familiarize yourself with the different platforms available for running your PPC campaigns.

Let’s look at some of the most popular ad platforms, like Google, Microsoft (Bing), Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube.

Google PPC Campaign Management

Google has been the dominant player in the search engine space for over 20 years, and it still produces some of the most innovative ad experiences in the market.

Google PPC management offers several key advantages compared to other platforms, like larger reach and audience, advanced targeting options like intent-based targeting and remarketing, and native integration with other Google tools.

Here's a look at two of the most popular ways to serve ads on Google.

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Google Search Ads

One of the most popular types of Google Ads is the search ad. These ads appear at the top and bottom of the search results for specific keywords you bid on.

The typical goal for running Google search ad campaigns is to drive traffic to a specific webpage — like a landing or product page.

Google Display Ads

If you’ve ever visited a website that advertised on the banner, sidebar, or footer of a web page, you've probably seen a Google display ad. These ads are typically visual, featuring colorful graphics, videos, and occasionally audio.

Google display ads are helpful for retargeting customers who visit your website without taking your desired action.

Microsoft Ads (Formerly Bing Ads) PPC Campaign Management

Overall, Microsoft Ads works almost like Google Ads. Both offer similar ad formats, like text ads, responsive ads, and dynamic search ads.

However, Microsoft PPC management can be considered easier to use than Google PPC management for digital marketers starting out, with fewer field requirements and lower thresholds to get to advanced features.

There are a few more distinctions that’ll help you get the most out of your PPC campaign.

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Microsoft Ads Keyword Planner

The bulk of your PPC efforts will likely live in Google Ads. When you decide to bid on Microsoft Ads, avoid using your Google Ads keywords for your Microsoft Ads.

Google and Bing are different search engines, meaning the search volume for your Google keywords may not be the same in Bing.

Microsoft Bing’s keyword research and suggestion tool provides more accurate search volumes for your keywords.

So, while you can use your keyword list from Google, use this tool to verify whether you should bid on the same keywords versus other variants with more traffic.

Lower CPC

One upside of Microsoft Ads is the possibility of having lower CPC, which decreases your ad spend.

A WordStream test of both Google and Microsoft found that the average CPC of running ads on Microsoft was 33% lower.

The implication? Bidding on Microsoft Ads is less competitive than Google, meaning you may likely spend less when paying for Microsoft Ads keywords.

This may be especially true for specific industries, as you’ll see in this table:

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For a deeper dive into Microsoft Ads, check out this resource portal.

Facebook PPC Campaign Management

Facebook Ads Manager is a platform that connects 1.6 billion people to businesses on Facebook.

Where Facebook PPC management differs from Google PPC management is in its ability to target specific demographics and interests, which is great for brand awareness campaigns.

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Some of the most popular ads you can use for Facebook campaigns are:

Story Ads

With more users spending time on social media platforms’ story features, these ads are one way to reach your audience.

Like personal stories, you can share story ads as a video with a link. You can also use a series of photos to explain your ad and entice your audience to take a specific action.

Keep in mind: You can only post stories for 24 hours. These ads are best used for promotions like time-limited offers.

Playable Ads

Gamification is an innovative way to catch a lead’s attention. Facebook’s playable ads allow you to create a brief interactive version of a game or app so users can get a feel for your product.

You’ll want to keep the functionality simple, so you don’t deter potential customers. And, of course, make it fun.

Messenger Ads

If you’ve ever used Facebook’s messenger tool, you’ve probably seen an ad in your conversations. Messenger ads are useful because potential customers can decide to connect with your business directly from their messages.

If you have a customer service team that connects with people via chat, this is a great way to establish an instant connection. You can also send a lead to your site or a specific landing page from the ad.

To get a comprehensive deep dive into building Facebook ad campaigns, check out HubSpot’s Facebook Ads Training Course.

X (Formerly Twitter) PPC Campaign Management

X / Twitter Ads Manager makes it easy to plan your X ad while providing reporting on campaign performance.

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EMarketer reports that X is still a supportive environment for native brand content, with its ability to connect directly to consumers and interact in real time.

But while you may have an excellent chance of success with X, your ads need to be catchy enough to stop someone mid-scroll. Some ads you can include in your X ad campaigns are:

Promoted Ads

X’s Promoted Ads can display your message as a single Image Ad, a Video Ad, a Carousel Ad with up to six horizontally swipeable images or videos, or Text Ads for native advertising content.

This approach allows your business to convert users, or gain new followers. That can help build your brand’s awareness.

