Track how often a sales email is being forwarded

[mikr]

We would like to track how often a sales email has been forwarded. The reason is that depending on their seniority, people often forward emails to their teams because they don't have time themselves. This is always a great indicator if a company is interested in our solution. So it would be great to be able to track that.

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @mikr,

This is unfortunately not possible, due to how sales email tracking works technically. An email client is not passing on information to the original sender whether their email was forwarded.

To understand the background, I'd recommend this article: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/connected-email/understand-hubspot-sales-email-open-and-click-tracking

A sales email is tracked via a tracking pixel that is loaded when an email is opened. Apart from being loaded and signaling HubSpot that is was loaded, HubSpot does not get any information about what's being done with that email.

A high open count could however be a signal that the email was forwarded a lot.

Best regards!

[mikr]

Thank you for the swift response, Karsten. I am aware that with the current technical setup is not possible, but I know from other solutions this is possible and that is really a competitive feature and at least I wanted HubSpot to know that we would be very interested in having that and I think it could be of big value also for other people / companies and if they upvote this suggestion, HubSpot might consider a technical option that would allow that in the future.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @mikr,

Thank you for elaborating.

Other users have actually requested this before: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Track-email-forwards/idi-p/338093

It relates to marketing emails, so I'd recommend upvoting and commenting with your sales email requirement. Whatever technology would be developed here would likely work for both. Of course, you could also create a new HubSpot Ideas request.

You can help other users find the request more easily by accepting my reply as a solution. I'd appreciate it, too.

Best regards

[mikr]

Thank you for the advice @karstenkoehler I already did comment on that post with the sales requirement and also upvoted it. I just wanted to make sure that is being recognized that for us it is even more important for sales than marketing emails. That's why I've created this separate issue. If you think it helps if I flag your answer as a solution, I'm happy to do so, hoping HubSpot product management thinks the same way you do 😉

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @mikr, 

Only posts in the HubSpot Ideas section are monitored by the product team. This thread here however, marked as a solution, provides another avenue for users like you to find those requests.

Best regards!