How should I handle email profiles with unusual high engagement rates that may be bots?
Michael Ko
Co-founder & CEO, Suped
Published 25 May 2025
Updated 17 Aug 2025
7 min read
Encountering email profiles with unusually high engagement rates, such as multiple clicks and opens within seconds, can be puzzling. It often leads to a debate within teams: should these profiles be removed, or could they be beneficial for maintaining good engagement statistics and improving sender reputation? The data, often derived from webhook events from your email service provider (ESP), might show activity that simply doesn't look human.
This scenario highlights a common challenge in email marketing: distinguishing legitimate engagement from automated bot activity. Understanding the nature of these interactions is crucial for accurate metric analysis and effective list management, ultimately impacting your email deliverability and sender reputation.
Identifying bot activity
The first step in handling suspicious engagement is to accurately identify if it's indeed bot activity. These automated interactions often display specific patterns that differ significantly from human behavior. For instance, clicks from email security bots, especially prevalent in corporate or government domains, are designed to scan content for malicious links or spam before an email reaches the recipient's inbox.
While security bots are usually benign, other types of bots might be attempting to inflate metrics, sign up for services fraudulently, or even probe for vulnerabilities. Recognizing the characteristics of bot clicks, such as rapid, sequential clicks on all links, clicks originating from data center IP addresses, or opens from unusual geographic locations, is key. You can learn more about how to identify and handle suspicious bot clicks to improve your data integrity.
Common bot indicators
Instantaneous actions: Rapid opens or clicks immediately after sending, often within milliseconds or seconds.
Sequential clicking: Every link in the email clicked in order, including the view in browser link.
Unusual IP addresses: Clicks or opens from known data center IPs rather than residential ones.
Inconsistent behavior: High email engagement without corresponding website or purchase activity.
It's important to remember that not all bot activity is malicious. Many email providers and security software use bots to pre-scan emails for malware and phishing attempts. These security bots often trigger automated opens and clicks. While this behavior might inflate your metrics, it doesn't necessarily indicate a negative impact on your deliverability. Identifying bot user agents in your email click data can help differentiate between various bot types and their intent.
Impact on deliverability and metrics
A common point of contention is whether these bot-driven engagements harm or help your sender reputation. The general consensus is that Internet Service Providers (ISPs), like Gmail, are quite sophisticated. They often filter out or ignore automated clicks and opens from their deliverability algorithms, meaning these won't significantly boost your reputation.
While they might not hurt your reputation directly by landing you on a blacklist (or blocklist), bot clicks can severely skew your internal analytics. Inflated open and click-through rates can mislead your marketing team, giving a false sense of campaign performance and making it difficult to accurately measure email engagement. This distortion impacts A/B testing, segmentation efforts, and ultimately, your return on investment.
The argument for keeping
Perceived engagement: High numbers can make sender look good in dashboards.
Security scan benefits: Some bots are legitimate security measures, ensuring email safety.
The argument for removing
Skewed metrics: Inflated data leads to poor decision-making and misallocation of resources.
List hygiene: Bot profiles clutter lists, increasing costs and reducing efficiency.
Negative value: Bots signing up to game your system can indicate broader non-email bad behavior.
Ultimately, the argument for removing or at least segmenting these profiles is stronger for long-term strategic benefits. Focus on genuine human engagement to ensure your campaigns are truly effective. Email providers are becoming increasingly adept at understanding bot clicks, and their systems are designed to distinguish between real human interaction and automated activity.
Strategies for handling suspected bot profiles
Proactively addressing suspected bot profiles is essential for maintaining a healthy email program. Implementing robust anti-bot measures at the point of signup is a crucial first line of defense. This includes using CAPTCHAs, honeypot fields, and double opt-in processes to verify new subscribers. These methods help ensure that the email addresses entering your list belong to real, engaged humans rather than bots.
For existing profiles, regular monitoring of engagement patterns is vital. Look for spikes in opens or clicks that don't correspond with actual website visits or conversions. You might need to identify and filter bot email addresses by creating segmentation rules based on suspicious behavior. This could involve segmenting out any subscriber who clicks all links within a specific, unrealistically short timeframe.
