Called to Action

When the iPhone came out,

the thing that was exciting

was not just the iPhone,
but the App Store,

and that

there was all these different apps,
and there was that kind of famous slogan,

probably 10 or 15 years ago,
that there's an app for that.

You want to do this?

There's an app for that.

You want to do that,
there's an app for that.

And he said,

where we're going now is with AI agents
where there's an agent for that.

So there's an agent to create content,
there's an agent to personalize sales

follow up.

There's an agent to do
competitive intelligence research.

And that really, really rocked my world

Hello fellow marketers and listeners,

thanks for tuning in
to this episode of Call to Action.

I'm Janet, CEO of Aimtal.

Aimtal's an integrated marketing agency.

We specialize in building
marketing processes and strategies

for B2B companies,
and then we help launch those first or,

marketing campaigns
and programs for those organizations.

And so this show a call to action,

we analyze and discuss the latest trends
in researching B2B marketing.

And then we conclude every episode
with one call to action.

So that means you're going to get ideas

and tactics to use and your own marketing
and your own organization.

So I'm thrilled to be joined

by my co-host Tucker Delaney Winn,
one growth marketing lead at Aimtal.

Yeah. Happy to be here.

Awesome. Yeah.

And I'm excited to talk through
in this episode with you today, all things

marketing automation
and to automate or not to automate.

That is the question for our fellow
Shakespeare lovers.

So few of the things
that we're going to talk through,

actually, we went to the HubSpot
inbound 2024 conference last week.

So we definitely want to,
we're going to start

there, share a little bit of our learnings
and takeaways.

And then we're going to talk through,
you know, how to strike this balance

between technology, and human creativity,
that human touch.

And then when, when to leverage
automation, when not to across email,

paid advertising

and then just within the HubSpot
platform as well.

and as I just mentioned,

we just came back from the House
bot inbound 2020 for a conference.

I'm so exhausted.

You might be able to hear

I feel like after like,
just like for the past

four years, it just takes a long time
to recover for so much energy.

But it really was
an incredible conference.

Curious to hear
if you've fully recovered and just

I mean, maybe we could start like,
what were some of your favorite moments?

No thank you, Janet.

Happy to be here.

I don't feel like I've recovered.

I feel like you you hit your 30s and just
everything is harder to do physically.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

I feel like a HubSpot
inbound was incredible.

It was. It was so fun.
It was my first time going.

I was stunned.

There was just so many people there.

I feel like I was constantly having FOMO
that I was missing out on the coolest,

session or having the right conversation.

But then I realized

everybody was having that experience
because I told someone else

I was feeling FOMO
and they're like, me too.

So I don't think I'd felt that much FOMO
since like, college, but it was

it wasn't a part of that.

Or living in New York City. I feel like

it was like, yeah, it was bustling.

I thought I was like, on the G train
or something,

the way everybody was running around
looking important.

But yeah, no, it was really, really fun.

Yeah.

And to your question
of some of my favorite moments,

I think for me, I loved
just stepping in that

first morning on Wednesday
and attending the inbound spotlight.

They had three speakers from HubSpot
leadership.

You had CEO Yamini Rangan,
who kicked things off

and just kind of gave an incredible,

speech and kind of insight into HubSpot
in general.

Followed up by EVP of product Andy Petry.

Had a ton of great things to say about AI
and Hubspot's new AI solution, breeze.

And then, of course, the CTO of HubSpot,

Dharmesh Shah, who was just incredible,

you know, yes, for all the things
he's doing with HubSpot and AI,

but also his dad jokes really knocked it
out of the park for me.

That that really was, pretty great.

for me personally, when

I attended that first inbound session,

the spotlight, Dharmesh in particular,
you know, pulled up a quote here

where he said, most of
you will be building AI agents this year.

And just to unpack that a little bit,
between Yamini and Andy and Dharmesh,

like I said,
they had a great kind of look ahead,

not just for HubSpot, but really
where marketing in general is going.

And a huge piece of that.

Really the thrust of that spotlight
was around AI.

And frankly, for me, it was really helpful
in terms of how to think about AI

in concrete terms, more concrete probably,
than anything else I've seen so far.

So Andy obviously talked a lot
about the new AI capabilities in HubSpot,

which I'm incredibly excited
to start testing out.

There's that new AI solution, breeze,
which is kind of your

AI companion all throughout HubSpot.

Really incredible.

That's in beta now, and there's a ton
of things you can do there.

And then, Dharmesh,
I think the way he really framed up, I

was really excited for me.

He had a

great analogy where he said, you know,
when the iPhone came out,

the thing that was exciting

was not just the iPhone,
but the App Store,

and that

there was all these different apps,
and there was that kind of famous slogan,

probably 10 or 15 years ago,
that there's an app for that.

You want to do this?

There's an app for that.

You want to do that,
there's an app for that.

And he said,

where we're going now is with AI agents
where there's an agent for that.

So there's an agent to create content,
there's an agent to personalize sales

follow up.

There's an agent to do
competitive intelligence research.

And that really, really rocked my world
and got me really excited as he started

talking about how you can create agents
by combining different agents.

It really got my head spinning
and churning with with exciting ideas.

So that was probably one
of my favorite moments from inbound.

And I think just there's

some really incredible opportunities
for AI and automation,

which we're going to be getting into.

But I love to turn the tables and,
and ask you what?

What about you?

What was one of what were some of
your favorite moments from inbound?

I would say I mean, getting back
there was great.

So you said it was your first time,
which is so cool.

I think the first year was in 2015,
actually.

So I remember being, like, small, like,

it was a pretty small conference,
like it was half the conference for.

So I feel like
when I went down the elevators,

like into the conference space,
I was like, whoa, this is like huge now.

