Day: November 14, 2024

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Today we’re featuring some of the best free script fonts from across the web. We’ve hand-picked bold script fonts with impact, that can be a stand-out choice for your next project.

Fonts don’t always need to be expensive. In fact, it’s hard to believe that the fonts in this collection are actually free to use.

We handpicked these bold script fonts from all around the web, so be sure to check the license and attribution details before using them with your client and commercial projects.

Before we get to the free items, we wanted to show you a couple of our favourite script fonts from Envato Elements:

Buffalo

This beautiful handwritten script font features both uppercase and lowercase letters with numbers and punctuations. It’s the perfect font for designing everything from website headers to greeting cards, T-Shirt designs, and more.

The Historia

Historia is a script font with a vintage brush style script design. The font features a realistic hand painted look and it’s ideal for crafting posters, book covers, and banners. It includes uppercase and lowercase letters with numbers and glyphs.

Watch

Watch is a modern script font with a graffiti style design. You can use it to design website headers, posters, social media posts, and much more. It will fit in well with millennial and fashion related designs.

Sophia Script

This elegant script font is the perfect choice for designing greeting cards and wedding invitations. It features a natural and flowing design that makes it one of a kind. In addition to the basic characters, the font also includes 370 glyphs and 115 alternate characters as well.

Stay High

Stay High is a unique script font with a pop-culture design. It’s a great choice for designing posters, flyers, banners, and other types of print and digital designs. The font also includes 200 ligatures and glyphs as well.

Lelliany – Free Handwritten Script Font

Lelliany is a beautiful handwritten script font with a stylishly creative letterform design. This font is a great choice for crafting logos, signage, and even packaging designs. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Blackboard – Free Handwritten Script Font

A unique script font with a blackboard-style handwritten design. This font will make your titles and text look like letters coming off of a blackboard. It’s an ideal choice for everything from wedding invitations to business cards and more.

Bernady Neulion – Free Script Font

A stylishly elegant script font for your creative projects. This font has a vintage-style letter design that takes inspiration from classic posters and banner designs. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Haunted Christmas – Free Script Font

A perfect choice for crafting Christmas cards and all sorts of holiday-themed designs. This free font will make your seasonal greetings look much more professional. It’s free for personal use only.

Lofty Goals – Free Elegant Script Font

You can download this script font for free to design elegant titles and headings for your professional and client projects. The font features a beautiful handwritten script lettering design. And it’s free for commercial use.

Wintersoul – Free Brush Script Font

Wintersoul is a creative brush script font featuring a unique handwritten letter design with a brush texture. It’s ideal for posters, greeting cards, t-shirts, and much more. You can use it freely with commercial projects.

The Bredan – Free Script Font

This beautiful script font comes with a vintage-style letter design that will fit in perfectly with your modern product packaging designs as well as custom T-shirts, posters, and more. You can use it for free with personal projects.

Claudya – Free Elegant Script Font

With this free script font, you can design elegant logos and labels for luxury brands. Or craft stylish typography for your business cards and wedding invitations. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Calystine – Free Brush Script Font

If you want to add a handcrafted look and feel to your designs, use this font to your advantage. This is a free brush script font that comes with a beautiful hand-drawn character design. It’s free for personal use.

Sundries – Free Bold Script Font

The bold retro design makes this font one of the most unique typefaces on our list. It features a stylish character design that is suitable for various product packaging and label designs. You can use it for free with personal projects.

Restless – Free Brush Script Font

Restless is another beautiful brush script font that comes with a minimalist letter design. This font is perfect for crafting typography for greeting cards, posters, and flyers. It’s free for personal use.

Coastline – Free Textured Script Font

This free script font comes with a beautiful textured design that will help add an authentic look to your designs. It’s especially a great choice for greeting cards and invitation designs. The font is free to use with your personal projects.

Adventurist – Free Hand-Painted Script Font

The bold and hand-painted brush design of this script font gives it a very uncommon look and feel. You can use it to add unique titles to your poster and flyers. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Richmond – Free Brush Script Font

Another creative brush script font featuring a bold textured design. This font has a clean design that’s perfect for various print and digital designs. And it’s completely free to use with your personal and commercial projects.

GoodHood – Free Retro Script Font

If you’re looking for a script font with a classic retro design, this font is perfect for you. It comes with a 90s retro-style script lettering design. You can use it for free with commercial projects.

