Email Reply Tracking

[acaringi]

It would be great if Hubspot had the ability to track how many replies I got to my marketing newsletters. A lot of our newsletters are designed to get people to reply to them instead of having them click on something, so really the reply rate is what we want to measure over CTR.

Each newsletter is sent from a dynamically populated email address (based on the sales rep who is working with the lead), so it's pretty impossible to track this by just monitoring an inbox. 

[acaringi]

@BB1 yup totally correct there. This would be that order of operation:

1) Marketing email sent to contact

2) Contact replies to a connected inbox which was the "reply-to" address of email

3) Someone at the company (marketers, account rep, etc.) replies and logs the email. Then the text of the contacts reply will show up in the CRM 

If you are using just a connected inbox and not a team inbox, then the text of the replies are not automatically logged in step 2 above, and you need step 3. 

And to further clarify, in either case, the data point will be created which is what shows up in the reporting pages, lists, workflows, and on the timeline (X contact, replied to Y email). 

Hope that is all clear now @elise1 & @BB1 

[acaringi]

@elise1 - If all the contact owners already have their inboxes connected to HubSpot then the data (x contact replied to y email) should populate on the email reporting pages showing reply rates & which contacts replied to what email.  Additionally, the data will show up in workflows & lists to build with. 

What will not show up with your current configurations is the actual content of the reply that lands in the contact owner's inbox. Aka logging the email in the CRM. To get that functionality the inbox needs to be setup as a team inbox. 

[acaringi]

@elise1 yep that should work just fine. We have a number of customers who are doing something similar. As long as those contact owners have their inboxes connected to HubSpot (personal or otherwise) we should be able to generate the data that shows up in the email reports. 

If you want the email to be logged to the contact timeline though, then you will need your reps to have their inboxes set up as team inboxes. Instructions here for that.

Hope that helps. 

[acaringi]

Hi folks- this is now live to all customers, with documentation here on how it works, and how to set it up. Feel free to continue to leave feedback here on how it works, and if you run into any issues please reach out through the normal HubSpot support channels.  

[acaringi]

Hi folks - This is now in a Beta. We have been running an Alpha for some time now, and we are moving ahead in opening this up to a wider audience. All the folks who originally signed up via the google form I posted in this community thread have now been granted access. 

If you missed that google signup form please send me a direct message with your HubSpot Account ID + an email address and I will send over instructions and get you added to the Beta.

[acaringi]

Hi folks- We are ~3-4 weeks away from kicking off the Alpha for this project. We had a lot of people sign-up, so we had to do 2 things: 

1. The Alpha signup form is now closed. As soon as we are comfortable with the stability of the solution, we will open this back up & make it generally available. 
2. We were only able to select a portion of those who signed up to participate in the Alpha. For those folks who were selected, I’ll be sending instructions on how to get access to the alpha and more information on how it will work.
3. For those folks who weren’t selected, I’ll be reaching out to let you know. You will also be the first to get access as soon as we progress to the next stage.

Thank you for all your patience, and I am looking to finally getting this one resolved for you all!

[acaringi]

@Levi hey yea - So right now our goal is to get to an Alpha by the end of September. This is a goal we are setting, but it is subject to change.  In a comment above I posted a form here. Make sure you fill this out if you are interested in being included in this Alpha. We will select a handful from that list to get early access and to give us early feedback.

You will need to have your `reply-to` address be a connected inbox  or a HubSpot hosted/ fall back inbox. For connected inboxes we will only support Gmail or Outlook inboxes. The first step in this project will be surfacing data in HubSpot on which contacts are replying to which emails. ex/

This data will show up on individual email reporting pages, as well as the global level across email campaigns in the email analyze reporting pages. We will also enable this data to be used in the lists and workflows tool. ex/

Let me know if there are any other questions! Excited to get this one solved for you all 😀

[acaringi]

Hi folks -

Thank you for the comments, feedback, and honesty. I understand the frustration that the lack of functionality, and stagnation over the last 3 years is causing. Recognizing the repetitiveness of this comment, I will say we are actively moving towards bringing a solution for this into HubSpot.

What I am looking for now is to start pulling apart this problem with all of you individually. We are looking to understand all of your use cases in greater detail, and needs from a reply tracking solution. This will also be the pipeline we use for getting customers into an Alpha/ Beta once we have reached that point. If you are interested in providing feedback as we build out a reply tracking solution in HubSpot, and participating in an Alphas/Beta, then please fill out this form.

I hope everyone here is doing well during these stressful times.

[acaringi]

Hi Everyone - 

Taking this thread over from @Shay  Yes, this work item is in-planning right now. We haven't yet started development on it. We know roughly the work needed to get there and it should be prioritized in the near future. I will update this thread with more details once that timeline becomes clearer.

As we get closer  hopefully I can gather a few folks from here to get some early feedback. Looking forward to getting this one solved for you all! 

Cheers,

Jake

[acaringi]

Hi all, wanted to share an update here. First off, we have definitely been paying attention here, and have been following along closely with all your feedback. Apologies for the radio silence, we didn't have anything super meaniful to share at the time. I have some good news, we totally agree that this is a very impactful feature for the HubSpot product and are doing a lot of research right now to identify how and when we can make this possible. We want this to reach it's full potential, including offering capabilites to enroll/unenroll from a workflow, log replies on contact timelines, offer list segmentation, rich email reporting, the whole kitchen sink. 

