Thread in contact shows mails of other contacts

[Peggy]

Hi community/support-team,

I have weird view in my contact.

I see mails from other contacts in a thread. 

I guess it's because of the same mail subject!?

We are using O365 and save mail as draft. Then I copy the mail and write it to a customer in company A. I copy the draft mail again and send it to company B and so on.

What I see now in Hubspot is a Thread (Leistungsportfolio SharePoint und Office 365) and all the mails from the people of other companies. In my example I'm in the contact Mr. F from company C an I can see the mail for Mr. S from company A and the mail of Mr. L from company B and the correct assigned Mail for Mr. F from company C. 

Why is hubspot assigning it to the wrong contact?

Thanks a lot

Peggy

[Jenny26]

We just discovered this exact issue with one of our reps using the Outlook plugin. Unfortunately, we almost lost a client because of it. We thought we responded to their request but that response was for a different record and client. We're researching the fix you are suggesting but it doesn't seem to be the issue. I was able to go through about 100 emails and correct the associations - however, the thread is still there in each record.

Understandably so, my team is hesitant to use the plugin. I have two questions: 1) how do I sort out the threads? Each email is associated with the correct contact, company, and deal but they are all still threaded together. It's a mess. 2) Any updates on fixing this issue?

[Jenny26]

I'm replying again to correct something I said. I just learned that my team mates were forwarding an email (changing the email address & subject) to re-use a template. It sounds like this is what caused the problem.

HubSpot, I have a recommendation - Please, put an obvious note with the Outlook plugin and 365 plugin, telling users not to forward an email for this reason. Thank you!

[prozakis]

I'm afraid your problem is not that your colleagues use the same templeate to send to more customers.

We did what was suggested -as per the instruction in this post- to use a new email but the problem is still there.

Our Hubspot customer records is a mess, we cannot and we do not rely to this system to check email sequence anymore.

[DBorg]

we noticed this now - that mails we sent from Outlook with the Sales Tools add-in sometimes end up in the wrong contacts email thread. 
The accepted soulution is old and a lot of people has replied since then saying that it still happens.
Even if they do this: "To avoid this issue, please send (or reply to) each Sales email using a different compose window, and avoid using “reply-all” or “forward” options to send an additional email to a prospect."
Any news on a solution for this? This is a big and urgent issue for us.

[TiphaineCuisset]

Hi @DBorg 

Thank you for reaching out. 

There could be multiple reasons why this happens and this accepted solution is still valid for most cases. If this is not the case for you, we'd need to troubleshoot further. I can see you have access to technical support and have a ticket open regarding this - partnering with technical support on this ticket will be the best next step as they will be able to provide faster assistance for this matter, where you are able to share screenshots and specific examples about this.

Thank you!

Best

Tiphaine

[prozakis]

Same problem here.

I cannot understand the pattern. It is a mess.

We discover every day mixed emails in other contact pages.

We sort our contact list by "last activity date" to find out that dead contacts have very recent activity dates because other peoples email are stored in their page.

So, we cannot use this feature anymore as it produces faulty results

[SJR]

@Peggy Have you received a solution for this problem yet? How to unlink all those emails from the wrong contact? 

We are having the same issue at the moment. Individual emails have been sent out to different clients with the same subject line and they are now saved at each client, with all replies from every client that writes back. Creates a bit of a mess. Thanks

[TiphaineCuisset]

Hi @SJR 

It doesn't seem there is another way instead of doing it manually following these steps. To understand why this happened and what else could be done here, I would recommend connecting with HubSpot Technical Support, as Support is included in your subscription and they will be able to provide real-time assistance for this matter, where you are able to share screenshots and specific examples about this. 

Thank you

Best

Tiphaine

[HLennett]

@TiphaineCuisset Do you have a solution for when this has already happened and we want to unassociate a massive thread from over 100 contacts? Is there a way to do this or are we stuck?

[TiphaineCuisset]

Hi @HLennett 

I do really apologize for the delay here - I didn't see this reply. 

I had a look but it doesn't seem there is another way instead of doing it manually following these steps. I do understand how this is a lot of manual work - I'd recommend connecting with HubSpot Technical Support, as Support is included in your subscription - to see if something else could be done.

Thank you

Best

Tiphaine

[HLennett]

Thank you. I have worked with the support team on this and they also say there is nothing they can do. It would be great for HubSpot to prioritize a fix for this, as it can wreak havoc on our systems and there isn't really a way of knowing it will happen until it is too late. 