Albertiny – Free Vintage Script Font

This script font features a stylish vintage letter design that will look great on product label and signage designs. The font includes both uppercase and lowercase letters. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Monique Script – Free Signature Font

Monique Script is an elegant signature font that comes with a very clean letter design. It’s ideal for all sorts of creative greeting card designs, business card designs, and even for wedding invites. It’s free for commercial use.

Southam – Free Signature Script Font

If you’re looking for a stylish script font to design a business card, this font is for you. It comes with a stylish signature script design that’s perfect for professional projects. You can use it for free with personal designs.

Calista – Free Handwritten Script Font

Calista is a trendy handwritten script font you can use to craft social media posts and various other creative designs. It’ll look great on T-shirt designs as well. The font is free to use with your personal projects.

Jelantik – Free Elegant Script Font

If you’re looking for a script font with a minimalist design, this font is worth downloading. It features a clean and elegant lettering design you can use with all kinds of print and digital designs. It’s free for personal use.

Blankeny – Free Creative Script Font

This free script font is perfect for different kinds of creative projects like designing school banners, posters, and even logos. You can download and use it for free with personal projects.

The Crawley Script Font

Crawley is a retro-themed script font that comes with a beautiful design. It’s ideal for creating logos, posters, badges, and website headers. The demo version of the font is free to download and use with personal projects.

TAHU! – Free Script Font

This minimalist script font features a modern design that will instantly attract anyone’s attention. The font features uppercase and lowercase letters with numbers, punctuations, and multilingual characters. The font is free to use with personal and commercial projects.

Hamster Script

This creative script font comes with a design inspired by brush lettering and sign paintings. The font can be used to design T-Shirts, signage, mugs, and much more. It’s free for both personal and commercial use.

Adrenaline – Free Script Font

Adrenaline is a modern-vintage font with a unique rounded design. It’s ideal for designing everything from product packagings to labels, greeting cards, posters, and much more.

Rohtwo – Bold Script Font

Give your designs an authentic handcrafted feel. Rohtwo Bold Signature is perfectly suited to stationery, logos, and much more.

Haglos – Bold Script Font

Haglos allows you to create hand lettering in an instant and offers a super handy set of bonus swash. Ideal for logos, handwritten quotes, product packaging, header, poster, merchandise, social media & greeting cards.

Rafale – Bold Script Font

Rafale is a bold script font with a calligraphy style. It looks very beautiful on invitations, greeting cards, branding materials, business cards, quotes, posters, and more!

Hardwork – Free Script Font

Hardwork is a clean, modern, and bold script font with a vintage look and full of charm. It contains uppercase, lowercase and numbers. Hardwork font is perfect for projects like business card, typography, graphic design, poster, brochure, wedding invitation, web header, logo design and many more.

Hobenshaw – Free Script Font

Hobenshaw is a hand drawn font carefully crafted with a personal charm. It is a hot font, perfect for a design that stands out even if it’s a logo, or simply a stylish text over an background image. Hobenshaw includes full set of uppercase and lowercase letters and numerals.

Southampton Signature Free Font

Southampton is a signature-style script font you can use to design logos, signatures, social media posts, watermarks, wedding invitations, and other types of graphics. The font is free to use with personal projects.

Badriyah Script Font

Another signature-style script font with a modern design. The font is ideal for designing many different types of web and print works. The free version of the font is limited to personal use only.

Indesign Signature Script Font

This elegant script font also features a handwritten signature-style design. You can use it to craft business cards, logos, wedding invitations, greeting cards, social media posts, and much more.

Barcelony – Modern Free Script Font

Barcelony is an elegant free script font that features a natural flowing handwritten design. It’s perfect for designing everything from greeting cards to wedding invitations, logos, and more.

Mellgatha – Free Monoline Script Font

Featuring a creative monoline design, this free script font comes with lots of alternate characters and multilingual support. The font is most suitable for wedding invitations and stationery design.

Woodlands – Free Brush Script Font

Woodlands is a free brush script font you can use to craft large headings and titles for your posters, banners, website headers, and social media post designs. It includes both uppercase and lowercase letters.

Milestone – Vintage Script Font

Milestone features a stylish vintage design that’s ideal for designing product labels and logos. The free font includes lots of glyphs, multilingual characters, and ligatures as well.

Raphtalia – Stylish Free Script Font

Another free script font featuring a vintage design. This font comes with several unique alternate characters, ligatures, and multilingual character support.

