How Do You Manage Sales Sequences vs. Marketing Emails in HubSpot?

[Heisenberg]

Hi everyone,

We’re a HubSpot-using organization where both our Sales and Marketing teams actively use email outreach:

The Sales team uses sequences for cold outreach and follow-ups.

The Marketing team sends bulk email campaigns to our broader contact database.

Being a new organization to use HubSpot we noticed that we have a higher bounce rate. 

I'm curious to know:

Is this a common practice across HubSpot-using organizations — where both Sales and Marketing email the same contacts in parallel?

How does this affect email deliverability and reputation? (e.g., hard bounces, unsubscribe rates, sender score)

What are some best practices you’ve implemented to manage or separate communication between Sales and Marketing?
How do you use suppression lists, contact ownership, lifecycle stages, or smart lists to avoid conflict?

We're looking to refine our processes and ensure we’re following email hygiene best practices, especially now that HubSpot email health metrics are more critical than ever.

Would love to hear how others are navigating this!

Thanks in advance!

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @Heisenberg,

Happy to help here!

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@Heisenberg wrote:

Is this a common practice across HubSpot-using organizations — where both Sales and Marketing email the same contacts in parallel?

---

That depends very much on the products/services offered, the exact responsibilities of both teams, the content which they're sending, the goal their communication is trying to achieve. Typically, you would have marketing qualifying contacts using nurturing emails after conversions – up to a point where these contacts are handed over to sales and any previous nurturing communication is now turning into individual communication by sales. The only communication that would typically come from marketing at such a point are transactional emails (should contacts request whitepapers, register for events etc) and emails that the contact specifically subscribed to (e.g. recurring newsletters).

That doesn't mean that both teams cannot email a contact at the same time. But the idea of the above is that marketing isn't suggesting to a contact to book a meeting or to learn about our products and services while sales is already talking to the person.

---

@Heisenberg wrote:

How does this affect email deliverability and reputation? (e.g., hard bounces, unsubscribe rates, sender score)

---

Two teams communicating to one contact in itself does not negatively or positively affect deliverability. Also keep in mind that technically these emails are treated differently, see here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/marketing-email/understand-email-sending-in-hubspot

In general, you want to make sure that you're avoiding hard bounces where you can, for example by integrating an email validation solution like Zerobounce, Neverbounce, Verifalia, EmailHippo or similar. Contacts with a bad validation result should be excluded from marketing email sends especially.

---

@Heisenberg wrote:

What are some best practices you’ve implemented to manage or separate communication between Sales and Marketing?

---

Here are important best practices I would recommend establishing if you haven't yet:

• A shared understanding of lifecycle stage definitions and when exactly a contact is ready for sales
• A dashboard which tracks the number of sales-ready contacts, also displaying disqualification reasons, to be reviewed by markeing and sales in a regular meeting
• A shared communication channel for marketing content updates to sales (new whitepaper, new event etc)

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@Heisenberg wrote:

How do you use suppression lists, contact ownership, lifecycle stages, or smart lists to avoid conflict?

---

If you follow the best practices above, then a marketing exclusion list by lifecycle stage is enough. You can of course expand such an exclusion list by contacts associated to open deals or with a recent 'Last activity date' or upcoming 'Next activity date'.

Hope this helps!

[HKoch · Accepted solution]

@Heisenberg Yes, sales and marketing typically reach out to the same contacts. In my opinion it's mostly about data cleanliness - don't let the sales or marketing teams import lists of cold leads or leads who have not opted in. That will horribly impact your bounce and deliverability rate. In addition, if you see spam leads coming in - adopt Neverbounce or a double opt-in to combat spam contacts. 

