How To Automate Your Renewal Pipeline In HubSpot

Part 1 of 3: Managing recurring revenue and renewals in HubSpot

👋 Hey, I’m Stuart, and welcome to ConnectedGTM. This edition has been made available for 💸 FREE 💸 by CloneNer | Your Time-Saving HubSpot App for Duplicating Deals, Contacts, Companies, and Tickets.

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Let me ask you this:

How confident are you in your process for closing new business?

How about this:

Are you more or less confident in your process for winning renewal deals?

Once a new contract is signed, it’s easy to get caught up in acquiring the next customer rather than nurturing the ones already on board. But that makes it easy for revenue churn to sneak up on you and you forecast 😬

Today, we’re covering how to build automated renewal management in HubSpot that not only works behind the scenes, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks, but is also proactive, to help identify at-risk customers and expansion opportunities.

Highlights

→ Define your renewal process in a dedicated HubSpot deal pipeline and trigger the right milestone or time-based playbook for each customer.

→ Automatically move deals through your renewal pipeline as they make progress towards their renewal date.

→ Discover 2 simple methods for creating subsequent renewal deals and transferring the required context to the next phase of the customer journey.

As usual, the exact steps to implement this playbook in HubSpot can be found at the bottom of the post. Let’s get into it.

This newsletter is part 1 of a 3-part series on managing recurring revenue in HubSpot

Here’s what we’ll cover:

Part 1 (this newsletter):

• How to build and automate your renewal pipeline

• A step-by-step renewal enablement playbook

Part 2:

• A deep dive into building strategic account plans and proactively enabling customer outcomes that drive renewals and expansion

Part 3:

• Revenue reporting

• Renewal and expansion revenue forecasting

Bonus for paid subscribers:

• Pre-built playbook that you can one-click deploy and implement this system in your own HubSpot account.

• Office hours with me on 11/14, part of a new monthly series for paid subscribers. If you have questions or want to hear me discuss this newsletter, become a paid subscriber, then RSVP here.

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Customer renewals are the most critical element of a recurring revenue business model and yet the element we hope to make the most anti-climactic event of the year.

Ultimately running an effective renewal process is much like closing an initial deal, you need context about your buyers experience, goals, and constraints to take the right action. The renewal process in HubSpot looks something like this:

1. Close a new deal in your sales pipeline

2. Trigger a workflow to handoff from sales to onboarding/customers success/account management (create a renewal deal in the process)

3. Automatically move the renewal deal through the renewal pipeline

4. Check for falling health scores (at-risk) or expansion opportunities along the way

5. At a defined time to renewal (90 days) kickoff your renewal playbook

6. Send automated reminders for auto-billing

7. Close the renewal deal (renewed or churned)

8. If renewed create a subsequent renewal deal and repeat the process

Using a dedicated renewal pipeline and automatically creating deals for future renewals reduces manual work for your team AND provides an effective way to trigger engagement throughout the lifecycle to ensure renewals are a non-event.

However, if you have seen any of the previous content I created about automating renewal management in HubSpot you’ll know this workflow requires a pretty wild hack to get round a HubSpot limitation out of the box. That’s where CloneNer can help.

Features

Built to be a native extension of HubSpot, the CloneNer app provides a simple way to clone HubSpot objects either manually or automatically. Perfect for recurring processes such as renewal management.

Clone HubSpot objects directly from the CRM card in each record

The CloneNer CRM card is available in the right sidebar of each record and allows manual duplication of both properties and associations.

Automatically clone records using auto-rules

Once you have clear definition around when you want to duplicate records on a recurring basis and the information that you need to transfer to the newly created record auto-rules in CloneNer provide a powerful alternative to HubSpot workflows.

💡 HubSpot workflows are incredibly powerful but have limitations specifically for the record duplication use case when it comes to which records you can enroll and which attributes you can clone.

Update property values in cloned records

Each time you duplicate a record you will likely have some properties that need to stay the same and some that should be updated such as the renewal year or the name. If you are using auto-rules you can dynamically set new values using personalization tokens.

Maintain specific associations while duplicating records

Select associations you wish to preserve in the new record across available HubSpot objects.

How to build and automate your renewal pipeline in HubSpot (step-by-step)

Starting with a clearly defined process is a precursor to increasing internal adoption and reporting accuracy. Use these playbooks to start defining your renewal management process in HubSpot and lay the foundation for automation and

Here’s how to set up your renewal system step-by-step:

1. Track renewal dates on the company record

When a new deal is moved to closed won in our sales pipeline we need to make sure that the company record reflects the next renewal date for the account. We can achieve that with workflow action and a simple custom property.

