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Running a business often means juggling countless tasks—following up with leads, sending emails, and assigning tasks to your team. It’s easy to feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. That’s where automation steps in, and HubSpot workflows are the perfect tool to simplify your processes.
HubSpot workflows allow you to automate repetitive tasks, freeing up your time for more strategic work.
Whether it’s nurturing leads, streamlining email campaigns, or ensuring your team stays on top of their tasks, workflows can make it happen.
This guide will walk you through setting up HubSpot workflows step by step. By the end, you’ll not only know how to create your first workflow but also how to use it to save time and optimise your operations.
What Are HubSpot Workflows and Why Do They Matter?
HubSpot workflows are a powerful automation tool designed to simplify and streamline your business processes. Instead of manually following up with leads, sending emails, or assigning tasks, workflows handle these repetitive actions automatically, based on triggers you define.
For example, imagine someone fills out a form on your website. Instead of manually adding them to an email list or assigning them to a sales rep, a workflow can automatically handle these tasks.
Similarly, workflows can help you nurture leads with personalised email sequences or even notify your team when it’s time to follow up.
Another example of a workflow:
Imagine a sales manager wants to ensure that every new lead is promptly followed up on by the right team member. Instead of manually reviewing and assigning each lead, an internal workflow can automate this process.
Here’s how it could work:
- Trigger: A lead submits a contact form on the website
- Condition: The workflow evaluates the lead’s location or company size (criteria set by the sales manager)
- Action: Based on the criteria, the workflow assigns the lead to a specific sales representative and creates a follow-up task in their HubSpot dashboard
This internal workflow ensures leads are routed to the right person without delays, keeping the sales pipeline moving efficiently.
The benefits are clear:
- Saves Time: Automating repetitive tasks lets your team focus on more strategic initiatives
- Increases Consistency: Ensures no lead, email, or task slips through the cracks
- Improves Customer Experience: Provides timely, tailored communication to prospects and customers
In short, HubSpot workflows take the guesswork and manual effort out of routine tasks, helping your business run more efficiently and effectively.
Setting up workflows in HubSpot starts with knowing where to find the tool and understanding the basics of how it works. HubSpot makes the process user-friendly, so even if you’re new to automation, you’ll feel confident navigating the platform.
Read: HubSpot Best Practices for Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and CRM
How to Create a HubSpot Workflow: A Step by Step Guide
Step 1: Navigate to the Workflow Tool
- Log in to your HubSpot account
- From the main dashboard, go to the Automation menu in the top navigation bar
- Click Workflows to open the tool
Step 2: Click Create Workflow and Choose the Type of Workflow
Click the “create workflow” button:
When creating a new workflow, HubSpot gives you two main options:
- From Scratch: Build a workflow tailored to your specific needs by starting from a blank slate
- Template-Based: Use one of HubSpot’s pre-designed templates, which are great for common tasks like sending follow-up emails or lead nurturing
If you’re just starting out with workflows, explore the available templates first, because chances are, HubSpot already has something pre-built to do what you’re trying to achieve.
Step 3: Select the Object Type and Workflow Trigger
When creating a workflow in HubSpot, selecting the appropriate object type—such as contact-based, company-based, deal-based, or ticket-based—is crucial, as it determines the records the workflow will act upon and the available actions.
Here’s how to choose the right option:
- Contact-Based Workflows: Use this to automate processes related to individual contacts, such as sending personalised emails, updating contact properties, assigning tasks to sales reps based on contact properties or managing lead nurturing sequences
- Company-Based Workflows: Use this to automate actions at the company level, such as assigning company owners or updating company details. Perfect for account-based marketing or managing B2B relationships
- Deal-Based Workflows: Use this to streamline sales pipelines. Automate actions like updating deal stages, assigning deals to sales reps, or notifying teams when deals are won or lost
- Ticket-Based Workflows: Use this to enhance customer service by automating actions like updating ticket statuses, assigning tickets to team members, or sending follow-up satisfaction surveys after a ticket is resolved
- Quote-Based Workflows: Use this to automate actions related to sales quotes, such as triggering notifications when a quote is signed or creating reminders to follow up on pending quotes
- Conversation-Based Workflows: Use this to automate actions related to conversations in your HubSpot inbox, such as assigning incoming messages to team members or sending follow-up emails
- Feedback Submission-Based Workflows: Use this to act on customer feedback forms. Automate actions like alerting your team to negative feedback or sending thank-you emails for positive submissions
- Subscription-Based Workflows: Use this to manage subscription preferences. Perfect for updating subscription types, managing opt-outs, or sending updates based on subscription status
- Payment-Based Workflows: Use this to automate processes related to payments, such as sending receipts, notifying teams of completed payments, or updating a contact’s payment status
- Goal-Based Workflows: Use this to trigger actions based on the achievement of specific goals, such as notifying the team when revenue milestones are met or updating lifecycle stages
- User-Based Workflows: Use this to manage internal processes related to HubSpot users, such as automating onboarding sequences or assigning training tasks
- Task-Based Workflows: Use this to automate task creation and management, such as assigning follow-ups after key interactions or deal updates
- Schedule-Based Workflows: Use this to execute actions on a recurring schedule, such as sending weekly reminders or refreshing lead scoring properties monthly
In our walkthrough, we’re going to select the contact-based object.