We'll be deep in planning and research for a little while on this so we may not have a beta soon, but I wanted to let you all know that there is light at the end of this tunnel and that your feedback was not falling on deaf ears. Bear with us on this, there's a lot to this feature but we think you're going to get a lot from it. 

[acaringi]

For some of our email marketing campaigns, our goal is to encourage a response/dialogue with their sales rep who is sending the email. It would be very helpful if one of the email marketing analytics we could track were replies sent to the "From Email Address". Ideally, "Out of Office Replies" would not be counted in this analytic.

[evilc79]

Awesome news, waiting to know when this is rolled out beta or live.

[Shivangisharma]

Very much in favour of this solution. We want our sales rep to just be in Hubspot not going back and through Gmail to track the replies for the email sent from automation.

[Gmarcus1988]

Yes, this is critical. Please make this a priority.

[jaleonard19]

Hi folks - This is now in a Beta. We have been running an Alpha for some time now, and we are moving ahead in opening this up to a wider audience. All the folks who originally signed up via the google form I posted in this community thread have now been granted access. 

If you missed that google signup form please send me a direct message with your HubSpot Account ID + an email address and I will send over instructions and get you added to the Beta.

[sisebrand]

Agree with this fully!! Can't wait for this to be an option. 

[cassan]

We'd like to be able to track replies, and even more so, be able to  perform actions with that knowledge. E.g. stop/change campaigns via workflows if we get a reply. 

[BB1]

For all those waiting or those who already have Reply tracking - you can use it to trigger/stop workflows. Awesome!

[BB1]

To elaborate on my above comment, here is how we use the Reply tracking.

We have a Contact based workflow - if Marketing email activity - replied to: "Email Name" > Set contact property: "Replied" = yes.

Next: Deal based workflow - Deal stage = xyz (and whatever conditions) AND Contact property "Replied" = yes > Set deal property: Stage = in touch.

We have workflows which follow up with people who have deals with Stage = Invited. So when they reply, their deal gets changed to "In touch", they no longer get follow up emails.

Hope that helps make it a bit clearer for anyone who wanted to know.

[NJenkinsLC]

Absolutely, it's unbelievable that 'marketing emails aren't meant to be replied to'. Insane. Please fix this HubSpot.

[BB1]

Yes, @NJenkinsLC  - correct, many people want to track replies of marketing emails. That is why Hubspot built and is rolling out this useful feature.

[jaleonard19]

Hi folks- this is now live to all customers, with documentation here on how it works, and how to set it up. Feel free to continue to leave feedback here on how it works, and if you run into any issues please reach out through the normal HubSpot support channels.  

[StephanieB]

SOOOO happy to hear this @jaleonard19 !!!! Thank you!! 

[elise1]

@jaleonard19 I send marketing emails on behalf of my team and use the personalisation token "Contact Hubspot Owner Id Email". How can this work if you want responses to go directly to the contact owner, of which there are various, and need to be tracked? Surely if we were just sending one to one emails we'd use the Sales Email function?

[jaleonard19]

@elise1 yep that should work just fine. We have a number of customers who are doing something similar. As long as those contact owners have their inboxes connected to HubSpot (personal or otherwise) we should be able to generate the data that shows up in the email reports. 

If you want the email to be logged to the contact timeline though, then you will need your reps to have their inboxes set up as team inboxes. Instructions here for that.

Hope that helps. 

[elise1]

@jaleonard19  Yes, all contact owners have their inboxes connected to HubSpot. So each rep needs to change their personal email set up from personal/individual into a team inbox that only they use? (It wouldn't work for our reps to have a shared team inbox.) This seems very confusing. Can this be used in the same way as they are currently using the system now?

[jaleonard19]

@elise1 - If all the contact owners already have their inboxes connected to HubSpot then the data (x contact replied to y email) should populate on the email reporting pages showing reply rates & which contacts replied to what email.  Additionally, the data will show up in workflows & lists to build with. 

What will not show up with your current configurations is the actual content of the reply that lands in the contact owner's inbox. Aka logging the email in the CRM. To get that functionality the inbox needs to be setup as a team inbox. 

[BB1]

Thanks @jaleonard19  @elise1  - to clarify, this is in order to have the texts of the email that was sent to you (or your colleagues) appear in Hubspot. For the text of the emails you (or your colleagues) send to them, if it is logged to HS, by BCCing Hubspot, you will be able to see that email content.

[jaleonard19]

@BB1 yup totally correct there. This would be that order of operation:

1) Marketing email sent to contact

2) Contact replies to a connected inbox which was the "reply-to" address of email

3) Someone at the company (marketers, account rep, etc.) replies and logs the email. Then the text of the contacts reply will show up in the CRM 

If you are using just a connected inbox and not a team inbox, then the text of the replies are not automatically logged in step 2 above, and you need step 3. 

And to further clarify, in either case, the data point will be created which is what shows up in the reporting pages, lists, workflows, and on the timeline (X contact, replied to Y email). 

Hope that is all clear now @elise1 & @BB1