HubSpot Workflows 101

In this video, I'll walk you through everything you need to get started with HubSpot workflows.

We'll go through the entire interface and I will show you how to create them manually, how to create them using a HubSpot template, and how to create them using AI.

Before we start, you need to know that HubSpot workflows, they are not included in all subscriptions.

They require professional or enterprise subscriptions.

And even for professional and enterprise tiers there are some limits.

So before starting, make sure you're on the right plan.

What is a HubSpot workflow?

A HubSpot workflow is an automated trigger based sequence of actions within HubSpot CRM.

Every workflow has three core pieces.

The Trigger what starts it.

It can be a form submission, a contact property, changing a webinar, a registration, or an event registration.

Then the second one is the condition which is also part of the trigger.

I would say, this is who qualifies because not every contact, should go through every workflow.

You add filters to make sure only the right people get enrolled.

And the actions, what HubSpot actually does with all these contacts, you can send an email, update a property, notify your sales rep.

The options here are a lot, one more thing before we get started.

Workflows are not just for contacts.

HubSpot lets you build workflows around deals, tickets, quads and a lot more.

But today we are focusing on contact based workflows because that's where most of the marketing automations happen.

But everything you learn here, applies across all of them.

Now let me show you where to find everything.

Open HubSpot.

From the left menu, go to Automation and click on Workflows.

This is basically your workflow home base.

Here on the dashboard you can see all your existing workflows in a list.

Each one shows you the name, the type, whether it's contact detail, deal or company based, the status, if it's on or off, how many contacts are enrolled, and all the other data like who created it, Everything is in here.

On top of the list of your workflows you have some filters, that you can use to find and organize your workflows better.

You can even create views.

Here you can see now I have three views.

First one is all workflows.

Second one is the deleted ones, unused ones.

And I can create a view myself if I want to.

And I can use the folders to organize them better.

Let's say you want to separate your marketing workflows from your sales workflows.

You can click on these, folders here.

And on the left side you have a create folder button.

Click on it.

Let's call it marketing workflows.

Click create.

And you can see that the folder appeared here.

Now go back to all workflows.

Select the ones that you want to move.

Let's say this one.

Then click on move to folder.

Select the folder that you just created, and click move.

Now if I go back to folders, click on the folder that I created.

You can see that my, workflow appeared there.

Does the full interface, before creating a workflow.

Now let's build one together.

On the top right corner you can see create workflow button.

For the beginning let's start from scratch.

But later on I'm going to show you these two options as well.

Next I'm going to click on trigger manually.

Select contact because this is a contact based, workflow.

Then click save and continue.

This is your workflow canvas.

The flow runs top to bottom.

You always start with the trigger box, at the top and actions stuck below it.

Now let's talk about triggers.

So to set up a trigger we need to click on this.

On the left side you will see a number of different enrollment triggers available.

So let's go through them one by one and see when and how you can use them.

The first one is pretty easy.

You can generate a trigger using AI.

You give it a prompt and it automatically creates a trigger for you.

For now we're going to skip this one, but we will try it later on.

Because this workflow we're going to create completely manually.

The second one is when an event occurs.

When you select this, contacts will enroll when an event has happened.

For example when a form has been submitted.

This also includes custom event triggers.

Next one is when filter criteria is met.

So when you select this one, contact will enroll when a criteria is true.

For example when contact city is London and job title is Marketing Manager.

Next we have based on a schedule.

So when you select this one, contacts will enroll based on a specific calendar date or by using a date property.

An example for this use case can be if you want to remind customers about contract renewal, let's say every January 1st.

So you can a workflow based on a schedule trigger.

Next we have when a webhook is received.

So you can automatically enroll records in a workflow when a webhook is received from an external third party.

The first workflow we're going to create is going to be a lead magnet.

Follow up.

This is the most common workflow in marketing.

It's when someone downloads your free Guide or template and you start following up and nurturing them over the next few days or weeks.

This is going to be a contact based workflow as I mentioned before.

So I need to select when an event occurs to trigger and here I'm going to look for form submission then click on it and I want to be more specific.

So which form did they submit?

I'm going to click on add criteria, select form name and before I do anything here I want to show you the filters that are available.

filters work slightly differently depending on the property type.

If it's the text, drop down number, date or whatever.

