Tired of manual data entry and cleanup in your CRM? Don’t have time to follow up with all your leads? Want to get more positive reviews online? Workflows can help with these and much, much more.
This guide will help you understand why you need to be using workflows and how to set them up for the best results. We also reached out to the HubSpot community to give you a list of HubSpot workflow examples from experts, which you can use for your own business.
First though: what are workflows, what do they do?
Skip to a section:
A HubSpot workflow is a tool inside of HubSpot that allows you to automate parts of your marketing, sales, and customer service efforts.
Each workflow is made up of triggers that start them, followed by actions that they automatically perform. (Occasionally you may want a workflow that's only activated manually, but mostly you'll use triggers)
By automating repetitive tasks, HubSpot workflows free up valuable time, allowing your team to focus on more important tasks, such as building relationships and closing deals.
HubSpot workflows bring a host of fantastic benefits to businesses, beyond just time-saving automation. With their help, you can develop scalable processes that consistently execute tasks and deliver personalized content.
Additionally, workflows boost lead nurturing, task automation, teamwork, and performance monitoring. This empowers your business to harmonize marketing, sales, and customer service efforts, resulting in heightened efficiency and more reliable results.
The total number of HubSpot workflows grows pretty regularly, offering more options with each update. HubSpot offers more workflow options than you see here, but these are some of the main types you’ll work with. Bear in mind, their availability depends on your HubSpot subscription.
Let's boil this down to some of the workflow types used most often, and who gets them.
Workflows and sequences are both powerful automation tools within HubSpot, but let’s make sure you understand the differences between them and when to use each one. We created a breakdown of HubSpot sequences vs. workflows in our post dedicated to sequences, but here’s the recap:
Let’s go over are some of the high-level steps for creating a HubSpot workflow. For more detailed instructions, watch the section of our HubSpot Hacks tutorial video that covers creating workflows in HubSpot.
Choose the type of workflow you want to create based on the object that triggers the workflow, such as contact-based, company-based, deal-based, or custom object-based workflows. This selection determines the options and actions available within the workflow.
HubSpot offers pre-built workflow templates to help you get started quickly or the option to create a workflow from scratch for complete customization. Choose the one that best suits your needs.
Once you’ve moved to the next page, give your workflow a name and description so you and team members can easily check what the workflow is for.
Enrollment triggers determine when a contact, company, or deal is added to the workflow. Examples include form submissions, property updates, or specific events.
If you have Operations Hub Pro or Enterprise, you can even set recurring workflows that trigger on a schedule. Choose the appropriate trigger(s) based on your goals and desired user experience.
Actions are the tasks that occur within the workflow, such as sending emails, updating properties, or assigning tasks. Determine which actions are necessary for achieving your goals and add them in the desired sequence.
Customize the settings of your workflow, such as re-enrollment options, suppression lists, or limiting workflow execution to specific days or times. These adjustments help ensure your workflow runs smoothly and aligns with your overall strategy.
Using the “test” feature, you can select a contact in your system, and you’ll be able to see which steps that contact would have hit.
Don’t worry: this won’t actually send those emails to the contact. You can even check the box to have HubSpot send you the emails the contact would have gotten (all at once, regardless of delays you’ve set), so you can view what that exchange would look like from the contact’s perspective.
Once your workflow is set up and tested, click the "Review and publish" button to activate it. The review page will also give you the chance to retroactively add contacts who already qualify to enter that workflow.
Heads up! There’s a reason it says “Review and publish.” Workflow mistakes can be a huge pain, especially when they happen at scale. Check that final review page carefully, and make sure you review the workflow settings, triggers, and actions before hitting that final “Turn on” button.
After activation, the workflow will begin processing the enrolled contacts, companies, or deals according to the defined actions and settings.
Congrats, you’ve launched your workflow! So how do you measure its results? HubSpot provides plenty of metrics to help you evaluate your workflows' performance. Consider keeping an eye on some of these analytics:
By monitoring email open and click-through rates within your workflow, you can identify which emails are generating the desired engagement and which ones need optimization. Analyzing these metrics helps you fine-tune your email content and subject lines to improve overall engagement.
If you've set a goal for your workflow, such as form submissions or deal closures, reviewing the goal completion rate will show how effectively your workflow is driving the desired results. Low goal completion rates indicate a need for adjustments in your workflow steps, or actions to better align with your objectives.
Your analytics can help you spot areas where contacts may be dropping off or not progressing through the workflow as intended. This information can be useful in identifying bottlenecks, such as an action that's not engaging enough or a condition that's too restrictive. Now you can more easily make changes to improve the workflow's effectiveness.
By comparing the performance metrics of multiple workflows, you can identify best practices or areas for improvement. This can help you figure out which workflows are most effective in driving desired outcomes, such as lead generation, customer retention, or upselling opportunities.
HubSpot workflows offer nearly endless opportunities for automation across your marketing, sales, and customer service efforts. But with all of the possibilities, it’s not always easy to know exactly what’s possible or where you should prioritize your workflow-building efforts.