And I think that's just incredible.

Like the growth of the organization
and just the, the ecosystem in general.

But I haven't been the last time
I was 2019.

So we know what happened in 2020.

They kind of hosted it for
a couple of years to kind of go last year.

So I was really excited to come back
this year for us to just like,

show up and be out there.

Definitely.

I would say, selfishly,
to like the point where we've taken Aimtal,

we were able to host our own, like,
happy hour event.

So it was like a B2B marketing
and sales mixer.

And that was like
pretty like exciting milestone.

And just to bring a bunch of marketing and
sales leaders together in the same room.

And I was pretty shocked.
We had 50 people show up.

I was like, my inner critic was like,
no one's going to show up.

You're gonna have to eat the entire taco
bar to yourself.

But that was not the case.

So kudos
and thank you to everyone who showed up.

We had some really amazing conversations
and, a lot of folks like, we didn't know.

And then there are some
some past clients and friendly faces,

but it was just a really great time.

And I feel like that was just
what was exciting about

the whole conference
was just like connecting with people,

reconnecting, meaning people
from all around the world, honestly.

Like there are people from Switzerland,
Germany, Singapore, like South America,

everywhere, like I met
people from everywhere, which is amazing.

And then also so I feel like on your FOMO,
like missing out point

Tucker, I didn't get as many sessions
as I wanted to.

I think, you know,
we were really just as I mentioned, like,

whenever you want people,

having really great conversations,
just learning a lot about,

like, partnerships
and all this good stuff.

And but the one session I was able to

catch was on Friday, spotlight
with Ryan Reynolds.

And I thought I was just
actually hilarious because at one point,

like in the interview, he was asked, like,
so what do you want to happen?

Like in the like in marketing?

And he's like pretty insightful.

Like he had started a marketing agency,

has a bunch of companies,
like he's an actor.

So he's a very creative person.

So it's cool
to hear all of his perspective

related to that, but then into, marketing
and then into automation.

And it was
I almost was like, did he understand?

Like what?

Where he's speaking

and I think that he did like
I think it was must have been intentional.

so he was asked the question, like,
what do you want to happen

in like, marketing and like the future of,
like, this industry?

And he's like, well, I could tell you what
I don't want to happen first.

And he said, so,

like, point blank, like, I hope everything
doesn't become automated.

And I actually like I thought that was
a pretty interesting juxtaposition.

It gave us this, like, this idea,

we kind of have this idea of going before
to, for this episode of Call to Action,

but I felt like
this is a really interesting way

to see the balance of like,
the two sides of it, because of course,

like when you're hearing all these things
about AI and automation, it is

it is concerning to a certain extent.

It's like, what level are things

going to like replace a job
or like skills or something like that?

And I believe that is not necessarily

going to, replace
like human creativity and expertise.

It's only just going to augment it.

And that was kind of what he then went on

to explain,
like actually like we can do much more,

but we don't want to just completely
like also turn it into robots.

Like we have the robots
there for a reason.

So I thought that was actually just
hilarious.

Okay.
I think you you watch that one too, right?

Tucker, I was curious
what you thought of the idea of like. Yes.

And I remember when he said, I feel like
there was rolling laughs throughout the,

throughout the conference.

And I feel like a lot of people

at the time weren't sure, like,
is he joking or not?

But I think he, as he elaborated
on, he really was serious that like, no,

he really wants to retain
the personal human touch.

And that I think for him.

But he also he talked about, the
emotional investment being his Northstar.

And I think making sure
that there's emotion and creativity

being put into
everything has been huge for his success.

And yeah,
I think that's why this is so interesting

because there's clearly
a lot of excitement and opportunity

around automation and AI, but

we have to kind of retain the human touch
and the spirit of that as well.

So finding that balance
I think is going to be critical.

let's get into it.

I mean, this brings us to our topic
of to automate or not to automate.

you know,
we're going to share our opinion,

some research today, what we're seeing
how we approach this as well.

And, this is an endless conversation
like there's so many use cases.

But before I did say at the beginning
of the episode that,

for those of you listening wanted,
we'll share call to action at the end.

But I,
I actually wanted to put one in now,

and it's just to hear,
you know, in the comments,

wherever you're listening, like,
how are you leveraging automation

in your marketing in 2024
or even in our organization as a whole?

And like, what are some of those areas
that you're finding success?

And where do you want to improve it?

So with that, Tucker, definitely,

let's kind of delve into this
a little bit further.

And then we want to talk through
a few areas.

I think, as I just mentioned,
there's a lot we could cover.

yeah.

So we're going to look at three, three
aspects, three areas.

We're going to explore email marketing,
paid ads, both Google and LinkedIn.

And then HubSpot, HubSpot platform itself.

and by the way, I should say, when we,
you know, the question is to automate

or not to automate, I think spoiler alert,
the answer is both.

There's it's not a yes or no.

It's not a right or wrong. It's
not an either or.

There's really great moments,
and great things that you should be

automating in your marketing
and in your sales.

And there's really areas
that you really don't want to do that.

So we're going to be exploring that across
those three different, aspects today.

And I think, recurring theme and quote
that's running through my head

is something that Yamani Rong

and the HubSpot CEO said
during that spotlight, which was that

AI handles
simplicity and people handle subtlety.

So that's really sticking with me.

And I think that's a great thing
that we're going to come back to.

As we explore these different areas.

Yeah.

So so let's do it.

Let's, let's dive in and explore
where we should automate

and where
we want to get a little more personal.

And I do, starting out,
we've got a great report, Janet.

From,

yeah, from the state data
marketing automation report.

I'll let you fly there.

this was an interesting, report
and it's from last year.

So with the new I feel like

usually a lot of the reports come out,
we're going to be busy at the end of 2024.

