Use Goals in Contact-Based Workflow - HubSpot

In today’s digital world, marketers need tools to streamline campaigns and automate tasks. HubSpot's workflow goals simplify marketing efforts and track success in real-time. This guide explains workflow goals, why they matter, and how to use them to optimize your marketing automation.

Key Takeaways

• Workflow goals help measure success and automate contact unenrollment when objectives are met.
• Start simple and use SMART goals for clear, actionable results.
• Regularly review and refine workflows to keep them aligned with business goals and market trends.
• Combine multiple criteria for more effective, targeted workflows that boost engagement and conversion.

What are HubSpot Workflow Goals?

HubSpot workflow goals is a new feature in HubSpot. It represents the ultimate aim of a contact-based workflow. When a contact meets the goal criteria—such as submitting a form, becoming a customer, or hitting a specific engagement milestone—they are automatically unenrolled from the workflow.

This ensures they don’t receive unnecessary or repetitive communications. More importantly, it allows you to measure the effectiveness of your workflows and see if your efforts are driving the intended results.

The Role of Goals in Contact-Based Workflows

Workflow goals are essential in marketing automation, offering clear, actionable objectives that guide leads through the complexity of the sales funnel. By aligning your workflow goals with business objectives—like increasing lead conversion—you ensure that contacts move through targeted email campaigns or content offers designed to nudge them toward a specific action, such as scheduling a demo or making a purchase.

In contact-based workflows, these goals help structure the nurturing process by tailoring automation to each contact's behavior. This ensures they receive relevant content and exit the workflow once the goal is met.

Tip: Regularly review and adjust your workflow goals to keep your marketing strategy competitive and aligned with evolving market trends.

Set Up your Workflow Goals in HubSpot

Setting up workflow goals in HubSpot is a straightforward process, but it requires careful thought to ensure that your goals are properly aligned with your objectives.

In order to do this, carefully :

1. Define Clear Objectives: Identify what you want to achieve with the workflow—be it increasing lead engagement, driving more conversions, or boosting sales.
2. Select Goal Criteria: Choose a goal criteria that clearly signal a contact’s progress.
3. Implement and Monitor: Once the goals are in place, regularly monitor performance using HubSpot’s analytics tools to make adjustments when necessary.

Tip : I recommend using the SMART framework when setting workflow goals. It keeps you focused and ensures that your goals are realistic and actionable. I’ve seen this approach lead to better results because it encourages consistent monitoring and adjustments.

How to Define your Workflow Goal Criteria?

When setting up workflow goals, it’s crucial to define clear and measurable criteria that signal success.

Common workflow goal criteria include:

• Lifecycle Stage Changes
• Email Engagement
• Form Submissions
• CTA Interaction
• Newsletter Subscription

Tip : When I first started setting up workflow goals, I found it helpful to begin with small and clear goals. Once you get comfortable, you can move on to more complex goals, such as lifecycle stage transitions or multi-step conversions.

Combine Multiple Criteria

One trick I’ve found useful is combining multiple criteria to create more effective workflows.

For instance, if a contact opens three emails, visits the pricing page, and then schedules a meeting, that’s a powerful indicator they’re ready to move further down the funnel. HubSpot allows you to set these kinds of nuanced goals, making your workflows highly targeted and effective.

How to Set-Up your Workflow Goals?

• In your HubSpot account, go to Automations > Workflows.

• Click on the name of your contact-based workflow.
• In the top left, click Edit > Edit goal.

• In the left panel, select the Contacts meet a goal checkbox.
• Define your goal criteria based on actions such as email opens, clicks, or form submissions.

• After setting the criteria, click Save.

Monitoring and Optimizing Workflow Performance

Once your workflow goals are set, tracking their performance is essential. HubSpot’s goal conversion rate metric lets you monitor how many contacts are meeting your workflow goals. This conversion rate reflects the percentage of contacts that have successfully completed your desired action.

Common Challenges with HubSpot Workflow Goals

While HubSpot workflow goals can enhance marketing automation, they do come with challenges. Let’s explore how to tackle common issues and optimize workflow performance.

Managing Multiple Workflow Goals

Setting too many goals in a single workflow can overwhelm the system and reduce efficiency. Focus on a few key goals that align with your marketing objectives and regularly review your workflows to keep them streamlined.

Conflicting goal criteria can also cause inefficiencies, such as contacts unenrolling prematurely. In the picture below you can see a good example of conflicting goals.

Regularly auditing your workflows to clear up contradictory logic and keeping criteria simple ensures a smooth customer journey.

Balancing Multiple Criteria

Managing multiple goals within a workflow can be challenging but crucial for effective targeting.

Here are some tips:

• When updating workflow criteria, be cautious—adding or changing filters won’t reset progress, but clearing all criteria will reset the goal conversion rate, so handle updates carefully to avoid data loss.

• Use HubSpot’s AND/OR logic allows for precise targeting, ensuring workflows trigger based on specific actions, like a form submission and demo request happening together.

By simplifying your criteria and using logical filters, you can keep workflows efficient and aligned with your sales funnel.

Avoiding Confusion between Suppression Lists and Workflow Goals

It’s important to differentiate between suppression lists and workflow goals, as both serve unique functions. While both can unenroll contacts from workflows, their roles in your strategy differ.

Workflow Goals measure success by tracking how many contacts complete a desired action—such as opening an email, submitting a form, or reaching a new lifecycle stage. These are essential for nurturing contacts and should be used when sending marketing emails to track conversion success.

In contrast, suppression lists are used to exclude certain contacts from workflow enrollment, such as competitors or existing customers who don’t need to receive further promotional emails. Suppression lists are especially helpful for workflows without marketing email triggers, ensuring that only relevant contacts are enrolled.

Real-Life Example

A great example of how HubSpot workflow goals can fuel business success is Handled, a home services company that scaled from a single location to 121 locations in 18 months with the help of HubSpot workflows.

Handled used HubSpot to automate its entire customer journey—from lead generation to sales and customer support. This automation helped them manage high volumes of leads efficiently and provided a seamless experience for both their internal teams and customers.

Key Successes for Handled:

• Handled used workflows to automatically move leads through their sales funnel, eliminating manual tasks and allowing the sales team to focus on high-priority prospects.
• HubSpot's automation seamlessly integrated with third-party services, enriching the CRM with relevant data and ensuring personalized customer experiences.
• Centralizing customer data in one place enabled teams to collaborate more effectively, ensuring timely and consistent interactions with clients.

This case study highlights how businesses can use HubSpot workflow goals to scale operations, improve lead management, and enhance customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

HubSpot workflows are essential for any marketer looking to optimize automation and enhance marketing performance. With workflow goals, you gain the ability to fine-tune your strategy, ensuring your contacts receive relevant and timely content that moves them through your sales funnel.