Email Automation - Workflows or Sequences?

Smart CRM & Sales Hub Tips, Tricks & Best Practices
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When it comes to email automation on HubSpot, two tools come to mind -- Workflows and Sequences! Which tool should you use to send a series of emails automatically and what is the benefit of using one over the other?

Here are some of the key differences to consider when deciding which tool is a better fit!

1. Your current subscription level

Workflows:

  • Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise subscription

Sequences:

  • Users with Sales/Service Hub Professional or Enterprise seat with a connected personal inbox (G Suite, Office 365, or IMAP)

2. Who are you sending the emails to?

Workflows:

  • Workflows are great for bigger batch emails for leads in the ‘Attract’ phase of your business flywheel. You can trigger emails based on their initial interest with your organization (e.g. downloaded a whitepaper) and nurture these leads for sales qualification.

Sequences:

  • Sequences are most suited for smaller, targeted segments of contacts. The emails are meant for “one to one” communication, ideally sent by a sales representative, a BDR or SDR, who is looking to establish a direct relationship with your prospects. This is definitely becoming highly relevant with account based marketing!

3. What are you hoping to achieve?

Workflows:

  • To drive further engagement on your website, to encourage webinar sign-ups, etc.

Sequences:

  • To forge strong relationships with the targeted prospect and encourage email replies or booking of meetings.

4. How are contacts enrolled?

Workflows:

  • Workflow enrollments can be done manually and automatically when contacts meet a set of criteria (e.g. converted on a form, opened your recent marketing email and more!).

Sequences:

5. How are contacts unenrolled?

Workflows:

  • Workflows do not automatically unenroll contacts when they reply to your email. In order for a contact to stop executing the workflow (without going to the very end), you can utilize goal criteria.

Sequences:

  • Contacts will be automatically unenrolled from a Sequence when they reply to your email, or book a meeting with you. The email reply will also be logged on the CRM record. You can also use contact based workflow to automatically unenroll contacts. (Knowledge base: Enroll and unenroll contacts in sequences using workflows)

6. Email styling

Workflows:

  • Created using marketing email templates that can support rich-text content, smart rules and personalization tokens.

Sequences:

  • Created using email templates that use plain formatting (like a regular email sent from your inbox). Personalization tokens can only be applied in the email text body.

7. Contacts lists

Workflows:

Sequences:

  • Cannot create lists of contacts based on email engagement.

8. Reporting

Workflows:

  • Performance data are found in the marketing email reports and the metrics include:
    • Open rate
    • Click rate
    • Deliverability results
    • HTML click map
    • Top clicked links
    • Top engaged contacts
    • Time spent viewing email
    • Engagement over time
    • Opens/Clicks by email client

Sequences:

  • Performance data are found under the Sequence report and the metrics include:
    • Total enrolled
    • Open rate
    • Click rate
    • Reply rate
    • Meeting rate
    • Unsubscribe rate
    • Bounce rate

Now that you have a better idea of the difference between Workflows and Sequences, get started and explore them in your portal through the links here!

Do you have any must-know tips and tricks that other users should know? Leave your questions and feedback in the comments below :cloud:

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Fantastic post!
Just to add to these points, other triggers that help me position these tools to new customers would be that one tool is can be positioned 1:1 (sequences) and the other 1:Many.
With sequences, you are in most cases selecting individual contacts to be enrolled into automation, but with workflows, you are allowing the system to enroll data in larger volume into your automation.
Personalisation is involved in both email automation, but selecting a 1:1 strategy will allow for even more personalisation then automation at scale.

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Thanks very much for sharing @carinafoo

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Really nice post!

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Hi there, I created a free Hubspot account to send website visitors a series of free breath meditations. However, I cannot seem to create an automation flow. The video’s I can find on YT seem to get other stuff than what I get when I follow the steps. I want to create one where they get the next email on the next day if they clicked on the link to the meditation. How do I do this?
Thank you in advance,
Jessie

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Hello Jessie,

In order to achieve what you want, you need to have the “sequences” functionality activated in your Hubspot account.

It is a functionality that is available at the sales pro level.

Using a sequence enables you to send an automated e-mail on the next day (or working day if you prefer).

I hope this helps you.

I am available to help if you need to know more about the different levels of Hubspot licensing and their corresponding functionalities.

Diogène

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If we are extract email events via the API, is there some way to know which “nurture sequence” or “workflow”, the email is part of?

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thanks for the help