Key Summary
- Trello’s rapid growth created challenges in onboarding, retention, and enterprise sales.
- Manual campaigns were inefficient, leading to missed opportunities.
- HubSpot’s marketing automation streamlined onboarding, lead nurturing, and behaviour-based triggers.
- Implementing and learning about automation processes improved user activation by 20% and enterprise conversions by 25%.
- The marketing team saved hundreds of hours, focusing more on strategy and optimisation.
- Marketing and sales alignment improved, resulting in warmer & more engaged leads
Introduction
Trello, a visual project management platform, grew from a startup into a tool used by millions worldwide. But with growth came challenges: the marketing team couldn’t keep up with user communication, onboarding, and lead nurturing manually. They needed a way to automate repetitive processes without losing the personal touch that had helped them grow in the first place. By using HubSpot’s marketing automation platform, Trello streamlined onboarding, nurtured leads at scale, and improved retention rates, all while freeing up the marketing team to focus on strategy instead of manual execution.
This case study explores how automation made Trello’s marketing easier, more effective, and ultimately more profitable.
The Challenge: Scaling Without Losing Efficiency
1. A Growing User Base
Trello started as a free tool and scaled quickly due to its viral adoption. But as the user base expanded into millions, the team faced difficulty in:
- Educating users about advanced features.
- Onboarding new customers effectively.
- Retaining users who signed up but never fully engaged.
2. Manual Campaign Bottlenecks
The marketing team initially relied on manual email campaigns and ad hoc onboarding sequences. This led to:
- Delays in communication.
- Missed opportunities to convert free users into paid subscribers.
- Overwhelmed staff stretched too thin.
3. Data Silos
Customer information lived in different systems—support tickets, product usage data, and email signups. This fragmented data made it impossible to send personalised, timely communications at scale.
Trello needed a way to automate user journeys while keeping campaigns relevant and effective.
The Solution: HubSpot Marketing Automation
To try and fix these issues, Trello adopted HubSpot’s marketing automation suite and focused on three key areas:
1. Automated Onboarding Sequences
Instead of sending generic “Welcome” emails, Trello created automated workflows triggered by signups. These emails varied depending on user behaviour:
- New signups received a step-by-step introduction to Trello boards.
- Active users were shown advanced features like integrations with Slack or Google Drive.
- Inactive users received nudges with tips on how to get started.
This automation ensured that every user received the right message at the right time, without manual effort from the marketing team.
2. Lead Nurturing for Enterprise Clients
Trello wanted to grow its Trello Business Class offering for larger companies. Using HubSpot, the team built automated lead nurturing campaigns:
- Prospects downloading enterprise-related whitepapers automatically entered a workflow.
- Emails progressively educated them on security, collaboration at scale, and ROI of paid features.
- Sales reps were alerted once prospects hit engagement thresholds.
This reduced wasted sales time and improved conversions for enterprise deals.
3. Behavioural Triggers and Personalisation
With HubSpot integrated into Trello’s product, marketing automation could pull in product usage data. For example:
- If a user created more than five boards, they received an email about premium features.
- Teams inviting more than 10 members got prompts about Business Class plans.
- Customers using integrations were nudged toward additional third-party apps.
Personalisation at scale was finally possible.
Results
The impact of automation was dramatic:
1. Improved Onboarding and Retention
Automated onboarding increased activation rates by 20%, meaning more new users stuck with Trello long enough to form habits. This directly boosted retention and long-term revenue.
2. Increased Enterprise Conversions
Lead nurturing workflows contributed to a 25% increase in Trello Business Class sales. By the time prospects reached sales reps, they were educated, engaged, and ready to buy.
3. Time Saved for Marketing Teams
HubSpot automation saved the Trello marketing team hundreds of hours per quarter. Instead of manually segmenting users and creating campaigns from scratch, they focused on improving messaging and strategy.
4. Better Customer Experience
Users reported that Trello’s emails felt helpful and timely, not spammy. Automation allowed Trello to maintain a personal connection at scale.
Why It Worked
- Segmentation and Personalisation
Automation wasn’t just about blasting more emails. Trello built workflows based on behaviour and targetted the right people with email automation tools. - Alignment of Marketing and Sales
Lead nurturing helped bridge the gap between marketing and sales, giving reps warmer leads. - Scalable Efficiency
Automation replaced repetitive manual work, allowing the team to handle a global user base without hiring dozens more marketers. - Continuous Optimisation
With HubSpot’s analytics, Trello A/B tested workflows, refined subject lines, and improved conversion rates over time.
Lessons for Other Companies
Trello’s case offers lessons that apply to any fast-growing company:
- Start with the customer journey. Map out key stages (signup, activation, upgrade) before building workflows.
- Automate high-volume, low-value tasks. Free up human time for strategy and creative work.
- Use behaviour-based triggers. Emails tied to user actions always outperform generic blasts.
- Align teams. Marketing automation should feed into sales, product, and customer support seamlessly.
Conclusion
Trello’s adoption of marketing automation demonstrates how the right technology can turn scaling challenges into opportunities. By automating onboarding, lead nurturing, and behavioural triggers, Trello improved retention, boosted conversions, and empowered its marketing team to work smarter, not harder. Marketing automation made things easier, more efficient, and more profitable and meant they didn’t have to sacrifivce the personalization that customers value. For companies facing similar challenges—too many users, too little time, and fragmented data—Trello’s story shows that automation is an absolute necessity when growing a business today.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation uses software to automate repetitive marketing tasks like email campaigns, customer onboarding, and lead nurturing.
2. Why did Trello choose HubSpot?
HubSpot offered integrated tools for email workflows, CRM, and behavioural triggers, enabling Trello to unify its marketing and sales processes.
3. How did automation impact Trello’s onboarding?
Automated workflows personalised messages for new, active, and inactive users, improving activation rates by 20%.
4. Can smaller companies benefit from automation too?
Yes. Even small businesses can use automation to save time, personalise communication, and scale campaigns without needing large teams.
5. What was the biggest gain for Trello?
Time savings and improved enterprise conversions. The marketing team could focus on strategy while automation nurtured leads effectively.
