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Ecommerce is businesses selling products online, and people buying those products online.

Consumers and businesses alike are making more and more purchases online, and that’s only expected to increase, especially so on social media.

Below I’ve compiled a list of ecommerce statistics that will help you understand the potential impact of using the practice, as well as its growth potential throughout 2024 and beyond.

Table of Contents

• General Ecommerce Statistics
• Social Media Ecommerce Statistics
• Ecommerce Growth Statistics
• Consumer Behavior and Demographics Ecommerce Statistics
• B2B Ecommerce Statistics
• B2C Ecommerce Statistics
• Mobile Ecommerce Statistics

General Ecommerce Statistics

1. The average number of products bought per online order is 4.95. (Statista, 2023)

2. The global conversion rate of online shoppers is 1.9%. (Statista, 2023)

3. High-performing retail businesses are more likely to invest a given amount of their sales in digital and ecommerce. (Boston Consulting Group, 2023)

4. A majority of social media marketers (68%) use social media to drive traffic to products on its own website. (HubSpot, 2024)

5. eMarketer predicts that Grocery will become the largest ecommerce category in the U.S. by 2026. (eMarketer, 2024)

   
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6. There was a 20% increase in consumers shifting to ecommerce channels in 2020. (McKinsey, 2023)The average cart abandonment rate is 70.19%. (Baymard, 2023)

7. Amazon is the biggest e-commerce company worldwide with a 1.34 trillion USD market cap. (Statista, 2023)

8. Free delivery is the main reason 45% of shoppers head online. (Data Reportal, 2023)

9. Most marketers say they have an employee responsible for managing social commerce. (HubSpot, 2024)

Social Media Ecommerce Statistics

1. 87% of sellers say social selling has been effective for their business this year. (HubSpot, 2023)

2. 59% of social sellers say their company is making more sales through social media this year than last year. (HubSpot, 2023) 

   
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3. High performing salespeople are 12% more likely to use social media when selling. (HubSpot, 2024)

4. More than half of social media marketers use social media to sell products directly within social media apps. (HubSpot, 2024)

5. 50% of marketers plan to increase their investment in selling products directly in social media apps in 2024. (HubSpot, 2024)

6. Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are the platforms social media marketers most commonly use for social selling. (HubSpot, 2024)

7. Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook offer the highest ROI for social selling. (HubSpot, 2024)

8. Social media is 3rd place in terms of channels where consumers are most receptive to advertising. (Integral Ad Science, 2024)

9. Social media marketers who sell products directly through social media apps say Facebook and YouTube have the highest ROI. (HubSpot, 2024)

Ecommerce Growth Statistics

1. Retail ecommerce sales are projected to reach more than eight trillion dollars by 2027. (Statista, 2023)

2. 84% of social media marketers predict that, in 2024, consumers will buy products from brands directly in social media apps more than third-party websites and brand websites. (HubSpot, 2024)

3. Gartner predicts that 80% of B2B sales interactions will occur on digital channels by 2025. (Gartner, 2020)

4. eMarketer predicts that global retail media ad spend will reach $140 billion this year, which makes up 20.3% of all digital ad spend. (eMarketer, 2023)

5. The revenue in the US ecommerce market is forecasted to increase by 475 billion USD between 2024 and 2028. (Statista, 2023)

Consumer Behavior and Demographic Ecommerce Statistics

1. 19% of consumers have reached out to customer service via DMs in the past 3 months, up 45% from 2022. (HubSpot, 2023)

   
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2. A majority of consumers (82%) say they’re satisfied with their most recent social shopping experience. (HubSpot, 2023)

3. Adults aged 18 to 24 make up the largest share of ecommerce shoppers in the U.S. (Statista, 2023)

4. China has the highest number of consumers shopping on social networks. (Statista, 2023)

5. The total revenue of online retail in Asian countries totaled 1.7 trillion USD in 2023. (Statista, 2023)

6. The most common reason for cart abandonment among consumers is extra costs for things like shipping and taxes. Needing to create an account is the 2nd. (Forbes, 2023)

7. Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X prefer finding products on social media over any other channel. (HubSpot, 2023) 

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8. Just 47% of social media users feel comfortable buying through social media apps. (HubSpot, 2023)

9. 42% of consumers trust social media platforms with their personal card information. (HubSpot, 2023)

10. Facebook wins among social media users when it comes to social media shopping. It’s the most popular app for in-app purchases, they say it offers the best in-app shopping experience, and it’s the most trusted. (HubSpot, 2023)

11. TikTok is the least trusted platform among consumers for in-app shopping. (HubSpot, 2023)

12. A majority of consumers only somewhat agree that the products they buy directly on social media will come as described/depicted. (HubSpot, 2023)

13. The main concern consumers have about buying products directly within social media platforms is that the sellers aren’t legitimate companies/are a scam. (HubSpot, 2023)

B2B Ecommerce Statistics

1. 79% of B2B buyers say they prefer to place repeat orders online. (Sana Commerce, 2023)

2. The main hurdle B2B buyers face with online purchasing is lack of accurate information on delivery times. (Sana Commerce, 2023)

3. 65% of B2B companies across all industries offer ecommerce capabilities. (McKinsey, 2023)

4. 80% of B2B companies say they hold their ecommerce channel to the same or higher standard as other channels. (McKinsey, 2023)

5. More than 1/3 of B2B buyers say they’re willing to spend $500,000 or more on digital channels, and 15% say they’re comfortable making purchases of more than $1 million online. (McKinsey, 2023)

B2C Ecommerce Statistics

1. Global B2C ecommerce revenue is projected to grow to 5.5 trillion USD by 2027. (International Trade Administration, 2024)

2. The most popular B2C e-commerce segments are consumer electronics, fashion, and furniture. (International Trade Administration, 2024)

Mobile Ecommerce Statistics

1. Smartphones account for 66% of online orders. (Statista, 2023)

2. Mobile retail e-commerce sales in the U.S. are expected to reach more than 560 billion by the end of 2024. (Statista, 2023)

3. Mobile Retail ecommerce sales in the U.S. will exceed 450 billion USD by the end of 2024. (Statista, 2024)

4. Apple Pay is the most used mobile payment format among U.S. consumers. (Statista, 2023)

5. 60% of US adults believe that mobile shopping is a necessity for online shopping convenience. (eMarketer, 2022)

6. 80% of consumers worldwide visit a retailer’s website from their smartphone while shopping in-store. (eMarketer, 2023)

7. Business Insider predicts that mobile commerce will account for 42.9% of e-commerce sales in 2024. (Business Insider, 2022)

If Hubspot is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Simplify growth with an all-in-one platform. Powerful marketing, sales, and support automation. Integrated CMS. Scalable software. Crafted for customer experience.

I’m a content writer by night and a Head of Partnerships by day, and in my world, being productive is everything.

No scheduling or a lack of project management leads to overdue articles, failed partnership opportunities, high pressure, and stress. We’ve all been there, recovering from zero productivity.

Productivity systems help develop a sustainable work-life balance and prepare for working sprints when needed.

In this post, I’m sharing the seven best productivity systems that have become part of my routine, turning the daily grind into an efficient workday. You’ll find their pros and cons and different use cases.

 

What are productivity systems?

Productivity systems are methods and tools that assist you in getting things done efficiently. They don’t do the work for you, but they help you organize and prioritize tasks and your well-being, resulting in more productivity at a given time.

For instance, productivity systems help you with:

• Breaking down projects into smaller, manageable steps.
• Focusing and avoiding distractions.
• Goal setting.
• Organization and workflow.

Let’s explore the seven productivity systems I use and how they help me.

7 Productivity Systems to Simplify Your Workflow

1. The Pomodoro Technique

I’m simply in love with this method for supercharging my productivity when I struggle to pull myself together and get things done. It instantly activates my focus mode, and I become so in the zone that nothing can distract me.

How does it work?

The Pomodoro Technique breaks your work into short, focused intervals (typically 25 minutes) followed by breaks. It helps you stay sharp and motivated because 25-minute chunks are easily digestible by your brain.

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Also, seeing a timer counting down in your toolbar reinforces your willingness to complete a task during this time. It’s like your inner voice says, “Com’on, man, you can work for 25 minutes without scrolling your Instagram.”

