how to utilize "top engaged contacts" from a marketing email

[iamestyk]

There is a great new dashboard in the marketing performance tab within each email that has been sent through HubSpots marketing portal. it shows how many times each contact has opened/clicked an email.

unfortunatley at the moment there is no actionable way to use this information because you cannot add it to a smartlist or build a report out of it. It would be really great to see this be added as a contact property value so that we can use this as a way to prioritize sales follow ups based on email engagement.

[iamestyk]

Hi Contributers, thank you for the idea and for all the feedback. As Shay mentioned there is some significant work that is still in progress. It will not be landing in the next quarter so for transparency and clarity, I am updating this issue to 'Not currently planned' for the time being. I will update here once we are ready to share some updates.

Best,

Shane

[iamestyk]

Appreciate the follow up, everyone. While this idea isn't in development right now we're always keeping a close eye on the feedback to help inform the future roadmap. @LukePrAlc specifically related to your feedback, would you consider 10+ opens on a specific email as the differenciator, or just 10+ opens in one day of any emails you've sent them as valid in this case? I.e. a filtering option of "Contact has opened any email >10 times in <24hrs"?

[iamestyk]

Appreciate the feedback @ltowers and @paju, thanks for sharing

[iamestyk]

Hi all, appreciate all the votes and feedback on this post!

I have some good, and not so good, updates to share on this specific feature. The good news is that we're deep into a pretty significant overhaul of the email reporting infrastructure to move it onto HubSpot's more modern and feature-rich reporting systems which will unlock a lot of new reporting features and capability. The existing email reporting systems were some of the first we built at HubSpot, and have served us well over the years, but they have a good way to come to meet the more flexible and customisable expectations we have today, which should unlock a lot more options including some of the ones described here.

The not so good news is that this project is not the most straightforward task. We don't have a concrete answer on exactly how long this will take but it's actively being worked on and is a top priority for us.

In the meantime, it'd be super helpful to get to know a little more about how you'd leverage this data in your usage of HubSpot. There's a few ideas we've been floating around but we can't quite pin down which is the most relevant to the particular needs here. To list out what we have in mind: 

1. Would you want to be able to create lists out of the top engaged contacts on a per-email basis? 
   • I.e. a list filter that looks a little something like "Email Activity" > "April Ebook Offer Email" > "Is top engaged contacts"
2. Create a smart list of all top engaged contacts across all emails ever?
   • I.e. a running list of the most engaged contacts (by raw open/click counts) across all emails ever sent
3. A report that shows the most engaged contacts (by raw open/click counts) within a set window of time (i.e. last 30 days)
4. An updated/improved contac timeline card that does more to highlight the count of opens/clicks a contact did on a specific email?
   • I.e. an improvement on:
      
5. Any alternatives?

We're very interested in understanding how you'd like to see and use this data inside your portal, so any and all context is appreciated. Thanks!

[jmadore]

Totally agree - it would be super helpful to our customers to be able to filter for contacts that have opened a specific marketing email more than once, or any one marketing email in their portal more than once.

[Billsen]

All I want is to be able to click an action which allows me to "export to CSV, or XLS" (Along with names and phone numbers) to send to my sales team as a "hot list".

Yeah, they *could* go into HubSpot to get this directly, but my sales team doesn't do that. So, I need to lead the horse to the water - this shouldn't be hard to do!

[MirageMachines]

I agree. It would be useful to share with sales team members.

[JoanL]

I agree this feature would be massively helpful in identifying top engaged contacts. Exporting those contacts to a csv file or being able to create a list based on the number of times someone opened an email would be ideal. Idea number 1 (create lists out of the top engaged contacts on a per-email basis) gets our vote. 

[amyT]

Yes please. Such helpful information that I would use every single blast if only I could export it.

[gcwalker]

I just sent out an email yesterday to a list of contacts and was looking at my results in 'Top Engaged Contacts.' I see that someone has 30+ opens next to their name. What does that mean? Surely, someone hasn't opened my e-mail 30+ in the last 24 hours. Can someone shed some light, please? Thank you.

[melaniebell]

I have a client asking for this functionality - and I agree that I think this would be a really helpful idea. Even if we can't have all of the functionality right now with the options Shane mentioned, even just having one way of accessing these contacts would be incredibly helpful.