But this is a state of marketing
automation.

And, so the question asked was,
what are your primary goals

for improving your marketing automation
in the year ahead?

And the top, answer in this,

report by ascend to was,

43% said optimize overall strategy.

So that's really fascinating.

And actually great to see.

I'm like amazing.

You know, everyone
like folks are thinking of their strategy,

kind of this highest level,

point of across,
you know, everything that they're doing,

in marketing, in the organization,

you know, you're not just looking
to automate things in a vacuum.

I think, you know, this is a great point.

And how you should be
thinking about is like,

how are we bringing automation in
to what you're already doing?

Like the word
optimize is really important here.

It's like, okay,
this is why we have set up.

How can we make this more efficient?

I think that's an important distinction.

What I also found interesting
about this to, an important thing.

We'll kind of get into it on this episode
a bit, I think, but is like the second

one, 37% said, improved data quality.

And I think that is a definitely
a really important way

and effective way to leverage automation,
especially in the household platform.

Like you can set up a lot of automation,
like get the smart CRM to work for you.

And I think that's really the kind of
ethos of this is like, work smarter,

not harder.

You know, that term, how things complement
one another, but don't lose that

kind of like human, analysis
of what's actually happening.

So, yeah,
I think this is there's a few on here too,

you know, identify
ideal customers, optimize messaging.

But a lot of it, as you can see,
is like very much of kind of like around

that like concept

of like optimizing and using automation
to kind of take things to the next level.

And then the next report to, actually,
I know it's the same report.

Apologies.

But the other kind of data
point here by a Santa

and the same, research report,

the state of marketing automation,

this is cool
because it says the question is,

and which of the following areas
do you currently utilize?

Marketing automation.

So they were comparing 2022 to 2023.

And the top one, was email

marketing followed by social media,
paid ads and content landing pages.

as you just mentioned, like we
we definitely want like no surprise

that like emails on here.

So that's one we are definitely going
to deep dive in this episode.

I one thing I did want to
just mention here that was interesting is

and we want to talk about later as well,
is that like lead

scoring is at the bottom.

Only 14% of folks are like our automating
leads very much with with HubSpot.

That's actually like one area
you should absolutely be like

make sure you're tracking it.
It doesn't like just work itself,

but you can absolutely automate
that part of it.

So I'm just curious, like how many
people on the survey were using HubSpot

and how would you I'm like,
how would you even do lead scoring

if it's not automated?

You get like a pencil and graph paper or
something like, how would that even work?

Well, I guess, there's like the definition
of a manual process right

together.

Sounds like an absolute nightmare.

Yeah, absolutely. Get into that. That's.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. And even,

you know, like workflows was one
that's kind of lower.

And we definitely have

some hot takes on, on that
where you can see both sides of it.

So but I think it's really exciting
to see like across

a lot of channels,
like there are a lot of benefits.

curious to hear, Tucker.

Like, what are some of the benefits,
of automation that you're seeing.

And maybe we could let's start with email.

Let's start with the one that was of the

for the at the top there about you know,
after complaints and workflows.

Let's do it.

And I'm going to,
pull up a little bit of an example

here, Janet,
so we can just look at a example graphic.

And what we wanted to show was what a set
of automated workflows might look like.

And this is something
that we have at Angel.

This is something that we do
with clients all the time,

but we want to explore
what does it look like when you've got

several what we would call
triggers across channels.

So you know, you've got here, okay.

If someone signs up for a newsletter,

if someone attends a conference,
if someone attends a webinar,

if someone signs up for a free trial,
you know, and then things like,

okay, what if someone downloads,

an asset, like a guide or a case
study off of your website?

Each of those activities
can be what we call a trigger, where,

not only do you do the activity,
but when you sign up, usually a sign up

is the thing that triggers that,
that then triggers an email workflow

that is automated that,
then gets sent to a person.

So just by the nature
of what we're looking at here,

the huge benefit here
is that when someone does an activity,

you have an immediate and personalized
follow up, several follow ups, typically,

where there's several emails
that are now going to this person.

And not only is it immediate,
not only is it personalized, but the

the beauty of these automated workflows
is that you can tailor the email content

to be about what the person,

you know, first engage with
and I know I'm not I'm

probably telling our listeners
new news here, but,

just kind of reiterate and reinforcing
why automation would be so critical here.

For instance,
if someone attends a webinar,

you know, you then follow up,
you can send them

the on demand recording of the webinar.

You can send them a blog
related to content

that was discussed in the webinar,
and you might then send them,

you know, an offer

to get a free trial or, or something
a little bit deeper down the funnel.

But that's what's really great
is immediate, personalized

and tailored to the original activity
that the person engaged with.

You know, if you were to try to do
all this manually, it'd be really hard.

It'd be really time consuming,

and you'd be scrambling
to do a lot of it afterwards.

But having these automated workflows
set up the way we do

an email really allows us
to very quickly engage people.

And, you know, we talk all the time

about the buyer journey on the B2B side,
six months, nine months, 12 months long,

you need automated ways to immediately
and effectively engage people.

And this, I think, is a great example
of of how that's done.

And it's done, like we were saying earlier
across channels, and across functions.

Yeah.

So the channels there
like newsletter, trade show, webinar,

free trial, sign up or demo of application
downloadable guides

so you could set up like workflows
for all of those activities.

Programs. Exactly, exactly.

And often to,
you know, it's the kind of thing where

depending on the

first activity,

you know, you might get the sense of,
oh, this person should get more nurtured

about a specific product, or this person
might fit into a certain persona.

We know that a lot of our customers
have very specific ISP's ideal

customer profiles, and you can break out
different email nurtures

based on a certain target persona
and what they might be interested in.