I use the Marinara: Pomodoro Assistant Chrome extension to make the Pomodoro technique easily accessible. 30-minute timers with a 5-minute rest — that’s my rule.

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But often, I don’t take breaks and simply continue working on my task until it’s done. And when the timer rings, I set another one to stay focused.

I also use Pomodoro for time-tracking when I work on a specific task to understand my workload and time spent on task X.

It aids immensely in proper time estimation and project management.

Pros:

• Helps you focus when it’s hard to start working.
• Reduces procrastination.
• Less back pain and fatigue.
• Better planning for weeks and quarters.
• More accountability for tasks.
• Fewer distractions — better time management.
• Consistent motivation throughout tasks.

Cons:

• None. I’ve been using this method for ages, and it’s always helpful.

Best for: Anyone who wants to manage time better and get more done in less time.

My Verdict

At first, it was hard for me to accept the breaks. I was feeling like I was wasting time during those periods. But then I realized their power — those breaks literally recharge me.

2. Bullet Journaling

A bullet journal, or so-called BuJo, is like an advanced diary that includes writing and drawing. It’s organized with sections for daily tasks, calendars, notes, health tracking, and goal setting.

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I’ve recently stumbled upon great research exploring how bullet journaling impacts creativity and productivity. The conclusion is that it doesn’t just help with staying organized but also with reflecting on what’s really important.

I also love the piece by a teacher who shared how bullet journaling helped her overcome perfectionism. So, if you’re chasing that elusive perfection, take a read. 🙂

From time to time, I use bullet journaling for planning my days, understanding how packed I am, and carving out time for things I love to do apart from my job. It’s also helped me understand how many projects I can take on.

For example, I draft my schedule in a super old-fashioned way in my paper notebook. So, my bullet journaling usually goes like this:

7:30 — wake up
8:00 — yoga
10:00 — offer an outline for client X
11:00 — interview experts for HubSpot’s article
13:00 — lunch break
14:00 — work for a charitable fund
17:30 — meeting

If you’re not into old-school productivity methods, you can check out digital alternatives like Notion, Trello, Evernote, or Miro.

In my opinion, Miro is the coolest option because it reminds you of a regular notebook. It allows you to easily move items and fosters creativity.

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Pros:

• Helps with customizable organization.
• Assists in boosting creativity and aids prioritization.
• Provides centralized task management.
• Facilitates self-reflection.

Cons:

• Time-intensive upkeep.
• Risk of inconsistency.

Best for: Creatives, visual thinkers, and individuals seeking personalized organization.

My Verdict

Bullet journaling is a practice many of us have instinctively done at some point in our lives. Let’s say for planning trips, shopping, workout routines, or similar activities.

The trick is learning to do it more systematically. Sometimes, I rely completely on it. Other times, I use bullet journaling just as a scratchpad when transferring information from paper to my project management apps.

3. Calendar Blocking

The major issue people often face with their schedule is constantly switching between tasks. Calendar blocking is a time management method where you allocate specific time slots on your calendar for different tasks.

For instance, my workday before calendar blocking could look like this: I start writing an article. Then, after half an hour, I jump into a meeting. Next, I move to my emails. Finally, I get back to the article. Not effective at all.

Todoist’s graphic perfectly explains my point:

For time blocking, I use Google Calendar and block time for specific tasks. Each task gets its own focused time slot. Doctor appointments, yoga, and reading also go to my calendar.

The result? I get more done faster.

Here are some tips for successful calendar blocking:

• Divide your day into chunks for specific tasks.
• Be realistic about how long tasks will take; overestimate if unsure.
• Schedule breaks to avoid burnout; don’t overbook free time.
• Adjust plans if needed due to unexpected events.
• Review and follow your planned tasks regularly.
• Consider using apps like Todoist and Google Calendar for better organization.

Pros:

• Improved time management.
• Enhanced focus.
• Reduced task switching.
• Clearer prioritization.
• Better work-life balance.

Cons:

• Difficulty in adapting to changes.
• Potential for under-/overestimating task duration.

Best for: Anyone with multiple tasks and commitments to organize.

My Verdict

Calendar blocking organizes your working and free time and allows you not to get lost in multiple tasks at the same time. The biggest challenge could be sitting down on Sunday night or every Monday morning and preparing everything up front.

But it’s definitely worth it.

4. Eat the Frog

“If you have to eat a live frog, do it first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.” – Mark Twain

This quote explains what the Eat the Frog technique is all about. Do the hardest thing first, and everything else later will seem easier.

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Last year’s study found that using this method improves soft skills and helps combat procrastination, leading to long-term benefits for career and life.

I totally agree with that and implement the Eat the Frog method almost every day.

Here’s how I do it:

1. I pick my frog first — the most important but not urgent task. I go with the one that needs a lot of brainpower.
2. I usually select a task I can finish in 1 to 4 hours max.
3. I split big tasks into smaller steps.
4. I always focus on today’s tasks, not far-off ones.
5. And finally, I begin my day by tackling my frog task first.

Pros:

• Get tough tasks done first.
• Feel less stressed.
• Manage time better.
• Build good habits.

Cons:

• Starting with the hardest task may lead to fatigue.
• It could lead to overlooking time-sensitive matters.

Best for: Anyone who prefers to deal with challenges upfront rather than procrastinate or for anyone struggling with procrastination when it comes to difficult tasks.

My Verdict

When I’ve got those tough tasks to chew (the ones that need tons of focus, numbers, and research), I make them my top priority in the morning. Once I’ve tackled that, I can relax with a cup of coffee, catch up on emails, and move on to one more task.

I tried doing it the other way around, but I just couldn’t focus on anything else while knowing I had that big task waiting. So, for me, the “Eat the Frog” technique is the only way to go.

5. Project Management Practices

When I started freelancing, managing one or two projects without tracking wasn’t too hard. But as my workload grew, it became impossible.

Today, I can’t imagine my work routine without project management tools — Monday and Asana are my productivity lifelines.

They help me break tasks down, set deadlines, track progress, coordinate with my team, and deliver results.

I use Monday to plan and prioritize my weekly tasks for a charitable fund’s work in a simplified Kanban visualization with “Backlog,” “In progress,” and “Done” tabs.

What I like: Monday takes care of the project management essentials like subtasks, flexible statuses, owners and assignees, API integrations, etc.

As for Asana, I mostly use it for client writing and SEO projects. It’s so simple to get and assign tasks, track project progress, and communicate with others through the platform.

Pros:

• Centralize project information for easy access.
• Facilitate team communication and idea sharing.
• Help you break projects into manageable tasks.
• Keep your team focused and productive.
• Provide real-time data on project progress.
• Automate tasks for streamlined workflows.

Cons:

• I see nothing but benefits to using project management software. Learning how to use it might take time, but once you do, it becomes super easy.

Best for: Individuals, teams, and projects of all sizes. You can use it for small tasks or large-scale initiatives.

My Verdict

Although I like using my notebook for bullet journaling, PM tools help keep my work under control with notifications, reminders, repeated tasks, etc.

6. The Eisenhower Decision Matrix

“I have two kinds of problems — the urgent and important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Eisenhower Decision Matrix categorizes tasks by importance and urgency. I use it to decide what to focus on, delegate, or discard.

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You should consider using the Eisenhower Matrix if you’re often busy but feel your work lacks impact, struggle with time for long-term goals, or find it hard to delegate or say “no” (been there, done that).

I recently watched a YouTube video by Naomi from Todoist, where she shared insightful tips on the Eisenhower Matrix:

[Video: Beginner’s Guide to the Eisenhower Matrix]

Here’s how she explains each of these four categories:

1. Quadrant 1 — important tasks needing urgent attention.
2. Quadrant 2 — important tasks for long-term goals.
3. Quadrant 3 — urgent tasks that aren’t very important, often just busy work.
4. Quadrant 4 — tasks neither urgent nor important, providing instant but no lasting satisfaction.

And here’s how I apply this approach in my day-to-day work:

1. Quadrant 1. I prioritize meeting tight deadlines for articles.
2. Quadrant 2. I dedicate time to improving my writing and research skills for long-term progress.
3. Quadrant 3. Sometimes, if I’m too busy, I let a reliable person handle expert interviews for me.
4. Quadrant 4. I try to avoid spending too much time on social media to stay focused.