Consider implementing logic to automatically unsubscribe users exhibiting persistent bot-like activity, especially if their engagement metrics are not backed by any meaningful website interaction or purchase history. This approach helps to keep your list clean and ensures that your internal reporting reflects genuine human interest, giving you a more accurate picture of your campaign's true performance. You can also implement a program status for bots.
Refining your approach for accurate insights
The core issue with bot-driven engagement isn't necessarily a direct hit to your email deliverability, as ISPs are often smart enough to discount it. The real problem lies in the distortion of your data. When your metrics are inflated by automated interactions, it becomes challenging to gauge the true effectiveness of your email marketing efforts. This can lead to flawed strategies and missed opportunities to connect with your actual audience.
To refine your approach, prioritize data integrity over vanity metrics. Focus on identifying and segmenting (or even removing) profiles that show only bot-like email engagement without corresponding website activity, purchases, or other valuable interactions. This ensures that your email list is comprised of genuinely interested subscribers, leading to more meaningful insights and better campaign performance.
By actively managing these suspicious profiles, you ensure that your engagement thresholds for deliverability monitoring are accurate and reflective of human behavior. This proactive management helps maintain a healthier sender reputation and allows for more informed decision-making regarding your email marketing strategy. Remember, quality engagement always trumps quantity when it comes to long-term success.
Views from the trenches
Best practices
Actively monitor engagement patterns beyond simple opens and clicks, looking for behavioral inconsistencies.
Implement robust anti-bot measures at signup, such as double opt-in and CAPTCHAs, to prevent bot infiltration.
Cross-reference email engagement with website activity and conversion data to confirm genuine interest.
Segment out or suppress profiles that consistently show only bot-like email activity without other meaningful interactions.
Educate your team on the difference between legitimate security scans and malicious bot activity to avoid misinterpretations.
Common pitfalls
Mistaking security scanner activity for genuine engagement, leading to inflated and misleading metrics.
Failing to implement strong anti-bot measures at the point of entry, allowing bots to contaminate your list.
Relying solely on email opens and clicks for engagement assessment without considering broader user behavior.
Keeping bot profiles on your active list, which can increase email sending costs and skew segmentation efforts.
Ignoring the underlying business impact of bot activity, focusing only on email deliverability concerns.
Expert tips
Use a honeypot field on your signup forms to deter automated bots without impacting human users.
Analyze user-agent strings in your email click data to identify known bot signatures.
Develop custom segmentation rules in your ESP to automatically exclude or flag suspicious profiles.
Focus on conversion metrics (purchases, sign-ups) as a stronger indicator of true engagement than opens/clicks alone.
Regularly clean your email list by removing unengaged or suspected bot profiles to maintain list hygiene.
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks says that automated behavior is often seen from spam filters, particularly in corporate, educational, or government sectors that are scanning for malicious content. These filters are not harmful to your deliverability.
2024-06-07 - Email Geeks
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks says that while bot clicks and opens are likely invisible to Gmail and won't harm deliverability, they also won't help it. If bots are signing up to game your system, dig into signup metadata, IPs, and query metadata to understand their activity.
2024-06-07 - Email Geeks
Maintaining data integrity for genuine engagement
Dealing with email profiles that exhibit unusually high engagement rates due to suspected bot activity requires a nuanced approach. While the immediate impulse might be to view these interactions as beneficial for sender reputation, the reality is that major ISPs are sophisticated enough to differentiate between legitimate human engagement and automated actions. Therefore, inflated metrics from bots are unlikely to significantly improve your deliverability and may instead distort your analytical insights.
The most effective strategy involves prioritizing data integrity. By identifying, segmenting, or even removing profiles with purely bot-driven engagement, you ensure that your email marketing decisions are based on accurate performance metrics from your real, human audience. This not only leads to more effective campaigns but also helps maintain a healthier and more valuable email list in the long run.
Gmail, are quite sophisticated. They often filter out or ignore automated clicks and opens from their deliverability algorithms, meaning these won't significantly boost your reputation.
