3 HubSpot Workflow Tips

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:

Tip 1: Test Your 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.

Tip 2: Setting Lifecycle Stages In Workflows

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.

Tip 3: Workflow Branching Prompt When Deleting

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.