Pros:

• Clear prioritization.
• Effective time management.
• Long-term goal alignment.
• Better delegation.
• Reduced stress.
• Improved decision-making.

Cons:

• At first, it might be tough to decide which tasks are more important with a bigger impact but less urgency. After several practices, one gets used to the system and harvests tangible benefits.

Best for: Organizing obligations; particularly helpful for anyone who struggles with task prioritization, time management, or decision-making.

My Verdict

The sense of urgency posed the greatest challenge during my digital marketing career. It felt like every task demanded immediate attention. My default mode was “ASAP” for everything until I learned to categorize priorities and discern non-priority tasks.

That’s what I learned thanks to The Eisenhower Decision Matrix, and, in my opinion, it’s one of the best productivity systems out there.

7. Kanban and Scrum Methods

To be super productive during a workweek, I combine simplified Scrum and Kanban methodologies.

Scrum: You work in short bursts called sprints (usually one to four weeks long). In each sprint, you set goals and decide what tasks to tackle. Then, you have quick meetings called stand-ups to check progress and adjust your work plan as needed.

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Kanban: There are no sprints in Kanban. Instead, imagine your tasks on a board with columns labeled “Backlog,” “Doing,” “Review,” and “Done.”

As you work, you shift tasks between columns. It helps you visualize your workflow, limit work in progress, and focus on completing tasks one by one.

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Here’s how I do it:

Every Monday, I review my Backlog with ideas and tasks that have appeared randomly throughout the previous week, assign priorities and due dates, create subtasks, etc.

Every Friday, I look at my board in the PM tool Monday, a task manager, and analyze why I’m off schedule for some tasks and how to address the cause.

This helps me to be agile, complete as many tasks as fit within a work week (realistically), and spot bottlenecks or roadblocks.

Pros:

• Helps visualize workflows easily.
• Limits multitasking and improves focus.
• Encourages ongoing process improvement.
• Organizes projects effectively with clear goals.
• Fosters regular team communication and collaboration.
• Facilitates adaptation to changing project needs.

Cons:

• A lack of defined deadlines may lead to delays.
• Rigidity in sprint timelines (Scrum) may cause stress.

Best for: Environments that value flexibility and adaptability over strict timelines.

📍Note: Implementing the two systems at a time is called Scrumban.

My Verdict

Combining these two methods helps me visualize what I have to do in the Kanban board, while the Scrum sprints help me to make lots of progress on particular projects. I like the balance the two systems bring to my work, which is largely independent and remote.

What’s the best productivity system?

Although every productivity system has its merits, my personal favorites are:

• The Pomodoro Technique for keeping me focused with 30-minute working sprints and 5-minute breaks.
• The Eisenhower Decision Matrix for simple organization of urgent and important tasks.
• Scrumban for regular progress check-ups.

No matter which system you choose, the only thing that matters is that it truly helps improve your productivity. I combine three of them on a daily basis, and I think that’s the best approach for completing the jobs to be done, ideating new projects, and tracking my team’s progress.

Try a few, see what fits and what doesn’t, and ultimately, you’ll find your best solution to avoid mental blocks, demotivation, and burnout.

 

If Hubspot is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Simplify growth with an all-in-one platform. Powerful marketing, sales, and support automation. Integrated CMS. Scalable software. Crafted for customer experience.

Google Sheets templates help you create better spreadsheets while saving you valuable time. And it’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I love a good formula to keep manual math to a minimum (and, therefore, data as accurate as possible).

So, what do Google Sheets templates do? Short of reading minds, a template knows what you need and offers it with minimal manual input, giving you the ability to focus on more important things — like analyzing and translating the data itself.

In this post, I’m touching on the most important templates you’ll need to efficiently use Google Sheets for business — including templates for project management, reporting, people management, and customer tracking.

You’ll explore:

• Why should you use Google Sheets templates for business?
• How to Find Templates in Google Sheets
• Helpful Google Sheets Templates

Let’s get started.

Why should you use Google Sheets templates for business?

Google Sheets templates are valuable business tools that can be used by teams of any size. Whether you’re a business just starting out or an established enterprise firm, using Google Sheets templates is highly beneficial.

Even if not a primary business tool, they can supplement other tools. For instance, you might use a free CRM to track customer information, then use a Google Sheets invoice template to quickly create invoices for each customer.

Let’s explore the top benefits of using Google Sheets templates for business.

Google Sheets templates are free to use.

Google Sheets templates are free and cover a wide variety of needs without forcing anyone to spend big bucks on a subscription to Excel or other platforms. When you sign up for a Google Workspace account, you get immediate access to these templates.

Google Sheets templates make collaboration easy.

What I love about Google Workspace and Google Sheets templates, in particular, is how they allow your team to collaborate seamlessly and easily. By clicking the “Share” button at the top right-hand corner of a document, you can give team members access to the file.

You can also limit the collaboration aspect to commenting or viewing only and limit people’s ability to download, print, or copy the document.

Adapting these settings provides a great option for sensitive documents that only a few people should edit.

Google Sheets templates are intuitive to use.

Using a Google Sheets template doesn’t require much experience with spreadsheets. You don’t need to know advanced formulas and functions to make them work for you.

All you have to do is plug in your numbers and populate the fields. The document will generate a report or calculate a total based on the built-in fields.

Google Sheets templates are customizable.

Using a Google Sheets template doesn’t mean that you’re stuck with its look and feel. You can easily change the fields, the colors, and the fonts using Google Sheets’ built-in tools to give your sheets a brand-specific look and feel.

There’s no data loss.

Another great benefit of using Google Sheets templates? Unless a freak accident happens with Google’s servers, it’s nearly impossible to lose data.

Google Sheets stores everything in the cloud, including a version history of the document. You can always revert to a previous version if something happens.

If your laptop crashes or you lose an internet connection, Google Sheets simply freezes the copy until you’re online again. You’ll still want to take a few precautions, such as enabling offline editing and downloading a copy of important documents to your local drive.

How to Find Templates in Google Sheets

Ready to find a few templates that you can start using right now for your business? There are two common ways you can find and use free Google Sheets templates.

1. Google’s Built-In Template Gallery

On your browser, go to Google Sheets. Click Template Gallery at the top right. Explore the templates to find the right one for you.

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You’ll find different templates for your personal, work, project management, and education needs. Here’s an example of what the Personal template library looks like.

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2. Add-Ons

Another way to find free templates in Google Sheets is to download and install the Vertex42 add-on. Here’s how.

• Open an existing Google sheet, or type “sheets.new” into your address bar to create a new one.
• On the top left menu, go to Extensions, then Add-ons, then Get add-ons.

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• Type “Vertex42” into the search bar, and click enter.
• Install the add-on.

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• To access the templates, click on Extensions, then Template Gallery for Sheets.
• From there, click Browse Templates.

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Here, you will find templates that can help with almost everything you need — creating an invoice, an income/expense tracker, or a dashboard to manage your projects.

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Let’s look at some of the free Google Sheets templates you may find useful for your business.

Google Sheets Templates

Whether you send invoices to clients, track website analytics, or create expense reports, you probably work with spreadsheets, which can feel frustrating or tedious when you’re under a time crunch.

Fortunately, Google Sheets offers a wide variety of pre-built templates, allowing you to more quickly and effectively create reports and analyze data. Here are some of the best Google Sheets templates you can start using now.

• Google Sheets Templates for Finances
• Google Sheets Templates for Reporting and Analytics
• Google Sheets Templates for Customers
• Google Sheets Templates for Project Management
• Google Sheets Templates for Leading a Team

Google Sheets Templates for Finances

One of the most common ways to use spreadsheets is as a tool for bookkeeping and invoicing. Here are some of my favorite ready-to-go templates that save you time and make it easy to:

• Invoice clients.
• Maintain an annual business budget.
• Generate financial statements.
• Create expense reports.
• Generate purchase reports.

Best of all? You don’t have to create or choose any formulas that will help you calculate this data.

1. Invoices

If you’re a freelancer or work for a small business, this invoice template simplifies the process of using invoices to bill clients for services.

