Mar 26, 20202:09 AM - edited Mar 26, 20202:24 AM
HubSpot Employee
How to run automations based on replies to marketing emails
Most Hubspot users will know that HubSpot does not offer a feature that tracks replies to marketing emails. The reason we do not offer reply tracking on marketing emails is that emails of this type are not typically meant to be replied to. However, if you are a business who needs to know if a contact has replied to a marketing email and run automations based on this then there is a workaround. Replies to your marketing emails will be sent to the inbox of the reply-to address on your email. Considering this, you can follow the steps below to track replies and run automations/create lists based on this.
1)Connect the address that you will set as the 'reply-to' address for your marketing emails to your conversations inbox as an email channel. Once this is done it means that replies to your marketing email will be visible in your conversations inbox and will log to contact records. 2) Choose the ‘reply-to’ address for your marketing email in the email settings. You will see the option to choose any of the addresses connected to your conversations inbox here.
3) Replies to your marketing email will automatically have the same subject line as the marketing email but with ‘Re:’ at the beginning.
4) We can use the ‘activity property’ of ‘email subject line’ to filter contacts based on if they have an email logged to their record with the email subject line of ‘Re: {subject line of marketing email}’.
The same filter can be applied in workflows. This will allow you to run automations based on if a contact has replied to one of your marketing emails. For example:
How to run automations based on replies to marketing emails
We send our marketing emails from individual work email addresses, so responses receive the emails from known contacts and replies can be dealt with efficiently. Surely that's the benefit of the personalisation tokens. The above workaround doesn't seem possible if the individuals are already set up to have their emails tracked and logged. A workaround really shouldn't be necessary for something this important.
How to run automations based on replies to marketing emails
Seems like HubSpot should rethink the premise of marketing emails.
Why wouldn't I want to write marketing emails in such a way that customers would want to respond to them... wouldn't that indicate that my statements had resonated with them to such an extent that they felt compelled to reply?
Seems to me that HubSpot's position on this is missing out on a lot of 'real world' usage. I appreciate the workaround, but it shouldn't need to be a workaround... it should have 'first-class' support.