Vertical Video Ads

Grab the attention of your prospect with X’s full-screen vertical video Ads. Vertical video is the fastest-growing segment of X, capturing roughly 20% of viewers’ total time spent on the platform.

X reports that users are up to seven times more likely to follow, repost, like, and click the URLs of vertical video ads, as compared to the same ads on their home feed.

X Amplify/X Takeovers/X Live

For even more ways to align ads with premium video content, X offers ways to target ad display based on content categories, feed placement on Timelines or the Explore tab, or even livestream content.

Learn more about X Advertising for your business, and get to posting!

YouTube PPC Campaign Management

Consider adding YouTube PPC to your campaign, especially if you’re already using Google PPC management.

YouTube is one part of the Google Display Network with over 2.4 billion monthly users. This high number of users suggests that including YouTube in your ad campaign strategy makes sense.

If your business can create ads that’ll interest your audience and keep them from hitting “skip” you’re already winning.

Let’s look at some of the different YouTube ads.

Skippable In-Stream Ads

These are likely the ads you are most familiar with. These ads have a little button that says “skip.” Clicking the button allows you to start or continue viewing a video on YouTube.

Often, users have to wait five seconds before they can skip. Five seconds isn’t much time to convince someone to stick around, so ensure your ad’s hook can capture your audience’s attention.

However, you shouldn't worry if users skip your ad within the first five seconds. When a user skips your ad in the first 5 seconds, you won’t have to pay for such views or clicks.

Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads (Including Bumper Ads)

Since many people opt to skip ads on YouTube, advertisers have the option of creating non-skippable ads. If you think your creative is captivating enough to resonate with your target audience, this option may work.

Ensure you measure the results from your non-skippable ads to make the best use of your budget. If the results aren’t in your favor, revert to a skippable ad.

Video Discovery Ads (Formerly Known as In-display Ads)

Discovery ads are what users see in the search results. As the second largest search engine, people watch over 1 billion hours of YouTube videos daily. You’ll want those ads appearing in search results too.

These ads will include a thumbnail and a few lines of text as a description. Since many people prefer visuals over text, this is an opportunity to get your audience to view your video instead of reading a competitor’s text resource.

Start Your PPC Campaign Today

PPC campaign management is all about researching, budgeting, testing, reporting, building on what works, and optimizing for the best ROI.

You don‘t have to do it alone. With the right tools and instructions I’ve outlined in this guide, you’ll be able to implement a PPC campaign that yields results for your business.

Keep in mind that there are a few things that will help you make the most of your efforts:

Clearly defined goals, so you can focus your efforts on reaching them.
Focus on your audience, so you can reach the right people with the right message at the right time.

Write good ad copy by testing your message and iterating on it to lockdown your conversions.
Make data-informed decisions, so that you’re adapting your strategy based on numbers and not a gut check.
Always be optimizing to meet a changing market.

By keeping these tips in mind, you’ll be well on your way to running PPC campaigns that don’t just drive traffic — they drive meaningful growth for your business.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

August 23, 2024September 9, 2024

Collective #859

Now in Baseline: animating entry effects * The anchor element * WebGPU Unleashed: A Practical Tutorial

August 22, 2024

21 Brand Style Guide Examples I Love (for Visual Inspiration)

Developing a consistent brand starts with creating a brand style guide. These branding rule books help graphic designers, marketers, web developers, community managers, and even product packaging departments present a unified vision of the brand to the public.

The best brands stick in our brains because their presence is defined by the repetition of the same logo, fonts, colors, and images. Once we see them enough, they become instantly recognizable. All of this is possible when each member of your team adheres to a cohesive brand style guide.

So, what is a brand style guide? In this article, I'll go over the elements of a style guide and share some amazing examples of them in action to help inspire your next branding project or website redesign.

Table of Contents

What are brand guidelines?
The Elements of a Brand Style Guide
Brand Style Guide Examples
Branding Guidelines Tips

Picture the most recognizable brands you can think of.

Chances are, you've learned to recognize them due to one of the following reasons:

There's a written or visual consistency across the messaging.
The same brand colors are reflected across every asset.
The language sounds familiar.
It‘s all very organized and, while not rigid, it’s cohesive.

But before you sit down to create your branding guidelines, I'd recommend taking a step back and define your brand’s mission statement and buyer personas.

These strategic elements will help you dive into the tactical components of your brand style guide later.

Brand Guidelines Mission Statement

To me, your mission statement is the compass of your brand style guide. It‘s an action-oriented statement declaring your organization’s purpose.

This statement ensures that all your content is working toward the same goal and connecting with your audience. It can also guide your blog and paid content, ad copy, visual media, and slogan.

