Ready To Use Workflows In Hubspot- A Guide

Hubspot is the most popular marketing automation tool available.

It provides abundant features to target, acquire and nurture the leads so as to increase your revenue as easily as possible.

In order to automate the marketing and personalize the communication, it provides Workflows App(Only available in Marketing Hub Professional, Enterprise edition) where one can create personalized workflows.

Workflows are the heart of any Marketing Automation tool; making sure that prospects are getting properly pitched, organization ideas are aligned properly with the marketing efforts, and more leads are generated.

These are also an integral part of Hubspot and responsible for nurturing and converting prospects to customers.

Moreover, they also help in delighting the existing customers and encourage activities like upsells and evangelism.

Hubspot provides various features which make the workflows highly customizable, easy to make, and highly efficient.

Having said that, it has been seen that organizations use Hubspot just as a list email blast tool and not leveraging the full potential of Hubspot like using dynamic content, autoresponder emails, smart(dynamic) list etc.

There usually is no journey Mapping in the workflows and there is an absence of tailored content for prospects which could be sent based on the activities.

This guide will share examples of ready to use workflows that explore features of Hubspot; they are designed to guide prospects through the buying process with much more detailed and highly personalized journeys.

These workflows seamlessly pass prospects across workflows as they hit new sales stages or engage with specific content paths.

Setting Up Automation Workflows In Hubspot

Workflows can be created using Hubspot’s Workflows App which is available only in Professional and Enterprise edition of Hubspot Marketing Hub.

Using the app, different email workflows could be created which get triggered in a number of ways like when a contact – submits a form on your website, clicks a link in the email, clicks on the Pay-per-click ad, gets added to a list, views a page on the blog or becomes a marketing qualified lead(MQL).

These can also be setup based on the contact information already stored in the marketing database such as certain page views, properties, content downloads or any combination of these.

Another important aspects of these workflows are their internal usage such as to set or clear a contact’s property value, updating a contact’s lifecycle stage, adding/removing a contact from a list, and other tasks which are more on the administrative side and allow for more targeted, effective marketing to prospects and customers.

In the sections below, We would however talk about the workflows that can be used externally for contacts.

These workflows have been developed by our team and can be used to automate your marketing effectively and personalize your communication to the contacts.

Welcome Workflow-Blog/Content Subscriber

Trigger

This is used by brands to welcome their subscribers using a warm welcome email once they download any gated content on the website or subscribe to the blog.

Overview

This workflow is one of the most basic yet very powerful tool used by businesses across industries. Welcome emails are one of the most frequently opened.

The main aim at this point is to thank the subscriber, remind them what they can expect after reading the blog or the content they downloaded, introduce the organization and services and understand their problem area or requirement.

By automating our welcome campaign, we can increase conversions by including products, services, or special offers in the emails when we already have the contact’s attention.

Objective

Our Goal with this workflow is to send a Welcome email to New Subscribers as soon as they fill out a subscription form, then keep them in a list for easy identification.

Form Used

This Form is a General Subscription form, not specific to any product, can be found on the blog page or any other gated content, like an ebook, whitepaper, checklist, video etc., like in this example:

Hubspot Workflow Setup

According to the best practices used by marketers across the globe, the welcome email must have the following:

1. Simple subject Line, Sender Name, and Branding
2. Personalization
3. Thank You Message
4. What Subscribers Can Expect
5. Link to Email Preference Center(to unsubscribe or opt out)
6. Relevant Call-to-Action
7. Personal Sign-Off
8. Social Media Follow Buttons

Workflow Example:

Note: If you want to activate this workflow even when the contact is manually entered in Hubspot, you would need to put original source equal to offline sources.

Welcome Workflow-New paying customer

Trigger

This workflow will be triggered when the contact’s lifecycle stage gets updated to customer.

Overview

This workflow is a great way to start a relationship with the customer on a positive note and keep them engaged to have upsells and product adoption after they make a purchase. In addition, if the product requires some training, this workflow can be used as an opportunity to introduce training materials and help the customers on an incremental basis.

Objective

Automating the emails using this workflow can help eliminate some of the tasks that go hand in hand with closing a new customer such as training or additional information regarding the product.

Example:

Sending training information

Ongoing Evergreen Content

Trigger

If a contact has signed up on the website for receiving newsletter/opted to receive informational emails while registering on the website/downloaded a gated content, they will be sent the email sequence used in this workflow.

Overview

This Workflow is designed to engage your leads, preventing them from forgetting your company by keeping your products or services fresh in their minds.

The objective is to upgrade the contacts to a marketing qualified lead or an opportunity in the sales process.

It is achieved by sending weekly or monthly newsletter(s) containing the best content available.

This is one of the most effective ways of engaging and building rapport with leads by providing them with value through education.

This can help establish trust and keep your company top of mind as you communicate with your leads in a non-promotional way.

Objective

The aim of this workflow is to send a weekly/monthly Newsletter to Subscribers as soon as they fill out a subscription form and opt for Newsletter.

Form Used

The form for the newsletter can be included on the homepage of your website, and might look like this:

Ongoing Evergreen Content Workflow examples(Monthly newsletter in this case)

Note: You can direct the enrolled objects down a certain path based on set conditions.

This can be done using if/then branch in the workflow.

You can also send an internal email/SMS to your company sales representatives based on certain contact actions using the if/then branch.