So that's just another example of how,
you know, the automated workflows

can really, really be awesome.
Yeah, great.

So yeah. So just a review back.

It's like automated trigger based
email workflows are definitely,

a good and effective way efficient
to like immediately

nurture and engage prospects.

So with emphasized content,
you know, whether

wherever the kind of first attribution
touchpoint is,

I mean, that's a really great place
to start and start to scale.

I am I mean, when I look at this slide
though, too, and,

and I kind of obviously know
the answer to the question, but like,

what are some of the,

like issues if you're automating
like everything to this point

at a certain like at a certain point,
like I think it's a good place to start.

But then like when I look at this, I,
we created this flowchart

just to show, like,
you'd have all this running at one time.

So kind of leading
you into into the answer.

But I, I'm curious like kind of what your,
your hot takes are on on this

of like we are saying on the one side
great setup automate.

But what's like the flip side
of this situation?

I'm so glad you asked, Janet.

Because this I get I get pretty fired up
about this because I think really there's,

you know, we talked in a previous, episode
about the danger of dashboards.

I feel like
this is the danger of automation, right?

Where we have seen again and again
and again

these common pitfalls that a lot of B2B
technology companies fall into,

where, frankly,
it's an overreliance on automation.

And in this case, it's an overall reliance
on email automation.

So I'm going to walk us through
three pitfalls that we've seen a lot.

And the first is when someone enrolls

in too many workflows at once
and it's not their fault.

So by way of example,
let's keep this same graphic

and let's say that a really great lead
for us attended a webinar.

Then after attending the webinar,

they went ahead and signed up
for a free trial of the product.

They were still on the website
and they went ahead

and downloaded
two different guides off of the website.

Going off the automation we have set up,

they have just enrolled themselves
in four different email workflows.

I know you did it,
but I already have several thousand unread

emails in my inbox.

While the problem I need to take care of.

But if we are following
the automation rules that we've set up,

we are now flooding this person's inbox
and that's going to make them well.

It also makes a disadvantage
on the sales team

because like they're trying
to do like targeted direct outreach.

So they're getting a ton of marketing

emails in addition to someone else
from the organization reaching out.

And it's just like it's
a lot of information.

Such a good point,
and I'm so glad you brought that up,

because that's not even something we've

we've mentioned in here is that
in addition to all these automated emails,

if this is a lead who is midway down
the funnel, the sales team is going to be

following up with them too.
And that's not a problem.

I think we've talked about
what they should be doing is doing, and

I think there's the real magic in having
marketing and sales nurture together.

But, it is another channel
that's happening.

And yeah, I think, this
can just be a really big problem

if there's too many, if someone's enrolled
in too many workflows.

And I will say that it is possible,
and I think the correct move here

is to set up additional workflows
so that when someone does get enrolled

in multiple workflows, there's kind of
a safeguard where it's like, okay, where

if they're already currently

enrolled in a workflow,
we're not going to roll them in this one.

Oh yeah, that's interesting.

You can kind of yeah, I like that

you gives up some safeguards
with your automated workflows in HubSpot

to prevent there too much of an overwhelm,
but it's almost like

it's a slight Band-Aid
on the problem. Yes.

And but that's a good point, though
I like that you could

if it's you have so much set up,
you're like, I can't go through all this.

You can set up those guardrails
to kind of kind of cut off the automation.

So it's not overwhelming the experience
of your leader.

Customer.

Yeah, it's like, I don't really know
how dams work, but I imagine

maybe there's ways that dams,
you know, can, like a beaver dam.

Break or down.

But, yeah, that is just to say like,
because we have this graphic showing up,

automated email workflows,
I don't want to give the impression

that we're saying that that's a bad idea
to have all this setup.

You should have it set up

and you should do that
where you are setting up triggers

so that if someone's
already enrolled in one workflow,

they're not getting enrolled
in five others.

But it's a lot to manage.
And I think the thing

that we need to acknowledge
is we work with a lot of teams.

They're either a marketing team of one
or a marketing team of 3 or 4.

You know, if you're lucky
to have a whole marketing ops

team of 20 people who can do this all day,
that's awesome.

But a lot of folks, you know,
you're not going to have the time,

frankly, or the resources to constantly be
monitoring all your different workflows.

It's just not going to work.

So the other issue that I want to bring
up, pitfall number two,

is what happens when people finish
going through these workflows.

This is, what I would call the set it
and forget it pitfall.

Right.

Set up all these brilliant workflows and
everything's beautifully working together.

But you haven't taken the steps
to think about what happens

when someone works and makes their way
all the way through my email sequence,

even if it's ten emails, even if it's 12
emails, as we've talked about many times,

the buyer journey in in B2B
tech is often six, nine, 12 months long.

It's unlikely that you've built workflows
that are that one.

Even if you've done that,

you probably have old creative in there
that's two years old.

You know, your product

may have been updated, your UX,
UI may have been updated, and

it's about how much you have to update,
like you have all these workflows up.

And then if you're changing
your messaging,

positioning of the company,
visual identity, as you're saying,

is it go back and update all.

It's like it's like a
it's a constant process of yes.

And then for email updating information
in your workflow.

Exactly.

And for our small marketing teams,
they don't have the time to be content.

That's a whole job
constantly updating all your workflows.

It's not sustainable.

And you're also,
you know, at the end of the day,

if one of your leads goes all the way
through these workflows,

you're potentially sending them
into the void of your CRM

where they're not getting engaged for
multiple months, losing the opportunity.

Engage them.

So so it's like you annoy them
and then you go to them.

Yes, yes.

And again,

another one of those things

where if you have a big enough
marketing team and you're really on it,

you can set up workflows where it's like,
okay, they've gone through one workflow

and then once they finish that workflow,
they can go into another.

