Once you’ve created a robust Pipedrive account structure, the next step in your journey to maximizing ROI from Pipedrive is to implement automations.
Having a well-organized account structure is crucial because, to build effective automations, your data schema needs to be rich and tailored to your business. Only then will your automations truly be unique to your business and help you maximize Pipedrive ROI.
Pipedrive automations are a significant topic and will be the subject of many entries on our blog. In this article, we outline the key elements of Pipedrive automations, laying the foundation for what these automations can help you accomplish and how to get maximum value with minimal effort.
As always, we’re sharing the secret sauce behind our Pipedrive Booster package, and almost all examples we’ll be sharing are taken directly from the package specifications.
Let’s run with it!
Pipedrive automation scope
For us, there are two types of automations that you can configure with Pipedrive: internal and external. Internal automations use exclusive Pipedrive features available within the platform, while external automations manipulate Pipedrive data via its API. With these automations, you can pretty much automate any business process.
Pipedrive internal automations
Pipedrive internal integrations use built-in connectors to specific Pipedrive features or native integrations. These automations can still use data points provided by external data feeds, but the automation mechanism itself uses only Pipedrive workflow automations.
Workflow automations
Pipedrive workflow automations follow a causal, if-then logic. You configure certain actions in your account to occur when specific triggers or conditions are satisfied.
Actions can include creating, updating, or deleting a Pipedrive entity, such as a person, activity, or deal, or sending an automated email to a specific email address.
Each workflow automation can be triggered by any user or just a subset of them. If the automation involves sending an email, the sender will always be the user who created the automation.
Only global admin users in Pipedrive may create automations unless that permission has been enabled for other users in the company’s Pipedrive account.
If you’ve read our first article on building account structure, you’ll recall that we mentioned it is the account structure that determines the extent of automation you can achieve. Now it’s clear why we said that. Since automations in Pipedrive are essentially a set of if-then statements related to Pipedrive entities, having entities carry rich, accurate data is the only factor that limits your automation and optimization potential.
Let’s look at some examples of the kinds of automations we can create in this category based on various entity types. In future articles, we’ll dive deeper into each of these automations. The majority of these automations are part of our Pipedrive Booster 2.0 package, but we’re happy to share that secret sauce with you.
Lead workflow automation
Lead qualification
1. Update lead status to “qualified”, “pre-qualified”, or “disqualified” based on specific demographic or firmographic properties
We find that companies typically optimize for the volume of leads without really looking into what inspires them and what they’re actually looking for. This causes sales teams to lose opportunities to engage with leads. This automation benefits from the integration of sales and marketing data that we do in our Pipedrive implementations, and scans the latest activity of leads on the website. It then triggers an invitation for an exploratory session if it detects interest in the product or specific bottom-funnel content, such as FAQs and documentation. This mechanism can be applied to other user segments and can use different content as triggers.
2. Update lead status qualification to cold, warm, or hot based on their overall engagement with marketing materials, such as content or website interactions
With a Pipedrive account structure that incorporates sales and marketing data, we can calculate an engagement score based on the marketing activities a lead is involved in. We then combine these scores, save them in the detail view, and assign an objective lead label based on this data. This approach eliminates guesswork and ensures accurate reporting for various components of Pipedrive down the line.
Lead communication
3. Send an automated nurturing email to users inviting the lead to an exploratory session if they start browsing FAQ or documentation pages on your website and have not yet received a demo or qualification call
The data points added to the contact and organization entities as a result of the enrichment we run in our implementations—such as job title, maturity, company size, and others—inform the lead and company qualification process. The exact qualification process will depend on the company. Leads qualified in this automated way contribute to the MQL (marketing qualified lead) metric, which is then displayed on our custom-built Pipedrive dashboard.
4. Send different welcome messages to leads depending on the channel they’ve come from
Cold leads who signed up using a demo form may need a different message than those who called you or contacted you directly. By using a custom data collection endpoint to collect web and mobile events, along with the channel ID in the lead custom field, we can differentiate the welcome message and its sender.
