Every once in a while, someone takes the extra time to articulate a question so clearly that an abundance of information can be communicated in the exchange. Sorta like going from the days of 9600bps modems to 100Mbps internet connections.
Thanks for that.
Q: Optimal workflow design for multiple buyer personas and languages
Short A: There are no short answers to this multi-faceted question, but will try to be brief.
Longer A:
The HubSpot Workflow Butterfly Effect
Keeping in mind the two primary goals: 1) ease of testing (because there’s simply no other way to know what works and what doesn’t) and 2) agility, we have to agree with the core HubSpot recommendation of “many small workflows”. Would also like to add, “relatively simple” and “well documented” to the criteria. Here’s why.
As you begin building out your workflows and discover their awesome power you may experience a sometimes overwhelming temptation to put everything in there (including the kitchen sink). You may even have dreams of calling it something like your ‘Master Workflow’ (or worse) ‘Master Workflow 01’ which implies there’s gonna be more ‘masters’. haha The choice here is to either resist temptation or to embrace the chaos you so aptly anticipated and thereby creating what we’ve come to know as ‘The HubSpot Workflow Butterfly Effect’.
The framing of your question suggests an organized mind capable of reverse-engineering complex solutions, so consider …
You will have MANY workflows with varying degrees of complexity. Some (maybe even many) will interact with and/or depend on the successful completion of other workflows. This simply can’t be avoided in even a tiny HubSpot Marketing portal which fully utilizes the platform.
Since the HubSpot workflow management system -- an oxymoron -- is virtualy devoid of management capabilities (i.e., no folders), we like to repurpose HubSpot’s awesome Campaigns tool to help group related workflows. This makes troubleshooting agile.
(see image)
Examples:
_Top-Level Admin Workflows
- restricted to high-level, portal-wide processes that align with an organizations business strategy -- i.e., assignment of HubSpot ownership, (re)classification of Lifecycle stage, management of integration-specific custom properties, etc.
_Data Hygiene Workflows
- restricted to actions and notifications around housekeeping -- e.g., flaging contacts for review by a manager, flaging contacts containing bad data, flaging contacts for deletion, etc.
_INTERNAL NOTIFICATIONS
- restricted to internal notifications about the operation of the portal and other essential messages -- e.g., “Customer opted out of all emails”, “Work begun with no NDA on file”, etc.
Again, these are just baseline examples we use to organize portals and which encourage a blackbox approach to workflow building whenever possible. A good rule of thumb is to handle a specific task in a single workflow or group of workflows dedicated to the task. AKA: KISS theory.
Examples:
- Assign HubSpot Ownership in a single workflow or group of ‘HubSpot Ownership Workflows’ in the portal. This makes testing as relatively easy as possible and allows laser-like focus on a single task when issues inevitably arise.
- Flag records for deletion in a single workflow when possible. Makes testing a breeze. Makes troubleshooting even easier. (And no. There is no workflow command to auto-delete contacts! haha)
I say all of this to shed light on your proposed two options:
>>- using Smart Content linked to buyer personas in emails via CTA which would reduce emails by a factor of 5
True. However, it also increases complexity and risk of failure. Additionally, as you eleuded to earlier, it increases difficulty when analyzing performance -- always our focus.
Not to suggest that complexity scares us because we’re fearless when it comes to dynamic content in both email AND on HubSpot pages. Just know that when comes time to make revisions, you’re not gonna wanna have one of your interns handle this one unless you want your emails to end up in the news like the MIT guys! haha
- see MIT Shares Email Love With The Wrong Recipients
(disclaimer: We only love to pick on MIT because that’s where Brian and Dharmesh met.)
>>- using branches linked to language which would reduce workflows by a factor of 4
Using excessive If/then branches in HubSpot workflows has the same effect as excessive {{ elseif }} statements in code -- they lead to unintended behavior and to errors. And, they’re not scalable.
Right now you may think, “He11, we’ll never serve more than 4 languages.” Then the bean-counters tell us that we’re leaving a 30% revenue boost on the table because we’re not serving 3 additional languages. Now we’re up to 7 languages. Do we just add 3 more if/then branches to our already if/then branch laden workflow?
We thinks not.
Also, if/when working with clients in different countries there are frequently additional country-specific actions that need to take place. Depending on the task(s), these are often best handled in their own country-specific / language-specific workflow. For example, if we break CTAs or Forms serving the US market we don’t wanna interfere with our GDPR-compliant CTAs and Forms we just got approved by legal for the UK.
To sum it up, HubSpot Marketing is an awesomely powerful tool that’s only getting more powerful as the orange Oompa Loompas add to the product line. Mastery takes considerable time and experience. (even for the smart people AT HubSpot)
If there were a ‘short’ or ‘simple’ answer here it would be to hire a HubSpot Marketing partner to help you both strategize and implement. It will save you much pain and dramatically reduce your risk.
Thanks again for a world-class question.