But the reality is, is that,

as we're saying, that's a lot of work,
a lot of time, energy and resources.

And what we've seen again and again
is that in practice

that just doesn't actually happen.

And these leads are just left in the dust.

I want to come now to pitfall number
three, which I think is the biggest issue,

which is that if you're only relying
on automated email workflows,

that is a reactive
and not a proactive approach

to using email
to engage and nurture leads.

And what I mean by
this is we've already seen

we looked at earlier,
that email is one of,

if not the most effective way
for engaging leads.

So if we just stipulate that right
there, email is the most effective way

for engaging leads.

All of these

workflows depend on people interacting

with you and your marketing in a way
that is not email.

They have to take an activity
on your website.

They have to take an action to sign up
for a free trial or attend a webinar.

And then you'll start engaging them with
the most engaging channel, which is email.

So I've started to come around to the
to ask the question, well,

why wouldn't
we proactively reach out to our leads

with email in the first place,
rather than waiting for them

to take an action on our website
so we can engage this?

I think once, once you and I and the team
at Aimtal started to tilt our mind

into that perspective,
that was a game changer,

because what we started doing was monthly
email campaigns

where we're reaching out to leads,
sharing the latest content,

you know, sharing the newest videos,
inviting them to webinars,

but just actively going out to leads,
and engaging them.

That's been a huge way,
you know, to, to nurture leads.

And, you know, if we think about
we're going to get into HubSpot

leads scoring later.

But if you think about a lot of companies
have a point based lead scoring system

where they're trying to engage
leads to the point

where they have engaged enough
so that they, you know, tier up

to an Mql or an SQL email's
an incredible way to do that.

If you're using it proactively,

that's a way that you're going to be able
to month by month get people to open

emails, click through emails, start
taking more activity on your website.

So yeah,
I think this was the really big one.

Using email proactively is something that

I just think brands are not doing enough,
and we really want to encourage more of.

Excellent.

All right.

So to recap, the first channel a bit is
what you're the solution is is like

start to you know you have set up
looked at what makes sense to automate.

But overall kind of set up this
more like quote unquote manual monthly

email nurture sequences
in like a newsletter is really effective.

And to track
and then engage your audience in your

like list of, leads and prospects
that way.

as always, we could just keep talking
about this one specific channel,

but I do want to go to the next
one channel that we want to talk,

like to automate or not to automate,
which would be paid advertising.

And obviously there's so much
I and this is like a whole world.

I mean, everything in marketing is like,
you could just go down the rabbit hole

forever. We love doing it.

But we're going to start first,
I think I want to start.

And the whole purpose of Call
to Action to is like,

we want to go to the research
but also share, like what's

changing in the industry
because like there's just constant change.

Like it is just like
at the inbound conference.

Like there's so much information
can feel overwhelming to process at all.

And that's like our

what we're trying to do here is to help
kind of like bring this forward to you all

and process and help to understand
like how to how to pivot from here.

So this was interesting what I saw.

And we're not going to talk
too much about Google.

We did want to spend more time on LinkedIn
because we do a lot of LinkedIn

advertising for clients.

But I thought that this was
an interesting, update from Google.

This is literally like from Search
Engine Journal.

I mean, it was like kind of everywhere,
but we like to pull search engine journal,

follow them.

They produce
a lot of good content in the news.

But Google is planning to deprecate
enhance CPC.

So it's cost
per click for certain display ads.

So they're they're phasing
it out starting in October.

And it will

be like transition as of like March 2025.

So what does this mean.

So this this is not to say that Google's
advocating for managing ads manually.

In fact, it seems like what's happening
is like they're pushing advertisers

towards
this newer like machine learning actually.

So there's something called
like maximize conversions.

So you can get, you know,
an optimal target cost per action or CPA,

as well as, like you can
maximize your conversion values.

there's they are offering more automated
tools to improve performance of their ads.

So but the interesting thing about
this is what this means

is that this is a shift to more advanced
automated bidding strategy signals.

So Google's pushing towards like a greater
reliance on their machine learning.

And also kind of looking into more of that
on that automated bidding strategies.

And, you know, way more of this
than I do. Tucker.

But I think we know
it can actually be ineffective to over

rely on, automated optimization strategies
when it comes to paid ads.

I think everyone kind of goes
back to this, like setting forget mindset.

It's like,

let's just set this up and run it,
and then we're

going to send a get a ton of people who,
like, love our product and know about us.

And it's actually

like it's a similar thing
where we've gone into client ad campaigns

and they're like, we're not seeing
this move in the way that we want.

And we're like,

because you have so many campaigns
running at one time, like it's pure chaos.

Like you don't know
what's actually effective.

Because you're just running everything,
kind of setting it,

potentially forgetting it, and sort
of taking the time to go in every day

and really look at what is performing
and where should we optimize.

So that's on the Google side.

But I know we also wanted to spend more
time for paid ads on the LinkedIn side,

because you've discovered and lead a lot
with our clients and the team on

how actually we should be, what we should
and shouldn't automate in the platform.

Yeah, absolutely.

No. And I completely agree.

And I love that you started with that data

because I think it speaks
speaks to the times. Right.

And it speaks to these platforms.

And I love Google love LinkedIn,
love love what they're doing.

But I think

for newer marketers,

it's easy to come into these platforms
and get the impression that,

as you said, Jenna, we'll just set it up
and Google will take care

of managing everything.

They'll take care of managing the bidding.

They'll take care
of managing your optimizations.

And while there is definitely value
in areas where that's absolutely

so helpful and has been a game changer
for us, there's absolutely areas where

you really don't
want to give up all your control,

and you really don't
want to get into that set

to forget that mindset,
because it can really be draining

and draining the resources,
draining on time,

making
you spend more money than you should.