Aliyah – Elegant Script Typeface

Aliyah is the perfect font you can use to design greeting cards and wedding invitations. The creative brush script design of the font will make your designs look more stylish and professional as well.

Wirepop – Creative Script Font

This free script font comes with a calligraphy design that makes it stand out from the rest. The font is free to download and use with your personal projects.

Briberra – Rough Bold Script Font

Briberra is a modern script font with a rough design. You can use it with various designs including T-shirts, posters, website headers, and much more.

Fineberg – Clean Script Font

Fineberg typeface features a clean and stylish design. The handwritten script design of the font makes it most suitable for designing titles and headlines for posters and banners.

Black Roasters – Free Monoline Typeface

Black Roasters is a monoline script font that comes with a modern-vintage design. The font is ideal for packaging and label designs as well as many others.

Hensa – Free Brush Script Typeface

Hensa is a modern brush script font with a natural design. You can use it with your greeting card, posters, book cover, and other types of design projects. The font includes glyphs, swashes, and ligatures as well.

America – Free Textured Script Font

Inspired by the Childish Gambino’s popular song, this free font features a bold and a modern design that will help you send a powerful message across through your designs. The font is free to use with personal and commercial projects.

Logawa Script Font

Logowa is a unique hand-painted font that features a creative design with an uncommon style. The font is perfect for logotypes, badges, and signage designs.

Gardenia Script

Gardenia is an elegant and free script font that comes with a creative design. The font can be used to craft website and blog headers as well as social media covers, posters, greeting cards, and much more.

Lauren Script Font

Lauren is a handmade calligraphy script font that comes with a modern design. You can design logos, T-shirts, greeting cards, website headers, and more using this free font.

Highlander Marker Script

This amazing marker script font comes to you free of charge. It features lots of glyphs, ligatures, swashes, and includes multilingual support as well.

Barista Script Free Font

Barista is a unique script font that features a stenciled and monoline design. The font is perfect for crafting logotypes, signs, badges, and posters.

Campground Free Monoline Script

Campground is yet another retro-inspired script font you can use to design posters, badges, website headers, social media covers, product packaging, labels, and many other types of designs.

Bahagia Typeface

Bahagia is a signature-style script font that comes with both uppercase and lowercase letters. It also features lots of symbols, punctuations, and alternate characters.

Florateris – Cursive Script Font

Florateris is a fancy, and stylish cursive font suitable for projects that demand a creative, and edgy look. It’s an excellent contender for your cash if you truly value standing out from the pack. Do give this wonderful script typeface a shot.

Twilight Blossom – Bouncy Script Font

If you’re wanting to get your hands on a cursive script font that really helps your designs stand out, look no further than Twilight Blossom. It’s a modern calligraphy font with a bouncy style that will surely make your lettering designs look way more attractive.

Dream Flourish – Decorative Script Font

Dream Flourish is a script font that exudes luxury, and elegance making it perfect for a range of creative and professional applications including but not limited to wedding invitations, landing pages, logos, greeting cards and headlines.

Bayhours – Cursive Script Font

If you’re looking to hunt down the best cursive script fonts available on the market today, Bayhours is well worth checking out. It features an effortlessly stylish design that surely will make your projects stand out. Check it out now.

Can’t get enough of beautiful fonts? Check out our best monogram fonts and calligraphy fonts collections for more.

This article is a sponsored by Penpot

Penpot is a free, open-source design tool that allows true collaboration between designers and developers. Designers can create interactive prototypes and design systems at scale, while developers enjoy ready-to-use code and make their workflow easy and fast because it's built with web technologies, works in the browser, and has already passed 33K starts on GitHub.

The UI feels intuitive and makes it easy to get things done, even for someone who’s not a designer (guilty as charged!). You can get things done in the same way and with the same quality as with other more popular and closed-source tools like Figma.

As someone who works with commercial open-source on my day-to-day, I strongly believe in it as a way to be closer to your users and unlock the next level of delivery. Being open-source creates a whole new level of accountability and flexibility for a tool.

Developers are a different breed of user. When we hit a quirk or a gap in the UX, our first instinct is to play detective and figure out why that pattern stuck out as a sore thumb to what we’ve been doing. When the code is open-source, it’s not unusual for us to jump into the source and create an issue with a proposal on how to solve it already. At least, that’s the dream.

