HubSpot sequence best practices

HubSpot sequence best practices

Quick Pulse Check

Bad sequences feel like automated spam; great ones feel like a helpful colleague pinging you with perfect timing.

Historical data (with what might be a playbook that doesn't work anymore) shows the winning formula is 8–12 multichannel touches in 14–21 days, segmented with precision, throttled for deliverability, and relentlessly A/B-tested. And as you know, general statistics can be misleading. The best approach is to rely on your data.

Use the playbook below (the individualized approach) to have 12+ % reply rates.

1. Start With Strategy, Not the Send Button

  • One outcome per sequence. “Book demo,” “revive closed-lost,” or “upsell pilot”—never all three at once.
  • Segment like a scientist. Lean lists beat bloated ones; HubSpot flags bounce-rate danger at just 3 %.
  • Map touches to the buyer’s journey. Early-stage? Teach. Late-stage? De-risk.

2. Individualization > Personalization

Stop sending outreach you’d delete yourself.

  • Pull context from everywhere—CRM properties, deal notes, LinkedIn posts, even funding news—before you write a single word. That’s individualization.
  • Token-only “Hi {first name}” is lazy personalization; modern buyers smell it a mile away and tune out.
  • Keep data hygiene tight. Incomplete merge fields kill credibility; enrich or default.
  • Ditch the templates, let every email be unique for the recipient.

3. Engineer a Cadence That Feels Human

  • 8–12 total touches (reply curves flatten after the 10th touch.)
  • 1–2 business days between touches (Gives them space while keeping momentum). Pro tip I like to follow - double the time between each touchpoint (i.e. 1, 2, 4, 8 days)
  • Tuesday 9 a.m.–noon local (highest open block in HubSpot’s long-run data)
  • Multi-channel approach (email + LinkedIn + phone) (lifts responses 27 %)

4. Craft Copy That Converts

Subject & Preview

  • Cap at 50 chars; drop gimmicks.
  • Front-load value in the first 20 words—mobile preview real estate is tiny.

Add “micro-offers”

  • Diagnostic questions, 60-second teardown videos, or a fresh data point outperform “just checking in.”
  • Video thumbnails boost click-through up to 300 %.

Multichannel Touch Scripts

  • LinkedIn connection request: reference a mutual interest, not your product.
  • Voicemail: reference the email you sent, do not repeat it. Gong data shows multi-threading insures deals and expands buying committees.

5. Safeguard Deliverability & Compliance

  • Keep hard-bounce < 3 % and spam complaints < 0.1 %. HubSpot will throttle you otherwise.
  • Warm new domains on a staggered ramp; move to a dedicated IP once you pass ~50 k emails/month.
  • GDPR: log lawful basis and respect opt-out workflows; HubSpot makes this a single property update.

6. Measure, Test, Iterate

  • Metric Healthy Range Open Rate 27–40 % (B2B)
  • Reply Rate 7–13 % baseline; aim for 12+%
  • Meeting Rate 3–5 % of enrolled contacts
  • A/B everything. If you want to do it with templates, HubSpot supports up to 6 variants per email inside a sequence editor. If you go beyond templates, test and iterate on the prompt and data sources.
  • Dashboard it. Track reply sentiment, opt-outs, and source pipeline to know which sequences deserve more volume.

7. Where Sequences Shine: 14 Proven Plays

Top-of-Funnel

  1. Cold outbound to new ICPs
  2. Content-nurture drips post-ebook
  3. Immediate form-fill follow-ups
  4. Webinar or conference invites

Mid-Funnel

  1. Meeting no-show reschedules
  2. Post-demo follow-ups
  3. Deal-stuck nudges
  4. Champion change-management support

Re-Engagement & Expansion

  1. Revive long-dormant marketing contacts
  2. Re-surface closed-lost deals
  3. Onboard new stakeholders in active deals
  4. Post-event (webinar or conference) momentum
  5. Renewal or upsell kick-offs
  6. “Breakup” sequences that leave the door open

Each play adapts cadence, copy length, and CTA to buyer intent—yet all follow the individualization principles above.

8. Advanced Moves

  • Dynamic branching: auto-unenroll on reply; auto-reroute non-openers to re-warm tracks after 30 days.
  • AI-driven enrichment: fill missing LinkedIn URLs, scan fresh funding news, and feed those facts straight into your sequence logic.
  • Self-optimizing send windows: minor time-zone tweaks can lift engagement another few points (look at your dashboards weekly).

9. Pitfalls to Nuke

  1. One-size-fits-all cadences masquerading as personalization.
  2. Over-automation with zero relevance looks spammy and robotic. It will always underperform mixed human + automated flows.
  3. Ignoring mobile formatting; >40 % of opens are on phones—keep paragraphs <3 lines.

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