What This Update Actually Is
Content Recommendations for emails is a HubSpot-native analysis tool that reviews your past email sends, compares them against peer benchmarks, and returns a list of specific, ready-to-implement suggestions.
Think of it as a built-in email coach. It doesn't just flag problems. It shows you a before-and-after preview of the recommended fix, explains why the change matters, and lets you approve it in one click.
The big change in this release: it no longer requires Marketing Studio to use. Humans who work directly in the Email Editor or review results on the Campaign Performance page now get the same recommendations without switching contexts.
Why HubSpot Shipped This
Email best practices have a shelf life problem. A skilled email marketer joins your team, builds strong habits, and then leaves. The institutional knowledge walks out with them.
Even when best practices are documented, they don't get applied consistently. Deadlines are tight. Copy gets approved fast. Nobody stops to run an audit before hitting send.
HubSpot built Content Recommendations to put that expertise directly in the workflow, not in a wiki page nobody reads. The goal is to close the gap between what your team knows it should do and what actually makes it into the email before it goes out.
How to Use It Step by Step
There are three ways to access Content Recommendations. Use whichever fits your workflow.
From Marketing Studio:
- Select the beaker icon in the Studio dock. The recommendations UI opens and surfaces low-performing assets.
- Click 'Review Recommendations' on the asset you want to improve.
- Select 'Preview Fix' to open the before-and-after email preview. Read the sourced explanation of why the change helps.
- Select 'Approve Changes' to apply the recommendation directly.
From the Campaign Performance Page:
- Open the email details page and navigate to the Performance tab.
- The same recommendations that appear in Marketing Studio are surfaced here, so you can review performance data and apply fixes in one place.
From the Email Editor:
- While editing an email, select the 'Recommendations' button in the top-right corner.
- A preview panel opens as an overlay on the editor. Review and approve changes without leaving the editor view.
What It Touches in Your HubSpot Strategy
This update lives in Marketing Hub, but its impact runs deeper than a single tool. Here's where it ripples through your strategy.
Email performance and deliverability. Recommendations based on peer benchmarks mean you're not just measuring against your own history. You're measuring against what's actually working in the market. That benchmark layer is meaningful, especially if your team has been unknowingly reinforcing bad habits.
If you've been working on list hygiene and inbox placement, these recommendations add a content-quality layer on top of your list-quality work. The two reinforce each other. Our article on why your B2B email list may be hurting inbox placement covers the list side in detail.
Key Takeaway
Content Recommendations bridges the gap between your performance data and your next email. It turns past results into forward-looking action, not just a report to file away.
Campaign workflows and review processes. Teams that run email through a multi-step approval process now have a built-in pre-send quality check. Add a step in your campaign process: run recommendations before the email moves to final approval. It takes two minutes and it catches gaps that reviewers often miss.
Onboarding and team transitions. If you're new to Marketing Hub or bringing on a new email marketer, this feature acts as a guardrail. It surfaces what good looks like based on data, not just tribal knowledge. That's especially valuable during the first 90 days when new humans are still learning your brand standards and audience behaviors.
Pair this with Predicted Email Engagement in Segments for a powerful pre-send stack: know who's likely to engage before you send, and know whether your content is ready to earn that engagement.
Key Takeaway
Run Content Recommendations and Predicted Email Engagement together as a standard pre-send checklist. One checks audience readiness. The other checks content readiness. Together they cut the guesswork out of every send.
Reporting and iteration loops. When you approve a recommendation and send the email, you now have a clean before-and-after comparison point in your performance data. Over time, that builds a feedback loop that makes your whole email program smarter.
Who Should Care Most
This update matters most to these humans and team profiles:
- Solo marketers and small teams who don't have a dedicated email specialist reviewing every send. Content Recommendations acts as a second set of eyes you don't have to hire.
- Marketing ops leaders who want to build a repeatable, quality-controlled email process without writing a 20-page playbook. The recommendation engine encodes best practices into the workflow itself.
- Teams in transition, whether a key marketer just left, a new hire just joined, or you're scaling a program that used to run on one person's expertise.
- Companies running Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise who aren't yet using Marketing Studio. You no longer need to adopt Studio to get this feature. You can access it straight from the Email Editor.
If your email program is consistent but flat, meaning your open rates and click rates haven't moved in six months, this is a low-effort, high-signal place to start.
George's Take
I've done a lot of portal audits, and one of the most consistent things I see is a graveyard of good intentions around email. Teams know they should test subject lines. They know body copy length matters. They know their CTAs could be stronger. But they're moving fast, the calendar doesn't stop, and those 'should dos' never become 'did dos.' What I appreciate about Content Recommendations is that it doesn't add a new process. It fits inside the process humans are already running. Approve or skip. That's it. That frictionless design is what will actually get it used.
“The best feature is one that gets used. Content Recommendations wins because it shows up where you already are, hands you a specific fix, and asks for one click. That's a process that actually survives contact with a real deadline.”
If you want to put this feature inside a broader email strategy that's built for how buyers actually behave in 2026, our article on B2B email marketing quick wins that still work is a strong companion read.
Want help building a pre-send process that puts Content Recommendations, engagement prediction, and list hygiene together into a system your whole team can run? That's exactly the kind of work we do at Sidekick Strategies. Book a strategy call and let's look at your email program together.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is HubSpot's Content Recommendations for emails?
It's a HubSpot-native tool that analyzes your past email sends and compares them to peer benchmarks to surface specific, ready-to-apply suggestions for improving email performance. You can preview each fix before applying it, and approve changes in one click. It's available for Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise.
Do I need Marketing Studio to use Content Recommendations for emails?
No. As of the June 2026 update, Content Recommendations is available in three places: Marketing Studio, the Email Editor, and the Campaign Performance page. You don't need to use or adopt Marketing Studio to access the feature.
Where do HubSpot's email content recommendations come from?
They're based on two sources: your own historical email send data (what worked and what didn't in your specific account) and peer benchmarks from comparable senders. Each recommendation includes a sourced explanation of why the suggested change is expected to improve performance.
How do I access Content Recommendations in the HubSpot Email Editor?
Open any email in the Email Editor and select the 'Recommendations' button in the top-right corner. A preview panel opens as an overlay on the editor so you can review the before-and-after and approve changes without leaving the editing experience.
Who benefits most from HubSpot's email content recommendations feature?
Small marketing teams without a dedicated email specialist, marketing ops leaders building scalable review processes, and teams going through transitions where institutional email knowledge may have walked out the door. It's also valuable for any Marketing Hub Pro or Enterprise team whose email performance has plateaued.
Does HubSpot's Content Recommendations feature work on any email type?
The feature works on emails accessible through Marketing Studio and the Email Editor within Marketing Hub. It surfaces recommendations for low-performing assets identified in your account. The Campaign Performance page gives you the same insights tied to specific email sends, so you can review data and act in the same view.
