Summary
A marketing automation workflow is a sequence of automated actions that starts when a contact does something, such as signing up, abandoning a cart or going quiet. Every workflow has four parts: a trigger, conditions, actions and an exit. The most common examples are welcome series, abandoned cart reminders, post-purchase reviews and win-back sequences.
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Most marketing teams don't need fifty automations. They need the five or six that fire at the moments customers actually care about, built well and left running. Marketing workflow automation takes repetitive tasks, manual processes and routine marketing tasks off your desk, so your marketing efforts go to strategy and relevant content instead of manual effort. This article walks through ten marketing automation workflow examples with the trigger, condition, action and exit for each, so you can copy the logic into your own platform. For the basics, start with our marketing automation guide.
What is a marketing automation workflow?
A marketing automation workflow is a sequence of automated actions that starts when a contact does something, such as signing up, abandoning a cart or going quiet, and follows rules you set in advance. Every workflow has four parts: a trigger that starts it, such as a form submission, conditions that check customer data and customer behavior, actions that send automated messages or update data, and an exit that ends it. Unlike one-off marketing campaigns, automated workflows run across the whole customer lifecycle and the customer journey.
Write the exit before the first email. A workflow without a clear exit keeps sending after the customer has already done what you wanted.
10 common marketing automation workflows (automation examples)
1. Welcome series
The first emails to new subscribers set expectations, often as one of the drip campaigns most businesses start with. Deliver what the signup promised, introduce the brand and give one clear next step. See the e-commerce welcome sequence use case.
2. Abandoned cart
Remind shoppers of what they left, within hours, with a short sequence across the channels they opted in to. Our article on shopping cart abandonment covers the sequence in detail.
3. Browse abandonment
A visitor viewed the same product three times without adding it to the cart. A short email with that product and two alternatives helps them decide. See the product view reactivation use case.
4. Post-purchase review
Wait until the product has been used, then ask for a review with a direct link. See the post-purchase review use case.
5. Replenishment
For consumables, time a reminder from the last purchase and the usual usage cycle. See the replenishment use case.
6. Win-back
Customers who used to buy and stopped get re-engagement campaigns that escalate over 30, 60 and 90 days, across multiple channels: email, web push notifications and SMS. Win-back protects customer retention and increases customer lifetime value. See the multi-channel win-back use case.
7. Birthday
A personal message with a code on the customer's birthday, for contacts who opted in to marketing messages. See the birthday campaign use case.
8. Price drop
When a product a customer bought or viewed gets cheaper, an alert based on purchase history and user behavior can bring them back and lift average order value. See the price drop use case.
9. Lead reactivation
Lead nurturing doesn't stop at the first sequence: leads who haven't engaged in 90 days get a reactivation email; those who don't respond leave your regular sends, which protects deliverability. See the lead reactivation use case.
10. Sales follow-up
A high-value quote or demo request creates a deal and handles assigning tasks to a rep automatically, so the sales team gives the lead a fast human answer. Combined with lead scoring, these internal workflows keep the sales funnel moving. More in our article on sales workflow automation.
How to build marketing automation workflows: choosing your first ones
Start with the workflow closest to revenue and with enough volume to measure: abandoned cart for an online store, sales follow-up for a B2B company, welcome series for a business growing its list. Add one workflow at a time, and only once the previous one runs cleanly. Effective marketing automation workflows start simple; complex workflows and custom workflows come later, once a single workflow proves itself.
Workflow best practices
- One goal per workflow. A workflow that tries to welcome, upsell and collect a review at once does none of them well.
- Use behavior first. Trigger emails on what customers do; dates come second.
- Check consent before each channel. Email consent doesn't cover SMS or web push.
- Cap frequency across workflows. A customer can be in several workflows at once; set a limit on how many messages they receive in a week.
- Measure each workflow on its own. Track conversion and revenue per workflow with your analytics tools, against a control group where possible.
- Break down data silos. Workflows are only as relevant as the data behind them: connect your store, CRM and email marketing data before you build.
Workflow automation software: building workflows in Positive User
Marketing automation software, or workflow automation software, is the automation solution that runs these workflows for you. In Positive User, you build automated workflows in the Journey Builder: triggers, conditions and actions on one visual canvas, with A/B splits to compare versions of a step. Actions send email, SMS through your own gateway, WhatsApp, web push or mobile push, show a pop-up, update contact data or create a deal. Every channel reads one contact record and one set of consents, and the use case library offers ready-made workflows like the ones above to engage customers and improve customer engagement and customer satisfaction.
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FAQ
Start with one workflow this week
Pick the workflow closest to revenue, write its trigger, condition, action and exit on one page, and launch it. Measure it for a month before you build the next one.
Start from a ready-made workflow
