In episode 9 of HubShots Ian and I discussed three quicks tips for using HubSpot workflows (you can listen to the podcast here).
HubSpot Workflows are really powerful for building nurture programs for your contacts.
Here's 3 quick tips for using HubSpot Workflows:
In the top right of a Workflow there is a Test link:
Clicking on that link will prompt you to select a contact to send the test items to (usually you'd choose yourself, but you could choose a team member etc):
You'll immediately receive all the emails from the workflow - very handy for doing a quick check of what contacts will receive.
HubSpot is good at protecting the lifecycle stage of a contact - if a contact is a later lifecycle (eg Customer), then you don't want to accidentally have the contact 'downgraded' to a lower stage (eg MQL) as part of a workflow. HubSpot will by default prohibit this from happening. Which is good!
However, what if you do want to downgrade a lifecycle stage?
Turns out it is reasonably easy - you just need to clear the lifecycle stage first:
After that you can set it to whatever lifecycle you need.
An example might be: setting a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) back to Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) because they weren't yet ready.
Or setting a Marketing Qualified Lead back to Lead because they haven't engaged with any bottom of the funnel offers, etc.
Workflow branching has been available for a while now (at least a year or more) but one of the reasons I've rarely used it is because deleting a branch item used to delete everything (and I mean everything) below it.
But a month or two ago I noticed that branching deletes now prompt you like this:
This makes things a lot easier to manage.
Workflow branching is still a little cumbersome eg ideally I'd like a way to easily move a branch to later stage in a workflow, but at least this improvement means you don't lose everything if you delete a branch.
Hope these tips help. For more HubSpot tips check out our other episodes of HubShots.