Here's a breakdown of the issues and best practices around Sales and Marketing email overlap in HubSpot:

Best Practices to Manage Communication:

• Clear Communication and SLAs:
  • Establish a Service Level Agreement (SLA) between Sales and Marketing. This should define:
    • Who owns which stages of the lead lifecycle.
    • What types of communication each team is responsible for.
    • How often each team should contact leads.
    • Escalation procedures for potential over-emailing issues.
  • Regular meetings between Sales and Marketing to discuss strategy and address any conflicts.  
• Contact Ownership:
  • Use HubSpot's contact ownership feature to assign specific leads to sales reps. This helps define who has primary responsibility for communication.   
• Lifecycle Stages:
  • Clearly define and use HubSpot's lifecycle stages (Subscriber, Lead, MQL, SQL, Customer, etc.) to segment contacts and tailor communication.  
  • For example, Marketing might focus on Leads and MQLs, while Sales focuses on SQLs.
• Smart Lists:
  • Create smart lists to segment contacts based on various criteria (e.g., deal stage, last activity date, email engagement).   
  • Use these lists to exclude contacts from certain campaigns or to trigger specific Sales outreach.

How to Use HubSpot Features to Avoid Conflict:

• Suppression Lists:
  • Use suppression lists to exclude contacts from Marketing campaigns if they are actively being worked by Sales (e.g., if they are in a specific deal stage).   
  • Create lists of unsubscribed contacts and ensure both Sales and Marketing suppress these contacts.
• Contact Ownership:
  • Only allow the assigned sales rep to send direct sales emails to a contact.
  • Use workflows to automate tasks and notifications based on contact ownership.   
• Lifecycle Stages:
  • Trigger different workflows and email sequences based on lifecycle stage.
  • For example, once a lead becomes an SQL, suppress them from top-of-funnel marketing emails.
• Smart Lists:
  • Create smart lists to identify contacts who have recently received a Sales email and suppress them from automated Marketing campaigns for a set period.   
  • Use smart lists to segment contacts based on their engagement with Marketing emails (e.g., those who haven't opened emails in a while) and tailor Sales outreach accordingly.

By implementing these best practices and leveraging HubSpot's features effectively, you can minimize the risks of parallel emailing and optimize for better results.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @Heisenberg,

Happy to help here!

---

@Heisenberg wrote:

Is this a common practice across HubSpot-using organizations — where both Sales and Marketing email the same contacts in parallel?

---

That depends very much on the products/services offered, the exact responsibilities of both teams, the content which they're sending, the goal their communication is trying to achieve. Typically, you would have marketing qualifying contacts using nurturing emails after conversions – up to a point where these contacts are handed over to sales and any previous nurturing communication is now turning into individual communication by sales. The only communication that would typically come from marketing at such a point are transactional emails (should contacts request whitepapers, register for events etc) and emails that the contact specifically subscribed to (e.g. recurring newsletters).

That doesn't mean that both teams cannot email a contact at the same time. But the idea of the above is that marketing isn't suggesting to a contact to book a meeting or to learn about our products and services while sales is already talking to the person.

---

@Heisenberg wrote:

How does this affect email deliverability and reputation? (e.g., hard bounces, unsubscribe rates, sender score)

---

Two teams communicating to one contact in itself does not negatively or positively affect deliverability. Also keep in mind that technically these emails are treated differently, see here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/marketing-email/understand-email-sending-in-hubspot

In general, you want to make sure that you're avoiding hard bounces where you can, for example by integrating an email validation solution like Zerobounce, Neverbounce, Verifalia, EmailHippo or similar. Contacts with a bad validation result should be excluded from marketing email sends especially.

---

@Heisenberg wrote:

What are some best practices you’ve implemented to manage or separate communication between Sales and Marketing?

---

Here are important best practices I would recommend establishing if you haven't yet:

• A shared understanding of lifecycle stage definitions and when exactly a contact is ready for sales
• A dashboard which tracks the number of sales-ready contacts, also displaying disqualification reasons, to be reviewed by markeing and sales in a regular meeting
• A shared communication channel for marketing content updates to sales (new whitepaper, new event etc)

---

@Heisenberg wrote:

How do you use suppression lists, contact ownership, lifecycle stages, or smart lists to avoid conflict?

---

If you follow the best practices above, then a marketing exclusion list by lifecycle stage is enough. You can of course expand such an exclusion list by contacts associated to open deals or with a recent 'Last activity date' or upcoming 'Next activity date'.

Hope this helps!