Pro tip: You can either include your mission statement within your style guide, create a separate document for reference, or distill your mission statement into a slogan that you can place at the head of your document.

Brand Guidelines Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. It includes details on your customer's job title, age, gender, and professional challenges — therefore stipulating for whom your brand publishes content.

Your buyer persona guides your blog content, ad copy, and visual media, which can attract valuable leads and customers to your business.

Pro tip: Download our free resource below on how to create your own style guide with brand guidelines templates to follow. Creating a consistent style guide isn't easy, but with these tools you can build an unforgettable one with ease.

The Elements of a Brand Style Guide

A brand style guide encompasses much more than just a logo (although that’s important, too). It visually encompasses everything your brand is about — down to your business' purpose.

Here are some key elements that I believe make or break a brand style guide.

Logo

Your logo might seem like the simplest aspect of your branding guidelines, but in reality, I‘d argue it’s one of the most complex and most important parts.

In your guide, you should:

Include a visual of your logo.
Explain the design details of your logo.
Describe how your logo can be used by external and internal publishers.

You should also include wrong usages — i.e, you might advise against rotating the design or curving the font. That way, whether you or someone else is publishing information about your company, your logo looks consistent everywhere.

Pro tip: If your brand is well-known and many outlets publish information about you, you also might want to provide an entire document outlining acceptable use policies for your logo.

Color Palette

In my opinion, the color palette is probably one of the most distinctive and recognizable parts of a company’s branding guidelines.

It’s the group of colors your company uses to design its brand assets, guiding every piece of visual content created.

These color combinations often follow HEX or RGB color codes, and govern your logo, web design, printed ads, and event collateral.

Pro tip: A brand color palette should not only include your primary color, but also a wide variety of secondary, tertiary, and neutral colors. This will allow you to come up with more dynamic and varied designs in the content creation stage.

If you don’t define an array of options, you can run the risk of having your team create content with random secondary colors, which can look inconsistent.

Typography

Typography is a visual element of your brand style guide that goes beyond the font you use in your company logo. It supports your brand’s design down to the links and copy on your website — even your tagline.

I recommend specifying a primary and secondary font, with a mixture of serifs and font weights for different use cases.

Remember, the goal of your branding guidelines is to empower your people and external stakeholders to create consistent but varied collateral on behalf of your brand. You don’t want to limit them with a single font option.

For instance, HubSpot’s primary font is Lexend Deca (sans-serif), while our secondary font is Queens (serif). They’re both integrated in our very own Content Hub, and our design tool, Canva, where we can use them to create assets.

Pro tip: Don’t forget that typography also plays a major role in your website's user experience. You want to make sure it is visually appealing while also being accessible and easy to read.

Imagery and Iconography

You may be able to only include your logo, colors, and fonts in your guidelines.

However, if you’d like to create a stronger style guide, consider including approved imagery, pre-designed icons, and custom symbols for your company to use across your website and print collateral.

If your budget is smaller, you can recommend photographic styles (i.e candid versus staged, etcetera), and then direct content creators to your preferred stock photo provider (i.e. Shutterstock, Unsplash).

Alternatively, you can commission a company photoshoot at a studio and make the resulting photography available for creative use.

Pro tip: Symbols and icons can also be a great addition to your branding guidelines. As with photos, you can always find free icons online and recommend what to use versus what not to use (e.g., outlines only vs. full color).

You can also commission custom icons from a freelance graphic designer.

Brand Voice

If your company visuals are the flesh and bones of your style guide, I'm going to say your brand voice is the beating heart.

The importance of your brand voice can’t be overstated.

Maybe you want your company’s personality to be friendly and casual, or you may prefer a more distant and formal voice.

Either way, you want to make it easy for marketers, salespeople, and content creators on your team to know how to represent your brand online. This will ensure consistent messaging across all channels.

For example, if your content marketing strategy mainly focuses on blogs, you could use our Blog Topic Generator to streamline the content creation process and help maintain a consistent tone.

Besides helping you generate content ideas, the tool can also create and edit blog posts based on your selected tone of voice.

You can also include a full editorial style guide. The job of an editorial style guide is to commit an editorial stylebook on how to phrase certain products, list topics the brand can and cannot write about, and other companies it can mention.

Your editorial style guide can guide your blog content, video scripts, website and landing page copy, PR talking points, and knowledge base articles.

As you can see, the purpose of the brand style guide is to form and maintain all of the various elements of a company that, when combined, spell out the entire brand as it's recognized.

Ready to get started? HubSpot's Brand Kit Generator can help you create all of these key branding and style guide elements with ease (and for free).