[AnnJ]

I am having the same exact problem, and what's more, I don't even use the same copy-paste email subject. They both just start with the same word, but the rest of the subject ends completely differently from one subject to the other.

Based on what I've researched so far, and HubSpot devs please forgive my irritation, Threading is causing far more harm than good. I think I would rather have the option to disable the **bleep** thing--I have a pro-bono client and a paid client, with totally different domains, companies, email endings, you name it, and I am seeing messages threaded from my Gmail Workspace inbox under the completely wrong, unrelated contact.

Just to catastrophize some more, if I'm a sales associate working for another company using HubSpot right now, this is creating an increased risk of me accidentally sharing the wrong confidential information from one customer to another.

Please, for the love of god. Fix this "feature" or take it the heck out.

[TiphaineCuisset]

Hi @AnnJ 

Thank you for reaching out. I replied to you in your other thread. 

Best

Tiphaine

[jennysowyrda]

Hi @Peggy, 

Were all of the contacts on the same email thread, or were they sent the email seperately? 

Additionally, are the emails logging on all of these contacts timelines, or just the one? 

If you can share the email address of the contact who's timeline this is happening on, that would also be great!

Thank you,
Jenny

[Peggy]

Hi Jenny,

every e-mail was sent alone.

All E-mails are displayed also on the other contacts.

best regards

Peggy

[jennysowyrda · Accepted solution]

Thanks @Peggy! I've done some further investigating on my end and partnered with the Support team, and it appears that this issue can occur when a certain set of circumstances occurs. 

Sometimes, threaded conversations on the contact or company timeline can get mixed up and include emails that are not associated with that particular contact or company record.

Within Outlook online and Office 365, it is possible to stay within one compose window or conversation view and send many iterations of the same email to different recipients, using either “reply-all,” or “forward” after each send to add a new recipient address.

Sending in this manner causes many of the emails sent this way to be incorrectly tagged with the same threadid. This occurs because Outlook passes the same threadid to HubSpot for different conversations that actually shouldn’t thead together within HubSpot.

This issue only occurs when users send emails in this specific way from their Outlook client. The initial email send can come from either the HS timeline or from Outlook client - what causes the undesired behavior is how the user is replying to emails. These “replies” can also be additional emails associated with the same thread.

To avoid this issue, please send (or reply to) each Sales email using a different compose window, and avoid using “reply-all” or “forward” options to send an additional email to a prospect.

If you still experience this issue after following the steps outlined to ensure this does not occur, please let me know. 

Thank you,
Jenny

[DBorg]

we noticed this now - that mails we sent from Outlook with the Sales Tools add-in sometimes end up in the wrong contacts email thread. 
The accepted soulution is old and a lot of people has replied since then saying that it still happens.
Even if they do this: "To avoid this issue, please send (or reply to) each Sales email using a different compose window, and avoid using “reply-all” or “forward” options to send an additional email to a prospect."
Any news on a solution for this? 

[LG1]

Hi Jenny, 

I understand the future prevention you have provided. 

But what is the solution to separate the emails that are now in one company but should be in two separate companies? 

Thanks. 

[kmm]

We are having this same issue.  When we send e-mail messages from Outlook to e-mail address A, if we later send an e-mail message to e-mail address B ( or C, D, etc.) with the same text in the subject area, HubSpot erroneously lumps messages to unrelated e-mail addresses into a particular contact, even though the e-mail addresses and "@whatever.com" are different.  To be clear, we compose a new message to e-mail address A and send it.  We later compose a new message to e-mail address B and send that.  We are not forwarding the original message to e-mail address A.

The solution presented, "To avoid this issue, please send (or reply to) each Sales email using a different compose window, and avoid using “reply-all” or “forward” options to send an additional email to a prospect," isn't helpful, as why would we not reply or reply all to a message to e-mail address A, if, indeed we want to reply to a message, keeping the original text of the message in our reply?  This solution seems to suggest starting a new thread, which defeats the purpose of keeping related info in one e-mail message.  Maybe I'm not understanding the solution?  Please help, as this is rather frustrating.  Thanks.

[josipmarkus]

I'm having this issue with emails I'm sending from Google Mail via a Chrome browser window and HubSpot gmail plug-in.