The addition of "RE:" for threaded email replies within HubSpot sequences

Marketing & Content Hub Tips, Tricks & Best Practices
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Hi,
We want to set-up a HubSpot sequence where all threaded emails which are a reply to the initial email have the same subject with one change… we want subsequence emails to start with "RE: ".
Example:
1st email gets sent with subject = “Random Subject”
2nd email is a response to the thread with subject = “RE: Random Subject”
3rd, 4th, 5th etc. email… = “RE: Random Subject”
The main benefit of setting up the sequence in this way would be to create the impression that I have typed out the email and manually sent it specifically for that receipient - since adding “RE” is what would happen automatically when I reply to previous emails that I have sent.
Our suspicion is that having “RE” at the start of emails 2, 3, 4, 5 etc. will increase the likelihood of engagement & responses. Other benefits might also include getting into the main inbox of our prospects / avoiding spam filters.
Has anyone been able to find a solution to enable this for threaded emails within hubspot sequences?
Many thanks in advance!
Glen

2

Hi @GlenBurgon,

Have you considered just typing it into the sequence email subject?

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You might want to monitor your email performance closely after you make this change as it is a bit of a sneaky tactic – and eventually, email service providers are still solving for the recipient, not the sender. I’d be surprised if some of them are not penalizing this.

Best regards!

3

Thanks Karsten for the quick reply!
We wouldn’t want the first email of the thread to also contain “Re”, would that be possible?

4

@GlenBurgon sure, I chose the third email in a sequence for my example, see my previous reply. It’s a free text subject line, you can type in whatever you want :slightly_smiling_face:

5

Something I forgot to mention because it’s complex enough already…
We are using personalisation tokens within the email subject because we want each subject to be unique for every contact that we enroll.
Again to improve deliverability / engagement.
Hopefully the solution would still work when personalisation tokens are being used in the subject.

6

@GlenBurgon sure, why wouldn’t it work? You’re really just typing a “RE:” at the beginning of the subject lines of select emails in your sequence.

7

I find that:

  1. You can type whatever you want as the subject when you’re creating the email templates. As in your example, you can add “Re” for email 3.
  2. I can add that email 3 into a sequence as the 3rd email and it works fine…
  3. BUT if I have email threading ‘turned-on’, then whatever the subject of email 3 is doesn’t matter. The subject of the first email within the thread gets used. Ideally the first email of a thread wouldn’t contain “RE”

Perhaps I am missing something?

8

@GlenBurgon ah, understood – yes, this might actually not be possible at this point.

You could request this from the product team here: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/idb-p/HubSpot_Ideas

At this point, you might have to decide between either the “RE:” or the threading.

9

Hi @GlenBurgon,

If email threading is enabled, the next sequence of emails will be sent as replies within the same email thread; they won’t be separate emails with different subject lines.

10

Thanks Karsten and GiantFocal, I just submitted this enhancement for sequences as an idea here: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Email-threading-with-different-subjects-in-HubSpot-Sequences/idi-p/1170328#M214707