Building a Pipeline Generation Journey

Last updated: October 12, 2026

The goal of your pipeline generation journey is to take a cold prospect from unfamiliar with your brand to actively working with Sales. Start by targeting the same contacts your sales team cares about—people at priority accounts with no open opportunity. Build familiarity by reaching those people across channels, then use contact-level intent and engagement signals to show Sales exactly who to reach out to, and how to make their message relevant to capture their interest. As prospects engage, adapt your messaging and continue supporting Sales with relevant ads, so Marketing and Sales work together to turn interest into pipeline.

Variation 1: Omnichannel

An omnichannel journey helps you coordinate ads, emails, sales outreach, and Salesforce reporting so buyers get relevant follow-ups based on their interests and actions. Instead of managing each channel separately and relying on manual steps, you can automate the right actions at the right time—all within one cohesive journey. Reaching prospects across multiple channels also increases the chances of your message being seen, reinforces it through repeated exposure, and keeps your brand top of mind as buyers move through their journey.

Let’s break it down….

Warm up stage

Step

How to build it

Step 1: Brand Intro

Actions

  • Ads: Show off who you are and what you do (platform-level, not feature-level). Assume this is the first time prospects are being introduced to your brand.

Journey criteria 

  • — (entry step), plus a loop (Target has spent 21 days on the last step). 

  • Contacts from the cohort that don't meet any other stages' criteria start here. The loop sends prospects back to the top if they make it through the full stage without engaging.

  • Why the loop matters: without it, prospects who never click stay with your last creative indefinitely. The loop sends them back to the top of the rotation. Refresh the creatives in this stage every six to nine weeks to keep content fresh.

Step 2: Trust Content

Actions

  • Ads: Now that prospects have had the initial intro to your brand, dig a bit deeper to catch their attention. Show off customer proof, analyst recognitions, or customer logos.

  • Add in email: They've seen your brand ad 15 times. They haven’t clicked, so diversify channels by introducing email into the mix. With this action, prospects will be automatically added to the selected list in your connected MAP.

    • A note on email consent: This action only adds someone to a list—Influ2 doesn’t send the email. Use your connected MAP to check and manage subscription status and consent before sending.

If you’re just getting started with omnichannel orchestration, check out this article to learn more.

Journey criteria to move here

  • Target ad impressions = 15 on Step 1. 

  • Why 15 impressions? It’s a good benchmark. If the prospect hasn't clicked yet, it’s a good time to switch up your messaging to continue building familiarity.

Step 3: Campaign Theme

Actions

  • Ads: Move from brand-level to product-level content to prime your prospect to talk to Sales. Showcase your current quarterly theme, new release, or flagship content.

Journey criteria to move here

  • Target ad impressions = 15 on Step 2.

When does Sales take action?

Prospects will continue to loop through this warm up stage until Sales begins outreach. 

Once an intent signal, HubSpot marketing activity, or ad click is detected, Sales will be notified through the channels configured in your Follower Settings. This is the moment for them to reach out with a relevant message to capture interest while it’s still top of mind.

Sales team still getting started with Influ2 signals? Check out the Signal-Selling Playbook to learn how to use Influ2 signals to boost pipeline by 2.18x.

Another option to consider: Rather than looping a prospect until Sales follows up on an engagement or intent signal, you can add a “Prioritize for Sales” step at the end of the warm-up stage. This proactively prompts sales to reach out after a defined number of impressions, signaling the prospect has been sufficiently warmed up for outreach.

Actions 

Journey criteria to move here

Sales outreach is the exact trigger that moves prospects into the next stage. Let’s take a look.

Active outreach stage

Step

How to build it

Step 1: Active Outreach

Actions

This stage provides marketing air cover while sales actively prospects a target. The goal is to reinforce the same messaging Sales is using across channels to keep your brand and value proposition top of mind.

  • Ads: Align your ad content with the rep’s outreach sequence. Whatever message or content they’re leading with, mirror it.

