No Location on activity feed

[GailNYC]

I am writing to complain about your new policy (effective in early August 2019) of not showing location with the email opens.

I rely on that info to let me know if someone is out of town, or if the email has been forwarded to another person in another location.

Can you reconsider this? It's really a big disappointment!

[heathcliff]

@matt - Thanks for the belated acknowledgement that the reason for the removal of location ID'ing had to do with privacy issues and not, as your corporate announcement lied to customers, saying it was not value added as determined by your customers.  Now:  I would like your company to take responsibility for lying to its customers and attempting lame corporate spin - thereby damaging trust in your company's brand.

[Doug1]

"the email recipients' experience"  Hmmm.....  Since your customer is paying, why is this a concern as the recipients have no direct interaction in our corporate hubspot. 

Since this is going away, what other software on the market should we look at to replace?

Working with clients worldwide, we found great value in knowing if an email that was going supposedly to a South African client was being opened in the Czech Republic and was actually part of a fraud.

[Agent314]

So, I think Matt, who appears quite young (no disrespect intended) may be missing the boat also. My sense is that the displeasure with this goes much deeper and is broader than anyone would have imagined. While we're not giving up just yet, we've spent a good part of the morning looking at alternatives, of which there are quite few. It's a matter of vetting. I'm sure many, many others are doing the same thing. Keep in mind though... that may not matter to HS as I feel certain this was a decision made by the lawyers, so it's over. That being said, if they can somehow magically redeem themselves in very short order, we'll consider staying on. But it's a tall order. Have a great weekend everyone...  Jeff

[tb123]

Could not agree more. The Email open data will be essentially useless without this feature because of how many false flags from coworkers etc. that trigger the open

[GailNYC]

Anyone feel bold enough to post the alternatives they've come up with, here?  The tracking is the only feature of HS that I use, so there's no need for me to continue to use the service without the location info.

Thanks in advance.

[ow23]

This is a HUGE MISTAKE removing this. I have literally called into support about 3 or 4 times BECAUSE due to the location feature I was able to tell that Sales was also monitoring my opens. How are we supposed to tell that now? Also, location is imperative for getting a sense of time frame etc. If anyone has alternatives to Sales if this goes away let me know. I think I researched a few back in the day that I will have to revisit.

[TSquare]

Sad to see that @ebeck has edited her post with the original lie about why HS changed the policy.

For a company that has been supposedly built on transparency and integrity only to lie to the customers when there was a small amount of heat in the kitchen just goes to show how things work around here.

[red75116]

we are looking at Outreach as a replacement.  I have looked at many solutions and I am familiar with most of them.  Please reach out if you have questions.

[stiebens61]

Thanks Red,

I will make this suggestion to our sales management as well.

Stiebens61

[VirginiaBee]

@red75116, thank you for sharing that insight into Outreach. We will be evaluating as well. 

[benjo777]

This is absolutely critical information to run our business and is a huge disappointment to see this feature going away.

Please consider keeping this feature!

[markwkaiser_HPI]

MixMax is a great alternative for email tracking, scheduling meetings, sequences, and workflows that are all much better than Hubspot functionality.

The only reason I continued to use and advised multiple clients to stick with Hubspot in the face of lesser functionality was because of its value as a one-stop shop and a centralized source for sales email analytics.

That's over. 

If you refer 7 friends, you can get MixMax email tracking for free. This decision is quite a mistake on Hubspot's part.

[andrewaj]

You just announced removing the location data on tracked emails starting August 7th and stated it did not lend value.

That is an incorrect assumption.

Currently, HS email tracking can not differentiate opens by different people either in the To: field nor the CC: field when more than one person is included on a tracked email. 

Seeing the location allows a user to ascertain who opened the email by deductive reasoning. Example: the bulk of my team is in Philadelphia. When an email sent to a prospect in Indiana with some of my team CC'd has opens in Philly, I know that it was my colleagues opening the email not the prospect.

Bottom line, location info is quite helpful!

[MarkFnkl]

As a HubSpot customer, I strongly agree with those who are disappointed by HubSpot's decision to remove location information. And I found HubSpot's justification for the move—that it didn't "provide value"—to be condescending and mistaken. Who says it doesn't "provide value?" Certainly not your paying customers. There must be a story behind this.  Perhaps HubSpot is under pressure from some third-party. In any case, HubSpot: please reverse this regrettable decision, and apologize for the ham-handed way you've handled it.

[HubHero]

The removal of the location tracking feature is ridiculous.  It's one of the few things HubSpot really has a leg up on the competition with... we can tell if emails are being forwarded and disseminated throughout a company.  It gives an instant reading of interest and activity and allows us to know when accounts are really considering our product and assembling a team to buy it or are just inspecting themselves and potentially wasting time or are at least in the very early stages of research.

"We don’t believe surfacing location information provides enough value to the end-recipient, however."

I wholeheartedly disagree with this sentiment, as the end-recipient will get better customer service more accurately tailored to where they are in the nurture/sales cycle.  Furthermore, knowing the exact location can give us an idea of what offices or locales the information is being sent to so we can understand what their decision-making process is like, how many offices are involved, if the HQ is involved, and include location-specific customizations in our presentations and product offering.  All of us are selling products that we (and our customers) know will help them, so how is this NOT providing more value to the end-recipient?

Just another misstep in a long series of missteps by HubSpot around functionality.

[tylerkelley]

@markwkaiser_HPI Thanks for the heads up on MixMax. It looks amazing. Can't wait to try it. Hoping it will integrate nicely with HubSpot CRM. If so, I can see recommending this app in place of HubSpot Sales.

[Dennis2000]

I agree with all of the above. Many of my customers travel a lot and the location information helps to determine what timezone they are in. Also if removing this function has another reason e.g. privacy regulations it would be much better to just communicate that. 

[MarkFnkl]

"if removing this function has another reason e.g. privacy regulations it would be much better to just communicate that."

Well said, Dennis2000. Hubspot added insult to injury by claiming that its removal of location information was justified because it didn't "add value." That is clearly untrue, judging by customer response.  Why not reveal the true reason: either compliance with regulations, privacy concerns, etc?

[Agent314]

Well, folks... We WERE told to "stay tuned" for news from HubSpot that would supposedly mitigate the disaster of removing the location data that we depend on. Crickets... but not giving up just yet. Trying to be optimistic and positive.

The thing is, most HS users are not aware of this thread. I suspect that the number of dissatisfied users is large. But more keep finding it. If it disappears, that will be sort of telling, right? It may be that HS simply does not care. Personally, and I've been at this over 40 years... I think that's a huge mistake. Unfortunately, lawyers don't think that way. I understand it, I went to law school... not that I'm excited to admit it given the current state of the lawyer world. But let's just hope that brighter minds prevail. If not, life goes on... Jeff

[DB212]

"the location data attached to that tracking did not add enough value to either the user or the end-customer-experience."

Hubspot, are your paying customers telling you the location data isn't adding value?  I am a paying customer and I can tell you the location data is the most valuable part of your service.  For example, when I send an email to a customer in Houston and CC two colleagues of mine in my New Orleans office the location data is the only way for me to know if my customer in Houston is opening my email or my colleagues in New Orleans.

Please do not eliminate the location data service.  I don't see much value in the service if location data is eliminated.