HubSpot Starter package tips and tricks for non-profits

Some of HubSpot's greatest features, such as automation, are only available on Pro packages. Often non-profits don't have the budget to stretch to Pro and have to settle for Starter, and in this blog we're going to explore how these Starter tools can be used effectively. Read on for some of our non-profit marketing tips & tricks within HubSpot!

Use of properties & reporting

A great feature of HubSpot, at all package levels, is the ability to create custom properties to capture whatever sort of data you like. And whilst this is a great feature, it should be used scarcely in a starter account. The reason for this being that on starter packages you cannot report on custom properties. 

On starter you will only have HubSpot's standard reports available (there's still a report library with 204 reports available), and these reports are based on HubSpot's pre-made properties, and therefore you won't be able to report on any custom properties. So the take away from this point is to use custom properties only where necessary, and be aware that you won't be able to report on these.

Lists

The next starter tool I've chosen to talk about is lists. Lists are a great feature available to starter-users, they allow you to create really specific lists of people that you can then target with your email marketing.

Before we get into some of the lists you can make, you need to understand the two types of lists available:

Static lists are lists of people that never change. You need to add people and remove people manually from the list, these are often used for attendees of a charity event, for example. These are set up using properties (amongst other filters), i.e. add anyone to this list where property 'attended charity event' = 'yes'.

Active lists are a little different. When setting up your active list you can filter by any property (or other filter) you like (similarly to static lists), but contacts will enter and leave the list depending on whether they fit your property filters.

I'll now list some examples of filters you can use to create segmented lists:

• personas
• Lifecycle stage
• Free download = yes
• Hard bounced/unsubscribed
• Webpage views

You can also use 'and's and 'or's to create even more specific lists, for example I could create a list of people that are from London, have viewed our pricing page 2 times, and have downloaded our free ebook. Using this feature allows you to target your hottest leads specifically.

Deal pipelines

On starter you have access to two deal pipelines. You can create deals, and associate them to companies and contacts, and you can move these deals along a pipeline. You can customise the pipeline stages, and have as many stages you like, so you can tailor your pipeline to suit your non-profit.

A staple for your non-profit will be a donor management pipeline. We would suggest setting the pipeline up with these stages:

(feel free to add or remove any that are relevant/irrelevant!)

• Potential donor identified
• Donor qualified
• Donor contacted
• Donor engaged
• Single donations
• Recurring donations
• Donor lost/unqualified

And remember.. you can create lists based off pipeline stages too!

Forms

Forms are going to be your go to form of lead generation. When someone new fills out one of your HubSpot forms on your site, HubSpot will create the contact and update all of the properties that they have answered - meaning zero manual creation of contacts. And if a returning contact fills out a form, HubSpot will update any properties with their most recent submission.

You need to use your forms in smart places in order to get these leads added to HubSpot.

Here are some of the places we'd suggest using forms:

• Event sign ups
• Gate free downloads behind form submissions
• Blog subscriptions
• Contact us page
• Use your email marketing to encourage form submissions
  
  

Email Marketing

Email marketing is critical to any company, especially non-profits. The people you're targeting are actively subscribed, and therefore have a chance of becoming a single donor, or returning to make recurring donations. Your email marketing is a chance to draw as many people to your website as possible, and if you're not able to do that your aim should be to build as much value as possible. 

Here are some non-profit marketing tips for your email campaigns:

• Keep consistent branding throughout 
• Offer free downloads that link to your website, where the contact must fill out a form to get the free download
• Include images and videos
• Use personalisation tokens
• Send to clearly segmented lists
• You don't have access to the A/B test feature on Starter, but you can create two emails and send to each half of your segmentation list, then use the 'compare emails' feature to see what worked and what didn't
• Schedule your emails to go out at the right times
• Assign your marketing emails to a campaign
• Use CTAs in your emails (try to distribute them evenly throughout your email)
• Don't be afraid of asking for a donation (see our example of how to ask for a donation in this blog)
  
  

Ticket Pipeline

The ticket pipeline is often used as a pipeline for managing support enquiries, but as the pipeline stages can be edited in the same way as the deal pipelines, this can effectively be used as a third pipeline for whatever you like.

Our suggestion would be to use this for a volunteers pipeline. Track from expression of interest all the way through to signing up as a volunteer/interest lost. You can associate a ticket with a contact, and you can even assign a ticket owner, so if you have members of your team working on different volunteer projects you can assign ticket owners so you know who is managing who.

Filters and views

We'll round up this blog with filters and views. This feature has been around for quite some time in HubSpot but is still a brilliant feature. Essentially, any filters you make on your contacts page, companies page, deal pipelines and ticket pipeline, can be saved as specific views.

So, following on from the example in the ticket pipeline section where we discussed assigning ticket owners. With filters and views, you can set a filter for each ticket owner and save each of these as their separate view. You'll now have tabs easily accessible for each of your ticket owners - it's as simple as that!

This knowledge base article by HubSpot will teach you everything you need to know about filters and views.

HubSpot is the all-in-one digital platform & CRM for non-profits.

• Grow your traffic, convert visitors into donors, and run campaigns at scale
• Get deeper insights, automate critical tasks, and convert more supporters
• Powerful website builder that is easily customised to meet your needs