HubSpot email embedded trackers vs. LinkedIn inMail
When a LinkedIn user sends an inMail message to my LinkedIn account, I receive an email notification.
When I reply to that notification email, my message is gatewayed back into inMail, appended to the inMail thread, and delivered to the LinkedIn user who originated the exchange.
I have begun using a free HubSpot account, and have installed The HubSpot App in my Google Workspace account's Gmail for email tracking and notifications.
By default it embeds open and click trackers ("an invisible one-pixel image") in email messages I send.
When I reply to that inMail notification, Gmail sends me a bounce-o-gram saying it got this SMTP reply code from LinkedIn's mail receiver:
550 5.7.0 The message was not decoded successfully
When I un-check the "Track" box before sending my reply, it is gatewayed as normal into the inMail system, but HubSpot is involved only because I left the "Log" box checked.
Yes, I know the email-to-inMail gateway implements a limited subset of MIME functionality. It preserves attachments in both directions, but it turns embedded links (like this) into plain text. At least it doesn't return a decoding error with those. I'm not expecting the embedded tracker to return tracking data for opens and clicks, but I often send a tracked email message To: or Cc: several addresses, of which not all are inMail.
The tracker description warns "If the recipient has a very strict spam filter where they block any images or link tracking from loading in emails, your tracked email could be filtered as spam. However, email tracking tools are common, and the majority of email clients will not view your email any differently than before." This describes the failure at the email-to-inMail gateway.
Has anyone else found a better way to get emails into inMail, while preserving HubSpot's tracking capability when cc:ing other email recipients?
@BSutterfield Thanks for the detailed description. I am not able to reproduce this issue yet. Probably there is a difference in our steps of action. Here are my steps: - I receive a email notifying me about a inmail - I click reply thru gmail with HubSpot tracking enabled - I add more emails into cc field and send - No bounce from address@reply.linkedin.com or other addresses - Tracking works for all email addresses but when the reply.linkedin.com address shows opened/clicked it is just their automated system forwarding the message not a real person.
HubSpot email embedded trackers vs. LinkedIn inMail
Hello, @BSutterfield thank you for posting in our Community!
You can send InMail messages in HubSpot and view the entire conversation in the LinkedIn InMail pop-up box, but the conversation will not save to the record's timeline. \
For more information on this matter, I wanted to share this resource.
I understand that the full rich, thick integration isn't available for free accounts. That's the way the free-with-paid-upgrades model works. I'm okay if conversations inside other semi-walled gardens aren't saved in the HubSpot record's timeline. I'm just hoping to find a way to send an email to a group of recipients (including other addresses I'd like to tack) that includes an address@reply.linkedin.com without that one bouncing.