[Martinwd]

Agree. I'd like to add the following related enhancements for consideration:

• Include 'top engaged contacts' on the email comparison view
• Include (either by default or give option to add) important properties, e.g. company, job title, owner or HubSpot Score
• Include what they clicked / opened (ideally page name, rather than URL)
• Include filter to show only my contacts / owned by [user]
• Ability to expand to view more than 4 at a time

[simonezbob]

I would like this. It's a great idea. We are using the engagement data to follow-up with prospects who are demonstrating most intent.

[laurenlaw]

I just sent a simliar request to yours from 2018 and you got 110 upvotes I wonder how many it takes to get an idea implemented at Hubspot. 

Here was my idea submitted today. I really love the idea and found your post after I had submitted but I think our thinking is similar.  

Team: Marketing Team

Goal: Being able to reach out to the most engaged contacts over time

Value: By knowing who is engaging with us the most over time, that is, those who open, reach and click on our emails, we will be better able to reach and communicate with them by offering value-added content and ideas for them. 

We have been sending marketing emails out for almost two years. I searched on HubSpot for a way to find out over time who are our most engaged contacts, not just by individual email but through the course of the emails we've sent in an all-encompassing report. I couldn't find such a report on HubSpot and was told that I can only look at analytics by each email we send but not in total. The HS rep told me to submit this idea to HS community ideas so the engineers can give it a look and maybe implement it in the future. 

I am looking forward to hearing from others about this issue to see if anyone else has this need. Imagine, being able to know over time who likes and reads our information! And then being able to reach out one-to-one to see how else we can help them. 🙂  Thanks for helping and for your ideas! 

[JasonTong]

@Shay  Looks like this is picking up steam again. From your post in 2019, looks like most (including me) would like to see 2 and 3 developed.

[laurenlaw]

@JasonTong How do we get this idea to get implemented at HubSpot? I heard that they look at the number of Upvotes. If you would Upvote on my idea as well posted today that would be awesome. I would like to see this implemented soon! I am not sure why 109 upvotes on the idea posted in 2018 wouldn't have gotten some traction. 

[laurenlaw]

@Shayy 

I read your 2019 post  about top engaged contacts and I am copying from it what I would like to see with this feature:

1. Would you want to be able to create lists out of the top engaged contacts on a per-email basis?  YES! 
   • I.e. a list filter that looks a little something like "Email Activity" > "April Ebook Offer Email" > "Is top engaged contacts"
2. Create a smart list of all top engaged contacts across all emails ever?  YES YES! 
   • I.e. a running list of the most engaged contacts (by raw open/click counts) across all emails ever sent
3. A report that shows the most engaged contacts (by raw open/click counts) within a set window of time (i.e. last 30 days) YES! 

I hope you can push this through! It looks like it would benefit many on this forum. Thanks for anything you can do to help on this. ~ Lauren Law

[GabrielaC]

@laurenlaw @Shayy These are excellent suggestions. We would use these features all the time.

[JasonTong]

@laurenlaw we need the upvotes on @iamestyk 's original post in 2018, so hopefully everyone commenting here also is upvoting (which I think they are). I think with marketer's and a lot of competing vendors now running AI and engagement tracking,  I hope the Hubspot product team is also looking at this from a larger overall solution across the system.

[laurenlaw]

@Jason_ yes sir I upvoted for sure! I hope HubSpot will see the benefit in that as well and we will all benefit from it. 

[Ina]

This is a must have! I am so surprised we can't have this essential BASIC feature. At least, to be able to filter by the number of times an email was opened/clicked.

[justinsmith]

Pretty frustrating that you cant export "Top Engaged Contacts" into a csv file.  Seems like a very basic function.   Please reconsider adding this to your roadmap as it unneccessarily makes this a manual process

[laurenlaw]

I was working with my HubSpot rep (Chelsea Williams)  last week and was telling her about this feed and how many of us are looking for one list that will show us our Top Engaged Prospects.  This process below will not totally lead you to your Top Engaged Contacts but it will lead to a report you can export that shows Total Opens for each contact.  One thing to note is that this will only show you how many emails each person has opened over time. But it doesn't necessarily mean they are engaged right now. For instance, there's a contact in HubSpot whom I know was opening up emails for a long while but I know he unsubscribed a while back. So while the data shows he opened a lot of our emails and is at the top of that list, it doesn't necessarily mean he's engaged at this particular time. 

Go to Contacts

Go to Table Actions and Edit Columns

Search for Marketing Emails Opened, Select and, Save

Go Back to Table Actions

Export View and save as an XLS or CSV file

Open up your file and marvel at opens by each person in your database. 

Hope this helps! 

Lauren Law

[melaniebell]

Had another client asking for this yesterday!