Pausing Workflow based on active membership of another workflow.

[BillPark]

Hi All, hoping someone might have some advice.

So context first. 
I'm looking to build out some catch-all/evergreen email nurture workflows to make sure all of our warm leads are being drip-fed content.

However, in addition to these evergreen workflows other members of the team may also be running time/campaign-specific nurture workflows that might include the same leads/contacts in the audience. 

What I'm looking for is a scalable way of building a pause in the evergreen flows so that if someone does get added to a different sequence, they will stay at the same point until they complete the new flow. 

Right now the option I'm exploring is.
1. create a workflow & custom y/n property "IN ACTIVE NURTURE" that will change to yes if the contact is active in any workflow containing "nurture" in its title. 
2. build a delay until property changes step before every email send in the evergreen workflow, that will hold them until they complete any other nurtures (property above flips from y to n)

In my head, it's a nice easy solution, but I can't find any options to make step one work. 

Does anyone have any thoughts on either, getting the above working OR any other suggestions for pausing contacts in workflows based on being added to other workflows? 

A few other things I've thought about..
(as a fallback I know we could set the "IN ACTIVE NURTURE" property at the beginning/end of our other email workflows. But the downside of that would be 1. having to set even more properties as part of our workflows and 2. If a contact is active in 2 workflows and finishes one but not the other then the property will be wrong anyway)  

(Suppression lists would be a way more scaleable option but I'm not sure how id un-suppress someone and add them back in at the step they were at when they were removed)


  


 

[06845]

Your proposed solution of using a custom property to track whether a contact is active in any workflow containing "nurture" in its title is a good start. However, to make it work, you may need to leverage HubSpot's workflow enrollment triggers and filters.

Here's one way to implement the solution:

1. Create a custom Yes/No property called "Active in Nurture Workflow."
2. Set up enrollment triggers for your time/campaign-specific nurture workflows that add contacts to the "Active in Nurture Workflow" list when they are enrolled in the workflow.
3. Set up filters in your evergreen workflows that delay email sends until the "Active in Nurture Workflow" property is set to "No."

To set up enrollment triggers for your time/campaign-specific nurture workflows:

1. Go to the Workflows dashboard in HubSpot.
2. Create a new workflow or edit an existing one.
3. In the Enrollment Triggers section, add the trigger "Contact property" and select the custom property "Active in Nurture Workflow."
4. Set the trigger to "Is true."
5. Save the workflow.

To set up filters in your evergreen workflows:

1. Go to the Workflows dashboard in HubSpot.
2. Create a new workflow or edit an existing one.
3. Add a delay until the "Active in Nurture Workflow" property is set to "No" before each email send step.
4. To do this, click on the email send step and select "Add delay."
5. Set the delay to "Until property is no longer a certain value."
6. Select the "Active in Nurture Workflow" property and set the value to "Yes."
7. Save the workflow.

With this setup, when a contact is added to a time/campaign-specific nurture workflow, their "Active in Nurture Workflow" property will be set to "Yes." This will delay any email sends in your evergreen workflows until the property is set to "No," which will happen automatically once the contact completes the time/campaign-specific nurture workflow.

This approach allows you to pause contacts in your evergreen workflows when they are added to other workflows without the need for additional suppression lists or properties. It also scales well since you can set up enrollment triggers and filters for any new nurture workflows you create in the future.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @BillPark,

I think you're on the right track here, I'm using a similar solution in the portals that I'm managing:

1. Nurturing workflows are excluding contacts where "In active nurture" is any of Yes
2. At the beginning of nurturing workflows, "In active nurture" is then set to Yes
3. At the end of nurturing workflows, add a delay of your liking, e.g. 1 day, then clear the value in the property "In active nurture"

The delay is to make sure that a contact does not enter another email series immediately after receiving the last email in the previous nurturing workflow.

Additionally, you should set up another workflow that clears the value of "In active nurture" after some time. Look up what the longest possible time is a contact could spend in a nurturing workflow and use that as a delay. (enroll when "In active nurture" is Yes, then delay, then clear) This is because contacts might leave nurturing workflows when they meet workflow goals and could skip the clearing step 3 above.

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@BillPark wrote:

as a fallback I know we could set the "IN ACTIVE NURTURE" property at the beginning/end of our other email workflows. But the downside of that would be 1. having to set even more properties as part of our workflows

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I don't think that's a downside. That's what workflows are designed to do and it's not increasing complexity here by much.

Best regards!

[BillPark]

literally, as I pushed send, thinking about the suppression route, getting someone back to the point they were at when they were removed would just be if/then & goto branches before every email send to check if they had been sent the email before and to skip to next if they had...