One cool thing that's happening at HubSpot right now is we are documenting a list of all of the automation flows owned by our MarTech team. These are all of the processes that automate data needed for important processes like lead scoring, lead rotation, campaign reporting and more.
The best part is we are going to document 'how it works' so you can do it in HubSpot the way we do it too. I can't wait to share them with you all!
What are some auotmation flows you have built in HubSpot? How do they work and what do you use them for?
So, we've finally documented the flows, but instead of doing each flow's instructions, we've made a list of all of the popular automation flows that we use and other HubSpot customer use, too. The next step will be seeing which flows are of interest to the HubSpot Community and then documenting them out in separate posts - feel free to review and comment which ones you'd like to see!
2 workflows that we've come back to over and over again to workaround certain limitations:
1) Number formatting has always been an issue in Hubspot - even Hubspot's default Zip Code (Postal Code) property is a text-based property. Additionally, calculated properties don't allow formatting to the output. In both of these cases, we use workflows that take the information in those original properties and just mirror it to a second property that is formatted properly.
- For zip codes, if you have a number Zip Code property and the data is showing up with unnecessary comma's, mirror that information to a text-based property within a workflow.
- For calculations, create a second property and mirror the calculated output. In this case, you can label you calculated output property as Unformatted, and create a second property to mirror that data with the formatting you need and label is Formatted (ie. currency, number, etc.)
2) This comes into play with the mirroring mentioned above but one of the biggest workarounds we've found has to do with re-enrollment of Company records. In workflows, Hubspot doesn't allow the re-enrollment of a company into the same workflow when using the "has been updated in the last X.." filter.
So if you have a Company property that is constantly updated and you want the workflow to mirror the informaton if the new data aligns with the trigger criteria, what other option do you have besides the "has been updated in the last..."?
Use the "Is Known" option* rather than the "has been updated in the last.."
The Is Known option triggers each time new data enters a property and can be used as a re-enrollment trigger.
*If mirroring and you want to clear the data in the mirrored record if the source record data is removed, the workflow should actually have several steps:
Step 1)
Trigger:
Company Property is Known
OR
Company Property is Unknown
= use both of these triggers for re-enrollment
Step 2)
Action:
IF/OR
Company Property is Known
OR
Company Property is Unknown
Branch 1 - If Company Property is Known = Mirror data to other property
Branch 2 - If Company Property is Unkown = Clear data from other property
In this example, each time the original property is updated (whether with new data or cleared), the second property will mirror that. And this works for re-enrollment. Yay!
Excelent idea! A couple recent ones that I implemented for several clients are related to setting marketing contact statuses.
Email related workflows prompt you to set your contacts as marketing contacts otherwise the emails do not get sent. Equally important is to also remove them at some point.
I have one that removes them from Marketing contacts if the email ever bounced, is invalid, etc. (have a bad list that captures all that).
A workflow that is top of mind as we're hiring again is the people ops workflow I made that delivers an email with onboarding info to new employees once a day for 12 days (more days are added each time we hire as we realize what other info is important to new hires). This is because I don't expect people to remember everything told to them verbally on their first day when they are probably overloaded with info, so getting reminders and answering FAQs for new employees via emails has proven to be helpful in supporting our new team members. We also have an internal wiki using the HubSpot Knowledge Base that includes all this info, that a lot of these workflow emails link off to, but it has 150 articles so would be overwhelming for a new employee to sort through right away. The workflow delivers the most relevant and timely info to their inbox so they don't have to go searching for it.
A similar ops workflow I've been considering building later in the year is featuring a "wiki of the week" or another internal process documentation that the team may need reminders or refreshers about. We cover changes and new documentation in our weekly team meeting, weekly internal newsletter, and post on Slack but the older wikis could use some more attention. Delivering straight to people's inboxes may get them to read it, more so than an agenda item, line item in a newsletter, or Slack message.
I love this one because I'm in the process of building several of these over the next few weeks as we continue to grow and develop our onboarding framework.
Feb 12, 202110:40 AM - edited Feb 12, 20218:35 PM
Top Contributor
Favorite HubSpot automation flows
Great question @maggiebutler. Internally, we have a ton of automation flows to move data from one object to another, or copy property values so there is visibility into critical pieces of information across objects. Additionally, we have countless internal workflows that trigger internal notifications for key actions taken by our customers or prospects. An example of this would be an internal notification that is sent to our RevOps team when a customer is showcasing interest in integrations or migrations (based on engagement with related content combined with known information from their company record).
For clients, we're noticing a pattern regarding questions surrounding Lead Status usage. I recently started another thread exploring the value of the Lead Status property, and described how many of our clients are using this. One thing I love about that use case is that it efficiently defines where a sales team can prioritize their time (e.g. brand new leads that haven't been contacted).
Wow! I really can't wait to see this. Thank you so much for deciding to share it with the community.
I have loads of little (and some big) workflows that I've grown to love. A few faves:
Set company became a {lifecycle stage} date
Log number of pages views when contact becomes an MQL
Log number of visits when a contact becomes an MQL
Automatic Closed Lost deal re-engagement based on Closed Lost Reason
Internal Closed Won/Lost deal notifications
Copy Company Website URL to Contact
Copy Company Name to Contact
Set team members/suppliers to Lifecycle stage = other based on email domain
Just a few to get the discussion started.
@Phil_Vallender Phil thanks for kicking us off here. I love this list! I want to ask about the Close Lost flows. Do you have any automation set up that alerts either Sales or Marketing and is in fact designed to be a CTA for the recipient to follow up because of the closed lost reason? Closed-lost surveys and best practices there are a topic of interest over here right now...would love your thoughts!
Our closed lost follow ups are pretty simple at present (simple tends to work best anyway) and re-engages, after a sutiable time, the prospect with a message that is aligned to the closed lost reason. The contact owner is of course informed.