Privacy / Confidential Internal Company Emails (Email Tracking & Contact Creation)

[KFarn]

Hi Community,

Looking for some way to stop Hubspot from tracking and logging of INTERNAL emails within our company. Why - for obvious privacy and confidentiality reasons. How do we do this stop this?

We DO want to log and track EXTERNAL emails sent and recieved to external contacts. (including 'Opens) but thats it.

As it is now, we have our own company as a Company in HS and all our employees as Contacts in HS. Most of them do not have user accounts/seats in HS. Here are the HS settings I think I'm referring to for some of this.

We also do NOT want HS to automatically create a new contact when a person (internal or external) is BCC in email from MS Outlook or from HS email. How do we stop this?

Right now we are using a Free Plan. 

Any help is much appreciated. 

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @KFarn,

The only tool currently available for this would be the never log list at the bottom of your screenshot. https://knowledge.hubspot.com/connected-email/add-emails-and-domains-to-the-never-log-list

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• When an email is sent from a connected personal email, using the HubSpot Sales extension or add-in, or from a team email address to recipients on the Never Log list:
  • A new contact record will not be created.
  • Email tracking activity will not be recorded on the contact's timeline. However, email tracking activity for all recipients will still be logged in your activity feed.
  • The email will not be logged to any associated records.
• If you send an email directly from the CRM to a contact on the Never Log list, it will still send but the email will not be logged to the record. 
• If an email sent to an address or domain in the Never Log list, then logged to HubSpot using the BCC address or forwarding address, only the contact record will be excluded from logging.
• If there are recipients on an email who are not on the Never log list, HubSpot will still log emails to those contact records.

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Best regards

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

@KFarn the typical reason why internal contacts exist is typically because of testing reasons. Someone creates a test contact, submits a website form, or wants to receive a marketing email like an external contact.

In your case, they might have also been created through email logging. You can check by lookingupt the source of these contaccts: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/properties/view-and-use-the-record-source-property

The one thing you need to do on this settings page is to add your own company domain at the bottom in the never log list.

Best regards!

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @KFarn,

The only tool currently available for this would be the never log list at the bottom of your screenshot. https://knowledge.hubspot.com/connected-email/add-emails-and-domains-to-the-never-log-list

---

• When an email is sent from a connected personal email, using the HubSpot Sales extension or add-in, or from a team email address to recipients on the Never Log list:
  • A new contact record will not be created.
  • Email tracking activity will not be recorded on the contact's timeline. However, email tracking activity for all recipients will still be logged in your activity feed.
  • The email will not be logged to any associated records.
• If you send an email directly from the CRM to a contact on the Never Log list, it will still send but the email will not be logged to the record. 
• If an email sent to an address or domain in the Never Log list, then logged to HubSpot using the BCC address or forwarding address, only the contact record will be excluded from logging.
• If there are recipients on an email who are not on the Never log list, HubSpot will still log emails to those contact records.

---

Best regards

[KFarn]

@karstenkoehler,

Thank you for this!! Super helpful!

Do you know if there ANY reason why we should or even need to have our own company and employees (HS users or not) as a Company in HS and Contacts in HS? We have many that got auto added I think because of some setting we either turned on or didn't turn off.

Do you know what the settings should be on this page so Contacts (external) are NOT automatically created in HS when they are CC'd or BCC'd on an outgoing OR incoming email from a same email domain for a Company we already have in HS? This seems to have been another point of past creation of way to many Contacts in HS.

Kind regards,

Keith

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

@KFarn the typical reason why internal contacts exist is typically because of testing reasons. Someone creates a test contact, submits a website form, or wants to receive a marketing email like an external contact.

In your case, they might have also been created through email logging. You can check by lookingupt the source of these contaccts: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/properties/view-and-use-the-record-source-property

The one thing you need to do on this settings page is to add your own company domain at the bottom in the never log list.

Best regards!

[KFarn]

@karstenkoehler

Thank you again for this. I've read through the documentation and your comments. Still a bit unclear since there's 2 factors at play here with our company personnel (Internal Contact) currently included as Contacts as part our Company as company record in HS. And whether or not to turn on Never Log list and add our domain.😕

I'm reluctant to change this major setting in case of unintended consequences like loosing past email records with External Contacts we do want email logging for.

If we add our domain to the Never Log list, do you know what happens in these scenarios with respect to what's logged in HS on the Contact record for each Internal or External HS Contact?

1. Will our HS Users (who have synced their email account and are part of our paid user count) still be able to be able to have inbound and outbound emails logged to/from External Contacts? Opens, etc?
2. External Contact sends email to a User's email and copies one of our company's Contacts (Internal HS Contact)? What's logged where?
3. External Contact sends direct email to company contact who is not an Internal Contact in HS (does not copy a User)?
4. Internal Contact sends email to External Contact (doesn't copy HS User)?
5. For our Newsletter, we want to create a dedicated email (with no reply) for this purpose. Can we do this without buying a seat for this purpose? Do we have to have our own Company as a company for this "Contact" and create a Contact for this? Will the emails from this still address still be tracked for opens and clicks?

I feel that HS should have a matrix on this for what is and is not logged for the set-up under 2 differnt scenarios which I outlined above (and another factor as to whether or the email was copied to a User. And what happens to historial logs if Never Log is turned on.

Thanks in advance for any insights on this.

Keith

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

@KFarn the never log list specifically refers to recipients, see the first sentence in the documentation: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/connected-email/add-emails-and-domains-to-the-never-log-list

"To prevent logging emails sent to specific recipients, Super Admins in your account can add their email addresses to the Never Log list. These recipients will be blocked for all users."

Let's look at your questions:

1. As long as external contact’s domain is not on the Never Log list, inbound/outbound emails log normally.
2. If the email is a reply to an email previously sent from HubSpot or with a sales extension or if you have the new inbound email logging enabled for personal inboxes, it will log on the contact record and, depending on your association defaults, associated records (company, deal, ticket). If it is not a reply, if you have not enabled inbound email logging, if the email address is not a connected team email address in the conversations inbox section, the email will not log. In any case, the email will not be logged on the records of internal recipients.
3. Incoming emails will only logged if they meet the requirements in the previous question – net new emails to inboxes not connected in HubSpot (personal / team) will not be logged.
4. If the email is sent via a sales extension, BCC address, or from HubSpot, it will be logged on the record of the recipient and associated records depending on the aforementioned association defaults. It will not log on the record of any internal contacts.
5. To create marketing emails, a core user seat is needed for the person creating the email. No additional seats are needed.

Best regards

[STierney]

Hey @KFarn - thanks for posting in the Community!

I'd like to tag in some experts to see what thoughts they have regarding this inquiry! @karstenkoehler, @ChrisoKlepke, and @franksteiner79 - any thoughts?

Shane, Senior Community Moderator