1. Create a custom property on the company record for “Next Renewal Date”.

💡 HubSpot now has the option to show the date relative to today in date picker properties – perfect for showing renewal dates.

2. Automatically update the renewal date property in handoff workflows.

Building an automated process for sales handoffs when a new deal is closed won was the subject of the very first edition of ConnectedGTM.

2. Build a clear view of upcoming renewals

The first step to proactively managing renewals in HubSpot is to provide a list of accounts with upcoming renewals to your team. This can use our custom company property from step 1 that is:

→ Updated manually when a new deal closes.
→ Updated automatically via workflow when a new deal closes.
→ Synced via a billing integration like Stripe.
→ Synced from a product analytics tool like June.

Once you know which method you’ll use to identify renewal dates we can use that property to create lists of accounts using 3 different methods in HubSpot.

As well as providing clear visibility into which accounts have upcoming renewals, these lists can also highlight important information about these accounts product usage to the account owner.

Here’s an example of the columns you might choose to include in your upcoming renewal lists:

→ Company Name
→ Next Renewal Date
→ ARR
→ Health Status
→ Usage Trend (synced from your product)
→ Total Seats (synced from your product)
→ Active Seats (synced from your product)
→ Last Activity Date
→ Company Owner

Account List Method #1: HubSpot Active Lists

Create an active list of accounts (companies)

1. Add a filter: “Next Renewal Date” is less than “90 days” from now

2. Edit columns: Based on your property preferences
   

Account List Method #2: HubSpot Companies Saved View

1. Create your view:
   → From the Companies list page, click “Add View”
   → “Create new view”
   → Name your view: “Renewals Next 90 Days”

2. Add a filter:
   → Click “Advanced filters”
   → Filter: “Next Renewal Date” is less than “90 days” from now
   → Save View

3. Edit columns: Based on your property preferences

Account List Method #3: HubSpot Customer Success Workspace

If you have a HubSpot Service Hub subscription, you can also access all your renewal information inside the customer success workspace.

When you set up the customer success workspace you’ll be prompted to tell HubSpot which property will be used to represent your customers renewal date.

Once you have set the property that represents your customers renewal date, HubSpot will display a default view in the workspace “Portfolio” tab for accounts “Renewing in the next 90 days”.

💡 If you prefer to customize the columns displayed you can also create a private view. Note: private views are not displayed on the workspace summary tab.

Now we have visibility into which accounts have upcoming renewals, we can build a repeatable proactive renewal process to support them.

3. Build and automate a dedicated renewal pipeline in HubSpot

Using a separate pipeline for each stage of the customer journey, for example sales and onboarding is always recommended.

Intermingling stages of the customer lifecycle in the same pipeline make it more difficult to run effective reporting, more difficult to understand who owns the customer and process at any particular moment in time, ultimately making it much harder to run a repeatable process.

Organizing your renewal pipeline based on the time to renewal makes it possible to align your process to key milestones in the customer lifecycle. Start by breaking your renewal pipeline into quarterly stages

→ Automated Stages (we’ll do this below): 6-12 months, 3-6 months, 1-3 months
→ Manual Stages: 1 month, Renewed (closed), Churned (closed)

💡 Pro Tip: Automate movement through the pipeline using workflows based on close dates. This keeps everything on track without needing manual updates.

Create a workflow to automate pipeline progress

For this step we have both the way to do it today (a little cumbersome) and a promise of what’s seemingly coming very soon from HubSpot to make our life easier.

1. Create a days to renewal calculated property
→ Today: Use the “Time Between” calculated property type to compare a custom Today’s date property with the renewal date property.

→ Upgrade coming soon Use the “Time until” calculated property type without a separate today’s date property. We can create the property today but not yet use it in workflows.

2.Create a deal based workflow and trigger it when:
→ Property value changed → Property name is Days to Renewal
→ New value: Days to Renewal is known 
→ Pipeline: Renewal Pipeline

3. Branch the workflow based on “Days to Renewal” for each stage of the renewal pipeline.
→ 6-12 Months: Renewal Date > 182 days from now
→ 3-6 Months: Renewal Date > 90 days from now AND < 183 days from now
→ 1-3 Months: Renewal Date > 30 days from now AND < 91 days from now
→ 1 Month: Renewal Date < 31 days from now

4. For each branch of the workflow set the pipeline stage to match the branch.

💡 For more on how this works today, check out the Arrows playbook template.

4. Automatically create subsequent renewal deals

Try this simple alternative to building multiple complex workflows to create subsequent renewal deals in HubSpot using CloneNer.

