Reporting Implications of Changing the Assigned Campaign After a Marketing Email Has Been Sent

[HKotara]

We've recently adopted a new campaign structure, and I'm finding our HubSpot users who are creating/sending marketing emails are not always complying with our new standards. There are cases where they assign the wrong campaign, or don't assign one at all.

It seems possible to update the associated campaign of a marketing email after it's been sent by choosing "Actions > Edit Campaign", but it displays this warning message:



"If you change the campaign after you schedule or publish this email, it will affect the reporting data in the campaign overview. You’ll only be able to view reporting data on the email from the date you changed the campaign."

I don't know exactly how to interpret that. Using this example, can anyone clarify what the resulting reporting data would look like?

November 1: marketing email sent under "Campaign A" and generated... 

• November 1 = 1000 opens, 10 clicks

November 2: the marketing email above's campaign updated to "Campaign B", then afterwards generated...

• November 2 = 1000 opens, 10 clicks

The way the warning is worded makes me worry that any data prior to the campaign change may be lost. Or is it just saying that the resulting data will be associated with the campaign it was assigned to at the moment the data was collected (i.e. when the contact opened/clicked), and the results will be split between Campaign A and B? 

[PamCotton]

Hey @HKotara, thank you for posting in our Community.

The warning message indicates that if you change the campaign assignment after an email has been sent, only the data from the moment of the change (i.e., after the campaign switch) will be associated with the new campaign. In your example, if the email was originally sent under "Campaign A" and you later changed it to "Campaign B," the opens and clicks recorded before the change (on November 1) will remain associated with "Campaign A." After the change (on November 2), the data will be counted under "Campaign B."

So, the data is not lost; it will simply be reported under the campaign it was associated with when the engagement occurred. The reporting for the email will be split between Campaign A and Campaign B, reflecting the correct attribution based on when the interactions occurred.

Kindly,

Pam 

[MariaRochford]

Hi Pam, 

Do you know what happens if there was no campaign previously. An email sender forgot to add it to the original email, and we are trying to find a way to allocate this email to a campaign. 

[HKotara]

@MariaRochford This happens constantly at my company, and here's how I handle and what the data and reporting impacts are:

• For emails that have already been published/sent, go into the email setup page and click "Actions" at the top right. One of the options is "Edit Campaign". Click that, and choose the correct campaign from the dropdown. (There is a warning message, but nothing to be concerned about.)
  
  
• I have found that after updating this, all the HubSpot marketing email data is correctly associated with the updated campaign: delivered, opens, clicks, etc. 
  
  
• But the web analytics data (whether in the HubSpot reports or another platform like Google Analytics), the campaign will still be missing. That campaign needs to be associated BEFORE the publish to correctly add it to the "utm_campaign" parameter. If it wasn't there at the time of send, too bad, it doesn't get retroactively injected into the copy/links of the email that was already sent.

Hope that helps!