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Episode 253: Our Favourite HubSpot Workflow Actions

Picture of HubShots HubShots Jul 16, 2021 11:00:00 AM

Marketing Manager HubSpot HubShots Marketing
Episode 253: Our Favourite HubSpot Workflow Actions

Welcome to HubShots Episode 253: Our Favourite HubSpot Workflow Actions

This edition we dive into:

  • Why am I seeing Smart TV on my Device Reports?
  • Our favourite workflow actions (new weekly shot!)
  • Using the Delay until Event action for marketing and sales
  • Using Custom Reports to get a list of Contacts with their count of Deals and Tickets
  • YouTube viewing trends
  • LinkedIn Ads tips

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Recorded: Monday 12 July 2021 | Published: Friday 16 July 2021

Shot 1: Growth Thought of the Week

Why am I seeing Smart TV in my Device Reports?

Are you starting to see Smart TVs and Game consoles appearing in your Device reports eg such as in HubSpot’s Traffic Analytics > Devices report:

In Shot 7 we chat through how this is happening, and why. Spoiler alert: it’s probably your YouTube ads.

Shot 2: Quick Shots of the Week

Here’s a few quick items of interest we noticed:

Shot 3: HubSpot Marketing Feature of the Week

Advanced Workflow Actions

If you’re on HubSpot Marketing Pro or above you’re likely using Workflow - or at least I hope you are!

Workflows have come a long way in the past year, with new ‘Actions’ being added.

This episode we’re starting a new series called ‘Workflow Action of the Week’ - cue music!

One of the ones I wanted to highlight is the ‘Delay until event happens’ action (we previously covered this in episode 212 a year ago - but it’s worth a revisit):

This delay allows you to make a workflow wait until any of the following events happen:

(It will also include additional Custom Behavioural Events if you are using Enterprise, and are part of the Beta)

These events mean that you can set a workflow to wait until the contact visits a page, or submits a form or interacts with an email for example.

Of course, there’s an override so that a contact doesn’t get permanently stuck:

So, you could set this to a few days for example, so that a contact doesn’t get lost in a workflow forever.

One of the most powerful ‘events’ is the ‘Property value changed’ option:

With this you can potentially manage just about everything eg you could create a custom property and have it updated by other workflows, or manual activities, or other ‘events’ not covered in the default list eg clicking on a CTA button could be used to create an Active list that then triggered a workflow to update a Property, which then meets this Delay requirement above. That’s a little complex and probably not something I’d do, but am mentioning it as an example of the power you have available.

In Shot 6 Ian expands on this Action, with a follow-on bonus tip!

Shot 4: HubSpot Sales Feature of the Week

Sales Workflow to assign a user and engage the new contact

So here is essentially what we are doing:

  • Assigning it to a sales person
  • Then notifying them through an internal internal sms
  • Emailing the new lead an information pack
  • Following up with an sms to notify them to check their email
  • Then waiting to check if they have booked a meeting
  • Then following up with another email

Shot 5: HubSpot Workflow Action of the Week

Using the ‘Output from Earlier Action in this Workflow’ option

Here’s an example of the Delay until Event action that picks up on a previous action from the workflow.

Earlier the workflow created a Task for a user, and then this action waits until the task has been completed:

Very powerful!

Note that there is a time delay that can be set as well as we discussed in Shot 3.

Shot 6: HubSpot Service Feature of the Week

How to get a list of Contacts who have Tickets but not Deals

I had an interesting request from a customer recently who had put some workflows in place to convert Closed Won Deals into Tickets (ie as part of the process of Sales handing over to the Customer Delivery team).

The workflows hadn’t been put in consistently, so there were some contacts with Deals that hadn’t been added as Tickets, and other Contacts who had Tickets against them but no actual Deal. So they wanted to analyse how many contacts were affected, and in which way (eg missing Tickets, or missing Deals, or both).

How to do this?

The initial approach would be to:

  • get a list of Tickets, and then sort by Contacts and export
  • Then get a list of Deals, sort by Contacts, export,
  • And then compare the two in Excel or Google sheets

However, there’s an easier way - just use a Custom Report.

Using a Custom Report

Set Contacts as your Primary Source and then Deals and Support Tickets as additional:

Then you can select your data fields as follows:

You can filter as required:

You’ll end up with a report like this that you can then export out:

You can sort when viewing, plus you can increase the rows per page size.

From this report, the client was able to quickly find which contacts were missing Deals or Tickets, and then organise appropriately to fix up.

The beauty of this is that because it can be run again in real time, it can be used as a quick check for future issues as well (And also to confirm that any issues have been resolved).

Shot 7: Marketing Tip of the Week

YouTube Advertising on TVs

There’s a few interesting trends to note from this article on The Information about YouTube advertising trends.

First up is that device viewing behaviour has changed for YouTube watchers, with 40% of ads shown on YouTube being shown on TVs (this is up from 12% two years ago). This indicates that people are moving from simply using YouTube on their phone or tablet, to making it part of their living room experience.

The second interesting trend is that - obviously - people are seeing more YouTube ads on their TV. Which means a few things:

  • Your messaging is less likely to work if there’s a direct call to action (who’s going to click on an ad on their TV?) but can still work as a brand call to action (since viewers likely have their phone next to them anyway)
  • Your messaging can now easily catch people in the living room (whereas previously you needed TV advertising)
  • And thus your retargeting messaging can be even broader

Note: This is why you’ll be starting to see analytics breakdowns start to include Smart TV and Game Consoles as device types. No, it’s not a mistake - it’s probably the result of YouTube ads.

Shot 8: Insight of the Week

I don’t have my insight ready to share this week, however I do have one started - it’s just that it’s not fully formed yet.

But I’ll give you a sneak peak and mention that it has to do with the book ‘Mindset’ by Carol Dweck (I just finished reading the Updated edition this weekend - btw well worth reading if you had previously read the original edition).

Think about your marketing mindset - do you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset when it comes to your marketing skills?

Shot 9: HubShots Throwback of the Week

Via the HubSpot product updates blog.

This time a year ago HubSpot introduced the ability to add custom HTML to the head section of individual blog posts.

Shot 10: Resource of the Week

CXL Guide to LinkedIn Ads

Conversion XL has a good guide to advertising on LinkedIn. In particular, read the advice around setting bids on campaigns - summary: set your click price bids manually and to the lowest possible that LinkedIn will allow.

Here’s some additional LinkedIn advertising resources:

Shot 11: Quote of the Week

“Mindset change is not about picking up a few pointers here and there. It's about seeing things in a new way. When people...change to a growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework. Their commitment is to growth, and growth takes plenty of time, effort, and mutual support.”

― Carol Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Shot 12: Follow Us on the Socials

Connect with HubShots here:

Connect with Ian Jacob on LinkedIn and Craig Bailey on LinkedIn 

HubShots, the podcast for marketing managers and sales professionals who use HubSpot, hosted by Ian Jacob from Search & Be Found and Craig Bailey from XEN Systems.

HubShots is produced by Christopher Mottram from Podcastily.

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