Lead capture and sales workflows
These are the highest-ROI automations to build first: every one of them shortens the gap between someone raising their hand and someone following up.
- New form submission → create CRM contact → notify sales in Slack (Fillout + Make)
- Qualified lead → book a call link by email; unqualified → nurture sequence (Make router)
- New Stripe payment → tag the buyer in your email tool → start onboarding emails (Pabbly Connect)
- Abandoned checkout → wait 2 hours → send a recovery email (Systeme.io)
- Inbound webhook from your website → enrich the record → route by deal size (Make)
Client onboarding and delivery workflows
Agencies lose the most time here, because onboarding is repetitive but never quite identical. Automate the repeatable 80% and leave a manual approval step for the rest.
- Signed proposal → create project folder, task template, and shared doc (Make)
- Intake form submitted → generate a welcome PDF → email it with next steps (Fillout + Pabbly)
- Kickoff date set → schedule reminder emails at T-7, T-2, and T-0 days
- Deliverable marked complete → notify the client and request feedback
Finance and admin workflows
Money workflows are where automation quietly pays for itself. Each of these removes a recurring manual task that is easy to forget and expensive to miss.
- New invoice paid → update the revenue sheet → post the total in Slack (Pabbly Connect)
- Invoice unpaid after 7 days → send a polite reminder, then escalate at 14 days
- Receipt email received → extract the amount → file it in your bookkeeping tool
- Month end → compile revenue, refunds, and MRR into one summary email
Content, marketing and reporting workflows
These keep publishing and reporting consistent without adding a person to the process.
- New blog post published → cross-post to your newsletter and social queue
- Weekly analytics pull → build a client report → email the PDF every Monday (Make)
- New review or testimonial submitted → route to approval → publish to the site
- New subscriber → tag by source → drop into the matching email sequence (Systeme.io)
Which tool fits which example
Most of these can be built on any platform, but the cost and effort differ a lot depending on the shape of the workflow.
- Branching, iterators, and multi-app logic — Make handles complexity best
- High run volume where per-task pricing hurts — Pabbly Connect stays flat as you scale
- Form-driven workflows with conditional logic — Fillout is the cleanest front door
- Funnels, email sequences, and checkout flows — Systeme.io keeps it in one place
How to adapt any example to your business
Take an example above, then map it onto your own stack in four passes: name the trigger, list the data you need, write the actions in order, and add one filter that stops bad data early. Build the happy path first, run it against a test record, then add error handling before you point it at production.