What are trigger events? HubSpot defines a trigger event as “any occurrence that creates an opening for a marketing or sales opportunity.”
Essentially, trigger events are automated actions taken in response to a specific action by a prospect or customer. They help streamline your sales and marketing processes and keep your interactions with prospects relevant and personal.
Trigger events are important to identify and act upon because, in sales, timing is everything. Engaging with someone at the right time can make all the difference in winning or losing a sale. With such a wide variety of trigger events out there, knowing where to look in HubSpot CRM is also a key factor. Build trust and ultimately drive more conversions and sales by understanding these trigger events and how to track them.
Whether you're new to HubSpot or a seasoned user, don't miss this comprehensive list of 15 events your sales team should use for a more personalized sales strategy.
15 Trigger-Based Workflows to Try in HubSpot
Form Submissions
A quick follow-up could provide additional touchpoint opportunities when a prospect submits a form on your website to attend a webinar, download content, or talk to a representative. You can use these trigger events to build workflows that provide relevant event information or add prospects to active lists for further nurturing.
HubSpot’s automation capabilities through features like forms, lists, and workflows remove the need for constant monitoring. Creating workflows that automatically enroll the right people at the right time is a great benefit your team can use time and time again.
The same goes for active and static lists. These can be used pre- and post-events to notify attendees of similar opportunities and applicable information. Similarly, understanding and leveraging a strong form strategy will help offer additional opportunities for prospect engagement.
Website Page Visits
Page visits are an extremely valuable metric to track. Teams that monitor when prospects visit specific pages on your website can send targeted follow-up messages and content. You can find performance analytics, optimization recommendations, and test results by visiting the website tab under the Marketing Hub in HubSpot.
These trigger events could shed light on products a company is interested in or pages they visit multiple times. An email, “We noticed you were interested in X, Y, and Z, and we wanted to follow up with some additional information and a chance to speak with a team member,” is more likely to get a response than a “cold email.”
Email Opens
Email metrics are excellent key performance indicators to monitor and track. By looking at email opens, you can see which emails are getting opened the most and which aren't and uncover opportunities to follow up with a personalized message or offer.
You can analyze emails for performance and health through the email tab in HubSpot’s Marketing Hub. These two views provide different data points and insights into how well your emails are doing and which of your prospects have opened what emails. Following this information grants you the opportunity to send a personalized response when a prospect is engaging or revise emails if they are not performing as you’d like.
Email Clicks
Other email triggers, like email clicks, can tell a slightly different story. This action is triggered when a link in your email is clicked. Seeing which links within an email are being clicked on gives further insight into a prospect's interests and what they like to read. Tracking email clicks allows you to provide the prospect with additional relevant information on these specific links and engage with them accordingly.
Tracking email metrics like opens, clicks, and replies paints a clear picture of who your prospect is and what they’re interested in. Knowing these metrics and using them to follow up by email, phone, or personal message may be the extra step to secure a deal.
List Membership Changes
HubSpot lists are used to group people that share common activities and characteristics. You can have lists for things like properties, forms, events, and email actions. This trigger occurs when a prospect is added to or removed from a specific list. With this information, your team can follow up with targeted messages based on their level of engagement.
The lists that you build can also help inform reports and segment workflows. Identifying a prospect based on a specific trait allows you to group similar prospects together for more tailored nurture streams. Knowing who gets added to or removed from your lists will help you personalize a prospect's overall experience.
Property Changes
HubSpot properties for contacts, companies, deals, tickets, and products offer great triggers for when a prospect's information changes in your HubSpot database. This information could be anything from job title changes, companies scaling up or down in size, deal status, ticket stage, and more.
Knowing if your prospect's position has changed could help you send a targeted message congratulating them for a promotion or even let you know that you’re not reaching out to the right person anymore. With all the HubSpot properties available, you can leverage a wide range of information for a more targeted and strategic sales approach.
Lead Score Changes
HubSpot’s lead scoring helps you rank and identify your best-fit leads. With machine learning, they have taken this a step further with predictive lead scoring that automates the process and prioritizes contacts automatically across thousands of data points.
Through a prospect’s level of engagement, you can align your efforts with their activities in real time. Sending follow-up messages based on their engagement and interest is a great way to personalize their experience and build loyalty and trust.
