Most small business owners know they should be following up leads more consistently. They know they should be staying in touch with past customers. They know a nurture sequence would help. They just have no idea where to start — and the word "automation" makes it sound like something that belongs to a company ten times their size.
It does not. And it does not require a large budget to do it well.
At ID Digital Agency, we have helped small and growing Melbourne businesses build lean, effective automation setups using tools that are either free or close to it. Here is a practical breakdown of what is possible — and how to approach it without overcomplicating everything.
Both platforms are capable, and both have a legitimate place depending on your situation. The short version:
HubSpot Free is the better choice if you are primarily focused on managing contacts and tracking where leads are in your sales process. The free CRM includes contact management, deal pipelines, email tracking, meeting scheduling, and a basic form builder. It is a proper sales tool with marketing features bolted on — and for a service business with a considered sales process, it is excellent.
Mailchimp is the better choice if email marketing is your primary channel and you do not need a full CRM. Its automation builder is intuitive, its email templates are polished, and the free tier (up to 500 contacts) gives you a genuine welcome sequence, basic audience segmentation, and automated follow-ups without spending a cent. For an e-commerce business or a brand with a content-led audience, Mailchimp still holds its own in 2026.
The mistake is treating them as competing options. For many small businesses, the smarter move is using both — HubSpot to manage the sales pipeline, Mailchimp to handle the email marketing — and connecting them so data flows between the two.
You do not need twenty workflows. Start with these four and you will be operating at a higher level than most small businesses in Australia.
1. The New Lead Welcome Sequence When someone fills in a contact form on your website, enquires via email, or downloads a piece of content, they should immediately receive a response that acknowledges their interest, sets an expectation about next steps, and begins building trust. This is table stakes — but a significant percentage of small businesses still do not have it. Set it up once, and it runs forever.
2. The Abandoned Enquiry Follow-Up A lead comes in, you respond, and then... silence. Three days later, nothing. A simple automated follow-up — one email, two to three days after the initial response, checking whether they had any questions — recovers a measurable percentage of leads that would otherwise go cold. The tone should feel personal, not like a mass email. Keep it brief and specific.
3. The Post-Purchase Check-In If you work with clients on projects or deliver a service, an automated check-in email sent two to four weeks after project completion does several valuable things simultaneously. It signals that you care, it opens the door to feedback, and it keeps the relationship warm ahead of the next engagement. This is one of the highest-ROI automations we recommend to small business clients because it costs almost nothing and generates real goodwill.
4. The Re-Engagement Sequence Contacts who have not heard from you in 60 to 90 days are at risk of forgetting you exist. A short, two-email re-engagement sequence — starting with something genuinely useful, like a recent blog post or a relevant insight — brings dormant contacts back into the conversation without feeling like a hard sell.
The automations above are straightforward in concept but easy to build badly. Before you open either platform and start creating workflows, do two things.
First, write out your ideal customer journey as a simple list. From the moment someone discovers your business to the moment they become a loyal repeat customer — what should they experience at each stage? This becomes the map your automation follows.
Second, write the emails before you build the workflows. The biggest delay in most automation projects is not the technology — it is figuring out what to actually say. Write the sequences in a document first, review them, and only then move into the platform to build the mechanics.
We can help you map your customer journey and build your automation from the ground up →
The free tiers of both HubSpot and Mailchimp are genuinely capable, but they have real limits. You will start to feel the ceiling when your contact list grows past a few hundred, when you need more sophisticated segmentation, when you want to A/B test email subject lines, or when you need detailed reporting on automation performance.
At that point, HubSpot's Starter tier and Mailchimp's Essentials plan both represent solid value. The key is not upgrading before you need to — get the fundamentals working first, prove the model, and then invest in the features that will take you further.
Is HubSpot really free? What is the catch? HubSpot's free CRM tier is genuinely free and genuinely useful — no credit card required for the core contact management, deal pipeline, and basic email tools. The catch is that more powerful features, including marketing automation workflows, email sequences, and custom reporting, sit behind paid tiers. For most small businesses just getting started, the free plan is a perfectly reasonable place to begin.
Can I use Mailchimp if I already have a website with a contact form? Yes. Mailchimp connects to most website platforms — WordPress, Squarespace, Shopify, and custom builds — either through a native integration or via a tool like Zapier. When someone submits your contact form, they can be automatically added to a Mailchimp audience and enrolled in a welcome sequence without any manual work.
How many emails should a basic nurture sequence have? For a small business welcome or nurture sequence, three to five emails spread over two to three weeks is a practical starting point. More is not better — relevance and timing matter far more than volume. Each email should have a clear purpose and a clear next step for the reader.
Do I need a developer to set up Mailchimp or HubSpot? Not for the basics. Both platforms are designed for non-technical users, and the in-platform documentation and tutorial resources are solid. Where a developer adds genuine value is in connecting the platform to your website, building custom integrations with other tools, or setting up more advanced conditional logic in your workflows.
What is the biggest mistake small businesses make with automation? Trying to automate too much before they have the fundamentals working. The businesses that succeed with automation are the ones that build three things well and measure them — not the ones that build fifteen things in a rush and have no idea which ones are actually performing.