Trigger – Email Activity

The Email Activity trigger allows you to add a person to a Flow when they are sent, or engage with:

any email
or a specific email in your account.

Note that this trigger:

Does not send email. To send email please use the Send Email action step.
Works only for future email activity and not for any activity that has happened in the past. To target past activity create a new segment with the "Email activity" condition and use the Entered Segment trigger or the Time Trigger instead.
Works with activity from all emails regardless of whether they are sent from a Flow or through a Broadcast. For instance, if a person opens one of your Broadcast emails, they would trigger this step. An exception to this is the "Replied to" activity which only works with emails sent from a Flow (read the next section).
Replied to activity does not work with Broadcasts as we don't support reply tracking in Broadcasts to ensure maximum deliverability of Broadcasts.
Emails from the Emails page are separate from the emails sent through Broadcasts. Make sure to select the name of the broadcast within the trigger if the email was sent via Broadcasts, and the name of the email if it was sent using a flow.
Works with activity from all emails in your account, not just the emails that you use in the current Flow.
Does not work with emails sent with the "Send test email" button in the email builder because email activity is not tracked for them. However, it works with the Send Test button in the Test tab within the Send Email step.
Can be triggered multiple times regardless of what the selected activity is. For instance, if a person opens the same email twice, the Email Activity will trigger two times and will add that person to the Flow two times. If you'd like to trigger email activity just once, you can create a new segment with the Email Activity Condition instead.

Some browser extensions, plugins, and bots are known to open emails automatically. This has been observed with email tracking tools like Mailtrack. This can cause unexpected opens and sometimes clicks. If you're experiencing issues please make sure to test the step with an email address and client that doesn't have any extensions installed.

How to set up the Email Activity trigger?

To configure the Email Activity trigger, first, select the email. You can select:

Any email – the step will trigger when activity occurs in any of the emails in your account.

A specific email – the step will trigger when activity occurs in a specific email.

Next, select one of the available email activities:

Delivered – the step will trigger when a person receives the email successfully.
Not delivered (bounced) – the step will trigger if an email was sent to the person but the email was not delivered or the email bounced.
Clicked – the step will trigger when a person clicks on a particular exact-match link. For instance, if the link in the email is "https://mysite.com/page?ref=email" you need to use that exact link not just a part of it.

Leave the "Link URL" field empty to trigger the step if a person clicks on any link in the email. Note that the step will not trigger if a person clicks on a Usunbscibe link.
Replied to – the step will trigger if a person replies to the email. Note that the "Track replies" option must be switched on in the Send Email action step for this activity to work. Also, note that we currently don't support this activity for emails sent through a Broadcast, as we don't track replies to Broadcasts.

Example use cases

Score leads based on their email engagement

You can increase the lead score of people when they open, click or reply to an email. Use the Email Activity trigger with the Lead Score action step. Every time a person performs the activity, their score will increase accordingly.

Record how many times a person has performed an activity, and take action when they hit a specific amount

Add the necessary custom fields based on the email activities you'd like to track (e.g. "Total Opens"), and choose Number as a field type.

Then connect the Email Activity step with a Change Field action step. Use Liquid tag to increase the value (i.e., the number) of the custom field as shown below:

The liquid tag {{person.totalOpens | plus: 1}} will increase the value of the custom field "Total Opens" by 1 every time a person opens an email.

You could then create a Segment of people based on one or more of these fields, and add people that enter the segment to a Flow using the Entered Segment trigger. For example, you could create a task in HubSpot if a person clicks more than 10 times on your emails:

Follow up with a person proactively when they click on a call to action

You can automatically send an email to a person if they click on a specific link in a specific email.

For instance, you can prompt your leads to click a link to show an interest in one of your offers. With the Send Email action step you can automatically send more information about the offer once they click.