Here’s how it works:

1. Create a dedicated renewal pipeline using HubSpot deals

2. IF automating renewal deal creation:
→ Create a calculated property for “Next Renewal Year”
→ year([properties.renewal_date]) + 1

3. Create the first renewal deal for each company when a new sales deal closes using the name format: {company name} - Renewal { year }

Option 1: Manual 🙋:

4. When you open the record page for a newly closed renewal deal, find the CloneNer CRM card in the right sidebar and click “Duplicate Deal”.

→ Why? Because we want to transfer all the context, property values, and associations for contacts, companies, and line items to our deal record for the next renewal period without hacky workflows.

5. From the CloneNer window, update critical details
→ Deal Name: {company name} - Renewal {next renewal year}
→ Deal Amount: Copied from the current deal
→ Renewal Year: Update to the next year
→ Modify any additional properties needed for your business

Option 2: Automated 🤖
4. From either the CloneNer CRM card on a deal or the settings page click actions and then “Auto Rules”

💡 Auto Rules are mini workflows specifically for duplicating HubSpot records.

5. Create a new auto rule called “Create Subsequent Renewal Deals”
→ IF a deal from the “Renewal Pipeline” enters Deal Stage “Renewed”
→ THEN create a new deal in the “Renewal Pipeline” placing it in the 6-12 months stage.

6. Update your critical deal details, instead of changing values manually we can use {{ }} syntax to include dynamic property values. eg.
→ Deal Name: {{ company name }} - Renewal {{ next renewal year }}

7. Select your deal associations to also be duplicated to the new deal. At a minimum, I would suggest Contacts, Companies, and Line Items.

5. Automate Renewal Reminders and Tasks

As with any process in the customer lifecycle, once we have our data and process defined inside HubSpot we can layer in automation to save our team time and provide a consistent experience at scale for customers.

1. Create a company based workflow

⚡️ Trigger Criteria:
→ List membership changed
→ is added to list Upcoming Renewals (Next 90 Days)

2. 🔔 Send a Slack notification
→ Send to existing company owners
→ Message: “Renewal for. { Company Name } is coming up 90 days from now on { Next Renewal Date }
→ Properties to include: Health Status, CSM Sentiment, Plan, ARR, Usage Trend, Active Seats

3.📧 Send an automated email to the customer
→ Send to all contacts with the “Billing Contact” association label
→ Use an Upcoming Renewal Notification template that includes details of when and how the customer will be billed.

4.✅ Create an internal task → Name: Review account data for upcoming renewal → Assigned to: Company owner

This workflow is just a starting point and we’ll cover more in depth renewal playbooks and automation in the next edition in the series.

6. Customize the company record layout for renewals

Removing friction from how teams discover and interact with renewal data in HubSpot can make a big difference to their ability to support customers effectively.

We can use HubSpot’s record customization features to present data that is the most relevant for the renewal phase of the customer lifecycle.

We’ll customize 3 configurable areas of each company record:

1. Deal record - Center panel customization

Click “Customize Record” in the top right of the center panel for any company record. Then select to edit either the default view or create a new team specific view if you want to show each team a different layout.

1. Recommended Enablement - This is a default HubSpot UI card that can be added by selecting the “Recommended Enablement” card and then dragging it to the top.

2. Active Deals - This card will display deals across pipelines that are currently open, existing customers will likely have a renewal deal and potentially upsell or expansion deals to consider.
   → Click “Add Card” and then select “Association Table”
   → Card Title: Active Deals
   → Properties: Deal Name, Amount, Close Date, Deal Type
   → Filter: Is Open is equal to “1”

3. Upcoming Activities - This is a default HubSpot UI card that will display all activities such as tasks and meetings with a date in the future.

2. Deal record - Left sidebar customization

Section 1: Account Overview
→ Company Owner, CSM Sentiment, CSM Sentiment Details, Plan, ARR, Next Renewal Date

Section 2: Product Usage Data
→ Total Seats, Active Seats, Usage Trend, Feature #1 Usage Total, Feature #2 Usage Total, Feature #3 Usage Total

3. Deal record - Right sidebar customization

→ Health score, Contacts, Deals, Tickets, App CRM Cards (CloneNer)

Taking a process driven approach not only increases renewal rates but also strengthens your relationship with customers by ensuring you can remain proactive and focused on their needs instead of manually managing process.

As always, it’s important to test new products with your own workflows and data, so don’t hesitate to try CloneNer in the HubSpot marketplace, or get in touch with the CloneNer team if you have any additional questions. 

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