Ongoing Promotions Workflow

Trigger:

This workflow will be triggered when a contact has opted to receive promotional emails while registering on the website. In addition, if a purchase has been made by a customer in the past, in that case also this workflow can be triggered.

Overview

These workflows will promote all available products to a prospect. It will happen gradually, exposing a prospect to all available products offered. These are used as an opportunity to upgrade or upsell your existing customers, or sell them complementary products and services depending on what they’ve already purchased.

Objective

The main objective here is to promote a product with plenty of time in between each promotion.

The workflows are designed to ensure that no prospect is pitched more than one product at a time.

The workflow designs prevent the bombardment of emails at the same time and thus keep the opt-out/unsubscribe rate in check.

This workflow is used as an opportunity to upgrade or upsell your existing customers, or sell them complementary products and services depending on what they’ve already purchased.

To start this, create dynamically updating lists of contacts who purchase a certain product or certain combination and create workflows aimed at recommending other products/services or encouraging upsells or add-ons.

Example

A simple promotional workflow could resemble the following email sequence:

Email 1: Delay one day after becoming a customer.

The first email would be a thank you email with appropriate information about the company and links of social media pages of the company.

Email 2: Delay two weeks. In this email, you can ask your customer how their product/service they purchased from you is going.

This makes sure you’re delighting them and keeping customers happy.

If they aren’t happy, this allows you to fix it and make it right.

Your customers will really feel taken care of if you include an email or phone number they can send questions or concerns to.

Email 3: Delay 1 month. Use this as an opportunity to promote making an upgrade or another purchase. You can push this through promo specials and discounts.

Email 4: Delay 1 month. Promote another product of yours with appropriate information and discount offers.

This will be followed by promoting all products in a sequence and based on a response by the customer, the if/then branch will follow.

Re-engagement Workflow

Trigger:

Contacts in your Hubspot account which were once active and were in the consideration stage regarding your products but have gone cold over some time

Overview

Re-engagement workflows are made to target the cold leads.

These are leads that perhaps once were strong candidates for becoming the client or buyer; however, they fell out mid-way or during the awareness stage.

There are several reasons why this might happen. Perhaps:

1. They find another business to be a stronger suit for solving their problem / need.
2. They no longer consider their problem / need to be of highest priority.
3. The product or service that they’re looking to solve for their need is too expensive, thus out of reach.

Objective

The objective of this workflow is revive the leads who had a potential to become your customers.

Example

Email 1: The first re-engagement email would be about giving the recipient general information on the company, product or service updates, lower prices or deals, brand’s story throughout the years and so on reengaging emotionally.

Email 2: The second email could propose taking an interactive survey over platforms and tools like SurveyMonkey or Typeform, determining their need or problem have yet been resolved or not.

It could also be about telling them what they missed and remind them of the benefits that made them sign up in the first place.

Email 3: This email could re-position the business among audience, using conversational language.

It could be about creating a sense of urgency and offering them an incentive as a last resort.

It could also be a farewell email, a win-back email, or a reminder about the content that they last viewed, softly offering a final recommendation.

What to do after the workflow comes to an end:

1. For those who re-engaged, add them to a new welcome workflow- new paying customer or a lead-nurturing workflow and not to your regular list of subscribers. That’s because you need to handle them differently and not send them your regular promotional emails but more specific emails leading them towards conversion.
2. For those who did not re-engage, it’s time to say goodbye. And that is the best option because by staying on your list and not opening your email, they are only going to hamper your deliverability.

How To Continuously Maintain And Improve The Above Mentioned Workflows:

The best practice to maintain and improve the workflows is to continually analyze the workflow, checking in on key metrics to see where it’s succeeding and if it’s coming up short anywhere.

One must take a deep dive into the workflows to see if they are working effectively or not.

Regardless of one’s goal, a few metrics that are very important are:

1. The conversion rate on the workflow as a whole. This high-level metrics tells you, overall, if the workflow is effective.

2. Email open rates. If nobody opens your emails, there’s a good chance something is off with the email timing, the subject line or something else.

3. Click through rates. Even if the reader doesn’t take the next step you intended, click-through rates can tell you about what’s piquing their interest or if a landing page isn’t performing well.

4. Unsubscribe rates. Lots of opt outs could mean that your emails are coming too frequently or that they’re not relevant to the audience.

It must also be noted that the numbers individually don’t matter, they are all interconnected.

If we have a low open rate but a high conversion rate, it could be the subject line that’s throwing off your goal.

A high open rate but low conversion rate could be a sign that you’re not delivering relevant content.

Finally, one must remember to look at both individual emails in the workflow and the sequence as a whole.

If the workflow has a bottom of the funnel offer and has high engagement but no conversions on the offer, maybe that signals the prospect is interested, but still not ready to convert so the entire workflow might need to be longer.

One must use these two approaches to improve the effectiveness of your workflows:

1. A/B testing. If you can’t figure out what’s really hindering the workflow, run a few A/B tests to figure it out.

Or, if you’ve determined the problem but you’re not sure how to fix it, run a test with multiple options to help you figure out the best approach.

2. Smart content. HubSpot customers can create workflows that customize the message based on contact’s characteristics or responses to form questions.

This targeted messaging can address a variety of issues and can speak more directly to the recipients.