It provides space for all the necessary information and looks more professional than a plain spreadsheet. Plus, the template is customizable, so you can create a theme that aligns well with your brand image.

Click here to use this template.

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Best for: Freelancers and small businesses.

2. Annual Business Budget

More in-depth than it initially appears, this template has tabs for setup, income, expenses, and summary at the bottom, and each includes several subcategories. It’s a good option if your budget requires a lot of customization and many moving parts.

Click here to use this template.

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What we like: This budget template provides all the essentials while allowing you to customize it to fit your business’ needs.

3. Financial Statements

The financial statements template is an all-in-one resource to keep track of business transactions, profits, and losses. If you work for or own a small business and need to manage your finances, this template makes the process easier and less prone to human error.

Click here to use this template.

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Best for: Tracking how your small business is doing.

4. Expense Report

Knowing how much you spend is essential for running a successful business. But it’s often easy to forget to record these expenses with the amount of work you have to do every day. This simple expense report template makes it easy to record all expenses — yours and those of your employees.

Click here to use this template.

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What we like: This template makes it easy to hold you and your team accountable for your expenses.

5. Purchase Order

This template is a lifesaver for professionals in charge of tracking orders, saving time, and avoiding the headaches that come with monitoring supplies or shipments.

Click here to use this template.

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What we like: This template is simple and straightforward for all purchasing needs.

Google Sheet Templates for Reporting and Analytics

Reporting dashboards are typically built into a wide variety of software products, such as Marketing Hub. However, if you don’t have the budget, you can easily create one using a Google Sheets template.

The below templates automatically gather data from Google Analytics, putting the information in a highly digestible, visual format that you can share.

6. Website Traffic Dashboard

If you analyze website traffic with Google Analytics, this template is a fantastic supplemental tool to pull that data into an organized report. Better still, you can use the dashboard template with the Supermetrics Google Sheets add-on to monitor and analyze data from PPC, SEO, social media, and website analytics.

Click here to use this template.

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Best for: Collecting and analyzing website traffic to see your strengths and areas for improvement.

7. Website Paid Traffic Report

If you’re looking for a way to demonstrate paid ads’ influence on your business, this template makes analyzing and reporting on paid traffic relatively seamless. It automatically collects data on your paid sources from Google Analytics and provides a clean chart with important information, including PPC’s percentage of goal conversions, total traffic, and bounce rate.

You can also adjust the template to compare different periods, different channels, or segments.

Click here to use this template.

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Best for: Companies using Google Analytics who want reports on their paid advertisements.

Google Sheet Templates for Customers

If you don’t have access to a CRM yet or your business is still growing, you can use spreadsheets to track customer information and see your growth. The Google Sheets templates below give you a CRM and a sales dashboard without paying the cost typically needed for such software.

However, as your business starts to grow and you earn more customers, you’ll want to switch over to a dedicated CRM.

8. CRM

CRMs help you organize contacts and automate an effective sales and marketing process. However, if you’re a small company just starting out, you might not feel ready to implement a fully established CRM.

This CRM template is a great place to get your feet wet, saving data automatically so you never lose information. Plus, you can share with coworkers, which helps encourage collaboration between your sales and marketing departments.

Click here to use this template.

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Best for: Small businesses to keep all customer data in one place.

9. Sales Dashboard

This template helps salespeople manage their leads, sales, and revenue all in one place, with multiple tabs feeding your data into a main dashboard. Plus, it features an “instructions” tab to get you up to speed on using the sheet.

Click here to use this template.

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Best for: Individual sales reps to track their leads and sales.

10. Sales Operations Dashboard

This template contains all the pre-built dashboards a sales manager, analyst, or operations specialist needs to monitor performance and maximize revenue. You can use this template to gain full visibility into your sales pipeline, set and track sales targets, and compare sales KPIs across monthly, quarterly, and yearly periods.

Want to supercharge your dashboard? Connect it to your live HubSpot sales data using the Coefficient add-on for Google Sheets. You’ll always have real-time charts and sales metrics to make better decisions.

Click here to use this template.

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What we like: This is the perfect way for small businesses to keep track of their sales.

Google Sheet Templates for Project Management

Google Sheets project management templates offer cost-effective alternatives to buying project management software.

You can use them to keep track of your project timeline, create Gantt charts, build product roadmaps, and even generate action lists that you can color-code and categorize.

Pro tip: If you’re managing multiple projects, simply duplicate the initial tab and keep all projects in a single spreadsheet.

11. Project Timeline

Whether this is your first significant project or you’ve been managing projects for years, this timeline template is a valuable tool for organizing each project step, allowing you to visually break up a daunting project into smaller pieces.

Click here to use this template.

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What we like: This template provides everything you need to plan and organize any project.

12. Project Tracking

If you’re juggling many projects simultaneously, this project-tracking template takes project management to the next level, enabling you to organize your tasks into categories by date, deliverables, status, cost, and hours.

Best of all, you can prioritize and visualize your projects, reducing your time management stress.

Click here to use this template.

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What we like: This template allows you to include sufficient detail for each project while helping you see everything on your plate at once.

13. Event Marketing Timeline

Promoting an event? This event marketing template offers organization and structure. It also features categories that include local and national marketing, PR, and web marketing, with subcategories ranging from an email newsletter to impact studies.

Click here to use this template.

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Best for: Storing all your event marketing preparations in one place.

14. Gantt Chart Template

When you’ve got a complex project with overlapping components, timing is one of your primary concerns. This Gantt chart template can help you visualize all steps and delegate essential tasks more efficiently. While there are a variety of different Gantt chart templates out there, Google Sheets is a good place to start and makes collaboration straightforward.

Click here to use this template.

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Best for: Keeping complicated projects with lots of people and moving parts organized.

15. Product Roadmap

Roadmaps help your team understand the direction you want a project to take. This product roadmap template makes it easy to create a calendar summary of your project and the milestones of your product development process.

Click here to use this template.

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What we like: The calendar view gives you and your team a clear “big picture” view of what needs to be done and when.

16. Product Launch Plan

This template makes it easy to organize the best product launch possible with fields to help you outline your market and competitive analysis, project strategy, key messaging, and who your target audience is.

Click here to use this template.

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What we like: This template ensures you don’t miss anything as you prepare to launch a new product.

17. Action List With Ranking

Managing a project requires tracking daily actions to ensure you don’t lose focus. This action list template gives you a tool to prioritize the most important tasks on your list and makes sure your team is on the same page.

Click here to use this template.

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What we like: The “value” and “difficulty” columns allow you to visually rate each task and then prioritize accordingly.

18. Project Budget

Most project managers create budgets for each of their projects outside of the general business budget. This project budget template offers a simple yet effective option to quickly estimate how much revenue a project might generate and how much it would cost.

While other Google Sheets budget templates might have more detail to them, this spreadsheet is great for focusing on the essentials.

Click here to use this template.

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Best for: Keeping track of a specific project’s budget.

Google Sheet Templates for Leading a Team

Google Sheets templates make it easier and simpler to manage a team without multiple emails or Slack check-ins. These templates allow you to set employee shifts and track how many hours employees spend on certain projects. And because these templates are collaborative, your employees can fill out forms at their convenience.

19. Employee Shift Schedule

This template simplifies the task of keeping track of who works what hours and how much each employee gets paid. Including slots for employees’ names, hours worked, and monthly wages keeps your paycheck process straightforward and organized.

Click here to use this template.

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Best for: Leaders who manage teams with shifts and hourly wages or who work with multiple freelancers/contractors.

20. Weekly Timesheet

Like the employee shift schedule, the weekly timesheet helps you track time and know how much to pay employees or subcontractors. Plus, this weekly timesheet template allows you to quickly find out how much time each employee spends on a project.

Click here to use this template.

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What we like: This template is a great way of keeping track of how employees use their time.

21. Contact List

This template comes in handy if you want to create a contact list database, making it easy to store your contact information (say, phone number and email address), your employees’ contact information, and those of emergency services like the ambulance or fire department.

Click here to use this template.

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Best for: Keeping important contact information all in one place.

Start Using Free Google Sheets Templates

No matter what your job is, using a suitable spreadsheet simplifies the process and makes it a more enjoyable experience.