On top of that, being open-source allows you and your team to self-host, giving you that extra layer of privacy and control, or at least a more cost-effective solution if you have the time and skills to DYI it all.

When the cards are played right, and the team is able to afford the long-term benefits, commercial open-source is a win-win strategy.

Talking about the extensibility of open-source, Penpot has the PenpotHub the home for open-source templates and the newly released plugin gallery. So now, if there’s a functionality missing, you don’t need to jump into the code-base straightaway — you can create a plugin to achieve what you need. And you can even serve it from localhost!

Creating Penpot Plugins

When it comes to the plugins, creating one is extremely ergonomic. First, there are already set templates for a few frameworks, and I created one for SolidJS in this PR — the power of open-source!

When using Vite, plugins are Single-Page Applications; if you have ever built a Hello World app with Vite, you have what it takes to create a plugin. On top of that, the Penpot team has a few packages that can give you a headstart in the process:

npm install @penpot/plugin-styles

That will allow you to import with a CSS loader or a CSS import from @penpot/plugin-styles/styles.css. The JavaScript API is available through the window object, but if your plugin is in TypeScript, you need to teach it:

npm add -D @penpot/plugin-types

With those types in your node_modules, you can pop-up the tsconfig.json and add the types to the compilerOptions.

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "types": ["@penpot/plugin-types"]
  }
}

And there you are, now, the Language Service Provider in your editor and the TypeScript Compiler will accept that penpot is a valid namespace, and you’ll have auto-completion for the Penpot APIs throughout your entire project. For example, defining your plugin will look like the following:

penpot.ui.open("Your Plugin Name", "", {
  width: 500,
  height: 600
})

The last step is to define a plugin manifest in a manifest.json file and make sure it’s in the outpot directory from Vite. The manifest will indicate where each asset is and what permissions your plugin requires to work:

{
  "name": "Your Plugin Name",
  "description": "A Super plugin that will win Penpot Plugin Contest",
  "code": "/plugin.js",
  "icon": "/icon.png",
  "permissions": [
    "content:read",
    "content:write",
    "library:read",
    "library:write",
    "user:read",
    "comment:read",
    "comment:write",
    "allow:downloads"
  ]
}

Once the initial setup is done, the communication between the Penpot API and the plugin interface is done with a bidirectional messaging system, not so different than what you’d do with a Web-Worker.

So, to send a message from your plugin to the Penpot API, you can do the following:

penpot.ui.sendMessage("Hello from my Plugin");

And to receive it back, you need to add an event listener to the window object (the top-level scope) of your plugin:

window.addEventListener("message", event => {
  console.log("Received from Pendpot::: ", event.data);
})

A quick performance tip: If you’re creating a more complex plugin with different views and perhaps even routes, you need to have a cleanup logic. Most frameworks provide decent ergonomics to do that; for example, React does it via their return statements.

useEffect(() => {
  function handleMessage(e) {
    console.log("Received from Pendpot::: ", event.data);
  }
  window.addEventListener('message', handleMessage);

  return () => window.removeEventListener('message', handleMessage);
}, []);

And Solid has onMount and onCleanup helpers for it:

onMount(() => {
  function handleMessage(e) {
    console.log("Received from Penpot::: ", event.data);
  }
  window.addEventListener('message', handleMessage);
})

onCleanup(() => {
  window.removeEventListener('message', handleMessage);
})

Or with the @solid-primitive/event-listener helper library, so it will be automatically disposed:

import { makeEventListener } from "@solid-primitives/event-listener";

function Component() {

  const clear = makeEventListener(window, "message", handleMessage);

  // ...
  return (<span>Hello!</span>)
}

In the official documentation, there’s a step-by-step guide that will walk you through the process of creating, testing, and publishing your plugin. It will even help you out.

So, what are you waiting for?

Well, maybe you’re waiting for a push of motivation. The Penpot team thought of that, which is why they’re starting a Plugin Contest!

For this contest, they want a fully functional plugin; it must be open-source and include comprehensive documentation. Detailing its features, installation, and usage. The first prize is US$ 1000, and the criteria are innovation, functionality, usability, performance, and code quality. The contest will run from November 15th to December 15th.

If you decide to build a plugin, I’d love to know what you’re building and what stack you chose. Please let me know in the comments below or on BlueSky!

I cringe whenever I look at how many unopened emails live in my work inbox. I’m lucky if I open maybe ten percent of them — including anything promotional.

