HubSpot Ideas

acaringi

Email Reply Tracking

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. 

HubSpot Updates
April 04, 2021 09:11 AM

@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 

March 29, 2021 12:01 PM

@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. 

 

 

March 29, 2021 08:00 AM

@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. 

Delivered
March 29, 2021 07:12 AM

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.  

In Beta
November 30, 2020 04:04 PM

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.

In Planning
September 11, 2020 07:06 AM

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!

August 24, 2020 10:27 AM

@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/

Screen Shot 2020-08-24 at 1.21.23 PM.png

 

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/

Screen Shot 2020-08-24 at 1.25.00 PM.png

 

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

April 20, 2020 02:22 PM

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.

February 26, 2020 09:31 AM

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

In Planning
February 15, 2019 05:49 AM

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. Smiley Happy

April 03, 2017 01:54 PM

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.

178 Replies
daniella1993
Participant

There should be a way for marketing email replies be tracked in the email report view. So essentially, the report would show: delivered, bounced, opened, clicked AND replied.

khughes
HubSpot Product Team

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.

AmyF
Member

It would be great if we are able to see email replies in HubSpot following an email campaign.  Our emails are typically personalized and sent from various lead owners so it's difficult to track responses.  Thanks!

roisinkirby
HubSpot Product Team


Hey @AmyF thank you for posting! Can I clarify if you are referring to the emails that are sent via the CRM or Marketing Emails sent using HubSpot's Marketing Basic / Pro / Enterprise platforms? Thank you!

magandy2
Member

Would love the ability to track a contact's response as easily as I can track my original email. I realize this can be done by forwarding their response to the hub id but this is pretty clunky. All emails should have the "Log in CRM" check box.

 

 

Babel_Gem
Contributor | Elite Partner

Seen that @AmyF hasn't replied here, but from my perspective I do agree that being able to see if someone has replied to a marketing email send through at least Pro / Enterprise. It would be great to see the reply, but if not possible, at least to show whether a reply has been received by the marked sender. Often we send emails where the goal or CTA is for the recipient to reply, and being able to report on this would be valuable, without having to ask sales teams, MD's etc if they received a reply. Understandably, a limitation here would be that out of office replies would probably count, which wouldn't be so good.

laurex
Member

100%! Marketing should be the start to building a relationship, and we need to track email replies!

Bartellglobal
Member

Our company utilizes workflows with the end goal of starting conversations with our prospects. Right now, we have no way of tracking whether a prospect replies to a marketing email or not. I think this is a big miss in terms of reporting because it is a very important interaction that we can't quantify. 

 

haldrich
Participant

Agreed... this is a very important aspect of our marketing.

 

We have workflows that get triggered after a user fills out a certain form (an online quote form for us).
That automatically starts no only a task for the hubspot owner, but also starts a series of marketing emails to the user.

 

These are in _addition_ to the Sales emails we also send...

If the user responds to a marketing email, it needs to be part of their record so that when I go to call or speak with them, I can see a full evaluation of their interaction.  It may be that in their response, they already said -leave me alone- or something... or they may have asked a question we need to address.

 

These emails are just as critical as sales emails to the process...

NickRise
Participant

This seems like a no-brainer.

 

If I'm sending out an email with the subject "This is my subject" then HubSpot should be able to see replies that look like "Re: This is my subject" and count them as "replied to." 

 

If I were building a HubSpot competitor, this would be one of the first things I'd build. Build campaigns based upon reply logic.

SamDickson
Member

Agreed.

Spencer
Participant

Hey, I think this is super important!

 

I visibility is No.1 importance with my marketing and if I cant tell how my messages are doing and get this type of feedback then I'm in the dark. 

 

Please update!!

 

Thanks!

NickRise
Participant

Not only just tracking as the original comment, but the ability for "reply" to be added to the "if/then" logic of a workflow. If I send a marketing campaign, I should be able to know, "Hey these people replied and these people didn't." Campaigns should be based around ACTUAL BEHAVIOR not time or non-discrete behavior. The options right now certainly aren't based upon real, tangible behavior that's centered around buying.

The current situation.The current situation.

 

 

troelsfeodor
Top Contributor

I like Mailchimps "Conversations" feature which solves this problem: http://kb.mailchimp.com/lists/manage-contacts/set-up-and-use-conversations

RafiPN
Contributor

Yes! I actually wrote a 'rant' on inbound about this. We do B2B with sales cycles of 8-12 months average. The most important thing is how engaged prospects are when going through the process. It would be super helpful to see which deals are taking longer to respond or not at all. Groove, Ebsta, and Yesware are the only three who have reply rate tracking that I found so far.




twandeleijer
Participant

For us this would also be an important feature. Like @acaringi we have also designed some of our emails in order to trigger a reply as the preferred action. Now we can't measure this in Hubspot. I have to ask the owners (the sender is dynamically set to the contact's owner) how many replies they received in a specific time period, in order to analyze the effectiveness of the email campaign. That is a hassle and could be easier.

 

Idea: add an optional toggle to track replies on email campaigns. This would set a specific reply-to address that looks very much the same as the sender's email address. Once this reply-to address receives the email a reply is measured and the email is forwarded to the actual email address.


For example

Sender: martin.johnson@company.com

Reply-to: martin.johnson@company.hs.com (or martin.johnson@email.company.com > if that's a domain set up with hubspot).

 

In any case, I would not want to have to rely on the Gmail inbox integration. If the owner hasn't set that up or disables it, the data might get skewed.

Darren_Larkins
Member

A similar use case is for 'personalizing' invitiations to events (trade shows). The replies to these campaigns indicate individuals who should

  • be researched so that the booth staff and sales teams are better informed.
  • be further nurtured as the event gets closer and once it starts.
Anonymous
Not applicable

We currently have to use the ####@forward.hubspot.com to log replies to marketing emails. We have marketing Pro and send emails out on behalf of our sales team all the time, but the replies are not logged like one-to-one emails. It would be a huge advantage to see these replies in the timeline without the manual effort.

roisinkirby
HubSpot Product Team
 
mbn
Member

Completely agree. The needs to be able to track email replies is crucial. When communicating with partners, we ne to follow tracking.