Automation is the backbone of efficient marketing, but what happens when key tools are out of reach? Recently, I faced this challenge while working on an automation process for a client. The goal? To automate sequence enrollment and unenrollment in HubSpot—without the luxury of Sales or Service Hub Enterprise.
For users with Enterprise hubs, workflows make automating sequences a breeze. You can easily trigger actions based on property updates, outcomes, or specific contact behaviors. However, without these advanced features, your options narrow significantly, leaving you reliant on triggers like form submissions or page views.
My client, who hosts monthly webinars with around 100 registrants per event, needed a streamlined way to enroll attendees in sequences based on their participation. Manually handling this process every month wasn’t sustainable—especially as we anticipated significant growth in registration numbers. I saw an opportunity to develop a creative solution, allowing my client to focus on engaging warm leads instead of spending hours on repetitive tasks.
The Challenge: Automating Sequences Without Enterprise Tools
Working within the limitations of Sales Hub Professional meant I only had two options for triggering sequence enrollment or unenrollment:
- A contact submitting a form.
- A contact viewing a page.
Where Do You Start When Enterprise Isn’t an Option?
At first glance, using page views seemed like a possible solution. But for HubSpot to track a page view, the contact has to already exist in the system. Since we were using Social Ads and Search Ads to drive webinar registrations, many of the registrants wouldn’t yet be in the client’s HubSpot database. Scratch that option.
This left form submissions. But that raised new questions:
- If someone registers for the webinar by submitting a form, how could I get them to submit another form after they attended?
- And for those who didn’t attend, how would I track that when they’re unlikely to submit a form to say, “Hey, I missed it”?
- How could I accurately track attendance at all?
- And most importantly, what other tools could help bridge these gaps?
Taking it One Step at a Time
The first problem I tackled was tracking attendance. Since I had already integrated HubSpot with Zoom using the Zoom Marketplace App, I knew that webinar registration and attendance data were being tracked in two places: the Activity Feed and HubSpot’s Marketing Events.
While this was a good starting point, I needed more granular data—information that was easily accessible from an individual contact’s record and could be used to filter contacts for follow-up actions. To achieve this, I created two custom contact properties:
- 2024 Registration by Month
- 2024 Attendance by Month
These properties allowed me to track both registration and attendance for each webinar. To prepare for the following year, I cloned the properties and renamed them for 2025. I then built workflows to automatically update these properties whenever a contact registered for or attended a webinar.
By organizing the data this way, I created a system that gave me detailed insights into individual contact behavior while laying the groundwork for automation.
Connecting the Dots
By this point, I had two key pieces in place:
- I could trigger sequence enrollment based on a form submission.
- I was accurately tracking webinar attendance and registration through custom properties.
The next step was figuring out how to connect these two systems to automate the process.
Enter Zapier
Zapier, often referred to as a “middleman app,” enables thousands of different tools and applications to communicate seamlessly. In most cases, it’s used to bridge two different apps—like HubSpot and Zoom. But in this case, I needed Zapier to help HubSpot “talk to itself.”
Here’s the challenge: HubSpot doesn’t natively allow you to trigger one action based on another internal change in the way I needed. This is where Zapier came into play.
I integrated Zapier with HubSpot and created a Zap that watches for a specific property change on the day of the webinar. When it detects that the property has been updated, Zapier performs two key actions:
- It submits a “dummy” unenrollment form on behalf of the contact to remove them from any existing sequences.
- It submits a second “dummy” enrollment form to enroll the contact in the correct sequence based on their attendance status.
By leveraging Zapier, I created a bridge between the custom properties and HubSpot’s sequence enrollment, solving a problem that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible without Enterprise tools.
The Solution
With all the pieces in place, it was time to connect everything into a seamless system. Here’s how the final solution came together:
- Zap for Attended Sequence Enrollment.
- Zap for Did Not Attend Sequence Enrollment.
- Registration Workflow to Set Monthly Registration Property.
- Attendance Workflow to set did/did not attend.
- Attended Sequence for follow-ups with attendees.
- Did Not Attend Sequence for re-engaging no-shows.
Step 1: Setup Registration Tracking Workflow
Registration starts with a HubSpot form integrated with Zoom. When someone registers, the form submission triggers a workflow that updates the Registration by Month property with the appropriate month. This ensures every registrant’s data is logged accurately and ready for further automation.
Step 2: Build the Post-Event Workflow
After the webinar concludes, Zoom passes attendance data to HubSpot via Marketing Events and Activity Timelines. I used this data to build a workflow that updates custom contact properties and branches based on attendance.
For each registrant:
- If they attended, the workflow sets the Attended Checkbox Property to “Yes.”
- If they didn’t attend, the workflow sets the No Show Checkbox Property to “Yes.”
These checkbox properties are the triggers for my Zaps, ensuring the correct sequence is applied to each contact.
Step 3: Setup the Zaps
Zapier handles the heavy lifting here, automating sequence enrollment based on attendance status. I created two Zaps: one for attendees and one for no-shows. Each Zap follows a similar process:
- Detect the Trigger: Zapier watches for a change in the Attended or No Show checkbox properties.
- Filter by Webinar Date: The Zap continues only if the property change occurred on the webinar date.
- Unenroll from Existing Sequences: The Zap submits a dummy unenrollment form for the contact, ensuring they are removed from any current sequences.
- Delay for 1 Minute: This allows HubSpot time to process the unenrollment.
- Enroll in the Correct Sequence: The Zap submits a dummy enrollment form, triggering the appropriate sequence (Attended or Did Not Attend).
Streamlined and Scalable
With this system in place, the only manual update needed is the monthly date filter in Zapier. Everything else happens automatically. My client now has a reliable, repeatable process that saves them hours every month—time they can spend engaging warm leads and growing their audience.