Deal workflow automation
Lead to deal conversion
5. Automatically convert lead to deal once they have a qualified label, and a set of conversion-ready properties captured in the custom fields
This automation is rooted in a strong account structure and utilizes rich custom fields to efficiently manage and process leads. Once a lead reaches a qualified status and meets specific conversion-ready criteria, either demographic or behavioural, the automation converts them into a deal. This process not only optimizes the sales workflow but also ensures that no opportunity is overlooked. Another important aspect is objectivity—since the conversion of leads to deals is managed by centralized logic, there is no ambiguity, and you can be confident that the results reported by your sales reps are accurate.
Deal qualification
6. Auto-qualify deals to sales qualified leads after certain criteria
One of the recommendations we have as we roll out our Pipedrive Booster 2.0 implementation package for clients is to capture the moment when the deal is accepted by the sales team after it appears in their pipeline. This can be done either through a dedicated stage in the pipeline (following the best practices we’ve described in our article on account structure) or through a custom field.
Typically, companies refer to this moment as a sales-qualified lead (SQL). Even though the term includes “lead,” we’ve found it to be a good label for deals that have been automatically converted from leads because they’ve met all the criteria and have been reviewed by the sales team, which confirmed their suitability to proceed further in the pipeline. This often involves additional qualification processes, such as BANT qualification, which includes the following elements:
- Budget: Does the prospect have the budget to purchase your product or service?
- Authority: Is the prospect the decision-maker, or are they in a position to influence the purchase decision?
- Need: Does the prospect have a need or pain point that your product or service can address?
- Timing: Is the prospect ready to buy now, or is their timeline aligned with your sales cycle?
This automation ensures that the qualification of sales-qualified leads follows a central logic, just as it does with marketing-qualified leads.
7. Automatically move deals between the stages based on the centralized logic involving multiple fields
This automation relies on a set of predefined rules that evaluate various fields in the deal record, such as deal size, customer engagement, and other relevant criteria. They can also incorporate third party data fields, such as the availability of your team to process the deal. Once met, these conditions trigger stage changes when specific criteria are met. For instance, if a deal meets the threshold for a certain deal size or has received a certain level of customer interaction, or both it can be moved to the next stage in the pipeline easily. Such automation ensures that deals are consistently and accurately managed according to a central logic, reducing the potential for human error and ensuring that your sales team can focus on closing deals rather than managing pipeline stages.
Deal valuation
8. Calculate objective deal valuation based on intricate logic involving custom field and Pipedrive formula fields
Automatically determine the deal value by applying complex logic that incorporates various custom fields via formula fields. This automation ensures accurate and objective deal valuations by integrating multiple data points, such as deal size, customer metrics, and other custom criteria, into a unified calculation.
Deal result
9. Automatically win or lose a deal based on complex logic and a set of factors represented by the custom fields
Set up an automation to automatically mark a deal as won or lost by applying predefined logic and factors. Define you the logic for the deal final resolution, involving any number of custom fields and dimensions, such as deal size, customer engagement, and other relevant data points, to determine the deal’s outcome. Having this process automated not only guarantees timely deal updates in your Pipedrive account, but also ensures high quality data saved in your Pipedrive account, which is then added to your reports.
10. Send an onboarding campaign every time your deal is won
This ensures an easy transition from sale to onboarding by sending personalized emails or tasks to the customer, guiding them through the next steps.
Workflow automations for activities
Lead/deal activities
11. Automatically delete all planned activities of the deal owner once the deal is lost
This automation automatically deletes all planned activities associated with a deal owner once the deal is marked as lost. This ensures that your team’s calendar remains up-to-date and free of unnecessary tasks, allowing them to focus on active deals.
12. Automatically update the activity status to done based on the specific logic or criteria
In sales, there should be no vague definition of what “done” means. To ensure clarity, determine specific criteria for what must happen for an activity to be considered complete, particularly regarding what the deal or lead achieves as a result of that activity. Each activity should be related to a measurable result, and in this automation, we capture those measurable results, check if they meet the criteria for completion, and then automatically mark them as done.
