Low engagement - affected by previews / iPhone etc ?

[RBeesley]

We recently sent an email to a group of people, inviting them to request a free information pack from us. Around 105 people responded and we sent the physical pack out. That all worked fine.

But we wanted to send an email to them to say it was on its way, and did that as a marketing email with those recipients set on a separate list.

In the marketing module, the 'Do not send to low engaged contacts' was showing 98 - so a lot of our recipients would not get the email (we unticked the box)... but they are engaged contacts anyway.

I know some people's phones/computers do not tell HubSpot when they have been opened - is that then resulting in them being marked as 'low engagement' even though they are opening the email, clicking on links, and requesting information? Is there a way to resolve that?

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @RBeesley,

The short answer is: It's best to not check the 'Do not send to unengaged contacts' box anymore and ignore it. Since iOS 15, open information has become unreliable and, personally, I think trying to come up with solutions is currently futile.

If you want to better understand what's going on in the background and how HubSpot defines engagement, you can find that information here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/email/what-is-graymail-and-how-can-i-avoid-sending-my-email-to-unengag...

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HubSpot's graymail suppression feature automatically excludes any contacts who have not been engaging with your marketing emails. This feature uses the Sends since last engagement contact property, which counts an engagement when a contact opens a marketing email or when they click a link in your marketing email.

A contact will be categorized as unengaged if they meet one of the following criteria:

• Never engaged with a marketing email from you and hasn't engaged with the last 11 emails you've sent them.
• Previously engaged with one of your marketing emails but haven't engaged with the last 16 emails you've sent them.

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For campaigns like the one you just ran, I don't think high or low engagement play a big role.

The most burning question after iOS 15 is how to remove actual unengaged contacts from recipient lists, to improve email deliverability. Since open information is not reliable anymore, the next best metric would be marketing email clicks, however click rates are much lower than open rates and a clean-up based on clicks would be much more aggressive.

If cleaning up is not an immediate concern for you: don't check the box, follow the HubSpot product updates regarding potential changes and don't overthink the issue for now.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any follow-up questions.

PS. The 98 contacts should refer to all of your unengaged contacts in your portal, not the ones from the recipient list. When you click the link below you'll be taken to a list that shows you all contacts from your portal that match the criteria and you'll see that the list count corresponds to those 98 contacts.

[RAshton4]

This is really helpful, @karstenkoehler . I've suspected for a while now that Hubspot's graymail suppression may actually be working against us. So I've now decided to clean my list manually every month (something I was going to do anyway) and switch off suppression.

My first step was going to be to unsubscribe contacts who've not opened a marketing email for more than 90 days. The second step was to enroll those who remain in a two-email workflow, asking them to click a CTA if they want to stay subscribed, with the final step being automatic removal from the list. 

However, having read your reply above, I'm worried now that I could also be removing/enrolling many contacts who have actually been opening the emails.

What are your latest thoughts on this when it comes to list cleaning, and have you developed any workarounds?

I'd love to know.

[RAshton4]

I suppose I could enroll the first group (contacts who've 'not opened' for more than 90 days) in the list-cleaning workflow. But I'd be worried about harming my sender reputation, as there are around 1400 of them and most are unlikely to respond.

[Whathcock]

Hi @RBeesley ,

It's definitely possible that the iOS updates are messing with engagment numbers, particularly opens. 

You mentioned in your post that the 98 people are "engaged contacts anyway". Can you share how you know that they're engaged contacts (despite being marked as unengaged)? That might help us dig deeper into this.

Whitney Hathcock

www.rakacreative.com

[RBeesley]

Thanks for the reply. We know they are engaged, as they read the initial invitation email and then requested a pack from us. They might have seen it on their email preview (without 'opening' the email) or on iOS so their view wasn't logged - but they must have engaged or they would not have been able to request the pack.

I don't have any other tracking within the emails, so no way of knowing more about them unfortunately.

[SNigam]

Hello @RBeesley ,

Yes, it's possible that some recipients' devices do not track email opens or clicks, which can result in them being marked as "low engagement" in your HubSpot account, even if they are actively engaging with your emails. This can happen if the recipient has images blocked in their email client or if they have a firewall or antivirus software that interferes with email tracking.

To resolve this issue, you can take the following steps:

1. Encourage your recipients to add your email address to their safe sender list to ensure that your emails are not blocked by their firewall or antivirus software.

2. Use a different tracking method, such as Google Analytics, to track the click-throughs from your emails to your website. This will give you a more complete picture of your email performance, even if email opens are not being tracked in HubSpot.

3. Make sure your emails are designed in a way that is easy for recipients to engage with, such as using clear and concise subject lines, keeping the content relevant to the recipient, and including clear calls to action.

4. Monitor your email performance regularly and adjust your strategy as needed based on your findings. For example, if you notice that a particular type of email is not performing well, you can adjust the design or content of that email to improve engagement.

By taking these steps, you can help ensure that your emails are reaching and engaging with your target audience, even if some of the email tracking data in HubSpot is not accurate.

I hope this will help you.

Thank you 

Shubham Nigam