Deals Won or Lost
Knowing when a deal is won or lost in your sales pipeline is valuable information. Sending a survey or questionnaire to prospective leads and asking about their experience helps collect feedback on improvements and what stood out for them.
On the other hand, a deal closing successfully could prompt a workflow to send a follow-up email with the next steps for your engagement. Keeping constant communication open after a deal closes helps your new client feel supported and excited about their new partnership.
Task Completion
Tasks are used in HubSpot as an easy way to keep track of your sales and service efforts. Tasks are essentially reminders ranging from sending emails to calling leads and other types of work. A task getting completed is a good indication that the next action needs to take place.
Tasks can be associated with specific contact records in HubSpot. This lets you always know what has been done and what needs to be done so you can move a prospect to the next step in the sales process.
Time-based Triggers
Time-based triggers can be used as reminders for specific dates or times. This could be a representative sending a follow-up email after a certain number of days or sending a renewal reminder before a contract expires.
In many cases, a prospect will tell a sales rep that now just isn't the right time or they don’t have the budget but would be open to reconnecting in a few months. With time-based triggers, reps will be reminded that a certain period of time has gone by, and it is time to follow up or reach out for another conversation.
Social Media Mentions
Social media is a powerful tool that offers a direct line to your target audience. You can monitor social media engagement, like clicks, mentions, and messages, through the social tab in HubSpot's Marketing Hub.
Side note —your company or brand getting mentioned on social media is a great chance for you to respond and engage with your prospects! These opportunities are additional touchpoints that can help create bonds with your prospects and even increase your social media followers.
Live Chat Interactions
HubSpot chatbots and live chat functionality give website visitors a chance to get their questions answered faster and engage with a live representative. When a prospect initiates a live chat on your website, a designated resource will get a notification that there is a new message.
This is an opportunity to speak directly to those interested in your product or service offerings. They can ask specific questions, and you can drive the conversation further by offering a meeting time or product demonstration.
Content Downloads
Content draws in your audience with information that is valuable to them. After a prospect downloads content from your website, such as an e-book or whitepaper, you can automatically enroll them in a workflow or follow up with additional offers and a personalized message.
The content that prospects download can also indicate their interests and needs. Seeing which pieces of content a prospect spent time reading can shed light on what capabilities and functions they are looking for in a product or service.
Lead Magnets
Long-form content that is locked behind a form is considered a lead magnet. When a prospect opts in to receive an offer, such as a newsletter or webinar invitation, you can provide additional relevant information that helps move them through the sales funnel.
Offering a blog subscription pop-up form or a newsletter sign-up can prompt leads to take action and provide answers to requested form information. When used correctly and not overdone, pop-up forms, visual CTAs, and other calls-to-action can help convert more prospects into leads and leads into sales.
Calendar Events
When a calendar event is scheduled or rescheduled in HubSpot, you can set up a trigger to send reminders and preparation materials to the prospect before the meeting. This improves the likelihood that they will attend the meeting and offers information, so they are well-prepared.
Alongside these benefits, you can also send over a meeting agenda and ask if they have any questions before you meet. These helpful triggers offer opportunities to engage with your meeting attendants and add value to the experience.
A Personalized Sales Approach
HubSpot does a great job of providing trigger events so quick action can be taken. Many of these events work in tandem with each other to provide users with increased visibility into the wants and needs of their contacts and valuable marketing insights on the best next steps to take. Each action taken and each opportunity to personalize and add value to the sales experience helps foster trust and creates a roadmap to the strongest partnership possible.
Trigger events can be used throughout account development, in sales efforts, before a deal is closed, and beyond. With HubSpot’s automation, these triggers can enroll contacts into workflows that run without you having to lift a finger. You can also build reports for consistent monitoring of several different trigger events.
These reports will help you analyze what actions have been taken and what still needs to get accomplished. Sales teams can also easily build personalized “Trigger Report Dashboards” that outline the triggers they want to monitor in a centralized location.
Never underestimate a small action of personalization. Each seemingly small touchpoint adds up to create an individualized and outstanding sales experience. As an Elite Solutions Partner and HubSpot's Top Partner in North America, New Breed understands how to leverage the HubSpot platform to best appeal to your prospects. Request an audit of your HubSpot portal and find the gaps in your inbound marketing strategy.
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