Sequence Enrollment via Workflow Formatting Error

[DCrinnion1]

Hi All,

Got a niche case, where I use multi text fields as a variable in emails in for AI emails. For example a sequence email will be 

{Ai Clay Email}

Issue I am getting is when I manually enroll people in sequences, the formatting from the multi text field is correct! However when I enroll via a workflow (automated way) in order for it to be sent from the right contact owner, it seems Hubspot forgets all formatting and send it as a clump. Pictures Below of Format in Field and then if you look at the bottom the email format sent to the client. Then a second picture of how it looks when I manually enroll

 

 

[HumbleTinker · Accepted solution]

Hi @DCrinnion1! And thanks @Victor_Becerra for the tap,

I ran a quick test and got good results.

I believe the issue comes down to the fact that you're using a Multi-Line text field in this process. The Multi-Line text property itself APPEARS to save formatting like hard returns / new lines, but that may not be the case when transferring the data to other apps in hubspot, it likely gets passed as a STRING without hidden characters like "new line".

In my test, I used one Multi-Line text field, and one RICH TEXT field, both with the same exact message, formatted in the exact same way. When I sent the email to myself, it appear incorrectly using Multi-Line text, but was correct when using a Rich Text field. Unfortunately, you might not be able to simply convert the property, and may need to rebuild it and transfer any existing values into the new Rich Text property field.

Hope that solves it for ya!

[RubenBurdin · Accepted solution]

Hi @DCrinnion1 , this behavior is expected, even though it’s pretty counter-intuitive.

When a sequence enrollment is triggered by a workflow, HubSpot resolves personalization tokens earlier and more “raw” than it does with manual enrollment.

Multi-line text properties look like they preserve line breaks in the UI, but under the hood they’re stored and passed as plain strings. During workflow-driven enrollment, those hidden line breaks don’t reliably survive the handoff into the email editor, so everything collapses into a single block.

That’s why it works perfectly when you enroll manually. Manual enrollment happens inside the email composer context, which respects formatting tokens more consistently. Workflow enrollment bypasses that layer.

Using a Rich Text property is the correct fix. Rich Text fields store actual HTML, not just line breaks, so formatting is preserved regardless of whether the sequence is triggered manually or by automation.

HubSpot implicitly recommends Rich Text for email bodies and snippets that need formatting stability across

tools, even though it’s not always obvious from the UI: (https://knowledge.hubspot.com/properties/property-field-types-in-hubspot )

One thing to watch out for when you rebuild the property is workflows that copy values over. You’ll want to explicitly map the old multi-line field into the new Rich Text field once, then fully switch your sequence tokens to the Rich Text version. After that, workflow enrollment formatting should stay consistent.

You weren’t doing anything wrong here. This is one of those subtle differences between how workflows and manual actions render email content in HubSpot (https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/enroll-records-in-workflows-using-crm-cards ) Glad you caught it early before scaling it further.

[HumbleTinker · Accepted solution]

Hi @DCrinnion1! And thanks @Victor_Becerra for the tap,

I ran a quick test and got good results.

I believe the issue comes down to the fact that you're using a Multi-Line text field in this process. The Multi-Line text property itself APPEARS to save formatting like hard returns / new lines, but that may not be the case when transferring the data to other apps in hubspot, it likely gets passed as a STRING without hidden characters like "new line".

In my test, I used one Multi-Line text field, and one RICH TEXT field, both with the same exact message, formatted in the exact same way. When I sent the email to myself, it appear incorrectly using Multi-Line text, but was correct when using a Rich Text field. Unfortunately, you might not be able to simply convert the property, and may need to rebuild it and transfer any existing values into the new Rich Text property field.

Hope that solves it for ya!

[DCrinnion1]

Hey!

Thank you so much! I will try change the fields to Rich Text now and test out!

Best Regards,

[Victor_Becerra]

Hi there @DCrinnion1 
Thanks for sharing this — that’s definitely a tricky use case, and I can see why it’s frustrating to have the formatting behave perfectly with manual enrollment but fall apart when enrollment happens through a workflow. 

I’m going to bring in a few community members who’ve dug deeper into how multi-line or rich-text fields behave in automated sequence enrollments — they may have run into this exact issue or found a workaround that preserves formatting.

Hi @Mike_Eastwood @TomM2 @HumbleTinker  have any of you seen this happen before with workflow-based sequence enrollment? Any insights or solutions you’ve come across would be super helpful here.

Hopefully we can get you some clarity on what’s going on behind the scenes.

Victor