So yeah, as you said, let's let's look at
LinkedIn and let's start with bidding

and let's, let's take that side of
maybe when not to automate.

So what we've got here,
we're we're deep into LinkedIn now.

And we're looking at a screenshot
of setting up LinkedIn ads.

And we're at the portion for those of you
who set up LinkedIn

ads all the time, we're

way down at the bottom of the setup area
where we get into bidding,

and this is where we bid on
how much do you want to spend on your ads

and LinkedIn now,
LinkedIn the default in this section,

the default bidding strategy
that LinkedIn automatically has signed up.

We've got a little green button
highlighted,

which is the bidding
strategy of maximum delivery.

And LinkedIn says get the most results
possible with your full budget.

Now that sounds great. Sure,
I want maximum.

All right.
Who who doesn't want specifically.

Right. Persuasive you know right.

Ryan Reynolds
maximum effort LinkedIn maximum delivery.

Sure.

But you know, what happens here
is that you're

essentially telling LinkedIn,
I've given you an overall budget.

Spend
whatever you think is right on the ads.

Just just go for LinkedIn.

What you're giving up,
though, is the ability to control

your cost per click.

Now, I went to HubSpot inbound with you.

Janet, and I had the opportunity
to to see AJ Wilcox, host of the LinkedIn

ad show, frankly, a LinkedIn ads guru who
I've been following for ten plus years.

And at his presentation
where he talked about five mistakes,

five common mistakes that you can make
with LinkedIn ads, his first thing that

he said was over relying on maximum
delivery for your LinkedIn ads.

So using this automated
share in the crowd, I was like, yeah, no,

I did text, I actually immediately
texted our digital marketing manager,

who I run LinkedIn.

That's that is,
I guess, what they just said because

the week before inbound, we had been
we had some campaigns

and some of our campaigns were set on
maximum delivery.

And we both said, really? You know what?

I don't think this makes any sense.

Let's switch over to manual CPC.

And so then to see AJC
say this on the stage and have this quote,

that maximum delivery
is the most expensive way to pay

for LinkedIn ads traffic 90% of the time.

That hit home for me and said, wow,
we really shouldn't be doing this.

And luckily
we had already made this change.

Yeah,
and we've been on top of this already.

I mean, the validation of that is
I mean, listen up, folks.

Yeah. And he's run thousands of campaigns.

And when I came back from inbound
this week, we had made that switch

the previous previous week
for maximum delivery to manual CPC.

And truly all of the campaign costs
had gone down the CPC.

You could see the graph just going
way down.

So this is a huge thing.

And so the, you know, tying it back

to thinking about automation versus
non automation,

the recommendation here and what we find
really works is using manual bidding.

And you can see

LinkedIn says this is where you can
control your bids in the auction.

We have found setting your bid.

And by the way LinkedIn.

You know you see here in the fine print
they give you a range of

we recommend some advertisers are bidding
between 5 and $19.

We recommend you bid $7.

What AJ actually said
and what we found to be true too

is actually you should go below
what LinkedIn recommends.

You know, again, nothing against LinkedIn,
but they tend to encourage you to spend

probably
a little more than you should on each ad.

So this is a great example
of where the manual approach

the human touch, using your own expertise
and experience to control the costs

and control the bids on your ad platform
is absolutely the way to go.

So yeah, that's that's
just a big example, I think, of where,

being smart and savvy and exerting
a little more control

and doing a little less
automation, really makes the most sense.

Excellent.

So those are some great use cases
for handling, like, not automating

certain aspects of your LinkedIn
ad campaigns and paid advertising.

But are there are you saying that
everything should be manual

or like what within LinkedIn ad campaigns?

What do you recommend
that marketers should and could leverage?

Automation? Yeah, no. Great question.

So on the flip side,
we just talked about bidding.

Let's talk about creative for a moment.

So again we're we're now
looking at LinkedIn ads set up.

We're deep in the platform.

We're even further down where
you're setting up the actual ad creative.

And there's an option called ads.

In this campaign.

You click on the little gear
and then it says ad rotation options.

You got two options.

You can either optimize,
prefer for performance,

which is recommended by LinkedIn,
or you can rotate ads evenly.

And that means all of the ads
that you upload are going to be shown

evenly to all your, leads.

Who are, you know, people in LinkedIn
look at looking at your ads.

Now, this is a great example
where using automation, using LinkedIn's

automation to just let LinkedIn
This is a great example

where using LinkedIn ads
to automatically optimize for performance

without you having to do things
manually is absolutely the way to go.

This is a great time
to use automation to your advantage,

and what we find
is when you use this feature,

it just shows the best

performing, add to your leads
much more often and you have more success.

So this is a great. Yeah. I'm sorry.

Do you have a recommendation
like how many ads to like

include one campaign
so that it's a cycle through?

Yeah, that's a great question
because sometimes, you know,

we'll work with clients
and they only want to create 1 or 2 ads.

4 to 6 is really the best minimum. Yeah.

Or to six. Yeah.

And then we'll often rotate creative
if we need to

every six weeks
I think it can I think that's important.

Then you use this you use this data
to continue as you optimize.

Like you're not just creating it
like in a silo.

You're looking at okay, what performed
and then make more some like

more ads that are similar to the top
performing ones based on this automation.

Yes. And I love that
because that's a perfect example

of that harmony between automation
and the human touch.

Right? Got the automation set up.

It's doing the simple, effective approach
of automatically

in the feed
showing the best performing ads.

But then to your point,
we as humans are analyzing

the ads, creating new ones
based on what's performing best

and putting those in there.

So there's that kind of that harmony

between automation and humans
that I think is works really well.

So Tucker,

we tend to the house
spot 2024 inbound conference.

