Hand-built emails, turned into a self-running engine

Lisman Forklifts is a family business that has traded used forklifts since 1967 — today Europe's leading wholesaler, supplying dealers in more than 80 countries from a stock of 1,600+ machines. Its growth runs on a Sales-led motion: Area Managers and buyers working wholesale relationships across the world. But the thing that fed that motion — keeping customers informed of new stock — ran on something else entirely. Every day, new machines arrive. Every day, customers need to know. And every email was built by hand: each machine's name, photo and specifications placed in, one by one.

Lisman's Sales-led motion was sound. Its demand engine wasn't an engine at all — it was manual labor. And manual labor has a ceiling in two directions at once: it consumed the content marketer's time, and it capped how far the stock updates could ever scale. You can't run a daily, multi-language operation across 1,600+ machines by hand — not without it becoming a full-time job that still can't keep up. Stat callouts: every machine placed in by hand / daily stock, manual assembly / a demand engine capped by one person's hours.

We designed a self-running demand engine on HubSpot — built so the stock updates assemble themselves. At its core: a custom object — a live inventory of every machine, refreshed daily as new stock arrives. On top of it, a custom email module that lets the content marketer decide exactly which machines appear — by brand, type, price category, or a single reference number — and even load machines to a recipient's preferences. The module pulls each machine's data, image and product-page link in automatically. And a safety mechanism that blocks any send with no new stock behind it — so the engine never goes out empty.

We activated the engine in two builds. Build 01 — The inventory backbone: We built the custom object and wired it to Lisman's live stock, then built the email module on top — so the content marketer went from placing machines in by hand to selecting them in seconds. Build 02 — The autonomous send: We turned on automatic sending — daily for new stock, weekly for specials — across nine languages, with currency adjusted per market. The safety mechanism made it trustworthy enough to leave running. The content marketer's job changed from assembling emails to directing an engine.

With the engine live, the numbers compound on their own. In a year, it sends close to 500,000 stock emails at a 20% click-through rate — and those emails alone closed 100+ deals worth around €5M, with no manual assembly behind any of them. The content marketer who once built every email now fills and translates them in a flash — nine languages, one click — and spends the time that frees up on work that actually needs a person.