Advice - HubSpot or External Mail Program

[pgazley]

Hi,

I have over 2k people in Salesforce that I consider "unengaged". They are contacts that were imported a long time ago (probably via list acquisitions) and when I integrated HubSpot, I did not bring them over. We'd like to send them a re-engagement email but I don't want to get blacklisted. Do you recommend I do this via HubSpot or through an external service like MailChimp? My thought with HubSpot is to import the list, send the email, flag responders vs non-responders, and then delete the non-responders from HubSpot. Externally, I would just send the email and those who respond will be tracked and re-engaged. 

Any recommendations? Pros/cons? 

Thanks,

Pam

[ajchapman20]

Hi @pgazley ,

I do think your initial idea of importing a list, sending an email and flagging and deleting unengaged contacts would be a good plan however I think it requires going a bit deeper.  So bare with me in this long message.

• Step one with any older list is to purge it of any initiative email addresses to prevent hard bounces. I would recommend kickbox.com for that.
• Step two is considering how old the list is and if it would still be relevant to contact those individuals. Even if the email is delivered, do they remember engaging with you in the past? What is the likelihood they would mark the email as spam?
• Step three, after assessing the list and sussing out any remaining good contacts brings us to a decision point:
• Do we want to incur the risk of damaging sending reputation / losing email privileges with HubSpot?
• Do we take the precaution to do it by the book? (ie. double opt-in: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/email/set-up-double-opt-in-for-emails)
• You'll need to send an opt-in email to the contact manually via the contact record (not using the marketing email tool). Exmaple emails for reference https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/10-examples-of-effective-re-engagement-emails

Main points and closing thoughts:

• In your post you had mentioned that the contacts on that list may have been purchased some time ago. This is contradictory to all email marketing best practices and could violate terms of service with HubSpot. If they are from a list, I would recommend against sending them any marketing emails until you have received explicit opt-in consent from them.
• Using a third party ESP would not impact your email privileges with HubSpot but could potentially damage the email sending reputation that is tied to your domain. With that, it could carry over a negative impact to your deliverability not just in HubSpot but with any other ESP in the future.

Let me know your thoughts, questions or concerns.