Understanding and reducing high Proofpoint click events for email marketers
Michael Ko
Co-founder & CEO, Suped
Published 21 Apr 2025
Updated 18 Aug 2025
7 min read
As an email marketer, you constantly monitor your campaign metrics, looking for genuine engagement from your audience. When you see a sudden, dramatic spike in click events, it's natural to investigate. Recently, many marketers have observed a significant increase in clicks originating from email security platforms like Proofpoint, specifically tied to their `pphosted.com` or `ppe-hosted.com` domains. This phenomenon can be puzzling, causing confusion and skewing your valuable reporting data.
These aren't legitimate user clicks, but rather automated interactions from security systems. While they don't necessarily indicate a problem with your deliverability, they can make it challenging to accurately assess campaign performance and user engagement. It's crucial to understand the nature of these clicks and how to effectively manage them.
My goal here is to shed light on why these Proofpoint clicks occur, how they impact your email marketing efforts, and what steps you can take to understand and reduce their effect on your metrics.
Proofpoint is a leading cybersecurity platform widely used by organizations to protect against advanced email threats like phishing, malware, and spam. Its core function involves sophisticated analysis of incoming emails to identify and neutralize malicious content before it reaches an employee's inbox. This protection extends to scanning URLs embedded within emails, a process known as URL defense or URL rewriting.
When an email passes through Proofpoint's filters, any links within it are often rewritten. This allows Proofpoint to check the link at the time of click. If a user clicks a rewritten link, Proofpoint first evaluates the destination URL in a secure sandbox environment to determine if it's safe. This pre-delivery scan, or 'safe link' check, is precisely what generates many of the automated click events you observe. You can learn more about how Proofpoint works to get a deeper insight into its operations.
The increase in these click events often reflects Proofpoint's proactive approach to security. They are constantly adapting their scanning methodologies to combat new and evolving threats. A sudden uptick could be due to an update in their scanning algorithms, a heightened security posture for certain clients, or even specific content in your emails triggering more thorough analysis.
Decoding high Proofpoint click events
The key identifier for these automated clicks is the associated MX domain, typically `pphosted.com` or `ppe-hosted.com`. These domains indicate that the traffic originates from Proofpoint's systems. You might notice these clicks happening very rapidly after sending, sometimes even before a human could realistically open and click the email.
It's important to distinguish these from genuine user engagement. Automated clicks, or bot clicks (robot clicks), are part of the security filtering process, not a sign of user interest. You can read more about why robots click email links to understand the broader context. While the volume can be concerning, it typically doesn't directly harm your sender reputation or deliverability, as these systems are designed to scan, not penalize legitimate mail.
The primary challenge they present is the distortion of your email marketing metrics. An inflated click-through rate (CTR) can lead to misinterpretations of campaign effectiveness, making it difficult to optimize future strategies. This makes it essential to accurately assess campaign performance.
Impact on email marketing metrics and deliverability
Inflated click rates from security systems like Proofpoint create a significant challenge for email marketers. Your analytics might show a soaring CTR, leading to false assumptions about campaign success. This 'fake' engagement makes it hard to distinguish real user interaction from automated scans. It's a common issue where bot clicks inflate email metrics and distort your true engagement data.
While these clicks typically don't directly lead to your emails being marked as spam or your domain being put on a blacklist (or blocklist), they can obscure real deliverability issues. If your team is spending time explaining away high click numbers, it distracts from focusing on legitimate deliverability challenges, such as emails landing in spam folders or being blocklisted.
The core problem is the inability to get a clear picture of your campaign's performance. Without accurate click data, it's difficult to run A/B tests, measure the effectiveness of your calls to action, or understand which content truly resonates with your audience. This makes it essential to identify and mitigate the impact of bot clicks on your metrics.
Strategies for reducing artificial clicks
Addressing high Proofpoint click events involves a two-pronged approach: improving data accuracy and adjusting your sending infrastructure. The most immediate step is to implement robust data segmentation to filter out these non-human interactions. Most Email Service Providers (ESPs) allow for filtering based on IP addresses, user agents, or other identifiers associated with security scanners. If your ESP doesn't offer this directly, you may need to implement custom analytics.
Shared link tracking domains
When using a single, shared link tracking domain (e.g., `links.yourcompany.com`) across all your clients or campaigns, a negative reputation event on one client's content can potentially affect the scanning behavior for all emails using that shared domain. This means that if Proofpoint deems content behind one of your links suspicious, it may increase scanning intensity across your entire shared domain.
