A Workflow is GoBuild's marketing/CRM automation: you describe when it should start
(a trigger) and what it should do (a series of actions), and the system runs every
matching Client through it hands-free — sending emails and texts, waiting between them,
tagging people, and creating follow-up tasks for you.
Workflows live in the Marketing hub and are the modern replacement for the old linear
Drip sequences (see Step 8). Everything
below happens in the visual builder — no code, just a stack of steps.
Who can do this: office and PM staff. Field-role users don't get the Marketing hub.
For the under-the-hood reference, see Marketing & nurture.
For the wider hub tour, see Marketing CC.
Think of a Workflow as a flowchart a contact walks down:
Trigger → (optional conditions) → actions, one after another → End.
- Trigger — the event that enrolls a Client into the Workflow (e.g. a new Lead comes
in, or a Lead's stage changes). There is exactly one trigger, at the top.
- Actions — the things that happen, in order: send an email, send a text, wait a few
days, add a tag, set a field, create a task.
- End — the contact reaches the bottom and exits.
Each contact is tracked individually as they move down the steps, so ten people enrolled on
different days are each at their own point in the flow.
¶ Step 1 — Open the builder and create a Workflow
- Go to the Marketing hub and open Workflows (also labelled Automations).
- You'll see a list of existing Workflows with their status (Draft / Live / Off) and a
count of who's currently running through each one. New GoBuild orgs ship with a few
ready-made examples — New-lead welcome, Proposal follow-up, Cold-lead
re-engagement — that you can open and study or copy.
- Click New and give it a clear name (e.g. "New-lead welcome" or "Estimate nudge").
It's created as a Draft so nothing runs while you build.
- The builder opens as a vertical timeline: a trigger card at the top, a ＋ Add a
step button, and an End card at the bottom.
Shortcut — let AI draft it. Use ✨ Describe a sequence and type what you want in
plain English ("welcome new leads with two emails over a week, then remind me to call").
GoBuild drafts the steps and drops you straight into the builder to refine them.
At the top of the builder, under When this happens, pick one:
- I enroll a segment manually — nothing auto-starts; you push people in yourself
(Step 6). Best for one-off blasts like a re-engagement push.
- A new lead is created — fires the moment a Lead lands from any source: web form,
booking page, website chat, photo estimator, or a hand-typed Lead.
- A lead's stage changes — fires when a Lead moves into a stage you pick (New,
Contacted, Estimating, Won, Lost). Great for "when it hits Estimating, start nudging
about the proposal."
- A contact joins a segment — pick a saved audience; members are enrolled when you turn
the Workflow Live.
Pick the trigger that matches the moment you want the automation to kick in. You can change
it later.
Click ＋ Add a step (or the ＋ between two steps to insert one in the middle), then
choose a node type. Add as many as you like; drag isn't required — steps run top to bottom
in the order they're listed.
The node types available in the builder are:
| Node |
What it does |
You set |
| ✉️ Send email |
Sends a tracked marketing email (opens, clicks, and an unsubscribe link are handled for you) |
An email template to send (edit its copy in Email Templates), optional subject override |
| 💬 Send text (SMS) |
Texts the Client from your business number |
The message body |
| ⏱ Wait (delay) |
Pauses the contact before the next step |
Number of days to wait |
| ✅ Create task |
Puts a follow-up on your list (a to-do, call, email, or meeting) |
Title, kind, and how many days out it's due |
| 🏷 Add tag |
Labels the Client (and their Lead) so you can segment or filter on it later |
The tag text |
| ✏️ Set field |
Updates the Lead's confidence (hot/warm/cold) or stage |
Which field, and the value |
A typical "welcome new leads" flow looks like:
Send email (welcome) → Wait 2 days → Send email (recent work) → Wait 3 days → Create task ("Call to check in").
Notes on two steps:
- Send email pulls from your saved email templates — build and style the copy over
in Email Templates, then just pick it here. Use the inline preview to confirm you grabbed
the right one.
- Create task and Set field only do something when the contact has a Lead
attached. For a trigger like new lead is created or stage changes that's automatic; for
a pure segment blast of people with no Lead, those steps quietly no-op.
