Hi @tylerdeion! I'm going to weigh in here from my personal perspective. Not taking anything away from the great conversation you're already having with @karstenkoehler here. Love that and he's a fantastic, thoughtful human.
Over the years, I've had the fun of sitting in a similar seat as you and feeling that hamster wheel feeling of, "Didn't I just do this yesterday? Or last week? Or... what the hell is time, anyway?!" I get it. I think sometimes, that's just the life of a marketer. What we do can become a bit tedious when we're in the weeds. So there's that confirmation that you're not alone.
Now, for me, when I was in those weeds, here's a bit about what it looked like. I'm going to go back into my past when I ws the day-to-day marketer at a mortgage bank (right now I'm a consultant, so I advise clients rather than building it all myself).
I wanted to be able to help home buyers, especially the first time home buyers who had little experience, understand as much about the process as I could. So anytime they'd download a guide, I had those behavior-based workflows serving them. And I necver really worried about sending too many cross-referenced campaigns because they all spoke to different needs.
For instance, I might have a spring guide (I'm currently dreaming if spring here in my Michigan winter), a credit help guide, a renovation loan guide, and a fun "buying your first home in a zombie apocalypse" guide. If the home buyer got each guide, I would have an automation campaign for each. But they'd have content related to each subject, and I'd try to time them out as randomly as possible.
Now, if we had announcements or other marketing emails to send, whether one-off or in a campaign, I'd be thinking about how it relates to those folks. So I'd think about suppression lists and email limits (I think limits are in Enterprise). We didn't have a lot of those needs, so it sounds like you have more. But here's what I'm thinking in regards to your overall question.
First, I don't see a way to further automate it other than some kind of custom property that would launch a workflow. Here's what I mean. You mention having a "broadcast campaign" you want to launch for a set amount of time. You already have to create the emails and the workflow. At that moment, you have to then choose a segment or a trigger criteria. It seems to me in my head that it's a natural fit to to just choose the right segment. Do I have that right?
But what you could do, is to have a series of campaigns where the trigger is "property: enroll is yes." Then the end of the workflow is "clear property: enroll." Because then if it's already checked, they won't be enrolled in a new automation you create, unless that poperty has been cleared by that time.
Thinking more about you specific questions, here's a breakdown of how I see it.
“Are you automating daily sends for these one-off campaigns?”
Typically no; the automation is in the audience and guardrails, not in day-by-day enrollment. Teams send the campaign once and let segments/frequency logic control who actually gets it.
“Do you just build everything as a trigger/automation?”
Triggered flows for anything lifecycle/behavioral; broadcasts for ad-hoc revenue pushes. Even then, many “random” sends are pointed at dynamically-updated segments (e.g., engaged last 90 days, customers of X product).
“Are you doing a true broadcast with exclusions + frequency caps?”
Yes—that’s the most common pattern. Global behavior:
- Global engaged-only segments.
- Frequency caps per time window.
- Exclusion flags for people in critical journeys.
"Do you have some kind of 'campaign intake' workflow where you drop in content and it handles segmentation/sending automatically?"
Some teams do a light version: a “Promo Config” object or a form where a marketer sets: name, send date, segment, priority → then a workflow applies standard exclusions and flags conflicts. That can be worth it at larger scale or with multiple requesters, but you can get 80% of the benefit just by standardizing segments and caps first.
I hope that helps a bit!
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Hi @tylerdeion,
Happy to help here.
@tylerdeion wrote:
We enroll one split list into a workflow that sends the campaign
Then repeat until the master list is “drained” and everyone has gotten it
That's the part that, I have to be honest, I don't understand. If you already have split lists, let's say 5, why not set up 5 regular sends? There might be some crucial context here about why you need to set up workflows for one-off sends -- if you could share that, that'll help provide clearer guidance.
Are you automating daily sends for these one-off campaigns somehow?
Most of the times, in the HubSpot portals I'm involved in, one-off campaigns don't involve daily sends. Are you splitting your larger base lists into smaller chunks to not email them all at once? Or are you emailing the same contacts daily, repeatedly?
If it's the former, I would challenge this mode of working, purely because of how much work it is. A single send to an entire list will do in almost all of the cases, unless you're warming up a sending domain / working on reputation or if we're talking about a particularly large list that you want to split for testing purposes.
If it's the latter, I think this tactic might harm your email performance and a change in strategy is due.
Do you just build everything as a trigger/automation (even the “random” campaigns)?
No, for multiple email journeys, I use workflows. For one-off sends, just a segment/list and regular email.
Are you doing a true broadcast send and just managing exclusions + frequency caps?
Could you elaborate what you mean by "true broadcast send"? If you're referring to a regular email send, then yes. Also yes regarding exclusions.
I'm not the biggest fan of how HubSpot handles frequency send caps, but that's personal preference -- yes, there should be a mechanism to ensure you're not emailing contacts multiple times a week.
Do you have some kind of “campaign intake” workflow where you drop in content and it handles segmentation/sending automatically?
No. The scenarios that I can think of where this is less work than setting up regular emails sends are quite artifical / unusual.
Basically: what does your workflow look like for non-behavioral campaigns that nobody “asked” for, but you send anyway to drive revenue?
Reading your questions, I feel like there's relevant context to your post. Which services / products are you selling? Who are your target group and recipients? Why "drain" a master list?
Hope this helps
| Karsten Köhler |
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@tylerdeion when you're referring to large lists, which list count would that be, approximately?
| Karsten Köhler |
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Hey @tylerdeion - just following up to see if we can get some more context regarding @karstenkoehler's last reply:
re: "when you're referring to large lists, which list count would that be, approximately?"
Shane, Senior Community Moderator
 | Loop Marketing is a new four-stage approach that combines AI efficiency and human authenticity to drive growth. Learn More |
Hey @tylerdeion - thanks for posting in the Community!
I'd like to tag in some Community experts here to see if they have any best practices for us! @karstenkoehler, @danmoyle, and @Ben_M - any thoughts for @tylerdeion?
Shane, Senior Community Moderator
| Loop Marketing is a new four-stage approach that combines AI efficiency and human authenticity to drive growth. Learn More |
