Once upon a time, we reached for our checkbooks to pay our bills. If you ever forgot to pay, you’d get a slap on the wrist from your landlord, leaving you scrambling to get your checkbook… only to find that you were out of checks for the month (whoops!). You would run to the bank, and then to your landlord’s office before it closes, or face that frustrating late fee… phew.

Enter, automatic bill pay: A new, smart tool to make that task a lot easier, simpler, and automated. No fuss, no extra thought, no late fees or last minute scrambling.

Ever feel that “last minute scramble” in your marketing career? Workflow automation is the “automatic bill pay” of the marketing world. No more scrambling to send out that email, write it up last second, move people in and out of different lists… then repeat the process all over again. This tool is changing the careers of many marketers — and it helps people move down your marketing funnel much easier, too. Here’s how.

Think of automated workflows like a smooth system of highways, moving your leads down specific paths effortlessly.

First up, what is an automated workflow?

According to HubSpot’s definition (and ours), a workflow is an automated set of marketing actions that execute based on a starting condition. For example, if somebody opts in to be a blog subscriber, you could automate a series of emails that “onboard” them to your brand.

The subsciber form could be your starting condition, triggering an automated series that you set up one time and don’t even have to think about aftewards. This is an automated workflow looks in HubSpot when you’re building it:

If you set up workflows for lead-level actions, middle-of-funnel actions, and sales-ready actions (like requesting a demo), you can connect every part of your sales funnel in one seamless, automated process.

You can also use workflows for internal processes. Want to find out how many people clicked on a certain website page, and put them into a new list of contacts? Done. Want to classify contacts who downloaded your pricing guide as sales-qualified? Done.

With the power of automated workflows, hefty managerial tasks are done in a couple clicks.

With this tool, you’ll have a hands-off way to nurture leads down your sales funnel.

Workflows are easily customizable

Not all leads are the same, and you shouldn’t treat them all in the same blanketed way. Whether they’re at different places in the buyer’s journey or have different habits and problems, you can easily customize your workflows to tailor to them each individually.

Are you currently segmenting your email sends to people based on who they are, what they’re interested in, and how ready they are to buy?

If you’re doing blanket email sends to everyone, it might be because customized emails require a lot of work and oversight… but not with automated workflows.

With this tool, you can do every segmentation trick and tactic you’ve dreamed of, in a “set it and forget it” way.

Whatever the need, you can easily segment your lists to create a different nurture path for different leads, sent to them automatically when they’re ready for it. (Here are 7 segmentation lists we recommend you start with!) 

Automation prevents leads from falling through the cracks

As your contacts database gets larger, it becomes more challenging to manage it all without letting anything slip from your window of opportunity. When you build workflows, though, you can easily manage your lists of leads, making sure there’s a complete and clear path for people to take with your brand.

It’s important to set objectives throughout the marketing funnel, and with automated workflows, you’ll have an easy way to see who’s converting on which paths you set up. Each workflow is created with a specific “goal” in mind: A conversion action that moves leads from point A to point B. (For example, they downloaded eBook A, and the workflow encourages them through emails and nurturing to request a demo, or action B.) The workflow reports on that goal for you in a crystal-clear way.

Once they’re set up, your automated workflows will run just as designed, not letting any visitor fall through the cracks.

There’s no need to double check that somebody got added to a certain list, or to manually put a person in one yourself — you know that everybody’s set up on the smoothest path to conversion, automatically.

Increase your lead-to-customer conversion, and shorten the sales cycle

The problem with big blanket emails is that they aren’t effective for everyone. You take a gamble that that email will be relevant to a large number of people — and in many cases, it isn’t. Other than maybe a few readers, your message will often be irrelevant and severely impersonal.

With automated workflows, you can group your leads based on different properties and behaviors, which significantly shortens the sales cycle and increases conversion. According to HubSpot, 60% of people using workflow automation say that it has increased the number of leads passed to sales. Automation has also shortened the reported sales cycle by 23% on average.

And, as a bonus, your messaging will feel much more personal, one-to-one, and sincerely helpful. Who doesn’t want a personable brand?

Best of all, workflow automation saves you time

Considering many of us have to wear a lot of different marketing hats, it’s easy to be spread a bit thin when things get very busy.

With workflow automation, you save time while getting important tasks done. No need to constantly check in on emails or manually write and send them. No more bumbling over tons of lists of contacts, segmenting people halfheartedly, or ignoring your sales funnel because it’s just too much to wrangle.

You’ll minimize your efforts on mundane tasks — and then, the best perk of workflows: You can focus on the parts of the job you love.