So, you want to make sure that your customers and your prospects are all promptly communicated with via a series (or should I say, a sequence) of sales emails.
You could set up a workflow in HubSpot to automatically send out emails according to a set schedule on a specific trigger. However, that isn’t the only tool in HubSpot that can send out strings of emails to prospects and customers—there’s also the HubSpot Sequences tool.
What are HubSpot sequences? How do they differ from workflows? How do they provide value for your business? How can you start using them?
Let’s take a look at the answers to these key questions about HubSpot sequences. Buckle up, because this will be a trip.
The term “HubSpot sequence” refers to an automated series of sales emails sent to contacts from an email address you’ve connected to your HubSpot inbox. These email sequences are typically specialized to address specific pain points that the prospect being emailed has expressed in order to better move them along the sales funnel.
Of course, a HubSpot sequence doesn’t have to be just emails. You can set up a “multi-channel” sequence as well that sends messages across different communication channels—such as text/SMS messages. A sequence can also send internal communications or tasks that include sending InMail or Connection requests on LinkedIn (this requires a connected LinkedIn profile).
Note: Text message sends may require separate communications opt-ins from the lead or prospect you’re messaging to comply with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991’s (TCPA’s) guidelines.
This tool should not be confused with the workflows tool, which is often used for similar purposes but has functionalities aside from sending emails. Workflows in HS can actually complement the sequences tool.
In fact, many HS users employ workflows as a way to automatically enroll leads into their HubSpot sequences. Normally, a contact can only be enrolled in a sequence if someone manually enrolls them in it.
What’s the biggest practical difference between a sequence and a workflow in HubSpot? A sequence email is always sent from the email address you’ve connected to your HubSpot inbox while workflow emails can be sent directly from HubSpot.
Another major difference between sequences and workflows is that, by default, a sequence will unenroll the contact if they book a meeting or reply to one of the emails in the sequence. This is because sales emails can track these interactions while marketing emails cannot.
So, what are the benefits of using the sequences tool in HubSpot? Using sequences can help you in a few different ways, such as:
So, you’re interested in creating a sequence in HubSpot. But, do you have access to the tool? Sequences are available to the following HubSpot subscription types (subscription costs listed in parentheses):
If you have either Sales Hub or Service Hub at a Professional or Enterprise subscription level, congratulations! You have access to HubSpot sequences. To access the tool, you need to have a “sales seat” or “service seat” assigned to you. If you’re on Sales Hub or Service Hub and don’t see the “Automation” button, contact your system administrator and have them check if you’ve been assigned a seat in the tool.
You can find your list of seats, along with who has a seat, how many seats are available, and more by clicking on the gear icon in your HubSpot portal, going to “Users & Teams” under “Account Setup” in the left nav, and clicking on the “Seats” tab:
Note: This tool is not a part of the CMS, Marketing, or Operations packages and is not available on “Starter” tier accounts.
So, how do you create a sequence in HubSpot? Before we actually get into the tool and how to set up the sequence itself, it’s important to start with some “pre-sequence” preparation.
Why do you want to send a sequence of messages to your prospects? What’s your end goal? While “nurturing leads along the sales funnel to become customers” is a common enough goal, what are the specific actions that you want them to take? It’s important to have this in mind because it will help you set the tone and context for all of the messaging in your sequence.
For example, are you simply building a follow-up sequence for a sales interaction? You might set a goal of getting the prospect to book a sales meeting or a demo. Are you looking to nurture a lead who just became an MQL by downloading a particular content offer? You may want to set a goal of turning the MQL into an SQL by having them complete other actions on your site—and tailor your sequence’s messaging to encourage those actions.
Who should get this particular set of messages? Like workflows, sequences can leverage automated enrollment criteria to start sending emails, texts, and other messages once a prospect meets certain trigger conditions.
For a sales meeting follow-up sequence, this can be as simple as the sales rep in charge of the prospect manually enrolling them into the sequence. You could also set up a sequence to trigger when a contact does something specific like:
Here’s a commonly-asked question: How long should an email (or message) sequence be? The answer is: “it depends.”
Different sequences will have different goals and audiences—and thus they’ll require different messaging, levels of persistence, and even actions within the sequence. As HubSpot states in their own tutorial article on using their sequences tool: “there’s no set timeframe or number of emails. You’ll need to get strategic about the touchpoints that are required and the frequency of those.”
There will always be at least some trial and error in your process as you discover what kind of messaging resonates with your audience, what communication channels work best, and when to reach out to them—though this is something that creating a buyer’s journey and buyer persona documents could help you with!
Now that you know who you’re reaching out to and why, it’s time to start writing the content for your sequence emails, SMS messages, and internal notifications. Here, following some email creation best practices can help you create high-quality emails that drive engagement.
To actually use these messages, you’ll need to upload them into the appropriate tools in HubSpot. For emails, you can pick an email template from inside the sequences tool or create a new one from scratch. Here’s an example of what that looks like:
This example doesn’t go into all of the details, but should provide a quick look at where you can find what you need to make a sales sequence email from scratch.