But, of those ten percent, what convinced me to open and respond to them? Those companies did below the line (BTL) marketing right.

Email marketing, direct mail, events — below the line marketing includes these and similar targeted tactics to convince and convert buyers. What goes into running a successful BTL campaign? And where do you begin?

To help you start, I dug into BTL marketing: the history, its relationship with other marketing tactics, and best practices from experts. Here’s what I found.

Table of Contents

• What is below the line marketing?
• Above the Line vs. Below the Line Marketing
• How to Make Below the Line Marketing Work for You
• Below the Line Marketing Examples
• Below the Line Marketing Best Practices

What is below the line marketing?

Great question! Answering “What is BTL marketing?” is surprisingly tough.

First, let’s look at history. Below the line marketing got its start in the 1950s.

Manufacturing giant Procter & Gamble wanted to separate advertising activities based on who got paid for them. “Traditional” advertising costs (aka, TV, radio, OOH) payable to ad agencies made it above the line on the company’s draft budget. Everything else fell below the line.

In modern marketing parlance, I’d say below the line marketing is a spiritual cousin to demand generation. However, BTL marketing in practice feels more like a subset of demand gen — enabling demand gen’s strategy through tactical details and execution. BTL campaigns often run on shorter operational timelines.

The results BTL generates focus more heavily on responses and conversions instead of demand gen’s longer-term customer acquisition and nurture goals.

For our purposes, BTL marketing tactics will include:

• Direct mail
• Email marketing
• Trade shows and events
• Location-specific promotions
• Targeted online outreach

While traditional BTL marketing relies on a physical component, the internet’s reach is inescapable. So long as it’s highly targeted, personalized, and time-bound, you could make a case to include physical and digital marketing tactics.

Above the Line vs. Below the Line Marketing

Speaking of the internet, digital marketing has blurred the lines between above the line (ATL) and BTL marketing. Yet, whether it happens in cyberspace or physical space, we need distinction between both operations. For our discussion, let’s say:

• ATL marketing involves broad campaigns aimed at wide audiences.
• BTL marketing involves targeted campaigns aimed at specific segments of your target audience.

The elements of targeting and personalization make the difference. Instead of billboards nationwide, it’s mailers sent to a dozen neighborhoods. BTL brings a clear focus to connecting with an audience subgroup and convincing them to buy.

This targeting shrinks a campaign’s size and scale, so BTL actions typically cost less than their ATL counterparts.

What do ATL and BTL marketing look like in practice?

To answer this question, I went to Sara Croft. Croft is the CEO of Five Four Partners, a growth agency that helps companies launch and scale. Many of her early-stage startup clients use below the line marketing tactics.

She positions the ATL/BTL divide with her clients like this: “Let’s take a LinkedIn ad campaign example,” Croft said. “A generic, broad message about your product that’s targeted to a very wide audience and sends people to your home page could get a lot of eyeballs and maybe some clicks, but likely won’t result in a conversion. For an early-stage company, this wastes time. While brand building is important, startups need customers — now.

“For targeted BTL marketing, an early-stage startup could consider running LinkedIn ads for a webinar,” she continued. “It’s a lower barrier to entry for the audience to sign up to attend a webinar versus signing up for a demo of a potentially six-figure product purchase. The webinar educates the audience further and helps qualify and disqualify prospects. The results are tangible, measurable, and actionable.”

A strong marketing strategy requires both ATL and BTL actions, but it’s vital to know when to apply each:

• ATL marketing is great for companies wanting to increase brand awareness and reach. If your metrics are more top-of-funnel-focused, you’ll do well with ATL tactics.
• BTL marketing is for specific audiences and supports bottom-of-funnel-related metrics. If your goal is to convince and convert, BTL is the way to go.

Or, as Croft puts it, “ATL marketing makes the prospect aware of a pain and its solution, but BTL marketing helps them know what to do about it.”

How to Make Below the Line Marketing Work for You

Whether you’re running marketing for an early-stage startup or a multibillion-dollar conglomerate, BTL marketing can offer many opportunities to convert your target audience. But it can be daunting to start.

When I build BTL marketing plans, I find it helps to adopt journalism’s Five Ws (Plus H):

• Who?
• What?
• Where?
• When?
• Why?
• How?

With these questions in mind, let’s see how you can build and execute your plan. For our purposes, I’ll also share details from BTL donor relations campaigns I’ve run to tie these concepts to concrete outcomes.