There are a ton of changes happening.

No shortage of opportunity for automation.

You mentioned they release breeze,
which is like their

I platform within the in the in HubSpot.

There's there's a lot you can do.

I think everyone's trying to like learn
and test it out.

Tell them things in beta,
but there's always some stuff

you obviously it's
a marketing automation platform.

So I'm curious, like how how have we been
thinking, like, share with the audience,

like how we been thinking about automation
when it comes to HubSpot and

kind of back to the beginning,
as I shared, one of what we found

interesting in that 2023

marking automation report was that,
like lead scoring was kind of low,

on there.

So I think it'll be fun to share.

Something around that.

So take it away.

I'm curious, kind of, leading
you into it of one of them.

But I think we can, kind of round it
out of what folks could consider

when they're automating in HubSpot
or not to automate.

Exactly. And I think you got it.

I think lead scoring is where we almost
always start when we're consulting.

Folks on HubSpot,

either they don't have lead scoring set up
and we say, great, let's help

get that set up
and get that automated for you.

Or they do have it set up, but
there's often almost always opportunities

to refine it, make it a little bit
cleaner, a little more automated. So

in HubSpot, you obviously have
the capabilities to to do lead scoring.

And this also brings me back to that quote
we talked about at the beginning

from Yamini Hubspot's,
CEO about AI handles simplicity.

Humans handle subtlety.

So I'm going to pull up just, a little,
lead engagement dashboard example.

So what we're looking at here
is where we're now on HubSpot

and we've got an example lead engagement
dashboard.

This is actually from Aimtal.

We've anonymized and blurred out all the,
all the contact information.

But what we're looking at here

is a dashboard where we're it breaks
down leads by lifecycle stage.

So up at the top we've got our leads.

Then we've got marketing qualified leads.

We've got sales qualified leads
and then we've got opportunities.

So you can see kind of each of each leads
at each stage of your, your funnel.

And then we've broken it out
where we actually have

the actual contacts,
the actual leads who are in each stage.

And we've got widgets for each of those.

So yet again, we talk about harmony
between AI automation and the human touch.

Right.

So this is a great example where AI is
handled, the simplicity.

We have set up lead
scoring in our HubSpot CRM such that

HubSpot
automation is able to categorize leads

into different lifecycle stages
based on their engagement,

based on their intent,
and based on the likelihood of them

converting to a purchase.

This is something
we do at a marketing agency.

This is something we would recommend.

Probably every company using HubSpot do.

So they actually automated

it. Exactly.

But what about the human side?

So we do this every day, Jenna.

We look at this dashboard, you and me,
and we start to say, all right,

who are opportunities?

All right. Who are sqls?

And this is where that humans handle

the subtlety side comes in
because there's subtle what's going on.

It's like, okay, Tucker,
did you talk to that person yesterday?

What did they say?

Janet,
you had a conversation with that SQL.

What do we think?
How do we want to approach following up.

And this is where

I don't know if you want to speak to us,
but you and I had a conversation about,

oh, should we use sequences
automated sequences.

And we we came to the conclusion that, no,
we should actually probably do

a little personalized
follow up with. Right. Yeah.

So sequences
and how sort of like an automated way

to send like more personalized
looking, emails.

And then you can also like layer
and like reminders to follow up

and send more emails.

So it's a it is effective way to automate
that kind of prospecting side.

But agreed.

We're like we

if you meet people in person
and you had like a strong conversation

like your automation is not going to
even though it

maybe looks personalized,
it's not going to sound personalized.

I even did that actually with like our
kind of back to what we're talking about,

where you can automate emails
from like, events or webinars.

We had a lot of our,
of course, like leading up to the event,

like automated reminders, emails
about the mixer

we had last week
during HubSpot email conference.

But we decided, actually, I decided, like,
I don't want to automate

and auto send the follow up email.

I want to like,

personalize it and make sure I like, has
like some takeaways and personalization.

For me, it's I'm just like,
thanks for attending our event.

Like it actually had some perspective.

And even pictures from the event.

And like we couldn't have done that
if we automated it to go out.

Right, like, right.

The like, you know, five hours
after the event or something.

So I think those are some ways,
like agreed. Like, yeah.

Like there's it's a balance between

automating
things to make it easier for you,

but then also like
bring in that personalization,

bring in that human like perspective,
the creativity.

I love your point about like,
don't set it and forget it.

We're not just setting up all this like
leads scoring and all this information.

And so just like runs itself, as you said,
we look at this daily and I think that's

what a lot of organizations
are going to do more of like

get into your CRM, like get into HubSpot,
like look at what's happening.

Is it working for you is not like,
what's the what's the picture?

What's the full story?

I know I like large organizations.

That's difficult for
some people will control that.

You're
waiting for the reports to come over.

But even with that, I think
that you should spend time to try to,

like, question and think through, like,
what's actually going on here?

How can we be more effective?

How can we personalize things?

Are these automations
working for for us or not?

always come up with
I think we come up with ideas ourselves.

Where does an idea like go into HubSpot
demo account on the next call to action?

I think, and just like go even deeper.

But definitely if you're like,
I think, you know,

if you haven't looked into the lead
scoring side

and how to automate these things,
and also like the lead

scoring, as you mentioned, Tucker,
like being able to like,

like change, like the life cycle stage
and be able to report on this.

You can build dashboards that
give you all this data that's in your CRM.

Those are really good place
to start with the automation side of it.

But when it comes to that personalization,
that's where to put

put your fingers to your keyboard
and talk to your audience.

amazing.

So a final
thing we're talking a lot about.

Like there's like the connection between,

you know, technology
machines, AI and humans

and this is just like obviously been
the conversation.

