11 essential HubSpot workflows for 2026

If you haven’t heard of HubSpot, kindly check your walls for algae; you may be living under a rock. The CRM Goliath started as an inbound marketing tool and has since branched out into everything sales, marketing, service, content, and more—positioning itself as a one-stop shop for customer lifecycle management. 

With a paying plan, HubSpot users can access workflow automations. These self-operating strings of tasks can help you nurture more leads, close more deals, and service more customers—all without human intervention.

Setting up workflows initially can be a little tricky. Once you have them in place, however, you can sit back and watch your to-do list evaporate by the minute. So, let’s dive into a handful of HubSpot workflow examples for lead management, sales and marketing processes, and customer service.

Table of contents:

What are HubSpot workflows?

HubSpot workflows are automations that trigger and complete desired actions in the platform without intervention from you or your team. You’ll first need to build and test the workflow; once it’s fully functioning, you’ll be able to complete tasks on autopilot.

Users can build both simple and complex workflows in HubSpot. You could set up a system that sends a welcome email to a customer when they sign up for your newsletter or make a purchase. Or, you could build something more intricate—for example, when a contact in your HubSpot CRM meets a workflow enrollment criteria (which you set), the system could notify your sales team, update the contact’s status, and trigger an automation that encourages that contact to do something you want them to do (like book a demo or open an automated email).

How to build HubSpot workflows

After taking a few moments to explore HubSpot, you’ll realize there’s more than one way to build a workflow. The process starts the same: to create a new workflow, go to Automation > Workflows in the main HubSpot menu. From there, you’ll have four different options.

Create manually

If you want to control every aspect of your workflow from start to finish, create your own workflow Mona Lisa by hand. Choosing this option brings you to a blank builder from which you can set triggers, add variables, and adjust logic. A few of my examples below start from this screen—but don’t worry, I show my work in those cases.

Start from templates

HubSpot offers a decent number of templates to build from. Don’t expect a massive library of content, but there are several easy-to-implement pre-made workflows that you can plug and play right into your workday. Many of my examples below use templates, so just copy from my homework word for word. 

Use AI

If you’d rather limit your effort expenditure—or if you have just a vague idea for a workflow but need a little help—build a workflow with the help of HubSpot’s AI chatbot. This little automated assistant pops up in the corner of your screen, where you can tell it in plain English what you’d like to build. It may retort with some follow-up questions like “You need to link an account” or “Sorry, I can’t automate your entire job,” but it’s a very useful helper for building something when your ambitions are a bit ahead of your technical knowledge.

Connect with Zapier

If you need more granular control or want to extend your workflows to connect across your entire tech stack, you can integrate HubSpot with Zapier.

Zapier is an AI orchestration platform that can link HubSpot with 8,000+ other tools to help you sync all of your systems and create complex workflows beyond what you can do in HubSpot alone. 

For example, Zapier can automatically create new HubSpot contacts from ad leads, form responses, or scheduled appointments, no matter what apps you use. Or you could send data from HubSpot to your email marketing tool, team chat apps, or customer lists. But things get even more interesting when you start building out complex workflows, like managing HubSpot quote approvals entirely in Slack. Learn more about integrating HubSpot with Zapier, or try one of these pre-made templates.

HubSpot workflow examples for lead management

HubSpot has a bunch of templates you can use to get started, but I wanted to share some of the most effective HubSpot automation workflows I’ve used to help create and nurture a stream of qualified marketing leads.

1. Welcome workflows 

You want as many people as possible to fill out your lead gen forms, not just to build your mailing list but also because gathering an email address instantly transforms a website visitor (who isn’t trackable) into a lead (who you can track, nurture, and hopefully convert into a sale).

Bolster these processes with the HubSpot workflow template “Send an email series when a form is submitted.” This workflow is triggered when a lead fills out a form on your website, allowing you to nurture the lead with automated emails. 

Here’s a full overview of the process.

• Enrollment trigger: Contact fills out lead gen form from an online source

• Action 1: Send contact an email 

• Action 2: Delays for 3 days (or a set amount of time that you specify)

• Action 3: Sends another email

Use this process to get a new subscriber instantly warmed up and engaging with your content. If you share downloadable assets in the welcome email, it can also drive contacts to landing pages, where you’ll be able to gather more information on them by adding extra fields to your forms. The more information you know, the easier it is to determine if they’re a lead worth passing through to Sales.

2. Lead scoring workflows 

HubSpot’s lead scoring is one of my favorite features. There are two main ways to give points to contacts:

• Assign points to a contact’s record whenever they perform certain “positive” actions. Maybe they get 10 points for visiting your website a bunch of times within a certain timeframe, or they download a couple of eBooks and get 5 points for each download. You tell HubSpot what actions you think indicate a contact is warming up to your brand, and they take care of the automated scoring.

• Assign points if a contact’s record data tells you they’re likely to convert. For example, is their IP address located in your target market location? Does their job title tell you they’re a decision-maker?

