Understanding Your Contacts with HubSpot Lists

Without a strong organizational system in place, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of your HubSpot contacts. In fact, according to Forbes, 53% of sales leaders say that the administrative burdens associated with their CRM system cause friction for their team. Sure, HubSpot features like HubSpot lifecycle stages and HubSpot lead scoring help you keep track of a contact’s importance and position in your sales and marketing funnel. But they’re often not enough to keep your CRM organized.

This is where HubSpot lists come into play. In HubSpot, a “list” refers specifically to a list of contacts or companies that share one or more characteristics. When paired with a HubSpot reporting alternative like Actiondesk, HubSpot lists can help you segment your contacts and design sales and marketing campaigns that drive real results. Keep reading to learn:

1. Why list segmentation in HubSpot is key
2. How to personalize your marketing strategy with HubSpot lists
3. How to create a contact list in Hubspot
4. How to make the most of HubSpot lists with a HubSpot reporting alternative

Why list segmentation in HubSpot is key

HubSpot lists help businesses understand who their contacts are and how they’re engaging with them. The more specific your HubSpot company lists or HubSpot contact lists are, the more powerful any report you pull will be.

To understand the value of lists, it’s helpful to think about a concrete example. Imagine you work for a company that has one strong customer base in New York City and another one in Atlanta. If you were to pull a report for the average time of day that all of your customers open your emails, you might get something like 6:30 p.m.

This information is interesting, but is it specific enough? Now let’s imagine you segment this larger list into two smaller lists: one for customers who live in New York City and one for those who live in Atlanta. You pull a report for each and discover that the New York City customers tend to open your emails at 8:30 p.m. while those in Atlanta open them at 4:30 p.m.

With this targeted information in hand, you can adjust when you send your communications to ensure you’re reaching each customer base at the optimal time.

Personalize your sales and marketing strategy with HubSpot lists

Why does this degree of segmentation matter? Today’s consumers and business decision-makers expect a personalized experience when interacting with brands. According to recent reports:

• 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase from brands that provide personalized experiences than from those that don’t (Source: Epsilon)
• 72% of consumers only engage with marketing messages customized to their specific interests, as opposed to batch and blast communications (Source: SmarterHQ)
• Personalization can reduce customer acquisition costs by 50%, increase revenue by up to 15%, and lift marketing spend efficiency by up to 30% (Source: AdWeek)

When performed with a segmented list, HubSpot reporting empowers you to create personalized sales and marketing campaigns that speak to — not at — prospects and customers. You can use this data to send more meaningful e-blasts, fine-tune your social ads, and build a community of steadfast promoters.

How to create a contact list in Hubspot

Now that you know what HubSpot lists are and why they matter, it’s time to start building the right lists for your business. To create a contact list in HubSpot:

1. Go to your HubSpot account and navigate to Contacts > Lists
2. Click “Create List” in the upper-right corner
3. In the left panel, select “Contact-based” to create a list of contacts (or “Company-based” if you want to create a list of companies)
4. In the right panel, enter a name for your list and choose either “Active list” or “Static list” before clicking “Next”
5. In the left panel, set the criteria for the contacts (or companies) you want to include in your final list
6. Click “Apply filter” and the appropriate records will automatically populate in the table
7. Click “Save” if everything looks good
8. Edit your list as needed once it’s finished processing

Make the most of HubSpot lists with Actiondesk

Once you’ve followed the steps above and created a HubSpot list, what happens next? You need a tool that goes beyond native HubSpot reporting and helps you glean actionable insights from your lists. In short, you need a tool like Actiondesk.

Actiondesk is a spreadsheet that can pull HubSpot lists into an intuitive interface to make organizing and analyzing your data easier than ever. Once you’ve connected your HubSpot to Actiondesk, all your HubSpot data automatically updates in Actiondesk in real time. No more laborious data imports and exports! Use Actiondesk’s powerful reporting capabilities to compare metrics week over week or month over month and get the insights you need to quickly optimize your sales and marketing efforts.

With your finger on the pulse of your data, you gain a better understanding of your contacts’ characteristics and interests. This, in turn, lets you create more personalized sales and marketing strategies that win the hearts of new customers while deepening your relationships with current ones.

And while HubSpot lists are a great place to start, Actiondesk is the tool you need to truly maximize the value of your HubSpot data. Try Actiondesk for free and start personalizing your sales and marketing efforts today!