13 HubSpot workflows you must set up

Sophie Branigan avatar
Sophie Branigan

Jan 05, 2022

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HubSpot workflows are a tool for unlocking the benefits of marketing automation in your business. They let you automate your marketing actions to free up the time your teams spend on mundane tasks. They also help you deliver content to your prospects at exactly the right time.

To help you get started, we’ve put together our top 13 HubSpot workflow examples that’ll support your B2B marketing strategy

Our key picks for HubSpot workflows: 
  1. Lifecycle stages
  2. Lead assignments
  3. Internal notifications
  4. Welcome emails
  5. Event promotions
  6. Lead nurturing
  7. Lead scoring
  8. Date stamps
  9. Deal stage automation
  10. Lost deal follow-ups
  11. Deal records for channels/partners
  12. Format data
  13. Custom code

 

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What are HubSpot workflows?

Workflows in HubSpot are a series of automated actions that are triggered by a user. The prompt for workflows is information, like a person’s contact details or behaviours.

In the HubSpot platform, workflows automate internal processes to save time, align marketing and sales, and enable better lead nurturing.

For example, you can move prospects further down the funnel and generate more qualified leads. Or, you can improve things for your internal teams by setting up internal notifications or lead scoring. 

However, these are just a few examples of how HubSpot workflows can help your business. 

13 HubSpot workflow examples you need to know

1. Lifecycle stages

HubSpot lifecycle stages define where your prospects are in the buyer's journey. Are they a subscriber, Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), an opportunity, existing customer, or not applicable?

Using HubSpot workflows for lifecycle stages automatically keeps your contact's position up to date. This lets you determine exactly where a specific contact or company is in the buyer's journey. It also helps you understand when and how to pass leads to your sales team. 

Tip: HubSpot workflows can categorise irrelevant contacts into an 'other' stage. For example, when your internal team is testing forms. This excludes them from being qualified as a lead and affecting your data. 

2. Lead assignment 

When you have a contact's details, you might be ready to give this information to your sales team. However, you need the right person to follow up on the lead.

HubSpot workflows can handle this for you by automatically assigning the lead to the most relevant team member. For instance, by their location.

This ensures that your leads are contacted by the right people, helping to improve the quality and timeliness of your interactions.

3. Internal notifications

If your teams need reminding to follow up on potential leads, then an internal notification workflow can be used to send automated prompts to ensure that no opportunities are missed.

Internal notifications can be sent by email, text, or in HubSpot when a follow-up is required. You can also notify your team of changes to deals or the closing of deals. 

Tip: HubSpot workflows are available with an integration to Slack.  Your team can receive messages in real-time from HubSpot via Slack by default.

4. Welcome emails

However you choose to say hello, HubSpot workflows let you automate welcome emails to new contacts.

When a prospect provides their contact details, you can set up exactly when a workflow will be triggered to send them a relevant and timely communication. You can customise rules for the time, method, and content of your communications to personalise the experience. The workflow will handle the delivery for you. 

5. Event promotion emails

If you're hosting an event, such as a webinar, you'll want to inform your contacts. However, it's important to get the timing right to maximise the number of sign-ups. For example, 54% of attendees sign-up eight days before a webinar launches

A HubSpot workflow can help you send communications at a specific date and time. It can trigger actions depending on how far away the date of your event is. If a prospect has already responded, it'll automatically remove them from the workflow.

6. Lead nurturing emails

79% of all marketing leads never convert to sales. So when you capture leads, it's important to continually engage them in the right way.

Using HubSpot workflows means you can nurture leads by sending them relevant regular communications automatically. You can also set up workflows to regularly communicate with your customers too. 

7. Lead scoring

A lead scoring strategy helps you identify if a lead fits your ideal buyer profile, or where they are in the buyer's journey. This is usually based on a combination of behaviour, your ideal customer profile, and firmographic data

If a specific contact or company is highly valuable, you can set up a workflow to notify you. HubSpot workflows can be used to categorise these contacts into priority tiers, helping internal teams to know how much attention to pay to them. 

8. Date stamps

Using HubSpot workflows, you can set property values for each stage of the buyer's journey. HubSpot doesn't give you visibility of the date and time a property value changes, meaning you can't report on exactly when the contact moved to the next stage. 

However, workflows can be used to accurately track the dates of different actions in real-time. While there are existing fields, like the created date or the MQL lead date, you can use a custom date property to stamp the current date into it with a workflow. For example, the date the deal was closed, the date the contact became a customer, or the date of the last account review.

9. Deal stage automation

If you reach a deal agreed in principle with a prospect, a HubSpot workflow can be set up to automate the deal stage and assign a task to the correct person. When it's completed, the deal can move to the next stage.

This is a powerful tool when you're working in a large-scale sales team and ensures that someone always follows up on opportunities. This is beneficial for operational processes in your business, as it generates tasks automatically and increases efficiency. 

10. Lost deal follow-up emails

When a deal is lost, your contact might tell you why. A common reason is that they're just not ready yet. And it's wise to look for new opportunities in your closed lost deals.

A lost deal follow-up workflow ensures that this contact will receive a communication in the future to check in on them. For your internal teams, a lost deal follow-up workflow automates the process and helps create more opportunities to re-engage lost deals. 

11. Deal records for channels/partners

If you're working with a channel or partner, you might want them to create a deal in your system. However, you don't want to give them full access to your HubSpot portal. 

To overcome this, you can create a HubSpot form for their deal. This lets them submit the vital information into your HubSpot system. Then, it'll generate a workflow for channel or partner deal records. So you can move things along smoothly. 

12. Format data

Did you know that HubSpot workflows can improve the way you format your contact data? If you want to standardise how your contact's names are formatted, it can automatically be triggered to capitalise the first letter of the name and surname. Or if they submitted their phone number, it'll format it without hyphens or spacings. 

This workflow improves data hygiene for the operational side of your business and makes sure you're always viewing a standardised set of data. 

This feature is only available in HubSpot's Operations Hub Pro.

13. Custom code

HubSpot has a wide range of functionalities, but it can't do everything. And innovative marketers are always looking for new, more relevant ways to nurture their contacts.

Luckily, HubSpot is compatible with many integrations that let you do what you can't do in HubSpot yet. For example, you can use HubSpot workflows to trigger custom code or integrations with a platform that'll send prospects a text message. This lets you pass HubSpot properties into another platform. 

In the future, HubSpot will continue to add new functionality to its workflows feature. And for marketers looking for more ways to use them, HubSpot has many workflow templates that are easy to set up.  

This feature is only available in HubSpot's Operations Hub Pro.

HubSpot workflows enable better marketing automation

Marketing automation lets you manage multiple channels effectively, align sales and internal teams, and execute powerful inbound marketing at scale.

HubSpot’s workflows tool is automation beyond email, so you can scale your growth and spend less time on repetitive tasks. HubSpot

Sending marketing communications, promotions, or prompts to your contacts via email using a scattergun approach isn’t enough anymore. Workflows let you send the right emails at the right time. HubSpot workflows let you get the most out of your marketing efforts by making sure the right actions are triggered exactly when they're needed. 

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