The engine can branch a contact down a yes / no path based on a field (e.g. "if
confidence is hot, send this; otherwise send that"). However, the timeline builder does
not yet expose a branch/condition step — you can only build a straight-line sequence of
the actions in Step 3.
If you need different treatment for different contacts today, do it with separate
Workflows plus segments or stage triggers instead of one branching flow — for example, one
Workflow triggered on stage → Estimating and another on stage → Won. (Branch nodes on the
canvas are on the roadmap; see the open questions your admin is tracking.)
¶ Step 5 — Set the run options and save
Above or beside the timeline you'll find two toggles worth understanding:
- Stop on reply (on by default) — the moment a contact replies (inbound email or text)
or books a meeting, GoBuild pulls them out of the Workflow so you never keep drip-emailing
someone who already answered. Leave this on for anything that sends messages.
- Caveat: reply-detection depends on inbound email/text routing being wired up for your
org. If it isn't, the exit won't trigger on email replies — check with your admin (see
Marketing & nurture).
- Re-enroll (off by default) — normally a contact runs through a Workflow only once.
Turn this on if the same person should be able to go through again on a later trigger.
Click Save. While the status is Draft, nothing sends — you can save as often as you
like.
- Preview the emails. Each email step has a preview and a Send test button — send
yourself the actual email so you can check the copy, links, and branding land right.
- Read every step top to bottom. Confirm the wait times are days (not hours), the tags
are spelled how you segment on them, and the final step is what you expect.
- Sanity-check the trigger. Make sure it's the event you actually want — a new lead is
created trigger will catch every incoming Lead once the Workflow is Live.
There's no full "dry run" that walks a fake contact through the whole flow, so the email
test + a careful read-through is your pre-flight check.
¶ Step 7 — Activate (go Live) and enroll people
- Change the status to Live and Save. The Workflow is now armed.
- What happens next depends on your trigger:
- New lead / stage change — enrollment is automatic from here on. Matching Clients
get pulled in from the sales pipeline as the events happen.
- Segment trigger — turning it Live enrolls the segment's current members right away;
new members join as they qualify.
- Manual — nothing auto-enrolls. Use the Enroll a segment control on the
Workflow to push an audience in on demand.
- Enroll a single Client by hand. From any Lead's page in the Sales Command Center
you can drop that person into a Workflow directly — handy for a one-off. (You'll get a
note back if it can't enroll them, e.g. the Workflow is Off or they're already running.)
- Watch it work. The builder's Recipients pane lists everyone enrolled, where each
one is (Active, Done, reached Goal, Replied-out, or Stopped), and their email
sent / opened / clicked counts. The hub dashboard rolls up total active enrollments across
all your Workflows.
To pause everything: set the Workflow back to Off and Save. Contacts stop
advancing. Draft and Off both keep it from running.
GoBuild used to run Drip sequences — simple, linear "send this email, wait, send the
next" chains. Workflows superseded them. A few things to know so you don't get crossed
up:
- Build all new automations as Workflows. The Marketing hub no longer starts anyone on a
Drip; new work goes here.
- Drips are dormant but not deleted. The old nurture screen still lists Drip sequences,
and the background scheduler still ticks any Drip enrollment that already exists — so a
Drip that someone is already on will keep sending.
- ⚠️ Drips can still be enrolled from the sales surface. A Lead's page offers an
Enroll in nurture sequence action that puts the Client on a legacy Drip. This works, but
it's the old path — prefer a Workflow. If you see someone getting a Drip, that's why.
- Same idea, more power. Anything a Drip did, a Workflow does — plus texts, tags, tasks,
field changes, stop-on-reply, and richer triggers. When in doubt, rebuild the Drip as a
Workflow and stop enrolling into the Drip.
- Where: Marketing hub → Workflows / Automations.
- Statuses: Draft (building) · Live (running) · Off (paused).
- Triggers: new lead · stage change · joins a segment · manual.
- Action nodes: send email · send text · wait · create task · add tag · set field.
- Not in the builder yet: yes/no condition branches (engine-only); enrolling into
another Workflow as a step.
- Deeper dive: Marketing & nurture · Marketing CC.