When making these templates for sales emails, it’s often best to keep them simple—as if you’ve just written them out manually and are sending a quick follow-up. The specifics will change based on what triggers your sequence. For example, if you’re following up a sales meeting, you could highlight the next steps for after the call. Meanwhile, a post-demo email might ask for a reply with feedback.
Start adding your emails and other actions to the sequence. There are several steps you can add to a sequence:
To get started, simply click on the little “+” icon in your sequence’s Steps tab:
Be sure to navigate to the automation tab in your sequence tool to set up actions that will unenroll your leads from the sequence (so you don’t keep messaging them after they’ve already met the sequence’s goal). There are two types of actions you can use within a sequence to unenroll contacts:
You can also use the workflows tool for more granular enrollment and unenrollment criteria.
Okay, you’ve added all of your sequence steps, emails, task reminders—everything. Now what? It’s time to test the sequence before you take it live for customers to see!
Test the sequence before launching it so you can see if everything’s working as you intended it to. You could do this by selecting a specific “test contact” you’ve set up in your HubSpot portal and manually selecting them for the sequence. Ideally, this fake contact would have an email you can access to test the automation and data capture. You may even want to enroll yourself in the sequence to see how it behaves.
Here’s a common question about sequences. When should you enroll someone in a sequence and who should you enroll?
First thing’s first: you can only enroll a contact into one email sequence at a time. If you want a contact to complete multiple sequences, then you’ll have to ensure that they’re unenrolled from other sequences first.
So, when should you enroll a contact into a sequence? Generally speaking, you’ll want to enroll a lead into a sequence after any major near “end of funnel” interaction like a sales call or demo. For example, if you’re following up on a sales call, you’ll want to enroll the contact as soon as possible into a post-call sequence so you can strike while the proverbial iron’s hot.
A good sequence with emails and task reminders for the sales team can help keep your business “top of mind” for hot leads after BOFU interactions.
Yes, any member of any team could use sequences as a tool to help keep contacts engaged. However, to create and execute sequences, HubSpot users need to:
These requirements put a hard limit on how many team members can use the sequences tool in your HubSpot portal. Also, because of the restriction that leads can only be enrolled in one sequence at a time, it’s important to be judicious about who can create sequences and at what points during the buyer’s journey you enroll in a sequence.
Another important note is that any tasks in a sequence will be assigned to the HS user who enrolled the contact into that sequence. So, it’s important to ensure that the right team members are creating the sequence and enrolling customers/prospects into it.
You might be wondering how many emails you can send in a sequence. While you can put a virtually unlimited number of emails into a sequence, there are hard limits on how many sequence emails you can send in a day depending on your HubSpot subscription type and your email provider’s own daily send limits.
Here are the sequence email caps for HubSpot users:
Note that “day” in this context is a rolling 24-hour period—there is no set time of day where your limit resets.
Because these emails are being sent from your personal inbox, you may face further limitations on how many emails you can send. Here’s HubSpot’s list of the rate limits for various email providers:
So, when connecting a personal email inbox for using with sequences, it’s important to consider the limits your email provider puts on one-to-one email sends.
Emails may also be subject to size limitations depending on the inbox you use, so it’s a good idea to minimize the number of emails sent back-and-forth to avoid these limitations and to keep each email as short and sweet as possible.
Okay, you’ve created your first sequence, where can you go to review its performance? You can do this easily from the manage tab of your sequences tool. Here’s a quick video guide of how to check sequence performance:
The step-by-step is to:
You can also check your overall sequence performance and see a list of highly-engaged contacts by clicking on “Analyze” from the main sequences menu view:
Did you forget something in your sequence or discover a way to improve it? Don’t worry, you can edit an active sequence. It’s actually quite simple—just go to the “Steps” tab of your active sequence and start making any additions or changes that you want to make.
However, it’s important to note when you edit an active sequence, any changes will ONLY be reflected for contacts who are enrolled after you save your changes to the sequence. Anyone currently in the sequence will still get the old version of it and any content that was in it.
For example, say you put in an additional email, changed the content of a few messages, and shortened the delays on your other emails in the sequence so it would still be the same total amount of time. If you click “save” your sequence will change for every future contact will have that extra email, new content, and the shorter message delay.
However, everyone who is already in the workflow will still get the “outdated” version of it. If you want them to get the updated version, you’ll have to unenroll and put them through the sequence again.
In the sequences tool itself, the primary way to enroll a contact into a sequence is to do so manually. Simply click on the orange “Email contacts” button and select the contacts you want to enroll from the menu that slides in from the right. Here’s an example of how to do it:
You’ll notice that, before I could enroll each contact into the sequence, I first had to fill out missing information. That’s because this sequence included an email for following up on a meeting, so I would have to upload my meeting notes into this sequence before it could be sent.
Unenrollment from a sequence is automatic whenever a contact replies to an email in the sequence or books a meeting. Here’s a video showing the automation tab in the sequence management tool:
You may have noticed the tooltips saying that the email reply and meeting booked unenrollment triggers cannot be turned off because they’re both used in every sequence. However, the middle option for unenrolling every contact at the same company can be turned on or off at your discretion.
