A successful Digital Marketing strategy generates a large number of Leads. Therefore, it is important to automate some processes, such as sending emails, according to the Lead's interactions with your company. Marketing automation makes your business function with more intelligence and agility.
Check out the steps for creating a workflow automation below:
Basic Plan
1. Lead Selection
Leads enter Workflow Automations after performing a new conversion. This conversion may be via a form, landing page, pop-up or integration.
Entry into the workflow occurs immediately following the conversion. Leads that convert via the selected event before the workflow is activated will not be included in it.
2. Actions
There are options for Send Email and Wait. This way, you can select which emails need to be sent to the leads that go into those streams, and how long to wait for those emails to be sent.
After creating the workflow automation, you can choose Save and Activate. From that point on, Leads that meet the entry conditions will enter the workflow. You can also choose Save and Exit, where your workflow settings will be saved, but Leads won't yet start going through the workflow.
3. Settings
To customize a workflow to suit your needs, there are two advanced options available:
- Withdraw Leads marked as 'opportunities' from the workflow: leads marked as opportunities stops going through the workflow. If they are marked while going through the workflow, they will be removed at the time of the next scheduled step;
- Perform steps on weekends: with this option checked, leads will receive emails during weekends.
Pro and Enterprise Plans
1. Types of workflow
When you click Create Workflow, you can choose between two types, depending on your goal. Once created, you cannot change the type.
- Lead Nurturing Workflow (Priority): RD Station Marketing workflow automations can be prioritized. A Lead can only go through one priority workflow at a time, with preference always being given to the highest priority workflow for which they meet the entry conditions and settings.
- Management Workflow (Parallel): management workflows allow a Lead to be in more than one workflow at the same time. Once the Lead meets the entry condition of one or more parallel workflows, they will go through all of those workflows until the end.
Priority workflows do not interfere with the behavior of parallel workflows. A Lead can be in several parallel workflows while they are in a priority workflow at the same time. Also, while it is possible to withdraw a Lead from a priority workflow, this option does not exist for parallel workflows.
Which one should I choose?
Since it is not recommended to send more than one email per day to the same Lead, it is always a good idea to create workflow automations involving one or more steps that include email sending as Priority workflows.
As the other action options don't involve the Lead's email, they can be used without restriction and placed in parallel workflows, as long as they don't negatively affect the delivery rate.
2. Workflow priority
Because it is not advisable for a Lead to go through more than one workflow at the same time, prioritization becomes important to accelerate a Lead's progress in the Marketing Funnel.
Prioritization is determined on a scale of 0 to 10. If a Lead meets the entry condition of a higher priority workflow than their current one, they will exit the current workflow (lower priority) and automatically enter the higher priority workflow.
If a Lead meets the entry condition of two workflows with the same priority at the same time, they will only enter one of them. Upon completing the first workflow, if the Lead still meets the entry conditions of the other, they will go through that one as well.
3. Lead Selection
For Pro and Enterprise customers there are three types of triggers for Leads' entry into workflow automations:
- New conversion: entry into the workflow occurs immediately after conversion, as long as the Lead is not currently in a workflow of equal or greater priority. Leads that have converted via the selected event before the workflow is activated will not enter it.
- New to the segmentation list: new leads are those that meet segmentation criteria only after the workflow is activated. Leads that were already in the segmentation will not be affected by the workflow. Every time a Lead undergoes any alteration (tag change, email interaction, conversion, change of funnel stage, etc.), RD Station checks to see if they meet the conditions of a segmentation that is an entry trigger of a workflow. If they meet the conditions and are not in a higher priority workflow, the Lead will enter that workflow.
- New to or already in the segmentation list: all Leads that meet the criteria for the selected segmentation list will begin the workflow as soon as it is saved and activated. New Leads that enter into the segmentation will also start the workflow.
4. Settings
To customize a workflow to suit your needs, there are three advanced options available:
- Withdraw Leads marked as 'opportunities' from the workflow: leads marked as opportunities stops going through the workflow. If they are marked while going through the workflow, they will be removed at the time of the next scheduled step.
- Perform steps on weekends: with this option checked, leads will receive emails during weekends.
- Do not allow Lead to go through this workflow more than once: the lead will be ignored the next time they meet the workflow's entry conditions.
5. Actions
You can organize and group your workflow actions into steps and set the waiting time between the execution of each one. Scheduling a time for the execution of the steps allows you to define a time interval of 2 hours, during which the actions will be performed.
After creating the workflow automation, you can choose Save and Activate. From that point on, Leads that meet the entry conditions will enter the workflow. You can also choose Save and Exit, where your workflow settings will be saved, but Leads won't yet start going through the workflow.
