HubSpot Ideas

GailNYC

No Location on activity feed

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!

Mises à jour HubSpot
Statut mis à jour : Not Currently Planned
August 06, 2019 02:28 PM

August 06, 2019 02:27 PM

Wanted to share a quick update. We continue to investigate solutions for multiple recipient tracking -- including a better way to mitigate self-open notifications. Any solution we implement, however, is unlikely to use IP address -- so exploring the right way to handle it will take us some time. 


In the meantime, we are moving forward with the removal of location data from the activity feed tomorrow to respect recipient privacy. We will continue to update this thread as we make progress.

 

-Matt

Statut mis à jour : Idea Submitted
July 26, 2019 01:29 PM

Hi folks,

 

I’m the Director of Product responsible for the sales products. We very much appreciate all this feedback. Removing location was a hard decision, and ultimately we feel it is the right one. There is an ongoing discussion in the industry about the ethics of location data of email recipients. I don’t want HubSpot to be on the wrong side of that discussion, and I want to be proud of what we build. We do understand that for some users, removing the location information from the activity feed is negatively impacting your experience, and so my team and I are looking at ways to improve both self open notifications and multiple recipient tracking. Stay tuned.

 

Thanks for listening,

Matt 

July 26, 2019 07:45 AM

@stiebens61, you're right. While we are still able to minimize the risk of false open and click notifications for any activities that you perform, there are times where this technology simply won't work based on a few different factors. I've ammended my previous comment.

July 26, 2019 07:24 AM

Thank you all for sharing your feedback.

 

We understand that some of our customers use location data to differentiate between recipients in one-to-many email sends. While it’s never an easy decision to remove functionality from our product, we believe this is the right thing to do to protect the privacy of the end customer.

 

We made the decision to remove the location feature after analyzing its current use and weighing that against its potential for abuse and privacy concerns for the recipients. We are currently exploring other ways to provide this functionality that don’t include revealing location data and will keep our community updated on progress.

 

Hope this helps!

July 25, 2019 11:45 AM

Hi there, 

 

I'm Elise -- one of the product marketing managers here at HubSpot -- with a quick update on this. 

 

To start, thank you all for sharing your feedback and voicing your concerns. We always try to strike a balance between giving our customers the tools they want and being mindful of the impact those tools have on their audience. While email tracking is a valuable tool, we believe that tracking location data doesn’t improve the email recipient’s experience, and it feels out of step with evolving consumer expectations around privacy.

137 Commentaires
oldskoul
Participant

I cancelled too.   How sad... 

red75116
Membre

@mschnitt,  Why not delay the removal of this feature until you can offer some other functionality?  None of the folks you seem so desperate to protect are paying customers?  If you leave the feature in place temporarily, then your urgency to protect all the recipients might create some urgency to find a solution and then you can remove.

 

Very few users have discovered what the impact of this change will be and after tomorrow things are going to get dicey.  Others will most likely share their frustration outside of this overlooked forum.

 

kenneth

 

 

Agent314
Participant

I agree strongly with @red75116 !!! Anybody else??

oldskoul
Participant

@red75116  Hear Hear ! 

 

Is it not the settings on the opening email that dictates wether the open tag can be read?   Meaning if the opening user was interested in more privacy they could adjust their settings blocking anyone knowing where/when they opened.   

TSquare
Membre

The value HS offered me declined by about 90% this morning with the removal of the location info.

 

 

Agent314
Participant

I'm sure they don't recognize the level of discontent on this. But I'm sure it's calculated. Sometimes a customer purge is what companies want. Most companies, for legal reasons, don't tell the whole truth. That's what's happening here. This is a cave to political correctness I suspect and we've already forced them to admit far more than they initially wanted to. Their continued responses unfortunately have a tone of arrogance (nothing personal because that's likely what they've been told to do). In the end, the market will determine the course of action. It's a complicated world we live in now as I look back after 40 years of doing this...  Jeff

roma
Membre

I believe it is quite likely that the product managers who made the decision to remove location from email tracking have never sold a day in their lives (combined). Now I have to go find an add-on product that does this. 