1. Define your target segments.

Who are you talking to? Because of BTL’s tighter targeting, you need to get detailed with your target segments. The more information you have on your potential buyers, the better.

In past campaigns, I’ve built donor outreach lists based on demographic and psychographic data gathered through various sources:

• Age
• Location
• Disposable income
• Engagement with other content
• Previous interest (e.g., volunteered at an organizational event, visited a physical location)
• Previous giving data (if available)

These data points helped me build the vision for my ideal buyer.

2. Customize and personalize messaging.

Once you know who you’re talking to, you must understand why you’re reaching out and what you want them to know. I’ve seen marketing teams run with generic copy from other campaigns and call it a day. That’s a surefire way to waste your and your buyers’ time and resources.

Through market research and past interactions, you can build a nuanced understanding of your messaging. What clicks with prospects? What makes people’s eyes light up in interest? What scares them away?

At this stage, practice articulating your messaging with draft copy. I find it helpful to lay out an internal brief containing:

• Core messaging
• 3-5 key points I want buyers to remember
• Purpose statement (Why am I reaching out to you?)
• 30-second elevator pitch copy (What am I trying to say?)
• Draft copy for short-form and long-form content

Great writing comes from great thinking. Use this internal brief model to organize your thoughts and state your case.

3. Pick the right channels.

You’ve chosen your segments and crafted a compelling message. Now, where will you find your buyers? When will you reach out? And how will you do it?

BTL marketing campaigns survive on nitty-gritty details. From your research and experience, you should know where your buyers spend their time.

Coupled with clear messaging, you can choose the right delivery channels:

• Direct mail
• Email marketing
• In-person experiences

My donor base loved receiving letters in the mail. They tended to be older and were more apt to respond and convert by mailing back a check instead of completing a digital donation form.

So, my organization would send a letter every two months to over 1,200 donors or prospects. The copy would be ghostwritten as a board member, program manager, or even program beneficiary. We’d tell donors about their gift’s impact and invite them to renew or upgrade.

While we offered multiple engagement channels (e.g., “Find us on Facebook” or an online donation link), that letter converted and upgraded more donors than any other tactic.

Pro tip: I wouldn’t use generative AI to write full drafts. But, AI tools can help you include personalized information from your CRM to humanize copy.

For instance, calling out a donor’s last volunteer interaction at the annual holiday festival helps you connect more meaningfully. AI can scale those small insertions across hundreds or thousands of letters.

I knew my donor base inside and out, which helped me run successful BTL campaigns. With all these pieces in place, you can start running your campaign.

4. Measure and analyze results.

As you execute your plan, check your progress often. Pay close attention to how your BTL campaign fits within your overall marketing strategy’s goals. Know which metrics matter to your organization, and use those metrics to track your campaign’s outcomes.

For instance, my donor management role’s goals included:

1. Establishing new giving relationships with prospects.
2. Reactivating lapsed givers.
3. Upgrading gift amounts for current donors.

Every letter in my direct mail campaign focused on meeting one of these goals. I’d then check the response and conversion rate on those letters to learn what worked, what didn’t, and how I could improve for the next batch.

Remember to gather quantitative and qualitative data, too. Post-action surveys can deliver extra intel on your audience and core messaging. Prospects might not respond to your initial BTL action.

But, offer them a chance to win a $500 gift card if they complete a survey telling you what you did wrong? That’ll start conversations.

5. Tinker and retry.

You won’t always get it right the first time. In fact, it’ll probably take around eight touchpoints to move a prospect. Use your data to tinker with previous stages and try again.

Like any good scientific experiment, don’t alter too many dependent variables at once. You want to track what you’ve changed so you can replicate winning outcomes. Try altering one segmentation criterion (e.g., shift the age group) or channel choice, and rerun your experiment.

Croft relayed that this is one of BTL’s greatest benefits. “BTL marketing helps you identify what to scale,” she said. “When you start with more targeted marketing, you can better understand the campaign's ROI.”

Below the Line Marketing Examples

You can spot BTL marketing throughout your daily life. Let’s focus on two examples from my life — and how these companies converted me.

Example 1: Email Marketing to My Canine Friend

Email is a popular channel that is overwhelming users. These days, your buyers probably never open your email: 79% of consumers delete branded emails at least half of the time.

And even when they open it, consumers spend an average of nine seconds before deciding to buy or trash it.

