I made a lot of mistakes transitioning from pure marketing to the technical side. These are the ones you can avoid.
The Workflows
1. Lead Qualification Scoring
This was the first one I built. It takes form submissions, enriches the data with Clearbit, scores based on company size and job title, and routes hot leads to Slack while dumping the rest into a nurture sequence.
Time saved: About 2 hours/day of manual sorting
2. Content Distribution
Every blog post I publish gets automatically formatted and distributed to LinkedIn. The formatting adjustments per platform happen automatically.
Time saved: 30 minutes per post
3. Weekly Reporting
I was spending every Monday morning pulling numbers from three different tools. Now n8n does it Sunday night and sends me a summary.
Time saved: 3 hours/week
4. CRM Data Hygiene
Contacts get automatically tagged, deduplicated, and enriched. When someone changes jobs (based on LinkedIn data), they get flagged for review.
Time saved: Hard to measure, but reduces errors significantly
5. Invoice Processing
PDF invoices from vendors get parsed, data extracted, and entered into my accounting system. Still requires human verification, but the data entry is automated.
Time saved: 1 hour/week
The Pattern
Notice what these have in common: they're all repetitive tasks with clear rules. That's where automation shines. Don't try to automate decisions that need human judgment—automate the data handling around those decisions.
Conclusion
This is what works for me. Your mileage may vary, but the principles should translate. Let me know if you hit any snags.
Questions? Find me on LinkedIn. I actually respond.