Note: You can also set up scoring to deduct points when you think a lead won’t convert, so the sales team doesn’t waste time working irrelevant leads—more on this over on the HubSpot blog.

To make the most of your lead scoring, create a workflow that automates this process and gets your leads routed to the right internal contact. Try something like this.

• Enrollment trigger: Contact gathers a certain number of HubSpot points

• Action 1: If/then branch

  • If the lead has a high score, set the lifecycle stage to Sales Qualified Lead

  • If the lead has a medium score, set the lifecycle stage to Marketing Qualified Lead

  • If the lead has a low score, set the lifecycle stage to Lead

• Action 2: Contacts a pre-defined member of your team depending on the quality of the lead (Sales should get the SQLs, and Marketing the rest)

The best part about this workflow is that it closes that gap between Marketing and Sales by sending a notification to Sales when a hot lead appears in the system. This allows your team to close qualified leads quicker and move prospects down the sales funnel more efficiently if they need a bit of extra nudging.

3. Lead nurture workflows 

Lead nurture workflows are built to push contacts down the marketing funnel. 

When a contact downloads one of your assets (for example, an eBook, report, or whitepaper), a workflow can enter them into a nurturing program that sends a series of emails to encourage further action.

Here’s an example lead nurturing workflow you could try.

• Enrollment trigger: Contact submits a form or downloads an asset

• Action 1: An if/then branch divides your customers and sends them an automated email that speaks directly to them

• Action 2: Delay five working days

• Action 3: Send another email with mid-funnel content 

• Action 4 (optional): Continue sending periodic emails that align with your lead nurturing strategy

A lead nurturing workflow like this can help you provide prospects with hyper-personalized content that speaks directly to their needs—allowing you to move leads down your funnel round the clock.

4. Video integration workflows

With HubSpot’s Zapier integration, you can easily integrate HubSpot with a video platform, like Wistia, to automatically add new visitor emails into HubSpot. Once these new contacts are in your CRM, you can set up a video content workflow that sends out a nurture email similar to the one mentioned above.

You can create a workflow that triggers something like the following.

• Enrollment trigger: Contact is added to a list “Leads from “

• Action 1: Set lifecycle stage to Lead

• Action 2: Delay three working days

• Action 3: Schedule a video email

• Action 4: If/then branch

  • If contact opens the email, change lifecycle stage to MQL

  • If contact doesn’t engage, change lifecycle stage to Lead

Workflows like this ensure every contact can move further down the marketing funnel right away, rather than leaving them stagnant in your CRM until they take an action.

5. Re-engagement workflows 

Re-engagement campaigns are a great way to create hot leads from seemingly dead ones. The prospect might have gone cold, but they already know your brand and have previously engaged with you, so it should be easier to warm them back up again. 

In HubSpot, you can use two re-engagement templates to fit your needs (and maybe even use them simultaneously, if you’re so inclined).

The “Send re-engagement email to cold leads” template re-engages leads that have filled out a form and visited your website more than 90 days ago. 

The workflow looks like this.

• Enrollment trigger: A lead filled out a form or visited your website over 90 days ago

• Action 1: Send re-engagement email

• Action 2: Wait a designated amount of time 

• Action 3: Send another email

The “Send re-engagement email to eCommerce customers” template is similar: a workflow that re-engages when a previous customer hasn’t made a new purchase in 90 days.

This is a simple, one-off workflow that looks like this.

If you’re re-engaging with a cold lead, consider including product or service updates, special discounts, or even some information about your brand story in the email. If you’re contacting a previous customer, include a discount code to entice them to buy again. Going in with a strong email subject line and offering something of value can turn cold leads into hot ones without you doing a thing.

HubSpot workflow examples for sales and marketing processes

Sales and marketing teams primarily focus on leads and conversions, but there’s often a little more nuance involved. Sometimes, your team needs to watch financial reports like a hawk or put on grand marketing events—here are a few HubSpot sales and marketing workflows to automate those processes.

6. Sales opportunity workflows 

If you’re in B2B sales, you know that your team needs to keep an eye on funding. Some organizations go through financial ebbs and flows, but a funding round or an injection of cash means they have money to spend.

HubSpot has two templates to help you identify sales opportunities. The first workflow is triggered when one of your tracked companies receives a funding intent signal.

• Enrollment trigger: Designated group has completed funding

• Action 1: Sends an email to your preferred contacts (i.e., your sales team)

• Action 2: Update the Lead Status

The next is similar: it creates and assigns a task for the company owner or designated sales rep when a tracked company receives funding intent.

Use these workflows to keep track of funding rounds—and contact businesses while the iron is hot. If you play your cards right and contact them early, your company could be a line item in their newfound budget.

7. Deal automation workflow

Getting a verbal confirmation or handshake agreement is only the first step in closing a deal. There may be layers of tasks and yellow tape that sales and financial teams need to sort through before funds get transferred and the contact can move to onboarding.

Expedite this process (as best you can) with the “Create and assign tasks when a new deal is created” template. It triggers when a new deal is created, and periodically pings deal owners to help keep the closing process on track.

