Feb 18, 201910:41 AM - edited Feb 18, 201911:59 AM
Participant
Searching for Unengaged Contacts with Multiple Email Addresses
SOLVE
I am attempting to search and destroy contacts in our HubSpot account who are unengaged. The concept of multiple email addresses being added to a Contact is really complicating what I would have assumed was default behavior.
By way of example, this is my criteria for evaluating if a Contact is unengaged:
Marketing emails delivered is greater than or equal to 10 [update: This "emails delivered" point is a mistake. See follow up posts for clarification.] and Marketing emails opened is equal to 0 and Marketing emails clicked is equal to 0
However, Contacts are being added to this list based off each unique email address that they have associated with their account. So, if they have a work email address that they are very engaged with, but then they have another email address that they are receiving email to but not engaged with, the above criteria adds the whole Contact to the list, based off the unengaged address in their Contact record. So, in my mind, I'm adding search criteria at the Contact level, but HubSpot is processing the criteria at the individual email address level, but then applying the status to the Contact as a whole.
Am I misunderstanding something, or is this an oversight as to how Contacts are being processed? I put a ticket in with HubSpot support, and they basically confirmed that this is how it works, but I don't understand why it is designed this way. Is there no way to evaluate a Contact's engagement to email based off the Contact record itself? If not, is there a way to query against each individual email address? I don't even see a way to search for Contacts with multiple email addresses at all, let alone set up criteria against each one individually.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks for your time.
I'm really surprised to hear that's how its working. Given that marketing emails only go to the primary email address, and searching within email only searches on primary, I would have assumed that the contact properties you mentioned only look to the primary email address. Again, given that marketing emails only go to the primary email address, that would mean that most contacts with a secondary email address, in most portals, count as unengaged.
As a quick check I added a second email address to my own contact record in my portal. I then did a search for contacts with 0 marketing emails opened, to see if I would come up as a result of the new email address - but I did not.
Is it possible that the contacts in question have multiple records with the different email addresses associated but the same name in your portal?
Searching for Unengaged Contacts with Multiple Email Addresses
SOLVE
This may help. See attached screenshots. In this specific case, the contact used one email address ("ifog...org") over the course of his email history with us. He has interacted a lot. He received an email to "ifog...org" just a few days ago. He took action, submitted a form, and, in that form, used a different email address: "acar...org".
HubSpot set "acar...org" as the new primary.
When you look at the List that I'm using as part of my Unengaged List, you can see that he is being included because as a "Contact" he has completed a workflow (this workflow includes 6 emails), but as an "email" he has had zero interactions. He has interacted in a transactional email, but not a marketing email, so his email is 0.
Now that I really dig into this and understand how HubSpot is evaluating each piece of this query, I understand why he is included in the list. If I added a "marketing emails received" point to my list instead of a "completed workflow" point, I don't think he would be included. But, since the workflow is 6 email sends, it feels redundant to add a quantity of email line item to the query, and the workflow email quantity will change over time...I should not have to go back to lists like this and re-define criteria, nor do I believe that I should need this level of understanding to make it work. It is very unintuitive to evaluate some pieces of a query on the specific email address and then others at the Contact level.
Is there a better way to do this, or is this concept of multiple email addresses still a new feature in HubSpot's mind, and it's a work in progress at this point? It feels like we need to either have deeper access to run queries against all email addresses vs the primary, or that HubSpot would change it's default behavior to evaluate all email address in these types of queries. Right now, it feels wrong, and I'm still not sure how to get around it without a lot of overlapping sets of list criteria.
Searching for Unengaged Contacts with Multiple Email Addresses
SOLVE
Based on the screenshot shown, the HubSpot smart list is correctly reporting. The contact's now current PRIMARY email address acar...org, in fact, has ... - not opened any marketing emails - not clicked any marketing emails - completed the workflows "Emaly Cycle ..."
When the PRIMARY email address of record is changed, HubSpot does not look back. It does not consider activity on a non-PRIMARY email address unless/until such an email address becomes PRIMARY again (if ever).
++ Also, confirmed that the number of 'Marketing Emails Opened' reported by the HubSpot view filter correlates with the then current PRIMARY email address ONLY.
Example - email_01@example.com PRIMARY Opened 28 marketing emails - email_02@example.com Secondary Opened 1 marketing email
View filter report is consistent with the number shown per PRIMARY email address (28), NOT the total (29).
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Searching for Unengaged Contacts with Multiple Email Addresses
SOLVE
I would argue one point.
It is correct to say that the PRIMARY email address didn't open any marketing emails or click any marketing emails. But, it is not correct to say that it completed the workflow. The CONTACT completed the workflow, not the PRIMARY email address. To add minimum emails sent to that criteria is redundant, since workflow completion defines its own unique minimum number of emails to have been sent, and that number will change over time.
It is this logical jump from a specific email address to a Contact that is not intuitive. Requiring an end user (me) to know that "marketing emails sent" only applies to the primary email address and not the Contact as a whole is not a safe assumption, and it feels so unintuitive that it should be corrected. From a Marketing perspective I would go so far as to say that the logic is actually incorrect. I almost always want to search for people based on complete Contact behavior, not specific email address behavior.
Additionally, if I do not have the ability to look at secondary email addresses as part of search criteria, this problem manifests itself in lots of ways that I cannot account for. It is this logical jump that I did not understand going into this post. I now understand why it's happening, but I would still challenge the logic of it.
Thank you for your responses. I do now have a better understanding of why this is happening. It still feels like a bug to me, but it sounds like HubSpot would have a different opinion.
Searching for Unengaged Contacts with Multiple Email Addresses
SOLVE
Thanks. Obviously, this is not a process that I can go through with 80,000 contacts, so I would encourge the HubSpot development team to allow for more advanced filters (secondary email address queries) and/or the ability to search at the Contact level instead of the email address level for this type of action.
Searching for Unengaged Contacts with Multiple Email Addresses
SOLVE
Thanks, that article does address one negative manifestion of this issue, but I felt like its scope is actually larger than that issue. It's one thing to complain that HubSpot isn't integrating with other systems well. It's another to say that HubSpot itself is not behaving as expected. I have upvoted that as an issue, but I wanted to point out some of the fallout within HubSpot's own ecosystem. I'll figure out a way to work around it now that I have a better understanding of how it works. Thanks for your time.
Searching for Unengaged Contacts with Multiple Email Addresses
SOLVE
To clarify one point, in my original post, I said that there was a minimum of 10 emails sent criteria. This is true, for part of the criteria, but I have other criteria as well. I assumed that he was meeting that part, but I see now that he was meeting a different part that did not include a minimum number of emails received, instead using a workflow completion as the criteria. I wanted to point out that I was mistaken about the original criteria. My second post clarifies, but it doesn't call attention to my mistake.
My overall confusion is still valid, but that "minimum of 10" point in my original post is a mistake. See my second post as clarification.