Last updated: August 5, 2022
Use the Track and Log features of the HubSpot Sales Office 365 add-in to monitor and keep a record of your contacts' engagement with your emails. With the track feature enabled, you can receive real-time notifications when a contact opens your email. You can also choose to log the email to the contact's record in HubSpot to keep a record of all past communication for your team to reference.
You can review email open and click information in the activity feed; logged emails are saved to individual contact records and their associated records.
Please note: if you've enabled General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) functionality in your account, your legal team is the best resource to determine how your company uses email logging and tracking. You can also customize your extension settings to disable this functionality for a specific message or for specific contacts or email domains. In addition, email opens can only be tracked for contacts with an assigned legal basis for data processing. Learn more about email tracking when GDPR settings are enabled.
Before getting started, understand the difference between tracking and logging emails:- Track: use the track feature to monitor when contacts open your emails. To track emails, HubSpot inserts a one-pixel tracking image into the email after it is sent. If you have the HubSpot Sales for Windows tray app installed or if you're using Chrome with the HubSpot Sales Chrome extension, you'll receive a real-time notification on your desktop when a contact opens the tracked email. Users with assigned Sales Hub paid seats can also track when a recipient clicks a link in the email. Free users cannot track clicks. HubSpot records tracked email opens and clicks in the activity feed and on the record's timeline. Selecting the Track email opens checkbox will not log a copy of the email to the record in HubSpot.
- Log: use the log feature to log a copy of an email to a record in HubSpot. Any attachments included in the email will also log to the contact's record. Log your emails to keep a record of past communication. Logged emails do not give you insight into open or click information.
Keep in mind that you can send an email that is both tracked and logged. That way, you'll have a record of the email communication and can track a contact's engagement with the email.
Please note: the add-in task pane must be open in your inbox when you send a logged or tracked email. You can pin the task pane so it is always open by default in your inbox.
This article covers tracking emails and logging emails with the HubSpot Sales Office 365 add-in. If you're using the Outlook desktop add-in, learn how to track and log emails with the Outlook desktop add-in.
Tracking emails
Send a tracked email using the Office 365 add-in
To send a tracked email using the Office 365 add-in:
- Log in to your Outlook account.
- Compose a new email.
- Enter the email recipient, subject line, and email body.
- Open the sales tools in your inbox. This process will differ slightly depending on which mail client you're using:
- If you're using the Office 365 add-in from Outlook desktop on a PC or Mac, in the message window, click Sales Tools.
- If you're using the Office 365 add-in on an Outlook on the web or Outlook.com account, at the bottom right corner of your email composition window, click the sprocket icon .
- If you're using the Office 365 add-in from Outlook desktop on a PC or Mac, in the message window, click Sales Tools.
- In the right pane, select the Track email opens checkbox (users with assigned Sales Hub paid seats will see Track email opens and clicks).
- Keep the HubSpot Sales pane open with the checkbox selected, then click Send.
View the tracked email's status
Before your contact opens the email, the email subject line and recipient will show in your activity feed in HubSpot as Sent.
When the recipient opens the email, you'll receive a real-time pop-up notification on your desktop and the email notification marked as Open in your activity feed. Click the dropdown menu below the contact's name to see when the recipient opened your email. You will also see a history of the contact's activities listed in the dropdown menu.
Please note: real-time notifications will appear when you send tracked emails using the Office 365 add-in and if you have the HubSpot Sales Chrome extension or HubSpot Sales for Windows tray app (Windows only) installed. If not, you'll only see activity in your HubSpot activity feed.
You can also see how your contacts are engaging with your tracked emails from the Chrome extension or from the Windows tray app. To access your activity feed from the Chrome extension, click the HubSpot sprocket icon in the upper-right corner of your Chrome browser. If you've installed HubSpot Sales for Windows, click the HubSpot sprocket icon in your Windows tray.
Learn more about email tracking and sales notifications and how to disable tracking.
Tracking with GDPR settings enabled
If you've enabled GDPR functionality in your account, HubSpot can only track a contact's email opens when the contact has an assigned legal basis for data processing. When composing an email in Office 365, the Track email opens and clicks checkbox will be greyed out to indicate a contact's tracking ineligibility.
Email opens will not be tracked for contacts without a legal basis for processing data or email recipients who are not yet contacts. When emailing multiple recipients, email opens will be tracked anonymously.
You can change a contact's tracking eligibility by updating their Legal basis for processing contact's data property.
Logging emails
To log an email and add new contacts to HubSpot from a logged email, the email address you send emails from must be one of the following:
- A user in your account
- One of your connected email addresses
- An alias in your email client (either an alias that has been configured in your connected Gmail inbox, or an alias added to your Profile & Preferences)
You can specify email addresses and domains that you never want to log emails for in your HubSpot account settings. Or you can add these email addresses and domains in your add-in settings.
Please note: email attachments larger than 50 MB will not log to HubSpot. Your email will still be delivered successfully to the contact and will log to the CRM, but without an attachment.
Send a logged email using the Office 365 add-in
To send a logged email using the Office 365 add-in:
- Compose a new email in Outlook.
- Enter the email recipient, subject line, and email body.
- Open the sales tools in your inbox. This process will differ slightly depending on which mail client you're using:
- If you're using the Office 365 add-in from Outlook desktop on a PC or Mac, in the message window, click Sales Tools.
- If you're using the Office 365 add-in from Outlook on the web or an Outlook.com account, at the bottom right corner of your email composition window, click the sprocket icon .
- If you're using the Office 365 add-in from Outlook desktop on a PC or Mac, in the message window, click Sales Tools.
- In the right pane, select the Log checkbox. Your BCC address will auto-populate in the BCC field.
- By default, the add-in will automatically select the contact's first three associated deal records to log emails to. To explicitly select which records the email will log to:
Please note: you must be using Office 365 version 1910 or above to explicitly select which records the email should log to.
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- Click the dropdown menu next to the Log checkbox.
- Select/clear the checkboxes next to the records you want to log the email to.
- If you're sending the email to a recipient who isn't contact in your CRM, a new contact record will be created. You'll see the contact's email listed when editing the associations. Clear the checkbox if you don't want the email to log to the new contact record. Learn how to log emails to existing contact records only.
- Keep the HubSpot Sales pane open with the checkbox selected, then click Send.
You can customize which associated records your emails are automatically logged to in your Office 365 add-in settings. If you are using marketing contacts, a new contact created by a logged email will be set as non-marketing.
Please note: if a new contact is created through a logged email, the HubSpot user who sent the email will be automatically assigned as the contact owner, as long as no previous owner has been assigned.
View the logged email in HubSpot
Email that are logged to HubSpot using the Office 365 add-in will automatically be associated to the records that you specified before sending the email.
To see the logged email in HubSpot:
- In your HubSpot account, navigate to your contacts, companies, or deals.
- Click the name of the record.
- On the timeline, locate the logged email. From the email, you can do the following:
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- Associated records: click to edit associated company or deals records.
- Pin: click to pin the email to the top if the contact timeline.
- Delete: click to delete the email activity from the timeline.
- Details: click to see specific information about the email send.
- Expand: click to see the full body of the email. If there's an ongoing email conversation, click View thread to see all of the emails in the thread.
- Attachments: click to open attachments associated with this specific email send.
- Reply: click Reply to send an email reply to the contact from HubSpot.
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Please note: in order to send email replies from HubSpot and log incoming replies to HubSpot, you must have a connected inbox.