• Enrollment trigger: Designated group establishes a “create date”

• Action 1: Creates a task for the deal owner

• Action 2: Delays for three days

• Action 3: If/then branch

  • If the deal owner completed the task, create task #2 for the deal owner

  • If the deal owner didn’t complete the task, email a reminder to the deal owner to complete task #1, and create task #2 

Use this template to keep your team organized and informed. When you have clear processes—and frequent reminders for completing those processes—your team can put a bow on closed deals and get new clients onboarded as soon as possible.

8. Webinar registration and follow-up workflow

Webinars can be a great way to explain or demo your product to potential customers in real time and show your value. But it’s only useful if clients show up—otherwise, your poor sales rep may be talking to themselves for 45 minutes instead of a lobby of interested prospects.

Pack your webinar house with a HubSpot workflow.

• Enrollment trigger: Contact signs up for a webinar

• Action 1: Sends contact a reminder email

• Action 2: Delays for a defined number of days (until after the webinar)

• Action 3: If/then branch

  • If the contact attended the webinar, follow up with an email with additional information

  • If the contact did not attend the webinar, follow up with an email and send an internal message to a member of your sales team

Use this process to move prospects further down the sales funnel and handle objections in real time. If the prospect attended the webinar, your follow-up email is a good opportunity to thank them and include helpful links or additional product information to keep your product top of mind. 

If they signed up but didn’t attend, this workflow allows your sales team to contact them directly—maybe it turns into an opportunity to overcome a few objections and get them to attend the next one.

HubSpot workflow examples for customer service and customer success

Sales and marketing teams turn prospects into customers; customer support teams turn customers into lifetime product advocates—but only if your onboarding and ongoing service is top-notch. Help your service team do their job better with a few automations. 

9. Ticketing automation workflows

Have you ever contacted a business with a problem, only for them to respond the next day—or even later in the week? This is the sad reality of companies that can’t keep up with support tickets, and it often results in frustrated customers and lost business.

Automate some of your ticketing processes with this HubSpot template.

Use this template to loop in other members of your team, or assign further tasks or reminders to ensure the customer’s question is answered as soon as possible. You could even include a step that emails the customer to let them know that your support team is on the case. This can help reduce manual effort and improve the customer experience.

10. Product onboarding workflow

Customer onboarding is crucial—especially for SaaS businesses and more technical products. If your customers don’t know how to use your product effectively, they may churn before they even realize its value. 

Keep a close eye on customer success by building a HubSpot workflow automation for product onboarding.

• Enrollment trigger: New contact is created, or a contact completes initial enrollment

• Action 1: Send contact an email

• Action 2: Delays for 3 days

• Action 3: Send contact an email

• Action 4: Delays for 3 days

• Action 5: Send contact an email

• Action 6: Create a task for a member of your support team to check in on the customer

In each of your emails, send informative content and product guides to help your new customer learn about your offering. For example, you could include a “Top 5 ways to succeed with [your product]” resource, or a video that covers common mistakes or advanced features to try.

If you have a more technical product, you could duplicate Action 6 (prompting a member of your support team to check on the customer) and add it after every email you send. A workflow like this helps new customers feel supported, reduces confusion, and catches potential issues early. 

11. Customer survey workflow

No one knows your business better than your customers. They can tell you where you’re succeeding, and most importantly, where you need to improve. Take advantage of this insight by prompting your customers to fill out surveys as often as possible. 

You can automate this process with a little bit of workflow creativity in HubSpot.

• Enrollment trigger: Customer submits a survey

• Action 1: The automation evaluates the survey score

• Action 2: If/then branch

  • If the survey score is negative (based on your pre-defined scoring criteria), the system sends an apology email to the customer

  • If the survey score is neutral, the system sends a “thank you” email asking for more information

  • If the survey score is positive, the system sends a “thank you” email asking the customer to leave a review

• Action 3: Contacts a member of your team depending on the survey response

  • If the survey score is negative, the system pings a member of your team to contact the customer immediately

  • If the survey score is neutral or positive, a designated member of your team is emailed the results

If a survey response is less than positive, you should be digging in for more specifics. Find out the why behind their score—maybe it’s a quick fix (like sending a shipping confirmation email), or you may find a gap in your service or uncover an opportunity for a new product feature. Customer feedback is invaluable, and this workflow will help you learn from it while also addressing customer concerns before they churn. 

Enhance your HubSpot workflows with Zapier

HubSpot offers workflow automations to make your team more productive, but its capabilities are limited compared to a dedicated workflow builder. 

Zapier helps businesses of all sizes connect HubSpot to thousands of other apps and build complex workflows that go far beyond what you can do in a singular tool. For example, you could create a workflow that automatically updates HubSpot contacts with new leads across your ad platforms like Google or Facebook, and pings your sales team on Slack. Or, build an AI agent that can qualify leads, help you prep for meetings, and keep your sales engine running even while your team is offline.

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This article was originally published in February 2022 by Katie Paterson. The most recent update was in January 2026.