HubSpot Marketing Email: Setup, Deliverability and Metrics

Who can receive HubSpot marketing emails?

On paid Marketing Hub plans, only marketing contacts. Only they count toward your contact tier and cost, so set imported, old or customer-only contacts as non-marketing unless you'll email them. HubSpot upgrades your tier if you go over by even one marketing contact and only downgrades at renewal; changes to non-marketing apply after the next update date.

• Subscription types (Marketing Hub Starter and up) let contacts opt out of one kind of email, such as a newsletter, without leaving everything.
• Consent: HubSpot requires opt-in consent; the lack of an opt-out isn't enough, and purchased lists aren't allowed.
• Send limit: a monthly limit resets each calendar month and counts marketing, workflow and form follow-up emails. Check your plan's number in your account.

How do you set up your sending domain?

Connect an email sending domain, which needs a Starter subscription, and add the DNS records HubSpot gives you: two CNAME records for DKIM and a TXT record each for SPF and DMARC. Without DKIM you can't send with your own domain in the From address. HubSpot recommends sending from a subdomain such as news.example.com.

HubSpot shows a domain as authenticated only when DKIM, SPF and DMARC are all in place; DKIM alone shows as partially authenticated.

What hurts HubSpot email deliverability?

Old or bought lists, which cause bounces and spam reports. HubSpot can suspend sending if, in a month, your hard bounce rate reaches 5 percent, your spam report rate 0.1 percent, one per 1,000 emails, or your unsubscribe rate 3 percent. Graymail suppression, on by default, skips contacts who've stopped engaging, and hard-bounced contacts are excluded automatically.

• Graymail: HubSpot treats a contact as unengaged if they never engaged and ignored the last 11 emails, or engaged before but ignored the last 16.
• Soft bounces are temporary and those contacts stay eligible; hard bounces are permanent.
• Free accounts: HubSpot says suspensions on free tools can't be lifted.

How should you build and test each email?

Send a test, check every link and personalization token, and keep the email under 102 KB, the size at which Gmail clips messages. HubSpot creates a plain-text version automatically; review it. Every marketing email needs a footer with your physical address and a subscription preferences or unsubscribe link, which HubSpot ties to CAN-SPAM compliance.

• Tokens: set fallbacks so empty values don't look broken.
• A/B tests need Marketing Hub Professional; HubSpot recommends at least 1,000 contacts and picks a winner by open, click or click-through rate.
• Campaigns: add each email to its campaign so reporting stays complete. Our campaign brief template has an email QA tab.

Which marketing email metrics should you trust?

Clicks and what happens after them, more than opens. HubSpot counts an open when images load or someone clicks, and privacy tools and security scanners can trigger both. Its bot filtering, on by default, removes activity from scanners and privacy filters such as Apple Mail Privacy Protection. Open and click rate are measured against delivered emails; click-through rate against opens.

Delivered means the receiving server accepted the email; HubSpot can't report inbox or spam folder placement. Watch bounce and unsubscribe rates per send, and judge nurture by meetings and deals created.

HubSpot marketing email checklist