Your email should inform, engage, and convert in nine seconds. That’s a tall order for any marketing team.

BarkBox did that to me. I have a dog, and she’s classified as a “Super Chewer.” She loves gnawing on tasty treats and tough toys. BarkBox knows this and sends me highly targeted, personalized emails.

They put my dog’s name in the title and waste no time in presenting the offer. The email contains their Super Chewer lineup for the holiday box, so I know exactly what I’m getting. And BarkBox offers a clear CTA to convert me in seconds. Guess who will chew on their Rudolph-themed toy this holiday season?

Pro tip: If you’re struggling to use email successfully, our comprehensive email marketing guide can help you begin.

Example 2: Direct Mail Gift Boxes to Upgrade My Subscription

Receiving a physical item still means something to people. Research from gifting platform Sendoso found that 83% of recipients feel closer to a company after receiving a physical gift.

But that gift has to mean something: Business.com research found that 54% of professionals have received a gift so bad that they immediately threw it away.

You need to know exactly what your buyer wants and reinforce that sentiment with your gift selection.

For instance, I’ve been using and evangelizing an AI presentation generation tool called Gamma for over a year. As a reward for my support and advocacy, they asked me my shirt size and sent me a swag box.

Inside, I received a properly-sized branded hoodie, a water bottle, and a personalized note. Gamma sent me useful, meaningful items. While this box celebrated our relationship, it also nudged me toward upgrading my subscription.

I did exactly that. And I’ve been more apt to share the tool with my marketing friends.

There’s a higher upfront cost to this tactic — and a higher cost for failure if you don’t know your audience. But in the right hands and with the right people, direct mail can deliver big conversion numbers.

Below the Line Marketing Best Practices

We’ve covered a lot about BTL marketing so far, but before you begin your next campaign, let’s review a few final (yet vital) best practices.

Do your research.

Successful BTL marketing means knowing your target audience intimately. There’s no shortcut to this process. Your goal should be to reach the right people, in the right place, at the right time, with the right message.

Audience research helps you achieve that objective. Deep research lets you segment an audience across several axes:

• Demographics like age, gender, and income.
• Purchase intent like people searching for “best college laptop to buy.”
• Lifestyle, including attitudes, opinions, and interests.

A vast amount of quantitative and qualitative data is at your disposal to help you segment appropriately. Explore target audience research tools and techniques to get the good stuff.

Secure relevant permissions.

BTL marketing is exciting, but pause to consider any legal and ethical implications. Did your direct mail recipient consent to a gift box? Are you following CAN-SPAM regulations with your targeted email outreach?

Because BTL tactics typically need personal data, review your data security and privacy requirements before launching campaigns. Tell people how you plan to use their data and what value exchange they can expect. It pays to be upfront about your intentions and let people opt out easily.

You can even turn permission gathering into a touchpoint. For example, let gift box recipients pick the swag they actually want. You gather their consent while letting them take part. Plus, they’ll be extra excited when their hand-chosen package arrives.

Integrate BTL into your overall marketing strategy.

This tip might seem self-explanatory. But I’ve seen teams try to execute BTL tactics without understanding how other marketing actions and ATL tactics affect their audiences’ brand perception and intent.

For example, you can build an incredible booth experience at your industry’s largest trade show. But if nobody knows you’re there or what to expect (i.e., content you share in an above the line press release and media outreach campaign), you’ll miss out on significant foot traffic and coverage.

Effective BTL actions require you to understand marketing’s influence across your organization. Marketing and communications, sales, customer success — engage anyone involved in achieving marketing’s strategic outcomes.

Also, plan comprehensively to ensure everyone agrees and is tracking the same outcomes. For instance, use HubSpot’s email marketing planning template to help you plan, calendar, and optimize your BTL email marketing campaign. Share this document with all stakeholders to keep everyone on track.

BTL Marketing Matters More in Busy Digital Worlds

My review of BTL marketing left me thinking we need more marketing like it. Generalized brand building has a vital place in our marketing toolkits.

I don’t think we’ll have a world where you’ll never run ads or buy billboard space.

But, amid the noise around scaling marketing and deploying AI and similar technologies, there’s something refreshing about true personalization. About something meant for me.

That’s why I opened those ten percent of emails with:

• Offers tailored to my needs.
• Simple and clear calls-to-action.
• Delivery at the right place and time.