You can also use workflows to enroll contacts in a sales sequence—so virtually any trigger you could use in the workflows tool could also be a trigger for starting a sales sequence as well.
Some HubSpot users may find the if/then logic branches of workflows incredibly useful for their sales sequences. For example, say that you want to change how a contact is handled based on whether they’re still currently enrolled in a sales sequence, for this, you would go to your workflows tool and, after the part of the workflow that enrolls the contact in the sequence, set an appropriate delay for the sequence to be completed, then use an if/then logic branch to determine the next steps.
In this example, you’ll see what it looks like when I base this on whether the contact is currently enrolled in a sequence:
From here, I’m free to enroll the prospect in another sequence, change their lifecycle status, or add even more if/then branches to address specific sequence outcomes.
To force unenrollment using workflows, simply create a new workflow using a trigger you want to use to force unenrollment. Since contacts can only be enrolled in one sequence at a time, no other adjustments are necessary.
Here’s a quick video tutorial:
Why would you want to do this? One reason might be for enrolling contacts into a different sequence. The workflow example shown above forces an unenrollment from one sequence so that the prospect can be enrolled into a different sequence if they complete a specific action on the website (a form fill, in this case). In this way, workflows can help you automatically prioritize the enrollment of contacts into a specific sequence based on their actions instead of having someone manage it manually.
Leveraging a “multi-channel” sequence is as easy as including SMS or social media messages and other manual communication task reminders in your sequence. Simply click on the “+” icon and add the type of message you want to include or a task reminder for the contact owner to send a communication on another channel.
You can manually unenroll, edit, or pause a sequence for individual contacts from the “Enrollments” tab. Hover over the contact’s name and you’ll be presented with an “Action” button. Click on that button, and you’ll be given the choice to edit, pause, or unenroll that contact from the sequence. Here’s a quick video:
Let’s say you forgot to properly personalize one of the emails in the sequence. You could edit the sequence for that specific lead to correct the error or pause the sequence to give yourself some extra time.
You can also click on the contact's name in the enrollment tab to be taken straight to their contact record to make manual edits to it based on their responses to your sequence emails or other communications.
Since your sales team is going to be using sequences the most out of any team, what are some “best practices” that they should follow for them? Here are a few tips to help your team get the most out of the sequences tool:
So, what are the top kinds of sequences that your sales team needs to create right now? There are a lot of different things you can do with sequences, but some of the top types of sequences to create are:
This is a sequence designed to take a new contact who isn’t quite “sales ready” yet and help nurture them along the funnel into becoming an MQL or an SQL. HubSpot recommends this type of sequence for “companies that have short sales cycles like many consumer packaged goods or even simple B2B technologies.”
Want to build a rapport with one of your prospects? An engagement email sequence might be right for you. Similar to a lead nurturing email sequence, an engagement sequence drives interaction with your site and the content on it to keep your business “top of mind” for that lead. What you’re looking for here are contacts who open, click, and reply to emails. These contacts are the ones who should be prioritized for enrollment in future sequences.
As mentioned earlier, if someone books a meeting, you’ll want to ensure that they don’t forget about it! Create a meeting reminder sequence that will send automatic meeting reminders to contacts the day before and the morning of the meeting so they don’t accidentally miss it (and send some task reminders to your own team in the sequence as well)!
Workflows can be a useful tool for scheduling enrollment in these kinds of sequences by forcing unenrollment from other sequences and enrolling the contact in this sequence.
Don’t let a contact forget about you after the meeting is done! Create a follow-up sequence for sales or demo meetings that provide a simple list of “next steps” for you and your contacts to follow and keep them moving along until you reach that coveted “deal closed” status.
Want your contacts to take a specific action (such as booking a meeting, scheduling a demo, or filling out a form/survey)? That’s a job for a conversion email sequence! You’ll want to make sure that all of the copy for the sequence centers around the desired action so there are no distractions.
Sales reps are often incredibly busy with reaching out to different prospects, juggling their meeting calendars, and generally being awesome at bringing home the bacon. So, it’s all too easy for a rep to accidentally forget to follow up with a specific prospect or to change a contact property in the HubSpot tool after a meeting.
This is where creating a task reminder sequence or working task reminder steps into an existing sequence can help. Working in task reminders helps your team stay on top of their most important post-interaction follow-up duties.
Say a lead goes cold, what can you do? Sending re-engagement emails to leads who haven’t interacted with your brand in a while can be a good way to remind them who you are, what you can do for them, and rekindle some interest.
If a contact still doesn’t engage with your brand at all after the sequence ends, it may be time to remove them as a marketing contact to keep your email list healthy (and avoid running into your contact limit).
If you’re looking for some more tutorials and resources about using sequences, here are a few to get you started:
Quick bonus content time: What are some of the biggest mistakes that you should avoid when using the sequence tool? Here are a few of the ones that you should avoid:
Are you trying to master the art of using HubSpot Sequences? Reach out to the experts at Bluleadz for help! Our sales team uses the tool all the time for customer and prospect outreach—and we would love to go over some pointers with you!