Assignment automations
Lead/deal assignments
Automated lead assignment
13. Assign leads to an owner using a set of factors such as company size, seniority, lead maturity and engagement levels, geography, and data quality
From our experience, one of the most important factors for scaling companies is the ability to focus on high-quality leads and treat everything else as a lower priority. The key to achieving this is having robust assignment criteria for leads, particularly in routing the most promising and semi-qualified leads to the best team members. We achieve it through this automation.
Automated deal assignment
14. Automatically assign deals to the most suitable owner by considering a set of factors, including budget, company size, need and timeline, and others
This automation ensures that each deal is routed to the best-suited rep. The automation system checks factors to match deals with team members who have the expertise and capacity to handle them.
15. Reassign deal if rep not performing
Automatically reassign a deal to a new owner if it is not progressing as expected. If a deal remains in the same stage or status for longer than a predefined number of days, the system updates the deal owner to give it a fresh approach.
16. Assign the deal automatically to the best-performing or least busy rep
Automatically assign deals to the best-performing representative from the a specific time period, e.g. previous month or the least busy rep, or use a combination of other factors to determine the best fit. This automation dynamically evaluates team performance and workload to distribute deals effectively.
Campaign automations
Lead campaigns
Lead onboarding
17. Welcome new leads with campaigns tailored to their unique profiles using enriched custom fields
Automatically welcome new leads with personalized campaigns using multiple enriched custom fields. This automation sends targeted messages that align with each lead’s profile leading to higher engagement.
Lead offboarding
18. Disqualified lead farewell campaign
Automatically send a personalized farewell message to disqualified leads using logic derived from enriched custom fields. This email sequence provides clear steps for reactivation in the future.
Deal campaigns
Deal engagement
19. New deal welcome campaign
Automatically send a highly customized welcome email to new deals, tailored using enriched custom fields.
20. Deal re-engagement campaign
Automatically send an email whenever a deal shows signs of reduced engagement, captured using custom field scores or properties such as the last engagement time, or gets stuck in the sales process as evidenced by the latest stage change time. This automation helps re-engage deals and move them forward by addressing potential issues proactively.
Deal offboarding
21. Deal reactivation campaign
Send a customized email when a deal is lost, offering clear steps for potential future reactivation. This sequence ensures that lost deals are handled professionally and keeps the door open for future opportunities.
Pipedrive external automations
Pipedrive external automations do not use any of Pipedrive’s built-in workflow automation or assignment features; instead, they exclusively utilize the Pipedrive API. We classify them as automations because they also follow a set of complex if-then conditions, often involving third-party data flows and updating multiple custom fields simultaneously.
These automations require our analytics backend, Omni CDI, which we configure by default for all Pipedrive implementations done as a part of our Pipedrive Booster 2.0. However, they do not depend on any external applications, platforms, or integrations such as Zapier/Make, or even applications from the Pipedrive marketplace. They fully rely on our custom-built analytics that comes as a set of Dockerized applications and can be deployed in a dedicated cloud.
External inbound automations utilizing Pipedrive API
The following automations manipulate data inside the Pipedrive account using the Pipedrive API.
Data enrichments
Organization data enrichment
22. Firmographic enrichment
Firmographic enrichment uses enrichment APIs to provide important data points about company size and scale, including: US Rank by Alexa, Global Rank by Alexa, Traffic Rank, Number of Employees, Range of Number of Employees, Market Capitalization, Amount Raised, Annual Revenue, Estimated Annual Revenue, and more. Having this information on your organization profile offers extensive options for building lead qualification and routing logic, allowing you to automate as many company processes as possible.
Person data enrichment
23. Demographic and professional enrichment
Personal data enrichment covers various categories, including employment details (such as job title, role, subrole, and seniority), social media details (like GitHub handle and Twitter handle), and geographical information (e.g., state, geographic latitude, etc.).
