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!

Atualizações da HubSpot
Status atualizado para: 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

Status atualizado para: 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 Comentários
heathcliff
Membro

@Agent314 I can't find a company called crickets

Agent314
Participante

@heathcliff I'm guessing you're kidding, but if not... "Crickets = Silence" 🙂

 

HS doesn't care. Doubtful there will be any solutions anytime soon. We've now managed to let them know we haven't found any external remedies yet so there is no urgency. And don't forget, this is a political issue unfortunately. Lawyers.

 

But, I still a positivity guy. So this too will resolve one way or another. This, or something better. Have a good week.

 

Jeff

heathcliff
Membro

@Agent314  no, wasn't kidding. I never heard that phrase before. 

dst18
Membro

I agree to this. Without this feature hubspot is useless for me!

 

I access my emails from another machine all the time and form different places. The only way I can tell if it was me who opened it or my recipient is from the location!!

 

PLEASE REINSTATE THIS FEATURE

VirginiaBee
Participante

The activity is utterly useless. @mschnitt, how does this help me? "Someone" opened my email several times. The two people I sent this to are contacts of mine, in HubSpot. Why are they identified as "Someone?" And, the same "Someone" did not open it four times. Different people opened it.

Someone HubSpot Activity Useless 2019-08-14_15-37-59.png

tylerkelley
Participante | Parceiro Diamante

Apparently this is also happening with documents that are sent to a single recipient (and yes I have the  "require email address" option checked).

 

Capture.PNG

jims
Participante

In the absence of tracking location (which is understandable), can Hubspot AT LEAST distinguish between the following?

 

1.  OPENED BY RECIPIENT

2.  OPENED BY ANOTHER PARTY FROM RECIPIENT'S DOMAIN (forwarded to a co-worker at recipient's company)

3.  OPENED BY ANOTHER PARTY NOT FROM RECIPIENT'S DOMAIN (forwarded to a third party)

4.  OPENED BY SOMEONE FROM SENDER'S DOMAIN (even if they are not a Hubspot user)

VirginiaBee
Participante

Great suggestions @jims . Please see and responsd @mschnitt .

o7
Membro

I suspect that most of the responders in this thread are power users which Hubspot inherited from Sidekick. Since I am one of those, I don't think we have a negotiation power, Hubspot doesn't care about our $10/m and they know very well how much each one of those commented here pays. I even think they have an interest in getting rid of us to stop supporting an interface (and pricing) which new users have no access to.

Does anyone here pay more than $10/m and/or is not a Sidekick user?

heathcliff
Membro

I'm going to try to attach screenshots from SalesHandy.  Their format is different than Hubspot.  For Saleshandy, the opens aren't indicated in Outlook.  You have to go to the Saleshandy website for the summary.  In the first screenshot it shows the address email, subject line, how many times it's been opened (if that's the activity you click on), and the time it was opened.  The second screenshot shows how it looks if you click on the number of opens.  For some, it shows location.  If the email is somehow linked to gmail or yahoo, you just get a Gmail open with no location.  Sometimes you get some gmail and some location, like in the 3rd screenshot, which also indicates it's been open by more than one person.  The cost is $16/ month, though you have to pay for the whole year in advance.

 

screenshot saleshandy.JPGscreenshot saleshandy2.JPGscreenshot saleshandy3.JPG

Agent314
Participante

@heathcliff Does it work with Outlook desktop client with multiple outgoing email addresses (POP3, one inbox, multiple folders)? Or do you know?

heathcliff
Membro

@Agent314  I have Outlook, and use 7 or 8 email accounts.  One is Microsoft Exchange, two are Godaddy-registered, two are gmail, one is hover.  SalesHandy allowed me three emails max with tracking/ location ID.  It seemed initially like they only allowed one, I said out of the question, and they allowed 3.  I can give you the contact name.  As I said, it's $16/month, but you have to pay for a year (drag!).  

feedback
Membro

Seriously, HubSpot? I wonder whether they ask paying customers before implementing these updates. In this case, they clearly did not.

 

I find this feature extremely useful. It helps me evaluate whether a prospect or client is traveling, which provides a well-informed perspective while engaging prospects and clients. 

 

Please return this feature.

heathcliff
Membro

Well, I canceled HubSpot and have bought a plan on SalesHandy, which tracks opens and offers locations, except in the case of Gmail based or Yahoo based emails.  Not perfect, but certainly better than HubSpot is offering.

abt
Membro

The decision to take away the location of opened emails, has taken away a lot of the added-value hubspot offers. I can no longer tell if the user has actually opened my email or if it is a colleague or the system is recognizing me. Huge disappointment that this is no longer available. please bring it back!

rmoscarino
Participante

Agreed....disappointing that this feature has been removed.

eniebles
Participante

Agree, that this is a big disappointment as there are users that do rely on location - we operate on a global scale, and good to see where opens based on locale. Hubspot failed users on this decision. We are looking at other applications like Yesware, Sales Handy, and others.  

Agent314
Participante

Don't worry, I'm sure HS is working on this faster so they can do nothing about it sooner...

tylerkelley
Participante | Parceiro Diamante

This feature still **bleep**.

Agent314
Participante

Again, like I said before... there's a lot of politics in this. Which is a shame. Like we don't already have enough of that? Sad... There's such a good opportunity for HubSpot to step up and do something good for it's customers. Do they not understand the exponential value of even 100 happy customers. Possibly there are many much bigger internal problems to solve and this just doesn't make the radar for them. But remember, where there's a market...