3 workflows you can implement in your business

Have you heard about workflows and how they can be implemented to grow your business?

Automations through HubSpot's workflows will allow you to increase sales by up to 14.5% more than the average, and not only that, and it will also be possible to take comprehensive control of all kinds of big or small tasks that are repetitive and therefore consume resources, energy and time to do it manually. By doing it manually you’re wasting valuable time that you could be spending finishing up or executing different tasks that will help improve the business.

The following points will be developed in this blog:

• Definition of workflow
• How a workflow works
• Email marketing automation
• Lead nurturing
• Internal notifications

Workflow Definition

Before learning about the processes that are essential to automate in a company with HubSpot workflows, it is important to know the definition of a workflow and how it is implemented.

A workflow consists of a series of actions that are triggered automatically when a specific action is performed and its purpose is to automate all these repetitive tasks so that the company's process becomes more agile, efficient, productive and consistent.

How a workflow works

It is activated autonomously employing a conditional; for example, if X situation happens, the action that follows is A, but if Y situation happens, action B will follow.

The primary and most valuable uses of workflows are the following:

• Updating your database.
• Assign internal tasks.
• Adding property values to contacts, leads and customers.
• Creating and tracking new objects in HubSpot.
• Creating and triggering internal notifications.
• Creating email programs / sequences.

Based on the above, there are three fundamental workflows that can be performed with HubSpot that will increase business sales:

Email marketing automation.

Save time that can be used in more strategic tasks and not spend it on small tasks such as creating email contact lists, sending generic messages, or scheduling events manually.

In addition to saving time, it will also improve lead nurturing campaigns, so that they become customers of the company and automatically send them messages to encourage them to make more sales and even cross-sell.

All of the above, through the existing database and workflow.

To achieve this, it is necessary to know how to do it, and for this purpose, the steps for the automation of email workflows will be explained as follows

1.      Identify the recipients

This will depend on the type of campaign you are working on; not all contacts are suitable, so it is essential to define specific contacts within the database.

2.      Clearly define an objective

Be clear about what you want to obtain once the desired results are achieved. It could be sales, promoting something specific, inform about something in the future.

3.      Set up the enrollment criteria

Define what will be the requirement that must be fulfilled for the email to be sent, for example, that it is sent once the person completes a form.

4.      Identify the following actions

Be clear about the succession of steps that will be executed according to what the contacts do, for example, emails, reminders, delays, updates, or others.

5.      Configure the workflow

Define the specific actions that will be triggered by the workflow, e.g., send internal notifications by mail, send internal SMS, send notifications in the app, etc.

6.      Verify the configuration and test it

First, it is essential to verify the following points before starting:

• Check for errors in the contact lists.
• Number of contacts enrolled and their expectations
• Verify the sending configuration

Another of the fundamental workflows are:

Lead Nurturing

Through this workflow, it is possible to provide engaging and quality content to the leads to strengthen the bond with each of them and push them down the sales funnel. It should be clear that this workflow only targets contacts who have already engaged with the content and are ready to move forward in their life cycle.

This type of workflows can be applied through emails to the most active and engaged leads, including valuable content according to the point they are in the sales funnel to convert them from being just leads to Sales Qualified Leads (SQL), or Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL).

To give an example of how to nurture leads. In the case of a lead who downloads an infographic of a campaign that has been launched, this produces conversion and, in turn, can activate the workflow to send a welcome email, and days later, another email is sent to find out if they are interested in more content on the subject or even a different one.

This is achieved in a simple way through the "if / then" forks in the workflow to automatically send the content or execute some other desired action according to what the person performs.

The third indispensable workflow is internal notifications.

Internal notifications

When a lead downloads, opens, or accesses a page of the company's website, it is possible to receive an internal notification that can be used to provide timely follow-up.

To better understand this point, it is necessary to look at it from the examples:

Use a workflow for automated mailings in case the team has many MQLs and it is difficult to follow up manually.

For example, suppose a free trial is offered. In that case, the sales team must be aware of the trial's closing date and may forget about it. This is precisely where an automated internal notification through workflow avoids any inconvenience.

With automated internal notifications, you benefit both internally (company team) and externally (leads).

Once it is clear which are the main workflows that can be implemented to increase sales, it is also important to know how to implement them through HubSpot. Here's an example of the steps to follow.

1. Go to the HubSpot account.
2. Go to Automation > Workflows > Workflows
3. Click on Create Workflow (top right corner)
4. Define the name and type of the workflow
5. Choose a proposed template or start it from scratch.

In the case of choosing to start it from scratch:

1. Click on Start from scratch
2. Select "Contact based", "Company based", "Deal based", "Ticket based", "Budget based" or "Custom object based" as the workflow type. 3
3. Select the actions to be triggered.
4. Test the workflow
5. Click on Activate

Implementing workflows will bring more than just economic benefits; therefore, you should not hesitate to work with them. The impact will start to be seen in a short time.

To learn more about this topic, go to: Automate the follow-up of business opportunities with workflows.

If you want to know more about workflows and how to implement them in your strategy, contact Imagineer immediately; it will be a pleasure to help you and grow together.