How to Create a Sequence in HubSpot Step-By-Step – ProperExpression

B2B sales can be overwhelming, with 100 different tasks every day – and all of them time-sensitive. Most teams lack the resources to stay on top of that workload and seize every chance to engage leads, which leads to missed opportunities and lost revenue. 

HubSpot Sequences can solve that problem and empower your team to scale hyper-relevant and impactful sales outreach. This article explains exactly how that works and what you must do to realize the tool’s full potential.  

How to Create a Sequence in HubSpot

What is a HubSpot Sequence? 

A HubSpot sequence is a powerful sales automation tool that allows you to send a series of personalized, timed emails to prospects while automatically creating follow-up tasks—streamlining your outreach and keeping leads engaged. Designed primarily for sales teams, sequences help nurture relationships by ensuring consistent communication without manual follow-up, making it easier to convert leads into customers. Each step in a sequence can be tailored to the recipient, increasing the chances of response and moving prospects through the sales funnel. Unlike marketing workflows, which target larger audiences, HubSpot sequences are built for 1:1 sales engagement, making them ideal for prospecting, follow-up, and re-engagement campaigns.

Sequences produce multiple clear benefits: 

• Save Time: Repetitive manual tasks are eliminated, saving teams hours every week. No need to rewrite the same follow-up message 1,000 times or draft unique emails after every demo request. 
• Improve Workflows: Individuals are relieved of the burden of managing numerous sub-tasks across multiple prospects and clients. They receive reminders for important tasks and automatically send collateral or nurture emails.  
• Eliminate Gaps: Salespeople are able to engage with far more buyers simultaneously before running out of bandwidth. That means fewer leads are discarded or lost due to slow or unreliable responsiveness.  

The net result? Your sales efforts are more efficient, effective, and scalable – leading to a measurable increase in both revenue and profit. 

A Complete Guide to Building Powerful HubSpot Sequences 

Now we’ve established the “why” behind Sequences, let’s explore exactly how your team can leverage the tool. 

Building a sequence in HubSpot takes just six steps: 

• Navigate to Sequences: In HubSpot, go to Automation > Sequences. This is where you will manage and create new sequences. 

• Click 'Create Sequence': Choose whether you want to start from scratch or use a template. Templates provide a starting point based on common use cases. 

• Add Emails and Tasks: Build a sequence of automated emails, follow-up reminders, and sales tasks that align with your outreach strategy. Ensure that each email is concise, value-driven, and encourages engagement.  

• Personalize Content: Use personalization tokens to customize messages for each recipient, ensuring a tailored experience that resonates with the prospect. Consider adding dynamic fields to make emails feel more human. 

• Set Time Delays: Define the timing between each email and task to optimize engagement and prevent overwhelming the recipient. Avoid sending too many emails in quick succession. 
  

• Review and Test: Ensure your sequence flows logically and test it before launching to guarantee effectiveness. Use a test contact or preview mode to see how emails will appear to recipients.  

Settings 

Configuring the right settings is essential for ensuring that sequences target the correct audience and function as intended: 

• Enrollment Criteria: Select contacts based on specific triggers like form submissions, email opens, or CRM actions. Define whether contacts will enter sequences manually or automatically. 

• Exit Criteria: Define when a contact should be removed from the sequence (e.g., they reply or book a meeting), preventing unnecessary emails and ensuring smooth transitions between engagement points. 

• Sending Schedule: Set the optimal timing for email sends, ensuring they align with your prospect’s working hours and increasing the likelihood of engagement. Avoid scheduling emails on weekends or outside business hours. 

Automation 

Automation ensures that sequences run efficiently with minimal manual intervention, enabling sales teams to focus on relationship-building and conversions. Below are key automation strategies: 

• CRM Integration: Connect with HubSpot CRM to automatically enroll contacts based on behaviors, keeping your outreach efforts seamless and efficient. This eliminates manual data entry and ensures leads enter the right sequences at the right time. 

• Task Automation: Assign follow-up tasks to sales reps to ensure manual outreach complements automated emails, enhancing the personal touch in your approach. For example, a task can remind a rep to call a lead who hasn’t engaged after three emails. 

• A/B Testing: Utilize A/B testing to refine messaging, subject lines, and send times, optimizing response rates and overall effectiveness. Testing different email formats can reveal what works best for your target audience. 

Four Ways to Use HubSpot Sequences 

While Sequences can be leveraged across a wide range of tasks and use cases, our experience finds there are four ways most B2B sales teams derive most of their value from this tool: 

1. Cold Outreach 

Generate more leads faster with cold email campaigns that don’t require endless manual effort. Import contacts from a database like Apollo or ZoomInfo and develop a series of cold emails with personalized elements. Cold outreach is almost always a numbers game, and Sequences allows you to win it without wasting hours of labor. 

2. Demo Follow-Up 

Maintain engagement and build momentum with timely follow-up after conversions. Create a sequence of emails relevant to each touchpoint (e.g., demo request, demo follow-up, proposal email, etc.) that can be triggered immediately after the engagement. You can also create reminders to follow or connect with prospects on LinkedIn to ensure your request is timely and relevant. 

3. MQL Outreach

Accelerate the buyer journey and encourage more qualified and engaged prospects to book a demo request with personalized messages at scale. Program Sequences to remind individual sellers to email or call a prospect with questions or useful content. 

4. Reschedule Meetings 

Save manual effort and reschedule meetings faster by automating rescheduled requests to deliver immediately after a prospect misses their demo slot.  

Improve Your Sales Performance with HubSpot Experts 

ProperExpression is a full-service B2B marketing agency and HubSpot Platinum Partner. After helping more than 50 sales teams onboard and integrate Sales Hub into their workflows, we know exactly how to accelerate the process and ensure your team makes the most of the platform. 

Want a free 15-minute call where our team can quickly identify your best path to increased HubSpot ROI?