Why bother with automation?
Ever feel like you’re chasing your tail trying to keep up with emails and follow-ups? Automation helps you stay on top of every prospect—not just the ones you remember—while giving new people a reason to discover what you offer. Plus, it saves you heaps of time on repetitive email tasks.
By collecting more data and using personalised fields, your messages can feel more genuine and boost response rates. It’s a win for your customer relationships, too.
In short, marketing automation sets up simple rules and conditions to handle the repetitive stuff—like triggering an email a day after someone signs up—so you can focus on the big picture.
Emails and email newsletters are still relevant, says ZeroBounce, with 93% of adults checking their inbox daily. (Other email stats at the Business Builders article).
What can you do with Marketing Automation: Hubspot or Brevo
- You can automate reviews in Hubspot or Brevo
- You can automate referrals automatically after a project, both
- You can automate a discount code sent on a birthday, both
- When someone fills out a web form, their details can go into a list that relates to their need. E.g., the person is added to a newsletter list (an automation action) once they have expressed interest according to the form checkbox.
Neil Patel says: it’s important to learn skills to help organisations with marketing automation to save money and grow.
Email nurturing in a series – can help connect firstly then warm up the hearts and minds of the new visitor. In a larger team, lead scoring automation can help them rate the prospects for later calls.
Contacts. Hubspot has capacity for 5000 contacts, which can be anyone who has ever contacted and given consent.
Lists segment various target audience interests or lead levels, to help you market to them. (Segments of lists to help with location-based criteria).
Companies will help you organise varied contact names under the company.
About HubSpot
In Marketing, if you subscribe to that Hub, you can connect it up to Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or LinkedIn Ads. You can use your own list to create a lookalike audience for Facebook ads. Three-step email sequences can be done in Hubspot, with the marketing hub.
It can link to social media accounts, and it has a scheduler and metrics for Fb, Instagram, X, Linkedin, only. Thus, saving money on separate schedulers. There are also website and landing page functions for simple needs.
Campaigns – this section just ties things together with pages, emails, ads, and posts together for say “Winter Offer”.
You will get good reporting to track ad spend, social network clicks and email opens.
Marketing Hub Professional costs $1,151 per month. Professional Onboarding for a fee of A$4,320.
You can also use Hubspot as an email client – connecting all Gmail as well, to keep track. You can do the Gmail integration on the free plan, too.
About Sales Hub in Hubspot
In Sales Hub, it is about organising your sales process and the prospecting pipeline. You can build an automated communication series for deals (quotes). Probably there are better tools which don’t cost as much, up to you.
Sales Hub Professional costs $126 per month per seat.
Professional Onboarding costs $2,160 – making it unlikely you’ll want to dip a toe in.
Automation in General with Hubspot
Firstly, set up your tracking code for the company website.
A workflow is an automation in Hubspot, helping the marketer adjust what happens once someone fills out a lead form. A special email is set to go out after X number of days or triggered by an onboarding action. You can embed the referral request form in a web page.
All email marketing platforms provide this on a premium plan.
Automate review invitations. You can build forms from within Hubspot, so that it integrates with an automation series. Reviews can be moderated this way, so you don’t ask for 1 to 2 star reviews directly.
You will want to adjust the Properties if using Hubspot Sales Hub and forms, so the fields relate to what you want. Set up a custom property for referral mobile number, service agent, etc.
It has deal stages, just like Pipedrive and others.
Workflows are an automation that helps you put a series of actions (e.g., emails, notifications) into place.
You can also add lead scoring with a workflow particular to lead form actions.
Brevo Overview
Ex-Send in Blue, the email system Brevo will also help a smaller business owner implement automations for the sales force or just themself.
It is free for the first 300 emails a day. And you can import an unlimited number of contacts.
My teacher has used eight different platforms, and he likes this Brevo platform a lot due to its advanced features for lesser cost. SMS credits are cheaper.
It has a sales CRM too, a bit simpler than HubSpot; so you can delineate deal stages and see the sales pipeline.
Automations: Email Templates is where you build basic automated emails.
You can create basic forms for embedding, including any custom fields. They are called attributes rather than fields. It helps when you want to weed out spammers – you might keep in the phone number.
Create a list especially for the service suite. This will make it easier to organise later, for newsletter sends.
Preparing a special web form, on the special settings you can pick the right ‘pre-made messages’. (No to double confirmation, yes to own Confirmation page – says my teacher.)
You can also automate a lead notification to send to agents.
Here’s how to set up the Workflow (or ask Jen to do it for you)
For the workflow, set the trigger (contact is added to list, for instance) – select ‘fill out any form’ — and select notification to head sales agent/you. Then the automation can wait, send email every third day, over a span of 10 days or so. Or send a SMS to remind a day before their appointment.
An exit condition will opt out the person who replies to your email – so they don’t get further ask emails, for instance.
Remember, just collecting data and simple ‘adding to this list’ automation is not enough – you also must set up the full email flow in order. For instance, marketer best practices wise, you’d send a cheery welcome email. Then you’d send an email gifting them ‘this companion workbook I just made’, then you’d send them a list of services you provide after the main reason for those particular solutions (with a button to book in). You’d also note that newsletters are going to come monthly – so they don’t immediately unsubscribe at this point.
You’d ensure there is a clingy subject line and a question in the preview line (that’s the line shown in many email providers, which usually says “Company news” but should say something like “Why you should be asking ‘do you want fries with that?’”
Ask Jen a question about email marketing via the contact form.