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Metrics type: Key Metrics • Category: Email Marketing
Marketing-Hub send volume. Audit HS03 fires when this collapses without a list-size reason.

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At a glance

Total Marketing-Hub email send volume in the period. The headline send-cadence number; collapses without a corresponding list-size reason fire audit HS03. Pulled from EMAIL_EVENT.SENT events via /marketing/v3/emails.

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your HubSpot data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

A B2B SaaS portal with 84,200 contacts running Marketing Hub Pro. The 30-day window is 14 Mar 26 to 12 Apr 26. Compared with the prior 30 days (12 Feb 26 to 13 Mar 26): Five things this picture reveals:
  1. 73% of sends come from two sources, the monthly newsletter (162,400) and the webinar campaign (28,200). Workflow sends are 14,250 (6.4%). For a Marketing-Hub-mature portal the workflow share should be 25-40%; this team is over-reliant on broadcast newsletters.
  2. The 16.8% MoM growth is healthy and consistent with list growth. Audit HS03 only fires when sends drop >15% with no list-size reason. Here the trend is up and the list is growing, no audit fires.
  3. YoY growth of 55.8% reflects scaling, not list bloat. Total Contacts grew 38% in the same period; sends grew faster, meaning send-frequency-per-contact rose. That increases unsubscribe risk; pair with the Unsubscribe Rate card.
  4. A 30%+ MoM collapse without list shrinkage is the canary scenario. Common causes: a workflow turned off (someone disabled the welcome flow during a redesign), the Marketing Email tier hit its monthly send limit, send-from-address was unverified after a domain change, or a List-trigger workflow broke. Audit HS03 surfaces the cause.
  5. Sequence sends (1-to-1 from sales reps) do not appear here, even though they look identical to recipients. A sales team sending 4,000 sequence emails per month adds zero to this card. To see total outbound, sum this card with Sales Hub Sequence sends from the dedicated card.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Send volume on its own is a vanity metric. Pair it with these:

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in HubSpot: Two native views give the closest comparison:
HubSpot → Marketing → Email → Analyze (Performance tab, filter to last 30 days) HubSpot → Reports → Analytics tools → Email analytics
The Performance tab’s “Sends” column summed across all emails should match this card to within a few hundred. Why our number may legitimately differ from HubSpot’s: Cross-connector reconciliation: When a merchant runs HubSpot Marketing Hub alongside a separate ESP (Klaviyo for commerce, Mailchimp legacy), each ESP’s send-volume figure is independent and they should not overlap subscribers. If they do, two compliance issues to check:

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Why is my HubSpot send count different from my Marketing dashboard? Three usual causes: (a) timezone, HubSpot’s UI uses portal timezone, Vortex IQ uses UTC. (b) Filter scope, HubSpot’s Performance tab can be filtered to Marketing-emails-only and exclude workflow sends; this card includes both by default. (c) Sync lag, the most recent 15 minutes of sends may not be in our index yet. My send count dropped 30% MoM but my list size is the same, what happened? Audit HS03 fires precisely on this scenario. Common causes: (a) a workflow turned off (someone disabled the welcome flow during a redesign), (b) the Marketing-Hub send-quota tier was hit, (c) send-from-address was unverified after a domain change, (d) a list-trigger broke (deleted property, missing list), (e) IP-warming pause (new dedicated IP). Audit HS03 surfaces the cause within 24 hours. Does this include Sales Hub Sequence emails? No. Sales Hub Sequence sends are 1-to-1 outreach (mostly looks-like-Gmail emails from rep accounts) and do not flow through Marketing Hub. They are tracked separately. To see total outbound add Sequence sends from the Sales Hub card. Why are A/B test variants both counted? Because each variant is a real send to a real recipient. A 10,000-recipient test split 50/50 sends 10,000 emails. Counting half would understate. The HubSpot Performance tab counts the same way. List-membership refresh lag, does it affect this? Active list memberships are evaluated on a 15-minute schedule. If a contact joins a list at 09:50 and the list-trigger workflow runs at 10:00, the email may not fire until the 10:15 cycle. The send count for that day is correct; just lagged by up to 15 minutes. Multi-portal aggregation, what does this show? One card per portal. Vortex IQ does not aggregate across HubSpot portals because send-quota tiers, suppression-list state, and IP reputation are per-portal. Today-volatility, why is this number jumpy intra-day? Marketing-email cadence is concentrated at certain hours (most teams send 09:00 and 14:00 portal-local time). The intra-day curve is bimodal, not smooth. The 30D rollup smooths this out. Why is my deal pipeline number different from my dashboard playbook? This is the email-sends card, not deals. They are independent metrics. Send volume rising while pipeline is flat means email is reaching new contacts but those contacts are not yet converting; check Lead-to-MQL and MQL-to-SQL rates next. Sequence enrolment vs send timing, what is the difference? Workflow enrolment is when a contact joins an automation; send timing is when the message actually fires (often 1-day or 3-day-delayed steps in the sequence). This card counts the send, not the enrolment. The Workflow Enrolment Volume card counts the enrolment.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Marketing Emails Sent is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across HubSpot and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.