So what are you waiting for? Get started with using these free Google Sheets templates to save time and effort, and download ten additional ones to exponentially improve your productivity.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

If Hubspot is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Simplify growth with an all-in-one platform. Powerful marketing, sales, and support automation. Integrated CMS. Scalable software. Crafted for customer experience.

If you want to be taken seriously, a professional email address is necessary.

You might love your old AIM address from high school, but if your clients, partners, or other professional contacts receive an email from “baseballbro25@aim.com,” there’s a good chance it’ll go straight into the trash.

That said, coming up with a professional address isn’t always easy. To help you figure out how to set up a professional email address for your business, I tried a handful of the top email address generators available today.

Below, I’ll go through some of the most important do’s and don’ts I’ve learned throughout my marketing career before walking you through three of my favorite email name-generation tools.

How to Create a Business Email Address

Unprofessional Email Address Examples

Professional Email Address Ideas and Examples

Email Name Generators

1. Choose your email host.

If you want a custom domain for your business, you’ll first need to purchase a domain and hosting site.

One way to create a business email address is to look for a hosting package with a business email. An email address usually costs extra, but many users set up their business email this way because it can be easier than other options.

If you opt for this approach to creating a business email, you must go to your hosting site and set up your email. Usually, this means going to the “Email” section of your hosting site and choosing an email (see tips and examples below).

Alternatively, another way to set up email is to go through G-Suite rather than your hosting platform (this is what we do at HubSpot). Google will walk you through this process, and it’s also pretty straightforward.

2. Connect your email to an email client.

Next, if you choose to host your email through your hosting platform, you must connect your email address to an email client.

To do this, start by logging into your hosting platform. Then, go to the “Email” section and find a button that says “Set up Mail Client” (or something to that effect).

This will walk you through setting up your email with Outlook, Gmail, or any other mail app.

3. Connect your email to your marketing automation software.

Finally, you’ll want to ensure your marketing automation platform has access to your email.

To do this with HubSpot, you can follow these instructions.

If you use another system, you’ll want to go to your settings and look for a “Domains” or
“Email Sending” button. Then, follow the steps to connect your email.

Unprofessional Email Address Examples

We’ve covered the basics of setting up an email address from a technical standpoint. But what address should you choose?

I can tell you firsthand that avoiding an unprofessional email address is critical. Before we dive into ideas to inspire your professional email address, let’s review common mistakes you should make clear of.

Nicknames

Even if your colleagues call you by nickname, you should still leave nicknames and alter-egos from your professional email address.

For example, your name is Daniel Johnson, but your coworkers, friends, and family call you Danny or DJ.

While you may like being called by those nicknames, the following email addresses would still be inappropriate:

• dannyjohnson@domain.com
• djdaniel@domain.com
• dannyj@domain.com

To make a good impression, keep your personal and professional lives separate. Your close coworkers can still refer to you by your nickname.

Still, your business email address must reflect your professional name, especially if you’re emailing someone for the first time or giving your contact information to a potential lead.

What does this look like in practice? Instead of using a nickname, use some combination of your first name, last name, and/or initials, such as:

• djohnson@domain.com
• danieljohnson@domain.com
• danielj@domain.com

Company Position

Though it’s acceptable to include your profession in your business email, you should avoid having your current role. After all, your position within the company can change over time, and your email address is expected to remain the same.

Plus, your job title may only capture a handful of your skills, and the person you’re contacting may not be interested in those particular skills. As such, I’d suggest that you avoid creating an email address like these:

• jsmithoperationsmanager@domain.com
• seniorengineerjohnsmith@domain.com
• jsmithceo@domain.com

Remember, you can always include your job position in your email signature. But it’s best to combine your name and initials in your email address. Plus, it’s also shorter and easier to read.

Numbers

Most names are not unique. Especially if you have a fairly common name, finding an email address that hasn’t been taken yet can be hard. As such, some people may be tempted to include numbers in their email addresses.

However, this can do more harm than good.

When creating email addresses, avoid adding lots of extra numbers like this:

• janedoe95@domain.com
• jdoe813@domain.com
• janedoe1408@domain.com

Usernames like these often come across as unreliable and untrustworthy. They can even set off spam filters, meaning your emails will be sent straight to the recipient’s junk folder.

Instead of numbers, you can use periods or underscores — but do so sparingly because too many punctuation marks or symbols can also trigger spam filters.

If you choose this route, use only one or two punctuation marks in your email address. For example, the following formats are acceptable for a professional email:

• jane.doe@domain.com
• jane.a.doe@domain.com
• jane_doe@domain.com

Professional Email Address Ideas and Examples

Now that you know how to set up your business email (and what to avoid when crafting an address), let me share some of my favorite ideas and examples to help you choose your naming conventions.

Combine your names.

• First name + last name = cliffordchi@domain.com
• First name . last name = clifford.chi@domain.com
• First name . middle name . last name = clifford.douglas.chi@domain.com
• First initial + last name = cchi@domain.com
• First initial + middle name + last name = cdouglaschi@domain.com
• First initial + middle initial + last name = cdchi@domain.com

Pro Tip: A period is a great option if you want to break up your first and last name.

Shorten your names.

• cliffchi@domain.com
• cliffdougchi@domain.com
• cliffdouglaschi@domain.com
• clifforddougchi@domain.com

Best for: If your name is longer, it’s often worth coming up with a shortened version.

Combine your name with your profession, city, or degree.

• cliffordchiwriter@domain.com
• cliffchiwriter@domain.com
• cchiwriter@domain.com
• cliffordchiboston@domain.com
• cliffchiboston@domain.com
• cchiboston@domain.com
• cliffordchimfa@domain.com
• cliffchimfa@domain.com
• cchimfa@domain.com

What we like: Adding a profession, city, or degree to your email address can effectively differentiate yourself.

Email Name Generators

In my experience, it can be challenging to settle on a professional email address. So, if you’re still struggling to figure out how to set up a professional email address, I’d suggest taking a look at some of the email name generators below:

1. Romarto

Romarto is one of the simplest email generators I’ve used. Just enter your first and last name, and the generator tool will come up with different combinations you can use for your address.

You can also add your profession or city to get more options.

I tried out Romarto, putting my first and last name into the generator. I had the option to include my middle name, profession, and the city I live in.

From there, Romarto created dozens of options that I could use for my email, mixing and matching different elements of my name and profession. This is an excellent option with plenty of outputs if you feel stuck.

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Best for Romarto is an excellent option for busy professionals seeking a quick and easy email generation tool.

2. 4MeNearMe

Another option I tried was 4MeNearMe. This free email address generator works similarly to Romarto, except it lets you add your email host.

I tested 4MeNearMe. Similar to Romarto, I had the option to share my name, profession, and area. I could also include the email server I planned to use, like Gmail.

The results appeared cleanly in tables, separated by what combinations of information the algorithm used.

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Pro tip: If you’re looking for a tool to add an email host, 4MeNearMe is the way to go!

3. GetMara.com

Finally, GetMara.com is another excellent tool to help you choose your professional email address.

As you can see in the screenshot below, GetMara allows users to add their company’s domain to craft the correct business email address for their organization.

GetMara.com had fewer fields to fill out. All I had to do was put in my name and company name. As a result, I had fewer options to choose from than the other two email generators. However, constraints can be helpful.

If you’re looking for a shortlist, GetMara.com is the way to go.

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What we like: GetMara lets you generate over 50 different email addresses, helping you identify the best possible option.

Crafting the Perfect Professional Email Address

In sum, there are a few key takeaways I’ll leave you with when it comes to creating your professional email address:

• Stick to a variation of your real name, and avoid nicknames.
• Don’t use numbers because they can result in your email getting flagged as junk mail.
• If you must use punctuation or symbols, do so sparingly, using only periods and underscores.
• Keep your professional and personal lives separate.

Choosing a professional email address can be challenging. Fortunately, there are still plenty of ways to choose a solid, professional email address — and my experience has taught me that they’re well worth the effort.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

If Hubspot is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Simplify growth with an all-in-one platform. Powerful marketing, sales, and support automation. Integrated CMS. Scalable software. Crafted for customer experience.

