With examples like Amazon and Netflix, even the most casual internet users are likely to have come across website personalisation at some point in their browsing. And now, personalisation is moving out of the realm of B2C marketing and into the world of B2B. 

This has been a growing trend over the course of the last few years, but the difficulty in setup and restrictive functionality in most sites has prevented the B2B market from seeing the true benefits of personalisation until recently. 

Enter: smart content.

Smart content is HubSpot’s answer to the messy and mind-boggling setup that is usually required by other content management systems to make personalisation work. If you have HubSpot’s CMS Hub or Marketing Pro/Enterprise, you can use smart content to create a tailored browsing experience for any visitor, particularly those already in your CRM.

Getting the most out of smart content

Using smart content is a sure-fire way to make your HubSpot website stand out, but getting started with any new tool can be tricky. This overview of smart content should help you make the first steps on your smart content journey.

Personalisation

Smart content’s primary function is to make the personalisation of your website simple and frictionless. But how does it do that and why is it useful?

Smart content works by using a specific set of criteria to automatically serve up more relevant content to website visitors. This criteria can be any of the following: country, device type, referral source, preferred language, contact list membership or lifecycle stage. 

By utilising information from a visitor’s browser or from their contact record in the HubSpot CRM, marketers can create content that feels tailored and will help visitors move along the buyer journey.

Increasingly, customers feel the need for personalised browsing experiences. A recent report showed that 74% of users felt frustrated when sites showed them content that was unrelated to their needs and interests. Smart content can make that level of experience more achievable. With that, marketers can streamline the customer experience and help move individuals through the funnel (or along the flywheel, for our inbound readers).

Read more: What is hyper personalisation?

Enabling marketers

The really fantastic part of smart content is how easy it is to use. Like the rest of the CMS Hub, smart content was created with marketing teams in mind. Even marketers with no coding experience are able to utilise and manage personalised messaging through smart content - a stark difference compared to working with most CMS’. 

With HubSpot’s smart content, marketers can create dynamic copy, content and CTAs (calls-to-action) that are more persuasive and engaging, without relying on the web development or IT team having availability.

This means that marketers can turn your website into a tool that not only captures leads, but also nurtures them automatically.

Reporting

Reporting on smart content hasn’t always been easy. Measuring and monitoring personalised content on most platforms entails multiple plugins and limited functionality. However, with HubSpot, smart content performance can be easily compared to default content in the smart content tab on the content module.

In addition to the smart content tab, CMS Hub comes with A/B page testing (at the Professional level) and adaptive page testing (at the Enterprise level), making content reporting easier than ever.

Measuring the performance of smart content can help prove ROI and ensure that your team is correct in understanding the needs of your visitors. Successful personalisation users like RyanAir and HubSpot have seen conversion increases upwards of 42% compared to default content!

Smart content is a powerful addition to any HubSpot site. With the potential of personalisation, you can turn your website into a whole funnel (or flywheel) experience! Treat your website visitors to the feeling of a bespoke website tailored to their needs.

If you want to learn more about implementing smart content or developing a site in CMS Hub, get in touch!