 

Also - can you please consider removing the ability for anyone to download a sales doc so I can actually use this functionality vs docsend. Tyvm. 

tylerkelley
Participant | Partenaire solutions Diamond

I was really hoping they would roll this back. I am disappointed to say the least. I agree with the previous comments, the people making this decision do not have sales experience. This decision completely excludes the perspective of the sales stakeholder.

 

In stakeholder management theory, there is no value in placing one stakeholder group above another. All stakeholders should be brought to the table and a solution should be found that satisifes all parties - the win-win. Unfortunately, HubSpot has chosen to publicly value the third party over their customers using the sales/crm product. This is not the first time they have chosen third parties over sales users. I don't think it will be the last. I think this is the beginning of the end of their sales product. It is a sad day indeed.

 

markwkaiser_HPI
Participant

For everyone’s benefit on this thread, let’s switch topic to sharing what people have tried or are exploring to get the full featured sales functionality they need and is offered if you use SalesForce and their partners.

 

Criteria:

1. Open, click, download and reply tracking for email with recipient location (MixMax, Yesware, ??)

2. Document tracking and viewership analytics (Docsend, MixMax, ??)

3. Email templates, sequence automation (Outreach, SalesLoft, MixMax, Yesware, ??)

4. Integration with HubSpot to seamlessly translate prospect lists for email campaign (Big gap here for me!, Zapier?, PieSync?)

5. Record prospect-level engagement data: opens, clicks, downloads. (Another big gap here) 

 

What other functionality do we need? What other companies are out there to help meet our needs.

oldskoul
Participant

I am trying out getnotify.com but i dont like it.  it tracks well but it passes through your email through their server... 

email reads from you through them.... looks odd.   Next going to try banannatag.com

 

 

heathcliff
Membre

@oldskoul   RE ALTERNATE OPTIONS:  Frankly, so far I am disappointed at alternate options.  Mixmax is only for gmail, so it's not useful for me on my business email. Outreach is a fortune, because it offers more than simply email tracking, which is all I need. Banatag works pretty well actually at tracking and locating, but you have to pay separately for each email, and since I have three, at least, it puts me at $30, based on the annual fee.  Month by month would be $36 per month, which I don't really want to pay.  I don't know other options.

Marina-DAT
Membre

I can only agree here! It also lists opened emails that you have opened yourself. The location of the email helped to determine whether it was really the recipient who opened the email.

tylerkelley
Participant | Partenaire solutions Diamond

92 replies and 25 upvotes?

 

Please click the thumbs up to keep this on their radar.

 

This tool is completely useless now.

Doug1
Membre

I found SalesHandy for tracking location.

heathcliff
Membre

@Doug1   I signed on to a trial of SalesHandy.  The U.S. ones either say it's a GMAIL CLIENT so no info, or just say UNITED STATES.  So that is of limited value. The Canadian one just said YAHOO CLIENT.  So it does not provide useful location tracking.

DaveCata
Membre

Updated on my iOS and Android app too.  The feature is now utterly useless.

 

Can't tell who is opening what now.  Very poor solution Hubspot, done with complete haste.

 

Fix it or we're gone too.

Agent314
Participant

Crickets at the moment...  

DaveCata
Membre

Ok we're switched over the Streak and it gives us our must needed prospect location data so we know which office is opening our correspondence -- at least the city location of where the email has been opened which is brilliant. Best of all ITS ALL FREE

 

https://www.streak.com/for/email-tracking-in-gmail

heathcliff
Membre

@DaveCata but streak only tracks Gmail.  But most people like me have business emails that need tracking. 😟

DaveCata
Membre

@heathcliff  ah I got you. Sorry we're GSuite users across our business