ChatGPT and Google Bard have entered the chat. You’re missing the party if you haven’t joined the conversation around artificial intelligence (AI) in digital marketing.

Perhaps you’re exploring AI on your own, or your boss asked you to report back on ways to implement AI in your work (welp!). Whatever your motivation, I’m here to help.

I’ll break down what AI in digital marketing is, how to use it, examples, pros and cons, and marketing strategies that benefit from AI.

Table of Contents

• What is AI in digital marketing?
• How do digital marketers use AI?
• AI in Digital Marketing Pros and Cons
• Examples of AI in Digital Marketing
• How to Use AI in Digital Marketing
• Harnessing the Power of AI

AI uses machine learning and large-language models (LLM) to analyze big data and turn it into actionable insights, automated actions, and content.

AI can even interact with customers who perform a specific behavior on your website, like clicking a button or liking a social media post.

What does this mean for you? With AI, you can analyze customer behavior, predict outcomes, automate marketing tasks, and create and personalize marketing content.

New AI tools are coming on the market every day. They promise to help marketers do their jobs faster, smarter, and more easily. Since these tools are still emerging, not every one is a home run, and the number of tools to research is overwhelming.

We’ve surveyed over 1,000 marketers to see how they use AI in their jobs and where it impacts them.

Pro tip: If you’re a HubSpot user, check out our new AI tools. We have a new content assistant and ChatSpot tools to streamline your day-to-day. Many of our features use AI, including SEO, call recordings, social media, data management, and more.

Get started with HubSpot Content Assistant.

How do digital marketers use AI?

In our survey, 64% of marketing professionals said they use AI tools in some form in their jobs, but the purpose and level of integration can vary widely. Just 21% of marketers said it’s extensively integrated into their daily workflows.

So, how are they using it? Our research found that the top three uses of AI in digital marketing are:

1. Data analysis/reporting (used by 40% of marketers).
2. Research, like market research or summarizing articles (39% of marketers).
3. Content creation (38% of marketers).

Let’s take a closer look at the potential uses of AI in digital marketing.

Ways to Use AI in Digital Marketing

1. Data Analytics

Struggling to make sense of large data sets? Most digital marketing tools give you analytics, but marketers often have to export and piece together data from different platforms like puzzle pieces to get the big picture.

AI can collect and sift through large amounts of data from multiple marketing platforms and summarize the findings.

This will help you save time when strategizing and developing marketing assets for your campaigns.

Pro tip: HubSpot Sales Hub has conversational intelligence capabilities to help you understand how your team performs on customer calls through data-driven insights.

Learn how to use account-based marketing recommendations powered by AI.

2. Content Creation

Digital marketers can instruct AI to write marketing content, including captions, social media posts, email copy, and even blog copy. Beyond writing, marketers can use AI for multimedia like images, audio, and even video.

It’s important to note that most AI-generated content isn’t ready for publishing immediately. Most marketers today use generative AI as a starting point — whether that’s ideation, an outline, or a few paragraphs to ignite your creativity.

Just 6% of marketers using AI say that they publish AI-generated content with no changes. You should always fact-check, edit, and adjust AI’s writing to make it sound more human and on-brand.

Pro tip: HubSpot’s AI-powered Content Assistant helps you generate blog ideas, create outlines, and write blogs or marketing emails.

3. Reducing Admin Work

Like any professional role, digital marketers spend a significant amount of time sitting in meetings and doing administrative tasks.

HubSpot’s State of Artificial Intelligence report uncovered the number-one benefit of using AI in marketing: it saves them time.

In fact, business professionals save an average of two hours and 24 minutes per day by using AI and automation tools.

AI tools can tackle manual tasks like scheduling meetings, summarizing articles and research, and taking notes.

For example, 63% of marketers are using AI tools to take notes and summarize meetings. These functions aren’t sexy, but they free up a marketer’s time to spend on more important, creative parts of their jobs.

3. Content Personalization

Of marketers using AI, 71% say it helps them personalize the experience customers get with their company.

This means AI can change the customer’s experience depending on their online behavior or whether or not they’ve filled out a form for your company.

For example, dynamic content changes depending on the user — their name, occupation, online behavior, etc.

AI analyzes a user online and gives them a more personal experience with marketing assets, including web pages, social media posts, and emails.

6Sense is one example of a tool that leverages AI to sift through intent data. You can then understand who in your audience is looking to make a purchase so you can personalize the marketing experience.

4. Media Buying

Another way to use AI in marketing is through media buying. Gone are the days when junior media buyers hand-select websites or billboards to advertise on.

Instead, adtech platforms use AI to choose the most effective ad and media placements to reach a target audience and maximize ROI.

If you use Google Ads, you’ve already encountered the AI feature that assists with the auction process.

Other standalone AI tools like Pattern89 provide recommendations on your ad spend and enable you to target the right audience to increase performance.

Pro tip: You can also leverage AI to help you write engaging ad copy in a fraction of the time.

Campaign Assistant is a free AI-powered app that can help you generate ad copy for Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn with ease — all with just a few simple prompts.

5. Chatbots

One use of AI in marketing that we’ve seen for years is chatbots. Chatbots, created with natural language processing (NLP), can answer common questions, nurture leads, schedule demo calls, and more.

A chatbot can personalize the customer journey during the stage when they’re consuming marketing content. This tool can also answer customer questions.

Let’s look at Drift, for example. The company has trained its chatbot to answer questions, even outside of a pre-programmed path. This way, if a person has a question that isn’t loaded into the system, the user will still get an answer.

Pro tip: Looking to better understand how AI-powered chatbots can answer customer questions? HubSpot Academy can help. This course describes the difference between rule-based and AI-powered chatbots.

6. Automated Email Marketing Campaigns

Automated email marketing has also been around for years. However, AI tools can help produce more engaging email content and learn about your email list behaviors.

The goal is to have your marketers spend less time researching and brainstorming so they can focus on sending successful campaigns.

As AI expands and improves, automated email marketing software becomes even more important to include in your marketing stack.

HubSpot Content Assistant can help you create marketing emails. Write a prompt about what you’d like to promote — from a discount to a webinar to a blog post — and AI can generate a message with the right tone.

7. Predicting Customer Behavior

Another great use of AI in digital marketing is to forecast customer behavior and sales.

AI can predict the outcome of marketing campaigns by using historical data, such as consumer engagement metrics, purchases, time-on-page, email opens, and more.

AI helps marketers understand the predicted outcome of their campaigns and marketing assets and forecast outcomes. These insights help marketers develop better, more dynamic campaigns that produce sales and boost ROI.

8. Improving Customer Experience

Digital marketing is all about the customer experience, and AI can help marketers deliver the best experience for their visitors to convert them into leads.

AI can help increase customer retention and loyalty, delight customers with personalized content, and improve assets.

AI Marketing Pros and Cons

While AI has a lot of great benefits, it’s still an emerging technology and has some drawbacks. Let’s examine some of the advantages and disadvantages of AI in digital marketing.

Pros of AI in Digital Marketing

1. Increased ROI

As you can see, the main goal of using AI in digital marketing is to increase performance and ROI for your campaigns.

Rather than running an ineffective ad for an entire campaign, you can harness data analytics and insights to produce better marketing assets in real-time.

This saves your marketing team time and money, allowing them to work more efficiently and increase profits. Cutting staff time and production costs also boosts your ROI.

2. Speed and Efficiency

I’ll say it again: Two-thirds of marketers say that time savings is the biggest advantage of generative AI in marketing. How much? Marketers report that they save over three hours for every piece of content that they produce with AI.

This frees up your time and capacity to do more and invest your time where it matters most, but it also helps your brand.

All marketers know that being first in a market is a major advantage.

Whether you’re spinning out social media campaigns based on pop culture moments or launching digital campaigns, the ability to pivot and launch campaigns in days or even hours is pure gold.

3. Better Customer Experience

Another advantage to using AI in marketing is that it can improve your relationship with your customers.

The more personalized your recommendations are and the deeper your relationships are, the more likely they’ll become repeat buyers.

AI can also identify customers at risk of churn and put them in an automated marketing campaign to get them to re-engage with your company.

