Track Replies to My Email Campaigns

[acaringi]

We regularly send out newsletters where the goal is to get the recipient to reply to the email instead of clicking a link. It's been historically pretty hard to track this, as the "reply-to" email is set to the owner of the lead (resulting in the replies going to various different sales reps). Does Hubspot offer any way to track when an email sent from the marketing platform is replied to? 

[relabidin · Accepted solution]

Hi @acaringi,

HubSpot does not offer a feature that tracks replies to marketing emails. Replies to your marketing emails will be sent to the inbox of the reply-to address on your email, which is understandably hard to track if you have variable reply-to addresses based on HubSpot Owner. 

The reason we do not offer reply tracking on marketing emails is because emails of this type are not typically meant to be replied to. I encourage you to post this idea as a feature request on the Ideas board of the forum.

Rami 

[emeshman]

Are there any zapier integrations that could help be a workaround for this problem?

[nsherron]

"The reason we do not offer reply tracking on marketing emails is because emails of this type are not typically meant to be replied to. "

You can't be serious. Is this a typo or is this real? What's the real reason, because that's absurd on every level. 

[jkmilton]

The best, most authentic marketing emails illicit human responses. It happens ALL the time.

[Misspolitica]

The ability to track replies to email marketing campaigns in HubSpot is absolutely essential. It is the most nonsensical thing ever to say that marketing email blasts are designed so that recipients are not supposed to respond. High-quality email marketing campaigns should ALWAYS elicit responses -- hope that HubSpot can recognize this and build out new functionality here soon 

[jmiro1]

Very much agreed - been trying to figure this out for 1.5 months now

[Sonny]

This is a critical piece of core functionality that is missing. The fact that Hubspot is missing this means that we are probably going to jump ship to another company at first opportunity.

This is completely unacceptable. Who doesn't want to track replies to marketing emails?

[GetAround]

It's been 3 and a half years and they still haven't implemented it. Which CRM have you jumped ship to?

[Jason_K_Nash]

Wow, emails are not meant to be replyed too!!! really REALLY that so wrong in so many ways... its alike admitting that marketing emails are a kind of SPAM!!!!! 

[ahedstrom]

Anyone find a solution for this or a better platform than HubSpot that does do this?? I was really hoping that HubSpot would have enabled this feature by now.

[mattbenati]

Hi Mandy,

Our service, LeadGnome, automatically handles this issue for many HubSpot customers (we also integrate with other marketing automation and CRM systems). If you'd like more information, please visit our website or send me an email (matt@leadgnome.com).

Best,

Matt

[NickRise]

@acaringi

When you have a moment, could you please head to this page and "like" our suggestion (apparently, features are built on a popularity contest basis)? We strongly agree that the ability to not only track replies, but include them within the if/then logic of a workfow, is an imperative feature for marketing campaigns.

@relabidin

Our team feels that by not building this feature, HubSpot is fundamentally misunderstanding a key component of marketing campaigns.

That is, tracking replies (and including them within if/then workflows) is what best allows campaigns to be designed around real behavior (instead of perceived behavior or even worse. time). Tracking replies is what allows for "lead scoring" within marketing.

If a customer responds to an email campaign (especially one built around open-ended questioning ... "Hey, what do you think about _____?"), that customer is far more likely to be a "best" customer who not only will be more likely to purchase in the future (but also suggest feature requests).

Tracking replies is what allows us to do this. As campaigns mount, we can better track who our "best" customers are. They're simply the ones who respond to the most open-ended question emails. 

This is something that we do manually, and it's an extremely manual process requiring importing and exporting from Excel.

[jordanskole]

This is one of the basic features of ActiveCampaign, which costs 1/8 as much to get started as HubSpot. 

I am having a hard tim rebuilding my ActiveCampaign automations in HubSpot without this. 

[mattbenati]

Our company, LeadGnome, solves this problem. We are a connect partner. Please let me know if we can be of help.

[meharrington]

This would be very helpful to us:

1) We want to improve the efficacy of our emails and track response rate over time.

2) We want to take action on it.  i.e. create a list of all contacts who have opened an email but not reply.

[pknobloch1]

that would be super helpful to automate sales nurturing that started with a personalized marketing mail. 

[Mike_Donnelly]

Check out www.leadgnome.com which does exactly this and then some.  They're a HubSpot Connect Partner.  https://www.hubspot.com/integrations

[Rachel10]

can you briefly explain how this works? Really struggling with Hubspot not providing this functionality. 

[mattbenati]

Hi Rachel - my name is Matt Benati and I am the CEO of LeadGnome, a HubSpot Connect partner, that specializes in managing email replies. I can be reached via email at matt@leadgnome.com. If you're interested in learning more about how LeadGnome might fit your needs, please send me an email or register for a demo. Thank you.