Next you’ll need to select a trigger. Click “Set up triggers.”
Next you’ll need to determine your trigger set up. You will be presented with three options:
How do you know when to use each one?
When an Event Occurs:
- Use this when: You need the workflow to start as soon as a specific event happens, such as a contact completing a form submission, clicking a link, or enrolling in a marketing list. This is ideal for immediate, event-driven actions like follow-up emails or task creation
When Filter Criteria is Met:
- Use this when: You want the workflow to enrol contacts, companies, or deals based on specific conditions or property values. For example, use this if you need to filter and act on contacts where the city is “Reno” and the job title contains “Marketing.” This is ideal for segmentation-based automations or highly targeted workflows
Based on a Schedule:
- Use this when: You need the workflow to run at regular intervals or on specific dates/times, such as sending daily updates at 8:00 AM or performing routine data updates. This is best for recurring tasks or campaigns that don’t rely on immediate triggers
Depending on the option you choose, the options available to you will change. From here you’ll want to adjust your criteria.
Remember that this is the trigger point of your workflow. Whatever you choose here determines when your workflow triggers and which conditions need to be met for the workflow to begin.
Here’s a detailed HubSpot guide on all the different ways to set up triggers.
Step 4: Add an Action
After setting the trigger, click the + icon to add an action.
You will be presented with four options from here:
Here’s a breakdown of when to choose each category based on the options shown in the image:
- Communications: Use this when you need to send emails or notifications to your customers or internal teams. This is ideal for tasks like automated follow-ups, sending reminders, or notifying team members about updates or actions required
- CRM: Use this to create or update CRM records and properties. This is best for workflows that involve managing your customer database, such as updating lifecycle stages, assigning owners, or modifying properties based on actions or criteria
- Marketing: Use this to manage marketing records and audience statuses. Ideal for workflows that involve segmenting contacts, adding or removing contacts from lists, or updating marketing properties based on engagement or campaign interactions
- Data Ops: Use this to create code-based actions, webhooks, or format data. This is suitable for advanced workflows where you need to integrate with external applications, perform complex data transformations, or trigger actions in third-party tools
Within each category you’ll be able to choose from a list of items. For example, in the CRM category, you can choose from this list among other items:
Whatever you want the next action in the workflow to be is what you should set here.
Step 5: Continue to configure actions
You can continue to click the “+” button and add more actions until you’re happy with your workflow.
You can also add delays, branches and other actions that we haven’t introduced yet (since you wouldn’t add these as the first action) by clicking + and selecting one of these options:
Here’s what each of these do:
- Delay: Use this to introduce a waiting period between actions in your workflow. Ideal for creating pauses to space out communications, such as waiting a few hours or days before sending follow-up emails or reminders
- Branch: Use this to create conditional paths based on specific criteria. This is perfect for customising workflows, such as sending different follow-ups depending on whether a contact opened an email or interacted with a campaign
- Go to Workflow: Use this to connect and enrol a contact (or other object) into another workflow. Ideal for managing complex processes by breaking them into smaller, reusable workflows
- Go to Action: Use this to skip ahead to a specific action within the same workflow. This is useful for reducing redundancy when certain conditions are met and you want to jump past unnecessary steps
Step 6: Review and Test Your Workflow
Before activating, test the workflow to ensure it works as intended:
- Use HubSpot’s Test Workflow feature to simulate the trigger and actions
- Review every step to confirm the correct emails, delays, and tasks are included
Step 7: Activate Your Workflow
Once satisfied, click the big “Review & publish” button at the top and off it goes!
So, What’s Next?
HubSpot workflows are a game-changer for businesses looking to save time, improve consistency, and enhance their customer experience. Whether you’re automating follow-ups, assigning tasks, or nurturing leads, workflows ensure that no step is missed, and every interaction is timely and personalised.
By understanding the basics, experimenting with different types of workflows, and applying best practices, you can turn HubSpot into an automation powerhouse that supports your team and drives results.
Remember to:
- Keep workflows simple and focused
- Leverage personalisation to make communications more engaging
- Regularly test, monitor, and optimise your workflows for maximum impact
Next, check out the top five features you should be using in HubSpot to make sure your team is maximising the platform to its full potential.
