10 Slack Workflow Automations to Coordinate your Team

Let’s assume that you already know that Slack has features to wow you. You did know that, right? Good. This will make a whole lot more sense now we’ve established that.

Imagine going one step further and making your everyday apps talk to each other. How easy would it be to collaborate if Slack was genuinely your hub for work? 

Think about the Slack direct listing. 

WORK was the chosen symbol for the New York Stock Exchange. And that’s because Slack genuinely believes that Slack could become your workplace.

Sure, out of the box, this is hard to envisage…

But it is 100% possible.

So, in this post, I’ll walk you through simple workflows that you can set up between your existing apps and Slack - using either the Slack App Directory or other connector apps.

I’ve listed out workflow automations for Marketing, Sales & Customer Support. Jump to what is most relevant to you and start automating manual processes right away.

Marketing ; Sales ; Customer Support

Slack workflow automations to implement in Marketing

Creating marketing campaign reports is a cumbersome task. Right? 

Small amendments like automating routine tasks in your marketing team functions often bring immeasurable results. 

Be it getting notified on high CPC for a keyword in Google Adwords, a sudden dip in conversions from a landing page, or new Twitter mention from an influencer, knowing these are happening in real-time is crucial.

Here are some simple Slack workflows that you can set up right away & see how efficient your marketing process can get. 

1. Chat with colleagues who don't use Slack

You use Slack. Your product team uses Microsoft Teams.

You have to update your sales team on progress via email as they use Webex Teams for meetings all day long and you can’t find your login. And you just know they won’t be checking their Slack notifications.

Sound familiar?

To get around this collaboration chaos, Mio created cross-platform chat interoperability.

By bridging the gap between Slack and Microsoft Teams, Webex, and Zoom Chat, you'll be able to communicate with colleagues on different platforms in real-time.

Everyone can stay in their preferred team collaboration app.

For small projects, you remove the hassle of switching between apps to cater for one person’s needs.

For larger campaigns that need thorough planning and multiple parties, Mio allows you to effortlessly communicate through channels, direct messages, and group chats.

Unlock your collaboration potential today.

2. Receive Email Marketing Data in Slack

You can track real-time data and manage campaign performance metrics right from Slack. 

If you’re using Mailchimp, GetResponse, or HubSpot, you add their apps direct from the Slack app directory. 

Here are a few metrics that you can pull in from these apps to Slack:

• New Subscribers 
• Unsubscribers
• Status of Email Campaigns

Below is a screenshot depicting how installing Mailchimp Slack app would look like:

What if you’re using something else?

If you’re using Aweber, ActiveCampaign, SendinBlue or any email marketing app that isn’t listed on the app directory, the good news is that you can still get the metrics from these apps to Slack using third party integration tools like Zapier or IFTTT. 

Setup a simple connection on any trigger from your email software and add ‘Send a Message in Slack’ as the action. And you’re good to go.

3. Get Notified on New Form Entries & Act Immediately

In your marketing team, you’re probably using online forms. Think about all the places you use them:

• Collecting leads for your product demo
• Inviting guest writers on your blog
• Downloading an e-book
• Plenty more, I’m certain

I think all us marketers agree forms are more than handy.

So, let’s talk about the product demo form for a moment.

If you use a form for a product demo, each entry is valuable to your business & needs immediate action. 

You can set up a simple workflow to get notified on Slack on each of these form entries and automatically create a calendar event for yourself.

For example, to get notified on Typeform, Wufoo, SurveyMonkey, or JotForm, you can add their Slack App in your Slack Workspace and get notified for each entry. 

Below, I’ve taken a sample Typeform form and will fill in details to show you how you would get notified in Slack:

Furthermore, using third party integration tools can help you setup multi-app workflows. 

For this, you need to create a simple connection on any trigger from your form app, add Send a Message in Slack as the action and further add another step of Create a Calendar Event. 

4. Trigger Notifications & Emails for New Leads

You can deliver new lead details from your CRM to Slack by using the HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho CRM apps from the directory.

Once you’ve done this, you can further optimize the process by setting up emails or calls with your leads.

You can trigger automated emails based on the lead scoring data by setting up rules in your CRM.

If it’s an MQL, you can immediately send a notification to your sales team and they can create a task to follow-up.