People are excited
and people are really concerned about what

the future looks like when it comes to,

I mean, kind of in a way, being
an employee or even a business owner,

and you know, how technology
is either going to help us or not.

So I wanted to conclude with this,
like really interesting,

awesome report
and concept from Forrester Research.

They actually have a they did a webinar
and it was actually targeted for agencies.

But they shared this slide
within that webinar

and we could drop the link in the show
notes for sure.

But I love this breakdown.

And obviously the thesis of
and their whole point in the webinar,

was saying like there's
going to be some aspects, of course, of

like what we do like on the manual side
that will be replaced and it should be.

But if anything, it's really going to help
to like complement

and like, improve the experience
for like humans at work.

So I love
the way that they broke this down.

Here they were, as I mentioned,
it was like, targeted at agencies.

So you're seeing here at the top, like,
how humans

and technology
can and should work together.

And they did divide it up
by like three different, jobs.

So like a media planner,
creative director or digital strategist.

So I just love this very clear
breakdown here of like, okay.

Like, you know, I guess what we're
just talking about on paid ads, like,

as a digital strategist, like the humans
should set the objectives, the goals

they need, know their audience,
get that research,

you know, come up with the messaging,
create the briefs.

What if thinking like love that like,
yeah, like what are the scenarios?

But the technologies I can, you know,
they can handle like the benchmarking, the

testing, the reporting
where you were just talking about. Tucker.

Like cycling the
top performing and creative.

And then as

you can see here, like creative director,
like doing the conceptual thinking,

like coming up with the concepts
like managing people.

But then the technology can help you,
you know, assemble,

like assemble the content, assemble,

you know, certain templates, help scale
that production velocity.

So I love this chart.

I won't go there like, every single one.

But I really love this concept of,
like, humans and technology

working together
and in the areas that they should.

And I think this is a really nice guide
for anyone of like

if you have concerns of like, okay, like

I don't think I and I appreciate
from Forrester's like I think a lot of

like the media is saying like oh marketing
like it's going to be gone.

Like that'll take over.

And it's like, no,
that's actually pretty far from the truth.

Is this
going to make us even more powerful?

And, you know, give us the ways.

But I think the point of it is like,
start to think of it in this

framework of human and technology
working together.

What's that human touch?

What can the human like do,
and how should we operate within this?

What should we automate? Not automate.

And being very clear of those differences
and pretty much

everyone working to their strengths
absolutely cares.

If you have anything else
like a final perspective on this,

I mean rounded out with our final call
to actions for the those listening,

I think this is great. Yeah.

And you can even see here in the media
planner

column, you know, on the human side,
you've got journey mapping.

And on the technology side there's
audience and channel scoring.

Exactly what we just talked about. Right.

You know, building the building

the funnel, building the journey
and then using, using automation to

to score and kind of monitor and Mark
who's doing what

and the other thing, it just makes me
think of a quote from, I think it is

a CEO of Netflix who said, you know,
AI is not going to take your job,

but humans who really know how to use
AI effectively might take your job.

So I think, right,
not to scare people at all,

but I think those of us who embrace
the opportunities with automation, embrace

the opportunities with AI are, you know,
really going to get a competitive edge.

And I think this is a great map

of how you might be able to do that
and strike that balance.

All right, Tucker, let's run this out.

So what's your call to action based on
this episode when it comes to automation?

Yeah, I think you've got me really fired
up about lead scoring right now, Janet.

So I'm going to,
make the call to action to folks to

if you don't have lead scoring set up,
go get started.

Just start it. Try it.

You know it's better than nothing.
So go start it.

And if you do have lead scoring set up,
now's a great time to audit it, especially

with all these new
AI capabilities coming out in HubSpot.

Again, plug

in breeze and especially their competitive
intelligence capabilities.

Go take a look at your lead scoring
and see if there's,

anything that you can any ways
you can enhance it.

So, yeah.
Over to you, Jenna. With love. It's.

Well,
I'm honestly surprised by your answer.

I thought you were going to be like, back
that the.

You were you were, like, sharpening
your blades on the email workflows.

But I love it. Love it.

I say, yeah,

I, I mean, I think the main point
I've been making is just like,

but kind of looking in the context of
like where I like where you just said

actually like auditing your automations
and like workflows

and do you have to have that right
combination of, automation versus like,

that human touch experience,
that personalization

obviously
can kind of automate some personalization.

But I do think that what I saw last week
at the inbound conference,

was very much like,
people want that like connection.

We, you know, we really want to have
that personalization.

We want to feel like seen and heard.

So any opportunity to like, layer

that into your marketing campaigns
and programs is really important.

So, you know,
make the technology work for you.

But don't don't overlook kind of,
you know, that you're

you're human intelligence
and creativity and,

what is it's, the subtlety, right?

The subtlety of it all. So.

All right.

Well, amazing stuff.

Thank you, Tucker, as always, for your
insights, consultation ideas, hot takes.

We covered a lot of ground today.

So just to recap, in this episode of Call
It Action, we discuss

how and when to leverage
automated email workflows versus,

you know, kind of taking a more,
maybe potential manual approach

of engaging prospects with regular emails.

Try it out on a monthly basis,
see what happens.

To we talked about paid
advertising specific to LinkedIn ads.

Why you should do manual bidding.

But also

then look into ways to do
the automated creative optimizations.

And then third, finally
we talked about how to use automated leads

scoring to organize your leads
and collaborate, you know, uses

create a dashboard,
bring marketing sales together.

And how you can, personalize
those follow ups in those touchpoints.

So yeah, thank you for listening.

please let us know if you have any ideas
what's working for you.

Comments.

Wherever you're listening,
it's here on YouTube.

Podcasts,
wherever you are consuming the content.

We're so happy you're here.

And finally.

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Thanks, everyone.