4. Data-Based Marketing Decisions

AI can make scaling your business easier, using data to analyze, predict, and create marketing assets that sell. See how your team can use artificial intelligence and automation in this course from HubSpot Academy.

Cons of AI in Digital Marketing

1. Content Quality and Accuracy

While generative AI has come a long way, its content isn’t flawless. Factual errors are a particular issue: 47% of marketers say that generative AI has provided them with inaccurate information.

If you’re going to use AI to generate content without having a human edit it, you may see a drop in the quality. The success of AI is reliant on high-quality data that is accurate and timely.

Without a human editor, AI can produce content with factual inaccuracies, bias, or a divergent tone from your brand. Using AI requires human oversight so these types of mistakes don’t happen.

2. Privacy

As marketing assets have become more personalized through the years, customers are beginning to value privacy more and more.

With AI, some of these techniques require using a customer’s cookies and previous internet behavior to predict future purchases.

If your marketing team downloads and uses AI software, you’ll need to be sure you comply with privacy laws, such as GDPR.

3. Copyright Concerns

As a new technology, the legal framework for AI is still being built. Generative AI tools are trained on public content from thousands of companies, so it’s possible they could generate content that’s a little too close to your competitor’s.

Copyright laws are written around human authorship, so it’s unclear if you actually own AI-generated content in the same way.

4. Evaluating Non-Quantifiable KPIs

It might be hard to get buy-in to invest in AI at your company because there are non-quantifiable KPIs at play.

Certain metrics will be easy to track, but others — like improving the customer experience, increasing brand awareness, or improving reputation — will be much harder. That’s why it’s important to have the right measurement tools in place.

Examples of AI in Digital Marketing

At this point, you might be wondering, “Okay, but how does this look in practice?” Let’s review some real-life examples of how big media companies have used AI in their digital marketing.

1. Netflix

If you’re in marketing, you know you have to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. Netflix uses AI to do this. How?

On a Netflix Tech Blog, the company explains how it uses previous viewing history to determine the artwork for recommended movies or TV shows.

For example, if you’ve watched a lot of one actor’s movies, they might recommend another movie they’re in. But if the artwork doesn’t show off the actor, you may click away.

So, when the movie is recommended to this specific viewer, the artwork will showcase that actor.

Or maybe a viewer tends to watch more comedies than romances. When Netflix recommends a movie, they might change the artwork to show off comedic scenes versus romantic moments from the film.

Let’s take a look at how Netflix would recommend the movie Good Will Hunting to someone who watches romance movies versus the artwork they’d use to recommend the movie to someone who watches comedies.

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So, why does Netflix do this? The goal is to increase conversion rates and improve the customer experience on their platform.

2. Spotify

Spotify uses a similar approach to Netflix. The company will use AI to understand a user’s music interests, podcast favorites, purchase history, location, brand interactions, and more.

Then, customized playlists and recommendations are curated for each user.

This type of content personalization has helped major media companies like Spotify become top streaming platforms. But the personalization doesn’t end there.

Spotify will also send automated email marketing messages with personalized recommendations.

The goal? Create automated marketing messages and assets that will convert a user because the message is specific to that customer.

3. Amazon

Two major use cases for AI in marketing are forecasting sales and analyzing data. Amazon uses AI to do just that.

When you go on Amazon, there is a recommended products section that uses predictive analytics to determine if a customer is likely to make a purchase.

This helps the marketing teams at Amazon know what products to place in front of which customers. Plus, they can predict how well a product will sell based on their recommended product campaigns.

This type of AI helps increase conversions, improve customer satisfaction, and measure the overall success and ROI of various marketing campaigns.

How to Use AI in Digital Marketing

If you haven’t started deploying AI in your digital marketing strategies, this is your year. Now, 46% of marketers feel overwhelmed by the prospect of integrating AI tools into their daily process or workflow.

But the best way to eat an elephant, as Desmond Tutu once said, is one bite at a time.

I’ve learned through experience that the best way to make any large organizational change is through a strategic, systematic, and empathetic approach.

1. Define your goals.

Before starting out, determine what goal or objective you want to reach. Do you want to make your campaigns more effective? Do you want to save your team time or money?

Don’t skip this step — you can’t determine success without defining your goals and quantifiable KPIs.

2. Audit your infrastructure.

To start, put together a small team to analyze your current tools and infrastructure and find opportunities for adoption.

Write a report with all possible areas of implementation, potential outcomes, and what resources you would need to make it happen.

Assess the quality, quantity, and accessibility of your data to see how suitable it is for AI applications. Don’t forget to identify potential challenges or negative outcomes along with the positive.

You can’t throw out your marketing playbook and replace it with AI strategies overnight, so identify your top two to three areas where you want to test initially.

These don’t all have to be huge initiatives like overhauling your email marketing — small things can add up. For example, I love using AI tools for note-taking from meetings and transcribing interview recordings.

3. Audit staff capabilities.

Another area you should assess is whether your staff has the training and knowledge to implement these programs.

You’ll likely need to invest in training for your current staff, hire a consultant, or create a new position to drive forward your AI initiatives.

Case in point, 62% of marketing leaders say they’ve already considered hiring an employee specifically for AI, and 40% of those who haven’t say they plan to.

Your team likely already has some worries they could lose their jobs to AI, so make sure to position this as an opportunity for your team to reskill, learn, and become better marketers.

4. Select the right AI marketing tools.

Once you’ve identified your goals and top areas for implementation, it’s time to build your toolbox. Your current tools may already offer an AI feature, but it’s smart to look at all of the options on the market.

First, decide whether you’ll use an out-of-the-box AI solution versus a custom one. An example of an out-of-the-box AI solution would be Jasper, ChatGPT, or Google Bard.

A custom solution, which you can create with APIs for an open-source AI like Llama 2, can be a powerful solution for long-term success. You can connect and train AI on your proprietary data or train a GPT on your own voice and style.

This approach takes additional expertise, so you’d need to work closely with a consultant or your IT department.

5. Test and analyze AI.

At last, it’s time to test the waters. Take your top two to three areas of implementation and launch your programs. Set a timeframe and some target KPIs to watch so you can compare results.

For instance, if you want to test AI-written and AI-placed social media ads, run a trial period of a month. Monitor and edit the content throughout the month and document the process.

Once you’re done, compare the performance of AI-generated, human-generated, and AI-assisted content to see how it did and create a plan moving forward.

6. Build a culture of innovation.

As I mentioned, getting your team on board is key with any new technology change. Ask your team for feedback, bring them along in the process, and assure them that AI is intended to make them better, not replace them.

Harnessing the Power of AI

Marketing teams can scale their operations with AI, and it doesn’t have to break the bank.

However, it’s important to keep in mind the limitations of AI, even as the technology continues to get better over time in the changing marketing landscape.

While you might be able to use it to aid several marketing campaigns (and should), it isn’t replacing marketers just yet.

If Hubspot is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Simplify growth with an all-in-one platform. Powerful marketing, sales, and support automation. Integrated CMS. Scalable software. Crafted for customer experience.

When I was working as an in-house marketer, our team spent months in preparation for a massive industry event.

In the run-up to the big day, one of the biggest challenges was finding sponsors for the show.

Emails went unanswered. Pitches were ignored. Nothing seemed to click.

That’s when we put all our creative instincts into creating the perfect sponsorship emails. And these emails secured positive responses, bringing actual sponsors for the show.

If you’re struggling to find sponsors for your next big show, I’ve been where you are. That’s why I’ve curated nine of the best sponsorship email examples to help you perfect your pitch and bag that sponsorship.

We’ll cover:

• The Best Sponsorship Request Email Examples
• How to Write an Email for Sponsorship
• The Ultimate Sponsorship Email Template

The Best Sponsorship Request Email Examples

Let’s look at these nine excellent sponsorship email examples and learn different elements you can emulate. I’ve collected a few real-life email examples and sponsorship email templates you can customize.

1. WTSFest

Areej AbuAli, the founder of Women in Tech SEO, hosts the WTSFest every year. This on-site event happens in multiple locations and brings together 500+ women working in the field of tech SEO. Areej shared this email she sent to a potential sponsor interested in contributing to this event.