In a busier world, help your customers feel seen and heard. BTL marketing done well can help you deliver on that feeling while also driving stronger marketing outcomes.

For marketers, AI-generated imagery tools open up new possibilities for content personalization and campaign engagement…but only when applied in strategic, targeted ways.

AI-generated imagery platforms like Flux, Runway, and DALL-E are becoming a valuable part of marketing, design, and UX toolkits. But with all the options available, it’s sometimes difficult to understand where and how these tools actually bring value — and where they fall short.

In a recent Marketing Against the Grain episode, Kieran and I discuss common challenges teams face when using AI image tools, practical use cases for maximum performance, and best practices for integrating AI imagery into your workflow.

Three Key Challenges of AI-Generated Image Adoption

AI image generation holds massive potential — but its adoption isn’t without hurdles. In particular, three challenges preventing widespread use that Kieran and I often see are:

1. Hesitation due to privacy and security concerns.

Employees hesitate to engage with AI tools, often due to concerns around privacy, data security, and AI’s current limitations. Many also feel that AI might not yet be “good enough” for their needs.

Addressing these concerns starts with clear communication about AI’s strengths and limitations. When teams understand where AI can add value — and where it can’t — they’re more likely to engage with it in a realistic way.

2. Misaligned expectations.

Users often expect AI to “do it all,” leading to frustration when it falls short, especially for tasks requiring precision. As Kieran pointed out, employees sometimes treat AI as a “magic box,” which can set them up for disappointment.

By managing expectations and educating teams on how AI works best, marketers can shift focus toward the achievable, practical uses that make an impact.

3. A need for guardrails.

With such broad potential, many people struggle to find the right applications for AI. As Kieran highlighted during the show, a defined, structured approach — like having clear AI prompts or targeted use cases — helps ease adoption by giving employees a clearer sense of purpose.

Similarly, using guided prompts or simplified interfaces for specific tasks can make it easier for teams to explore AI without feeling overwhelmed.

Three AI-Generated Image Use Cases in Marketing

Despite these challenges, AI image tools can have a strong impact when applied to targeted use cases. In our experience, AI-generated imagery tools can be used to:

1. Boost ad performance.

In my opinion, one of the most effective applications of AI-generated imagery is creating tailored ad variations. Custom images that closely align with specific ad copy help marketers deliver a more personalized experience across different platforms.

In our tests at HubSpot, we’ve seen that this approach significantly boosts conversions, making it an invaluable tool for efficiently scaling our ad campaigns.

2. Increase email engagement.

AI can also increase engagement in email marketing by generating unique images tailored to each message.

Combined with AI-generated text, these visuals create a curated and relevant experience for readers, adding a layer of personalization that keeps content fresh and increases the chance of connecting with audiences in a deeper, more memorable way.

This approach works particularly well when you need to create distinct visuals for different segments or campaigns at scale.

3. Save time on editing.

AI is equally valuable for image editing, helping marketers quickly adjust visuals to fit different audience needs.

For example, a technology company might use AI to modify product screenshots by adding a client’s logo or emphasizing specific features.

This tactic allows brands to deliver a more personalized visual experience without the time and effort required for manual edits, making it a powerful option for scalable, audience-specific content.

Best Practices for AI Image Implementation

Maximizing the value of AI-generated images means knowing where and how to use them. These pointers will keep your approach practical and results-focused.

✔ Define clear use cases. Since AI can be overwhelming, define specific applications (like customer support or ad variations) where it’s most likely to succeed, rather than trying to apply it universally.

✔ Focus on volume over perfection. AI excels at creating multiple variations rather than single “perfect” images. If you need one flawless image, stick with traditional methods.

✔ Educate teams on AI’s strengths and limits. To improve adoption, set clear expectations and provide guidance on where AI is most beneficial, which can help address resistance due to privacy and reliability concerns.

✔ Keep it authentic. Avoid using AI-generated images to represent real people or customers, as this could damage trust. Save AI imagery for conceptual or product-focused visuals.

To learn more about how marketing leaders can integrate AI-generated imagery into their teams and workflows, check out the full episode of Marketing Against the Grain.

This blog series is in partnership with Marketing Against the Grain, the video podcast. It digs deeper into ideas shared by marketing leaders Kipp Bodnar (HubSpot’s CMO) and Kieran Flanagan (SVP, Marketing at HubSpot) as they unpack growth strategies and learn from standout founders and peers.