For notifications on new leads from your CRM, search for your CRM in the Slack app directory and add the app to your Slack Workspace.

Slack workflow automations to implement in Sales

1. Sync your meetings across apps:

Syncing all your meetings (in every app, email client, and device) is a productivity sap. 

If your team uses Zoom or Google Calendar, you can integrate Slack with these apps and get notifications before your meetings. 

Additionally, you can respond directly to event invitations, kick start your meetings on Hangouts or Zoom right from Slack, and get details on updated events.

If you use any other calendar app and wish to get notified on Slack for the upcoming events, sync them with your Google Calendar and you’re good. 

If the enthusiasm in your team's meetings has become lackluster of late, it might be time to consider an alternative approach to team collaboration. One effective method is to use an asynchronous text-based meeting tool like Sup.

This type of tool allows for flexibility in scheduling and can enable more focused, productive discussions.

2. Follow-up on New Opportunity in your CRM

When it comes to following up with prospects, timing is everything. 

To follow-up with a personal touch, you should understand the opportunity & reach out in a manner that is personalized to your customer.

A few CRMs have their own Slack Apps, which will let you get new opportunity data in your Slack with their details. This way you can get notified and take action right away.

Additionally, it’s a good practice to create a task on your productivity app (like Asana or Trello) or set up a meeting for these opportunities & start working on them.

3. Celebrate your new customer with your team

Although the sales bell or the sales going hasn’t totally disappeared, sales success is celebrated differently in the modern workplace.

The realization that constant disruptions drive workplace silos, and generally upset everyone, has changed celebration culture. 

That’s not to say it should be removed completely…

Far from it.

Boosting team morale and motivating your team will help your business bring in more sales. No brainer. So, let’s help you achieve it - adapted for the modern workplace.

A simple integration between your CRM and Slack lets you do this…

• Boom! A new deal is closed! 
• Be it Hubspot or Salesforce automatically sends a notification to #sales 
• Sales teams cheers, pats you on the back, and probably goes and rings the bell anyway

You get the point, right? You don’t have to disrupt everybody in the business to celebrate success.

And you can send notifications to as many channels as you like. So, everybody knows that the business is growing and what a great job the pesky sales team is doing.

Hubspot, Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Dealbot by Pipedrive, Copper, Insightly & Nutshell CRMs have direct slack integration which can be installed from the app directory. 

But if you use a CRM that doesn’t have a direct Slack Integration, you can look for your CRM on the integrations list of Zapier.

These are tools that help you set up workflows between the apps you use and automate your routine tasks.

4. Sync your Slack, CRM & payments apps

When a new deal is closed, you’ll likely create a customer account in something like Stripe or PayPal and notify your team on the deal value.

Did you know? At the end of each day, you can get notified of the daily revenue generated by your sales team on Slack. 

You can get updated on the charges, subscriptions, and transfers from Stripe all without leaving your Slack channel.

Deliver exceptional customer experience by automating workflows

“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” 

But you need to do more than saying you’ll deliver an exceptional customer experience.
Here are a few workflows that’ll help:

1. Get notified about new tickets

Customers don’t want to hang in there for hours together before you deliver the service to them.

If you use any of these apps, you get can instant notifications direct to #support or #customer-service:

• Freshdesk
• Help Scout
• Zendesk
• Intercom

2. Manage tasks in Slack

For projects, and ongoing support, it’s best practice to use some kind of task list to organize your day/week/month. 

Get your due, upcoming, and overdue tasks from JIRA, Asana, or Trello as a Slack DMs:

• JIRA
• Trello
• Asana

Make complex workflows simple when dealing with multiple apps + Slack

All the workflows mentioned above are either simple one to one or multi-app Slack workflows. So things like Typeform + Slack is no problem.

However, in the marketing, sales, and support world, there are often examples where you need to use app 1, app 2, and then Slack as well.

Here’s a common example:

• A new form entry via Typeform
• Notify on Slack to the Marketing Channel
• Add it to your Mailchimp List
• Wait for 2 days
• Trigger an automated campaign via Mailchimp

So if your business also uses multiple apps across various teams (and would like to streamline processes by getting all the notifications in Slack), you might want to consider automating workflows across them. 

Automation is the key to the efficiency castle. So, go ahead & start making your apps talk to each other and see what difference they can bring in to your business.