What I Liked About This Sponsorship Email

This is a winning email because of its brevity. The message opens with a quick elevator pitch for the event. Areej gets straight to the point and briefly highlights what makes WTSFest a unique opportunity for the potential sponsor.

The email takes only a couple of sentences to zoom in on the biggest value proposition for sponsors: one of a kind, with an all-women speaker line-up and attendees. The brochure is a great way to share more details and answer questions/objections without making the email too wordy.

2. The Wall Street Women Forum

I found another great sponsorship email example shared by Saranya Balachandran, the Content Marketing Lead at Ionixx Technologies. Saranya sent an email exploring the possibility of sponsoring an event hosted by the Wall Street Women Forum.

On the left, you’ll see the response she received from the event organizers. This email shares a high-level overview of the event and answers the critical question: what’s in it for sponsors?

What I Liked About This Sponsorship Email

The response from the Wall Street Women Forum’s team was crisp yet detailed. It covers all the key details about the event: when, what, who, and where. Plus, sponsors can also check out the event’s agenda.

More importantly, the email specifically highlights the benefits for sponsors. It also includes a more comprehensive brochure sharing more insights that sponsors would be interested in. and I particularly liked that the message invites sponsors to get in touch with the event co-chairs to discuss more details.

3. SaaS Sponsorship

If you think your potential sponsors are too busy to read a long email or go through a brochure, then this email can be a great template for you. It’s concise and creates interest without giving away too many details.

What I Liked About This Sponsorship Email

This example works great if you want to keep your message simple and short. It’s a brief pitch inviting potential sponsors to explore opportunities over a chat. So, the email highlights only essential information sponsors need: what’s the event for and what the key benefits are.

4. Healthcare Sponsorship

I believe emails requesting sponsorships should have two parts:

• What the event is about.
• Why sponsors should care.

This email template addresses both parts well. It gives you a brief description of the event, attendees, and themes to be covered. And it gives you three clear points of what you get as a sponsor.

What I Liked About This Sponsorship Email

I love that this email is easily scannable and delivers a convincing pitch, even if you skim through the message. It also has a personal tone with first-person pronouns and nudges sponsors to explore possibilities for contributing to the show.

 

5. Big Event Sponsorship

Big events typically include sponsors in different tiers with varying packages and benefits. If you’re targeting sponsors for multiple levels/tiers, then this email is great to give people a quick overview of the event. It encourages them to check out the brochure or deck and learn more about different packages.

What I Liked About This Sponsorship Email

If you’re doing cold email outreach to find sponsors, you have to set some context around who you are and why you’re reaching out. I like this example because it starts by establishing credibility for the sender.

The message doesn’t beat around the bush. Instead, it takes very few words to emphasize the main CTA (view sponsorship packages). And it ends by highlighting that it’s a location-specific event — an important detail for companies trying to enter this territory or build their stronghold.

6. Data Analytics Event

While most sponsorship request emails rinse and repeat the same set of benefits, this example takes a different approach. It explains how companies can strengthen their brand image and reinforce their business values by sponsoring the event.

The message essentially banks on the quality and central theme of the event rather than highlighting flashy marketing and similar perks.

What I Liked About This Sponsorship Email

This email positively influences companies to sponsor the event by highlighting how both businesses are driven by mutual values. It also gives sponsors the promise of interacting with key opinion leaders and potential customers in the industry.

7. Innovation in Fintech

If you’re giving sponsors access to a niche audience, it’s best to lead your sponsorship request with this focus. This example is entirely centered around the fintech vertical and promises sponsors great opportunities to reach a niche audience of professionals and businesses in this space.

What I Liked About This Sponsorship Email

This email can catch sponsors’ attention with one compelling sentence: Sponsoring this Expo would position your brand at the forefront of the fintech revolution. It’s an aspirational opportunity—one that would excite brands to explore sponsorship opportunities.

The message also highlights all the benefits specifically aimed at the fintech industry. Its focused messaging stands out from generic pitches.

8. Sustainability Event

What if you create a sponsorship email the same way you write a LinkedIn post? Open with an intriguing hook, contextualize your idea, make the offer, and end with a gentle CTA. I love this example because it follows this structure and delivers a compelling message without sounding pushy or too direct.

What I Liked About This Sponsorship Email

This email opens with an idea that sponsors could relate to. This opening sentence sets the stage for the event and draws readers’ attention to the rest of the pitch.

The message doesn’t spotlight the same old benefits for sponsors. Instead, it focuses on the event’s mission and how sponsors can become a critical part of this mission. It also sheds light on the audience attending the show for sponsors to see if it aligns with their business.

9. Cybersecurity for Enterprises

I’ve also found that opening your sponsorship emails with an ambitious promise can be a creative way to reel people in. Give them a view of what they’ll achieve by contributing to your event, then share more details about how you’ll make it happen — like in this example.

What I Liked About This Sponsorship Email

I like how this example opens with a unique proposition to provoke a sense of intrigue among readers. The messaging also speaks from the sponsors’ perspective and highlights what’s in it for them. Plus, it mentions a key benefit: positioning each sponsor as a thought leader in the industry.

How to Write an Email for Sponsorship

I’ve read, analyzed, and written dozens of sponsorship emails. Some worked well, and some tanked. After evaluating all my experiments with these emails, I’ve narrowed down my best tips for writing sponsorship emails.

Emphasize your shared brand values.

High-decibel marketing campaigns won’t impress sponsors. They want to know the core values of your event and how they align with their brand.

I recommend highlighting your business values at the start of the email with a personal touch. You should show that you’ve done your research about them and understand their mission. Present these values to resonate more with your prospects and nudge them to have a conversation.

One of the biggest value-driven benefits you can highlight for sponsors is that they can get behind a cause they truly believe in.

This way, you can also build long-term partnerships with these sponsors instead of creating a transactional relationship for a one-off event.

Share specific insights about your audience.

Another decisive factor for sponsors is knowing who they’ll reach, aka the audience. You can’t simply write a line or two describing the kind of folks attending your show and call it a day. Give sponsors more context about participants and explain how they can benefit from this specific audience.

This clarity on your event audience will add more value to your sponsorship proposal. It can make your pitch instantly appealing if the audience aligns with a company’s target market.

Plus, this audience research shows you’ve put enough thought into curating a world-class experience for a highly niche group of people instead of making it open for all.

Create a sense of exclusivity.

You can increase the perceived value of the sponsorship opportunity by offering some exclusive benefits or early access to your event. Build a sense of urgency and hype to make your offer sound more exciting to prospects.

For example, you can provide exclusive rights to host the first session or early access to the tickets. This time-bound offer can also fast-track decision-making and encourage sponsors to take the spot before the opportunity goes away.

Sign off with a single call-to-action.

You should conclude your sponsorship request with a clear CTA highlighting the immediate next step. Don’t confuse readers with multiple CTAs, like “let’s discuss more” and “check out our packages.” You have to make it easy for them to proceed and learn more about this opportunity.

Remember to steer clear of pushy messaging. You have to encourage them to explore the sponsorship packages instead of using promotional words.

A Tried-and-Tested Sponsorship Email Template

Here’s a pre-made sponsorship email template you can use to create your first set of emails.

Subject: Become a sponsor for [Event]!

Hey [Sponsor’s Name],

I’ve been following [Sponsor Company] for a few years now, and I recognize your commitment to [specific values or mission]. That’s why I’m reaching out to you with an exciting opportunity to showcase your passion for this cause by becoming a part of [event name].

Here’s why I believe it’s a great opportunity for your brand:

• Benefit #1
• Benefit #2
• Benefit #2

I’d love to give you the exclusive offer of [mention exclusive offer] and a platform to partner with key industry leaders and decision-makers.

Would you be keen to discuss more details about this partnership? Please book time here to learn more about our sponsorship packages.

Best,
[Your signature]

Securing Sponsorships Made Easy with Email Examples

Finding sponsors is no mean feat — and I say this from my experience of spending weeks of trial and error to secure sponsorships for our event.

But with these handpicked examples, you now know how to write sponsorship emails that make people tick and engage in further conversation.

So, bookmark this post for the next time you’re reaching out to potential sponsors and need a pinch of inspiration to write your messages.

If Hubspot is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.