Make specific people "marketing contacts" before sending automated emails

Using HubSpot workflows to send automated email sequences based on account activity is a great way to keep them engaged, share helpful content, and introduce the next step in their journey.

But…

What happens when you try to email a HubSpot contact who isn’t a “Marketing Contact”?

The automated email fails to send.

And what if your data for email triggers lives on a deal record, not a contact?

• Updating “Marketing Contact” status only works in contact workflows
• Making every contact a “Marketing Contact” isn’t exactly a good solution for compliance or your budget

To get around this issue, we can use a workflow and an active list to add only the contacts we need (and have permission) to email as marketing contacts.

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Here’s how it works:

1. Create an “Active List" of contacts filtered by our email enrollment criteria

(eg. For our onboarding engagement email, we filter to contacts with an associated deal where “Arrows Plan URL” is known.)

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2. Set up a workflow

1. Add contacts to a workflow using the “List Membership” trigger when they are a member of the active list we just created
2. Use an IF/THEN branch to check if they are already a “Marketing Contact”
3. IF no use the “Set Marketing Contact Status” action to update that property

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3. Send our email sequence:

• Trigger a contact workflow using the same criteria as the filters in our active list PLUS “Marketing Contact Status” is any of “Marketing Contact”
• Add the emails you want to send with any appropriate delays between them

Using a combination of workflows and active lists is a great way to execute actions that can only be completed in workflows for one type of object.

Because, unlike workflows, lists give you the ability to reach into associated objects to filter on their properties.

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