But the logic is very consistent.

Let's see what each of these mean.

The first one is any of that the property matches one or more specific values from a list you select.

The second one is none of it means the property does not match any of the selected values.

The third one is known.

It means the property contains any value at all, it's not blank and the last one is unknown it means the property is empty.

There is no value stored.

So for this one I'm going to select is any of and I'm going to select the lead magnet because I want everyone who submitted the lead magnet form so my trigger is done.

But before we move on I want to show you the and or logic in HubSpot workflows so you can add multiple triggers.

For example enroll someone if they fill out form A or form B.

This is very useful.

So under or logic you add a criteria, let's say for form submission again and in this time we're going to select another form, let's say webinar registration form.

So this is how it's going to look.

Group one which is the lead magnet form and group two which is the webinar registration form.

I don't need this form now because my workflow is only focused on lead magnet submissions.

That's why I'm going to delete this.

Then click on delete group again.

You can see it's removed.

And now that I'm happy with the trigger I'm going to click on done and click Save.

So my trigger is saved.

Now I need to set up an action for this trigger.

So I click on this small plus icon and my action is to send an email.

So I'm going to search send email here.

It's under communications.

So select send email And I'm gonna the email I want to send to all these contacts.

So I click on choose an email.

The first email I want to be a thank you email.

So I'm gonna select it.

If you don't have your email set up before you create your workflow you can do it right inside the workflow.

If you click here you can see create new email.

You can click on it and start creating everything from scratch.

I have everything ready here for the follow up and thank you email.

So I just select it And I'm going to save my action here on the right side you can see save.

So this email is going to be sent immediately because there was no delay in between.

Now I want to delay the next email for two days.

So here on the left side you can see delay.

In the drop down you have several options.

I need a set amount of time, I need two days of delay and I want it to be only business days.

I click save here.

My delay is saved.

Next I want to send the first follow up email.

So click on add icon.

Again, send email.

I'm going to repeat the same action.

I'm going to choose the follow up email this time You can see the preview of your email.

Then I click save and here you go.

The first follow up is sent.

I'm gonna do another delay for three days this time.

Again, business days.

Save and click on the plus icon.

Again, send the last email.

I'm going to choose follow up two and save.

So with only five steps we set up a workflow to send a thank you email for those who submitted a form to get our lead magnet or a template or whatever.

Then after two days we're going to send a follow up email to them.

Then after three days we're going to send another follow up and and the workflow is gonna end.

But before publishing anything we want to check all the settings.

So I'm going to start from the trigger settings first I'm going to click on the trigger.

Then on the right side of the menu you can see settings Let's start from the first one.

Re enroll.

So by default a contact can only go through a workflow once.

You can turn this on if you want them to repeat the journey, under certain conditions.

Next you have the suppression segment.

You can add your customer list here.

So existing clients won't get these nurture emails.

All you need to do is just toggle this on and select the list of your customers.

I'm gonna turn this off for now.

After this you have the meta workflow goal feature.

For example, you can set a goal like contact booked a meeting, and HubSpot will automatically unenroll anyone who achieves that goal meet sequence.

So if someone books a call on day two, they won't keep getting nurture emails on day four or five.

It keeps your automation smart and your contacts happy and not annoyed.

Next, you also have the advanced options under the settings, so what does this do when two or more contacts are merged in HubSpot, HubSpot combines their properties activity history and association into a single merged record.

After the merge, HubSpot evaluates the updated merged record against the workflow's, enrollment criteria.

And if the merged record now meets the workflow conditions, it will automatically enroll contact into the workflow.

If it doesn't meet the condition, nothing will happen.

Okay, now we can review and turn on our workflow.

There are some more settings there that we need to go through.

So on the top right corner I'm gonna click review and turn on.

So here you can review, all your workflow details.

There is this option.

Do you want to enroll contacts that currently meet the enrollment criteria when the workflow turns on?

If you choose yes, it will enroll all existing records that meet the enrollment triggers If you select no, there are three scenarios that can happen.

The first one is, if a contact meets the enrollment triggers for the first time after the workflow is turned on, it will be enrolled.

The second scenario is if the contact meets the enrollment criteria again and the RE enrollment feature is turned on, it will be enrolled again.

