Question: How should lists and workflows play together?
Answer: There are many ways to leverage lists in workflows, here are some examples:
- Using static or active lists membership status to trigger the enrollment of a specific segment of your records into your workflow e.g. if a contact has downloaded an awareness stage content offer add them to your awareness stage list and enroll them into your awareness stage nurturing workflow.
- Using static or active list membership status in if/then branches to send records through different branches of actions e.g. if a contact is on my high intent list (based on fit criteria/engagement/lead score) branch them off into a fast track nurturing branch to connect them with the sales team right away instead of continuing nurturing.
- Adding contacts to a static list via an add to static list action for a permanent record of them carrying out an action or to otherwise create a list that won’t be changed automatically based on other record updates going forward e.g. have your workflow create a static list of leads that reached the end of your nurturing workflow but that didn’t respond for future lead recycling / long term nurturing.
- Use lists in the unenrollment and suppression tab of your workflow settings to keep a segment of records from entering your workflow e.g. if your contact downloads your awareness, consideration, and decision content offers within a short period of time, you can use lists based on specific recent form submissions (i.e. lists of recent form submissions by buyer’s journey stage) or a buyer’s journey custom property (set via workflow) to flag the most qualified stage of the buyer’s journey the contact has reached so they only enter the nurturing workflow closest to the bottom of the funnel (i.e. exclude Decision Stage contact list from the Awareness and Consideration stage nurturing workflows.) This can also help prevent contacts from receiving too many emails from your various nurturing workflows. If taking this approach just make sure your contact can download the content from your thank you page as they potentially won’t receive emails with download links from top of funnel workflows.