That’s why we reached out to the HubSpot community to learn about their favorite HubSpot workflows. From simple task automation to some tricks we’ve never thought of, we have quite the list.
Below are a variety of best HubSpot workflows marketers use in their own companies or for clients. Feel free to comment on the article and add your own!
A simple favorite from our team at Simple Strat!
When a new company gets added to HubSpot, fields like their industry often get updated automatically. We have a workflow set up to copy this information over to the contact record for easy reference and view-creation.
Cara Wood, Digital Marketing Manager, ShopPad
I work in a B2B business (ShopPad) and we find that our cross-sell workflow is highly effective. Essentially, when a customer installs one of our apps, we send a workflow following our welcome workflow educating them on what another one of our apps does and then selling them on it. These workflows perform well. One of them has accounted for 1550+ installs of one our apps this year.
Datis Mohsenipour, Director of Marketing, Outback Team Building & Training
We offer team building & training services to corporations looking to host an activity or training session in North America. We regularly collect feedback by way of Net Promoter Score the day after an activity or event has been completed.
We will send an automated email to the person who purchased our services asking them to rate our services on a scale of 0-10. We have each rating listed within the email as link to the feedback form. They all point to the same form, however, each link has parameters appended to the URL which will pre-populate the form with the rating they selected.
If the person clicks on the rating but does not fill out the rest of the form, we’ve got workflows in place (based off the link in the email) that automatically populate their NPS rating into a field within the contact. This allows us to collect scores, regardless of whether or not someone has filled the form.
If they didn’t open or click the email, we’ll send a follow-up two days later.
In that same feedback form, we ask if candidates are willing to chat about being featured in a case study. If they check, “yes”, then we have an automated workflow set up to notify our copywriters of customers willing to be featured in a case study. Our copywriters will reach out accordingly.
Anand Iyer, Digital Marketer
Setting up a "Product Education" workflow that triggers after a product inquiry is a fantastic way to build trust and keep your company top of mind. You can build an automated lesson plan by sending video links, product flyers, webinar recordings, and implement a curriculum-style lead nurturing strategy.
Sarah Hall, Digital Marketing Manager, Qwinix Technologies
Hubspot does not naturally segment sales leads vs opted-in marketing leads. When your sales team uses the Hubspot email integration to bring in leads, this can get messy. I always create a custom toggle property for “marketing opted-in” and ensure it's triggered with ad campaigns and form submissions. This tackles organization and compliance right off the bat. It is my primary custom property when segmenting lists and analyzing metrics too.
Kristopher Crocket, President & CEO, Selworthy
We use two workflows that I think everyone should use:
Damien Elsing, Founder, CLCK Digital
Create a workflow to assign a contact owner when a contact passes a certain threshold (lead score or late stage conversion), then set a task for the owner to follow up with the lead, and change lifecycle stage to MQL.
Allison Hott, Content Marketer, Blog Tyrant
One of my favorite HubSpot workflows to set up is to redeliver content to subscribers that haven't seen it yet. For example, if you email your subscribers a downloadable PDF guide and some of them don't download it after a week or so, you can automatically resend the content with a new subject line and new language around it. A workflow like this helps you promote your content more effectively and helps to ensure as many of your subscribers see it as possible.
Andrew Erickson, Partner, Alaniz Marketing
Copy the Country IP and State IP fields to the Country and State fields if they’re empty.
Adam Hempenstall, CEO & Founder, Better Proposals
Mark Whitlock, Marketing Manager, Golden Spiral
B2B marketers should consider building a workflow for Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs). We developed one that includes 8 emails sent out over a 10-week period. It delivered strong open rates for us and generated 2 Sales Qualified Leads for us right off the bat. We’re constantly refining the workflow and approach.
Allen Montellano, Marketing Automation Specialist, Appetiser Apps
If you don't have a welcome campaign yet that involves at least one email that allows your subscribers to manage their subscription preferences, then it's something you need to look at as more countries are becoming more strict about data protection and privacy policies.
Alexis Eaglin, HubSpot Specialist & Certified Trainer, Simple Strat
HubSpot's round robin workflow can be used to evenly distribute leads or tasks across users. In a deal workflow for instance, you can rotate deal ownership to equally distribute leads or deals to your sales team. This helps to keep people from being overworked or receiving unfair advantages for certain deal assignments. Round robin workflows can be especially helpful for large teams, or teams with a lot of breakdown between territories or regions.
Alexis also made a quick tutorial video for HubSpot Hacks covering 5 essential workflows you should set up in your portal today, which you can watch below.
Automatically creating tickets when deals close are perfect for teams who have an onboarding process they need to deploy once a sale is closed. This is available if you have both Marketing Hub Professional and Service Hub Professional. Check out our HubSpot Hacks video to see how it’s done.
----
What’s your favorite HubSpot workflow?
Let us know in the comments below and we just may add it to the list!