And the third one is if the RE enrollment feature is turned off, the contact will not be enrolled.

So I'm going to select, the yes option.

I don't think I do have any contacts that will meet this criteria.

But let's try.

And then if you scroll down, here is the RE enrollment feature, I've been talking about.

We don't want to re enroll them because it's a nurture campaign.

Okay, now let's scroll all the way down, check everything again and click Next.

So here we can either go deeper and set up the timing and performance everything like connections and review the workflow details again or we can skip it and turn on our workflow.

Here I want to show you something under timing and performance.

So if you click on this small edit icon under run this workflow at specific time, I'm going To click on it, You'll see this, run actions on specific dates and times only option.

If you toggle this on, you have this small drop down where you can select Monday to Friday.

This section confirms that emails won't be sent outside those hours and contacts may be delayed until the next allowed window.

Click Save here, at the bottom right.

Click next.

Here you have the option to unenroll contacts from other workflows when enrolled in this workflow.

When this option is turned on, HubSpot will automatically remove a contact from selected other workflows the moment they enroll in this one.

It's basically a conflict prevention tool.

Somehow instead of a contact being in multiple workflows at the same time, which could send mixed messages or duplicate actions, HubSpot prioritizes this workflow and removes them from the others you specify next again and if you haven't a name or description for your workflow, it will automatically be generated by AI.

To update this you can just click on edit and update the name and the description.

Now if you are happy with the generated AI generated name and description, click turn on workflow after you turn on your workflow, you can review the workflow history to monitor the records that are enrolled.

On the top right corner in a very small button you can see performance history.

And there is an option enrollment history.

You can select a date and see all the enrolled contacts here.

I don't have any records here.

That's why you don't see anything.

So from this moment every single download gets this sequence automatically.

There are a lot of other use cases where you could use this or a very similar workflow.

For example a webinar follow up sequence, an event follow up sequence, A re engagement workflow for cold contacts or you can use a similar workflow for progressive profiling to collect more data over time from your leads, and there are a lot of other similar use cases.

Now let's go back and create another workflow, this time using AI.

Again in the top right corner create workflow and this time select with AI.

You can see a chat has opened on the right side where you can drop your prompt and ask HubSpot to create a workflow for you.

So I'm going to drop my prompt.

When a contact submits any form, send an internal email notification to the contact owner, which is the sales rep, immediately and create a task to follow up within one business day.

Let's send this prompt and see how HubSpot is going to create this workflow.

We have an answer from Breeze Assistant, which is the AI assistant in HubSpot.

So it's asking me to review everything.

And once I confirm it's going to generate the workflow.

So I confirm.

Let's see how it's going to create the workflow.

It took like a few seconds for it to generate the workflow and it also dropped the link the workflow.

I'm going to click on it.

And here you go.

You can see form submission has been completed.

This is our trigger.

And send internal email notification to contact owner.

Create a task.

This is perfect.

It took us a few seconds to generate a workflow.

And if you need any changes regarding this workflow you can chat with Breeze Assistant and it will help you tweak anything you want.

Now let's go back and try to create another workflow using HubSpot templates.

Because when you are just getting started with workflows, you will find a lot of inspirations from the templates itself.

Click on Create workflow on the top right corner.

Then from template Here you have ton of options.

You can see that they are organized in folders.

The best folder for you would be available within your plan.

So you can select this one and see which templates are available for your specific plan and select the ones that you want.

As a test I'm going to just select this one, create a support ticket and send a confirmation email.

So I'm going to click on use template.

You can see that the workflow appeared here with the trigger, the action setup.

Everything is ready to use.

The only small change you need to do is under email.

Because we are sending an email, we need to select what template to send.

So if you click on send email on the right, it will direct you here and you can choose your template.

Let's say I want the thank you one and if I click save.

It saves the template I chose.

Now I can click on review and turn on again on the top right corner.

Review everything.

You can either go through the whole settings again or skip to turn on again.

It's gonna, a name and description for you and turn on workflow.

That's it.

Now, let's recap what we covered today.

You know how to navigate the entire, workflow interface, the dashboard, the canvas, triggers filters and settings.

you know how to use AI to generate a workflow in seconds.

You know how to use the workflow templates, and you can build one from scratch.

So it's time to create one yourself.

See you at the next one.