Latest / Marketing Automation with Fexingo: HubSpot, Marketo, and Automated Customer Journeys / How Marketing Automation Workflows Ignore User Intent Signals
Transcript
- Lucas: I recently saw a B2B software company that had a workflow set up to send a three-email demo follow-up sequence any time someone visited their pricing page. Sounds reasonable on the surface, right? Luna: Sure — pricing page visitors are usually in consideration mode. Lucas: Except they didn't filter for recency or frequency. One person hit the pricing page once, six weeks ago, and still got the entire sequence. They unsubscribed after the second email. And they weren't an isolated case — the company's overall unsubscribe rate on that workflow was over eight percent. Luna: Ouch. So the trigger fired, but the intent was cold — maybe they were just comparing prices or landed there by accident. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the core problem I want to talk about today: most marketing automation workflows are built around actions — page views, form submissions — but they ignore the intent behind those actions. And the platforms make it easy to set up a trigger without asking 'should this trigger still fire if the person hasn't engaged in 30 days?' Luna: Yeah, and I think a lot of marketers assume the default settings are smart enough. But they're really designed to maximize volume, not relevance. Lucas: Right. And if these conversations have sparked something you've actually used — maybe you've audited one of your own workflows after an episode — that's exactly the kind of thing that keeps this show ad-free and listener-supported. If today was worth a coffee to you, there's a link at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: It really does help. And honestly, just knowing people find these topics useful is what keeps us digging into the details. Lucas: So let's talk about the pricing page trigger specifically. One visitor, one visit, no other engagement — that person is probably in early research mode. They might not even remember which company they visited. Sending them a 'Hey, want a demo?' email is almost guaranteed to annoy them. Luna: And yet so many workflows are built exactly that way. I worked with a retail brand last year that had an abandoned cart email set to go out after one hour. Problem was, they didn't exclude customers who had already completed a purchase in that session. People would buy something, then get a 'you left items behind' email an hour later. Lucas: That's a classic example of a logic gap. The trigger was 'cart abandoned', but the workflow didn't check for a completed order event after the cart was created. So the email fired regardless. Luna: And customers were confused — some even called customer service to ask if their order went through. It eroded trust. Lucas: Let's put a number on this. I looked at data from a few marketing automation audits, and workflows that don't factor in behavioral context — things like recency, frequency, or engagement score — see unsubscribe rates that are on average forty percent higher within the first three touches. Luna: Forty percent? That's massive. And it's not just unsubscribes — it's also spam complaints and low open rates that hurt deliverability across the board. Lucas: Exactly. So what's the fix? It's not about scrapping your workflows. It's about layering intent signals on top of your triggers. The simplest thing you can do is add a recency filter: only fire the workflow if the action happened within the last seven days, or fourteen, depending on your sales cycle. Luna: And a frequency cap. If someone has triggered the same workflow three times without converting, maybe they need a different sequence — or to be suppressed entirely. Lucas: Right. And you can go further with engagement scoring. If someone visits your pricing page but hasn't opened any of your last five emails, that's a different signal than someone who visits after clicking through three blog posts and a case study. Luna: So you're scoring the intent, not just the action. That's a shift in mindset. Lucas: It is. And most marketing automation platforms already have the data — open rates, click rates, time since last visit — you just have to use it in your logic. I see teams build these elaborate multi-step workflows but skip the entry conditions that would make them relevant. Luna: What about the demo request form? That seems like a clear intent signal — shouldn't that always trigger a fast follow-up? Lucas: Yes, but even there you can over-automate. If someone fills out a demo request form, then gets an immediate email saying 'thanks, we'll be in touch,' then a second email an hour later with a calendar link, then a third email the next day — that's too much. You need to throttle the cadence based on the person's past engagement. Luna: And if they've already received three demo follow-ups in the past month from a different form submission, you probably want to suppress them or route them to a different queue. Lucas: Exactly. The key is treating each contact as having a cumulative history, not just reacting to the latest event in isolation. Luna: I think a lot of marketers assume their automation platform handles deduplication and suppression automatically. But in my experience, you have to explicitly configure those rules. Lucas: Completely agree. And it's worth auditing your workflows with a simple question: 'If I were this contact, would I find this email useful based on what I've done — or just annoying?' Luna: That's a good litmus test. Let's talk about some specific filters you can add. Lucas: Sure. One is the recency filter I mentioned — only trigger if the action happened within X days. Another is a frequency cap: limit the number of times a single workflow can trigger for the same contact, say once every 90 days. Luna: And a suppression list for contacts who have already converted on a related goal — like the retail example where customers who purchased shouldn't get the abandoned cart email. Lucas: Right. You can also use engagement scoring thresholds. For example, only send the demo follow-up sequence to contacts with an engagement score above 20. That way you skip the cold leads who just happened to land on your pricing page. Luna: And for B2B, you might want to add a company-level filter — like only trigger if the contact is from a target account or has a certain job title. Lucas: Great point. The more context you add, the more relevant the message. And relevance drives conversion, not volume. Luna: So for someone listening who's thinking 'I probably have this problem in my own workflows' — what's the first step? Lucas: Pick your top three workflows by volume. For each one, pull the list of contacts who received the first email in the last 30 days. Then check: how many of those contacts had engaged with your brand in the two weeks before that email? Luna: That's a quick health check. If the number is low, you know you're over-triggering. Lucas: Exactly. Then you can start adding the filters we discussed. Most platforms let you do this without rebuilding the workflow — just add a condition at the entry point. Luna: And that can save you from the forty percent higher unsubscribe rate you mentioned. Lucas: Right. And it's not just about avoiding negatives. When you send fewer, more relevant emails, your engagement metrics actually improve. Click-through rates go up, conversion rates go up. It's a win-win. Luna: It feels counterintuitive to send less, but the data backs it up. Lucas: One last thought: test these changes on a small segment first. You don't want to accidentally suppress a high-intent lead because your filter is too aggressive. Luna: Good advice. Start small, measure, then scale. Lucas: Exactly. That's the approach I've seen work best — and it's something any team can do starting this week.