topic Re: Difference between "Sent" and "Delivered" email? in Sales Email

Why do my marketing emails show as "Delivered" but my sales emails only show as "Sent" in HubSpot?

JHand3 — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:22:23 GMT

Hi,

I'm seeing the same issue as the screenshot in this post. Marketing emails show as delivered, but sales emails only show as sent.

Does the email type being sales vs marketing have anythign to do with the sent/delivered status?

Moderator Note: This post was reviewed for relevancy and optimized for clarity on April 2, 2026. Thank you for your contributions to the HubSpot Community!

Re: Difference between "Sent" and "Delivered" email?

kvlschaefer — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 12:10:44 GMT

Hi @JHand3,

Thanks for reaching out!

I moved your reply to a new post as the thread you had commented on is over a year old.

Sales emails will show as sent status until opened and, if HubSpot registers that, it would then be replaced by open and click metrics. Delivered status is only for marketing emails!

I also wanted to refer you to this guide regarding the sent and delivered definitions for marketing emails:

Sent: contacts on your selected recipient lists minus blocked recipients (exclusion lists). If your email message contained multiple recipient lists, HubSpot compiles a final list of contacts and removes duplicates so no contact will receive more than one of the same email messages.
Delivered: contacts whose email server sent HubSpot a response stating that the email was delivered.

To put it in simpler terms, Sent means that an email was sent out but does not necessarily mean that it was received. Whereas Delivered would mean that an email has been sent AND received.

I hope this information on sales emails and marketing emails proves helpful 🙂

Best,

Kristen

Re: Difference between "Sent" and "Delivered" email?

DutchieSarah — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 16:30:39 GMT

Hi @kvlschaefer - We sent an email that ended up being clipped by Gmail, and our open rate is lingering at 3-4% compared to average 20-25%. Could this low open rate be due to the fact it was clipped? In the event it was clipped, but shows as delivered, does that mean the email did make it to inboxes but HS isn't counting all the opens? I'm trying to determine if I should reduce the content to avoid clipping, then resend the email, but I don't want to do that if they already received it. Thank you! - Sarah