  • Update Salesforce Campaign: Your prospect has moved from marketing warm-up to active sales engagement. This action ensures your Salesforce campaign reflects this engagement automatically to keep reporting up to date.

  • Add to Sequence: Time is of the essence! Automatically enroll a prospect in a designated sequence or cadence instead of waiting for a rep to do it manually. 

    • If sequence enrollment triggers a prospect’s move to this stage, you can configure the action to avoid overlapping outreach.

  • Remove from email list: Once a prospect enters an active sales conversation, prioritize direct rep outreach over marketing nurture. Automatically remove them from the designated email list in your MAP.

Journey criteria to move here

  • Sales outreach has been detected in the last 5 days.

    • How this is detected: Influ2 connects to your CRM and uses AI to classify sales activity—emails, LinkedIn messages, calls, and sequence enrollments—as outreach. If your reps work in Outreach or Salesloft, make sure that activity is syncing to HubSpot or Salesforce first. Learn more here→ “How to automatically detect outreach activity from Sales”

  • Add a loop: Days spent in the last step = 21

Step 2: Sales Air Cover

Actions

  • Ads: Because active outreach can take several months, consider adding multiple ad creatives to this stage that align with the rep’s outreach content, like a case study, playbook, product deep-dive, or report in their segment.

  • You can also loop prospects back to the beginning to give you time to refresh and update the creatives.

Journey criteria to move here

  • Target ad impressions = 15 on Step 1.

Sales Action

Sales outreach is what moves a prospect into this stage. Reps should use the Signals Center and Target Report to identify who to reach across the full buying group and understand each person’s interests so they can tailor their messaging.

Marketing continues to provide air cover throughout this stage, keeping your brand top of mind during the quiet periods between sales conversations.

Pipeline progression stage

Step

How to build it

Actions

Once there's a real opportunity open, the messaging changes. This can be handled as the third stage in this journey, our built out as a dedicated progression program.

  • Ads: Use content that helps reps progress a deal: ROI content, proof of concepts, security and compliance, competitive comparisons, etc.

Journey criteria to move here

  • Opportunity stage (The exact opportunity stage will vary by customer, but it should represent the first stage where Sales is actively working on a valid opportunity.)

Keep in mind: Opportunity stage conditions move the whole account together — every target tied to that opportunity advances, not just the person who engaged. 

What happens at the end of this journey?

Consider adding an optional dormant stage that stops all ads once an opportunity closes.

  • Journey criteria to move here: Opportunity stage has changed to Closed Won or Closed Lost. 

Variation 2: Intent-based topic branching

Topic branching lets you automatically adjust a buyer’s journey based on the topics they engage with across channels. When a prospect shows interest in a specific topic, you can route them into a dedicated path with relevant ads, emails, and sales follow-up. This helps you reach buyers with messaging that matches their interests while interest is still high, increasing the chances of grabbing their attention and prompting them to take the next step.

To set this up, create a separate stage for each topic instead of using one Active Outreach stage triggered by detected outreach. Give each stage its own trigger based on a buyer’s interest in that topic, indicated by an Audienscope intent signal or direct ad click. For example, buyers who engage with security content enter a stage with dedicated security messaging, while those who engage with reporting content enter a reporting stage. Each buyer automatically receives follow-up content tailored to the topic they engaged with.

Keep in mind: This approach uses the interest signal—not detected outreach—as the entry criteria. It assumes Sales is already reaching out to these buyers, rather than relying on direct outreach tracking.

Journey criteria to move here: Target interested in [TOPIC] in the last [X] days.

Variation 3: Listening-only first stage 

For really large cohorts (ex. 20,000+ contacts), you could consider starting stage 1 with listening on, but no ad creatives. People sit there until an intent signal is detected, then move into a stage where advertising starts. You're spending impressions only on people who have already shown they're thinking about the problem.

Be honest about the trade-off: Waiting for intent means possibly missing people who would convert after seeing your ads. Contact-level ads don’t just capture intent—they create it. Use intent to prioritize a large audience, not as a replacement for warming people up.

Next up: Building a Pipeline Progression Journey