Reputation: Reputation is shared, making it harder to isolate issues.
Management: Simpler DNS and certificate management.
Analysis: Difficult to pinpoint specific content causing high clicks.
Custom link tracking domains
Implementing custom, client-specific link tracking domains (e.g., `links.clientdomain.com` or `client1.links.yourcompany.com`) offers better isolation. If one client's content triggers aggressive Proofpoint scanning, it's less likely to impact your other clients' emails. This provides a clearer view of individual client reputation and helps in troubleshooting.
Reputation: Provides better isolation of reputation per client or campaign.
Management: Requires more complex DNS and certificate management.
Analysis: Easier to pinpoint specific client issues driving scan activity.
While moving to custom tracking domains can involve more technical overhead, such as certificate management for each domain, the benefit of isolated reputation and clearer insights into the root cause of high click events can be significant. This approach aligns the link domain with the sender's domain, which is a best practice for deliverability.
Enhancing email authentication and deliverability
Beyond managing click events, reinforcing your email authentication protocols can contribute to better overall deliverability and potentially reduce unwarranted scrutiny from security platforms. Implementing strong DMARC policies, particularly moving towards `p=quarantine` or `p=reject`, signals to recipient servers that you are actively protecting your domain from unauthorized use.
DMARC policy recommendations
While not a direct fix for Proofpoint's scanning, a stricter DMARC policy can improve your domain's trustworthiness, which may indirectly lead to less aggressive scanning over time. Domains with `p=reject` tend to experience fewer spam filter clicks compared to those with `p=none`.
Transition gradually: Start with `p=none` to monitor, then transition to `p=quarantine`, and finally `p=reject`. This allows you to safely transition your DMARC policy.
Monitor reports: Regularly review DMARC aggregate reports to ensure all legitimate mail is authenticating correctly before enforcing stricter policies.
Ultimately, a strong sender reputation built on consistent authentication, low spam complaints, and high engagement from real users is your best defense against deliverability challenges. While automated clicks are a fact of modern email, proactive management allows you to maintain accurate metrics and strong inbox placement.
Views from the trenches
Best practices
Implement granular data filtering in your analytics to exclude known bot activity from Proofpoint and other security vendors.
Consider segmenting your email metrics to differentiate between human engagement and automated security scans.
Explore implementing custom, client-specific tracking domains to isolate content reputation and reduce shared impact from Proofpoint's scanning.
Ensure all email authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) are correctly configured and aligned for optimal domain trustworthiness.
Common pitfalls
Misinterpreting high Proofpoint click events as genuine user engagement, leading to skewed campaign performance analysis.
Using a single, shared link tracking domain across multiple clients, which can consolidate negative reputation from aggressive scanning.
Neglecting to filter non-human interactions from your email reports, causing inaccurate data and misinformed marketing decisions.
Failing to adapt DMARC policies to a more restrictive state over time, potentially leaving your domain more vulnerable to spoofing and increasing bot activity.
Expert tips
Actively seek feedback from recipients who use Proofpoint to understand if any content consistently triggers aggressive scanning.
Continuously monitor your domain's sender reputation metrics beyond just click rates to ensure overall email health.
Invest in tools or develop internal processes that automatically identify and flag bot-generated clicks for cleaner reporting.
Collaborate with your IT or security team to gain insights into how security vendors like Proofpoint interact with your emails.
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks says that Proofpoint is likely following links to look for hostile content, and it might be a new process they've implemented or a testing phase. Massaging the reporting by suppressing or separately accounting for non-human interaction (NHI) is a practical approach.
March 1, 2024 - Email Geeks
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks states that if one customer links to content that Proofpoint is suspicious of, it could trigger them to check everything on that hostname. Whitelabeling tracking links is worth considering because the hostname or organizational domain of links is a significant factor in content reputation. If they're all the same, reputation is shared across all customers.
March 1, 2024 - Email Geeks
Final thoughts
High Proofpoint click events are a reality in modern email marketing, stemming from robust security measures designed to protect recipients. While they complicate metric analysis, they don't necessarily signal a deliverability crisis. By understanding the root causes, implementing smart data filtering, and strategically managing your link tracking domains and email authentication, you can gain a clearer picture of your campaign performance and maintain a strong email sending reputation. Focusing on authentic engagement and robust technical setups will always be key to your long-term success.
, specifically tied to their `pphosted.com` or `ppe-hosted.com` domains. This phenomenon can be puzzling, causing confusion and skewing your valuable reporting data.