24. Unified UUID enrichment
Enriches a person with a unified multichannel identifier.
25. Marketing attribution enrichment
Provides the following online marketing campaigns with additional data points without using any other tools:
last_touch_gclid(to track offline conversions)last_touch_fbclid(to track offline conversions of the deal)last_touch_consentLevellast_touch_utm_sourcelast_touch_utm_mediumlast_touch_utm_campaign
Can also be extended to cover first-touch identifiers.
Data validations
External automation verifies the information collected in your Pipedrive account.
Person data validation
26. Email validation
Enriches contact data with various custom fields related to email quality, such as email score, email status, whether the email can be regarded as “gibberish,” or if it is from a disposable email service. In our Pipedrive Booster 2.0 implementations, we use this information as a criterion to assign the label “prequalified” to leads.
27. Phone validation
Enriches contact data with various custom fields related to phone number quality, such as validity, local format, country, carrier, and more. Similar to email validation criteria, this information is used in our implementations as one of the criteria for assigning the “prequalified” label to leads.
Advanced automated assignments
Lead/deal assignments
28. Lead/deal workload-based assignment
This automation assigns leads or deals to the owner or rep with the fewest existing deals, in order to ensure an even distribution of leads within the company. It can be improved further with additional logic to route leads based on specific characteristics or deal attributes, in addition to workload considerations.
29. Lead/deal performance-based assignment
This automation assigns leads or deals to representatives based on their past performance, such as the number of deals closed in a specific time period. It can be further refined with additional logic to account for other performance metrics or criteria.
30. Lead/deal round-robin assignment
This automation assigns leads or deals sequentially among sales reps, ensuring an equal distribution of opportunities across the team.
Advanced valuations and ops
Deal valuation and ops
31. Deal stage change automation
Automatically moves deals to the correct stage based on their characteristics and engagement. Custom, complex logic customized to the business we work with ensures deals progress smoothly.
32. Deal commission calculation
Calculates and updates a sales rep’s commission directly in the deal fields. Adjusts with any upsells and can factor in overall sales performance.
33. Deal valuation
The system calculates the value of a deal using details such as deal characteristics, past deals, deal size, customer metrics, and other custom criteria. It uses custom logic performed in the analytical backend through a unified calculation to set an accurate deal value in real-time. This automation was heavily utilized in one of our past projects, where we worked on deal valuation for the UK-based AdTech company, Vyde.
34. Automatically calculate the deal value in multiple currencies and save to the deal detail view
Effortlessly calculate and display the deal value in multiple currencies. This automation converts the deal amount into various currencies based on real-time, spot currency exchange rates and saves these values to the deal detail view, providing a comprehensive financial overview in different currencies. This automation has also been implemented in a previous Pipedrive implementation project for the UK-based AdTech company Vyde.
35. Profit calculation
Automatically calculates the profit from a deal using custom logic and saves on a custom field.
36. Deal scoring
Scores deals based on their past activities to help prioritize them.
Outbound external automations utilizing Pipedrive webhook
These automations send fully enriched Pipedrive events to downstream systems, again with no usage of external third-party tools.
Marketing automations
Offline conversions
37. Google Ads offline conversions
Sends deals meeting specific criteria (e.g., deal won, deal stage reached) to Google Ads, along with gclid and other identifiers, for marketing attribution and optimization.
38. Meta Conversion API automation
Sends deals meeting specific criteria (e.g., deal won, deal stage reached) to Facebook Ads.
Automation for the winning Pipedrive accounts
These advanced automations represent the future of Pipedrive, boosting efficiency and integrating seamlessly with your sales and marketing. By implementing these solutions as a part of our Pipedrive Booster 2.0 package, we optimize your CRM operations for better decision-making and improved results.
Photo attribution
As usual, the featured image of the article is a photograph that corresponds with the article’s topic. This time, the shoutout goes to Arthur Mazi on Unsplash.