[SantaR]

Hello! Does anyone know if Leadgnome is still providing their solution? I have been trying to get in touch to set up a demo but haven't heard back from them.

Thanks,
Santa

[mattbenati]

Hi Santa - my apologies. I’ll reach out via email to schedule a demo.

[mattbenati]

It seems that HubSpot wishes to address this issue with Connect partners. Our company, LeadGnome, is a Connect partner that provides the capability. You can learn more at https://www.leadgnome.com. If you'd like to schedule a time to talk, please feel free to send me an email (matt@leadgnome.com) or request a demo.

[ChrisEldridge]

We were able to figure out a way to at least stamp a property in Hubspot to know if a contact has replied to a marketing email.  It does not log the actual email, however now we are able to do an if/then in our workflows to basically say "did someone reply in the last 4 days? If no, send the next email, if yes, exit the workflow.

Feel free to get in touch if you are interested!  chris.eldridge@avgfunds.com

[ChrisEldridge]

Hello, I have had many people reach out to me based on my comment above on how we have solved this issue with a workaround using Zapier.

I get 2 to 3 emails per week of people asking, so I felt like I should comment here on how we do it!

-------

We utilized Zapier and Gmail in order to get it to work.  If you have a standard @gmail.com account the max is 500 replies per day and if you have a business Suite accounts is 2,000 replied per day.

The basic outline is:

Setup a new Gmail inbox that you can forward copies of all replies to such as “marketingreplies@yourdomain.com”.

We then had our sales team who would get replies to a specific email setup a forward rule for their inbox that said basically “anything with “X” in the body of the email, forward to “marketingreplies@yourdomain.com”.

In the footer of our Marketing emails we not have a white bar with white text at the WAY bottom with a random string that we use when we want to track the marketing email.

^^^That would then capture all replies

We then created a Zap in Zapier which would listen to that inbox for new emails with the trigger and then had it update a property (that we made) in Hubspot called “Marketing Email Replied Date” with the date of the email.

Now we have that date on the hubspot contact that we can use to kick people out of a workflow.

We also now use Zapier to add a copy of the email to the engagement record as well.

I know its a lot (and I probably did not explain it well) but that was our workaround and it has been bulletproof for a few months now!

[JamieTew]

This is totally insane!!! 

Is there a plan to change this??? 

How could you consciously decide not to show responses?? I am staggered. 

[PamCotton]

Hi @JamieTew,

Currently, HubSpot does not offer a feature that associates replies to marketing emails with contacts. Replies to your marketing emails will be sent to the inbox of the reply-to address on your email, but they will not be associated with the recipient contact.

I was able to find this post in the HubSpot Community Ideas forum. Upvoting here will alert our Product Team to the popularity of this request. Doing so will also auto-notify you if/when this functionality becomes available within HubSpot. You may read more about how that review process works here. The idea is currently in planning.

I hope this information helps,

Pam

[EBHamann]

Thanks, Jamie. I couldn't agree with you more!!!! 

Prospects and customers respond to our newsletters (sent via marketing email function) every time we send. This is amazing and we love their engagement with us. That being said, their notes back do not track. If I want to keep record of their question/comment/etc, which I do, I have to manually cut/paste and put into their contact in HS.  

Dearest HS--as you know, the goal is to use marketing to get the prospect to raise his/her hand and ask for more info so we can make the sale.  

People respond to what's in front of them. They are not going to craft a separate email if they want to send a note right away. Even with all of the links we include in our newsletter, this is the quickest and easiest way for them to communicate back with us. It is top of mind and right in front of them.

Please--HS gods and goddesses--take a look at this function and please reconsider so that responses to all marketing and sales outreach is tracked under the respective contact's info.

Thanks in advance for your consideration😘

[dang5941]

I'm glad I'm not the only one that wants this to be implemented. After testing it for the first time today. I sent an email to over 70 customers and got a couple of responses hoping they would be in contact records. But nope, I had to manually log the customer's reply. More steps to take. 😞

It also baffles me that after a marketing email doesn't mark the contact as worked. So you then have to fiddle about with all the different types of filters to show customers that haven't been contacted at all. 

This means that your diary just looks full constantly and you cannot bulk tick them off as worked. And you just have to find the right filters. 

Make it simpler.

[sharonlicari]

Hey @acaringi 

Thank you for your feedback. I'd recommend adding your thoughts on this idea and upvote for it. As @PamCotton was advising upvoting here will alert our Product Team to the popularity of this request. Doing so will also auto-notify you if/when this functionality becomes available within HubSpot. You may read more about how that review process works here. The idea is currently in planning.

Thanks

Sharon