Kixie Call and SMS Automations in HubSpot Workflows

Call and SMS Automations Best Practices

Call Automations are a great way to leverage HubSpot workflows to get your reps on the phone with the hottest leads at the best times and to ensure speed-to-lead on all your new prospects. 

They work best as a supplement to your standard outreach process as opposed to being your outreach process, and they also work best when contacts are being trickled into them via HubSpot workflow, as opposed to many contacts being bulk-enrolled all at once (not recommended).

4 Options for Kixie Automations in a HubSpot Workflow

Send a Text

Sends a text message through the HubSpot Contact Owner's Kixie number, so long as the HubSpot contact owner's email matches the Kixie agent's email.

• Use case/benefits:
  • Save time by automatically sending a text through the contact owner
  • Easy to setup in a HubSpot workflow
  • Asynchronous communication - you don't have to be present to send the text, and they can reply to it when they see it
  • You can limit the hours the text gets sent by changing the hours of operation in HubSpot workflow settings
• Things to note:
  • Not recommended for bulk-enrollment
  • See here for SMS best practices and avoid your number getting blocked

Make a Call

Sends a call through the HubSpot Contact Owner's Kixie number, so long as their emails match in Kixie and HubSpot

• Use case/benefits:
  • • Save time by automatically sending a call through the contact owner
  • Easy to setup in a HubSpot workflow
  • You can limit the hours the call gets sent by changing the hours of operation in HubSpot workflow settings
• Things to note:
  • Not recommended for bulk-enrollment
  • The contact owner rep may not be available in Kixie at that moment the call is triggered, in which case nothing happens 
    • To account for this possibility, some admins create a call task after the "Make a Call" step in the HubSpot workflow, to remind the rep to reach out if they don't end up taking the call

Send Contact to a Queue

Sends a call to a group of reps, connects a call through one of them

• Use case/benefits 
  
  • Ideal for use cases where there is no contact owner previously assigned, and you just want to achieve speed-to-lead through the first rep available, with the option to not make them the contact owner when they pick up.
    • If desired, the rep who takes the call can be automatically updated as the contact owner in HubSpot going forward
  • Hours of operation can be handled within HubSpot workflow settings
  • Since calls are routed through a Queue, Kixie will wait until a rep inside of the Queue becomes available, rather than nothing happening if nobody is available
• Things to note:
  • Not recommended for bulk-enrollment 
  • You must create a Team and a Queue
  • Reps may unsubscribe from the Queue associated w/ the Cadence in their PowerCall settings whenever they choose
  • If you want your reps to get a prompt before an auto-call fires out, then make sure to toggle off "auto-answer callbacks" in the Queue settings
  • You must be careful if you use Send Call to Queue many times within the same workflow; depending on how many contacts are entering into the workflow, how close together the "Send Call to Queue" actions are, and how many reps are generally available to handle the calls, you may end up triggering the next outbound call to Queue action before the first one has ever completed its call, or calling very close together.

Send Contact to a Cadence

Executes a series of calls (and texts as well)

• Use case/benefits
  • You can route a series of calls/texts through:
    • The existing contact owner
    • A random available rep (Auto-Assign from Queue), who then becomes the HubSpot contact owner
    • The first rep who accepts that first call (auto-assign on answer), who then becomes the HubSpot contact owner
      • Better for speed-to-lead
• Important things to note:
  • Not recommended for bulk-enrollment 
  • You must create a Team, Queue and Cadence in Kixie
  • After the first call, the whole series of calls/texts will continue through the person who answered the first call scheduled in the Cadence i.e. the "first calls" are prioritized over subsequent calls in the series, ensuring speed-to-lead on the first call 
  • SMS messages within the Cadence are generic and cannot reference HubSpot contact property tokens like first name, etc.
  • Reps may unsubscribe from the Queue associated w/ the Cadence in their PowerCall settings whenever they choose
  • If you want your reps to get a prompt before an auto-call fires out, then make sure to toggle off "auto-answer callbacks" in the Queue settings
  • Kixie Dispositions can be used to unenroll from the Cadence, or you can you use the "Remove from Cadence" action in a HubSpot Workflow.
    • While you can use the Disposition of "Connected" in the Cadence settings itself- you should NOT use call outcome of "Connected" as the trigger of a HubSpot Workflow to remove a contact from a Cadence. 
    • Using a HubSpot Workflow Goal will not remove someone from the Cadence
  • Hours of operation can and should be handled within the Cadence (recommended)

Example Use Case

Your reps have a pipeline or list of contacts/deals they're working in different statuses or stages, and perhaps you're putting those contacts through HubSpot sequences and calling out of the HubSpot Task Queue. This constitutes their normal outreach process.

To supplement this outreach and put them in touch with the hottest leads at the best times, you can set up Cadences that trigger calls/texts to go out when leads meet certain conditions, such as:

• New Form Submission Trigger: If you want to get a rep connected to the contact ASAP, and if they don't pick up, then send another call through that same rep again in 15 minutes, and then in one hour. That rep becomes the contact owner in HubSpot.
• New Form Submission Trigger, then a marketing email is sent to the contact as the first action step of the workflow, then set a delay for the auto call or text until they click a link within that same email: If after these triggers, you want to get a rep connected with them ASAP, and if they don't pick up, send a text from the same rep, then send another call through that same rep again in 15 minutes, and then in one hour.