Series of emails with ongoing enrollment

[07005]

Hello,

We’re setting up a series of instructional emails to be sent to a subset of our contacts—one email per week for 10 weeks. We’ll have a large group enrolled at the start, but we also expect new contacts to join on an ongoing basis.

What’s the best way to manage new enrollments? For example, if someone signs up in week 5, how can we make sure they still receive the first four emails before continuing with the rest of the emails?

I was considering building a workflow with date-based logic, but I’m hoping HubSpot has a built-in feature for handling this type of drip campaign.

Thanks!

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

@07005 in that case, delay until a date (not a fixed number of days), and check the box during creation for the additional branch (at the bottom of the left sidebar).

You now have a left branch for contacts who are arriving "in time" for the email and another right branch for late joiners. In the right branch, delay for only a day, for example, then immediately send the email, then, send them to the next delay (and branch) using go to action "Go to action".

In other words: contacts who arrive in time wait until the next scheduled email date. Late joiners only wait a day for each email until they catch up

Give It a try and let me know if you have any follow-up questions!

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

@07005 that looks like it would work, although I would have approached it differently - I'd branch before each week and check if the person arrived in time. If yes, send email and wait until the next week. If no, send email, wait a day, jump to next week's branch, repeat. Both approaches should work though, whatever feels more natural to you.

I'm not following with the form submission and list membership. If email sends are weekly, how are form submissions and list membership additionally affecting timing?

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @07005,

Are there any additional requirements or date / timing logic to this?

If not, it could be as simple as:

• Enrolling records whenever they meet the enrollment criteria
• Spacing out each email by one week

Whenever someone enters, they will receive emails in the specified cadence, regardless of when they enter.

Best regards

[07005]

Hi Karsten,

Thanks for your response.  I forgot to add, there are synchronous parts to this series, and so we'd like any "late" enrollees to "catch-up" to the current email, and then continue receiving the remaining emails on a weekly basis.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

@07005 in that case, delay until a date (not a fixed number of days), and check the box during creation for the additional branch (at the bottom of the left sidebar).

You now have a left branch for contacts who are arriving "in time" for the email and another right branch for late joiners. In the right branch, delay for only a day, for example, then immediately send the email, then, send them to the next delay (and branch) using go to action "Go to action".

In other words: contacts who arrive in time wait until the next scheduled email date. Late joiners only wait a day for each email until they catch up

Give It a try and let me know if you have any follow-up questions!

[07005]

That makes sense. It seems like I would then need a branch for each week?

1. Enrolled on time
2. Enrolled after email 1, before email 2 (send 1st email immediately, then return to regular cadence)
3. Enrolled after email 2, before email 3 (send 1st email, 1 day delay, send 2nd email, return to regular cadence)
4. Enrolled after email 3, before email 4 (send 1st email, 1 day delay, send 2nd email, 1 day delay, send 3rd email, return to regular cadence.

And so on.  Does that track?

In which case, I'm looking for a trigger for each branch that is either filled out a specific form between x date and y date..... OR ..... became a member of a specific list between x date and y date.  Is that date-based logic available to either form submissions or active list membership?

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

@07005 that looks like it would work, although I would have approached it differently - I'd branch before each week and check if the person arrived in time. If yes, send email and wait until the next week. If no, send email, wait a day, jump to next week's branch, repeat. Both approaches should work though, whatever feels more natural to you.

I'm not following with the form submission and list membership. If email sends are weekly, how are form submissions and list membership additionally affecting timing?

[07005]

Thanks for the response. 

The participants are enrolling in the content either through form submission and we are subsequently adding them to a list.

I'm curious, what triggers would you use in your workflow for "arrived on time"?  I'm having trouble finding a filter criteria that allows and additional criteria of date.

[franksteiner79]

Playing devil's advocate here @07005 

If I enrol in a 10 weeks series of emails would it not make more sense for me to receive these over a 10 week period, regardless when I sign up or when I get enrolled - to me that's a perfect example of evergreen content - no need to overcomplicate it just because we can 🤷‍♂️😉

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

@07005 enrolment would be based on the form submissions.

Have you tried adding a delay until a date? By default you get two branches. Left (before the date = n time) and right (after the date = too late).

[franksteiner79]

Hi @07005 

Plus 1 from me on @karstenkoehler's suggestion.

Ideally you map this it out in one workflow and have solid enrolment criteria, i.e. why should a contact be receiving these emails. If any new contacts meet these criteria the WF enrolment triggers will add them to the WF and they will then run through the weekly cadence of emails.

Frank