What are email bot clicks and how do they affect my metrics?

Bot clicks are automated interactions with email links, typically performed by security software (like Google or Yahoo ) to scan for malware or phishing. They inflate click-through rates and open rates, making it harder to accurately assess true human engagement and campaign performance.

How can I identify if my email clicks are from bots?

Look for sudden, uncharacteristic spikes in clicks, rapid clicks on multiple links (sometimes within milliseconds), clicks from unusual IP addresses (like data centers), or generic user agent strings. Comparing click times to delivery times can also reveal automated activity, as bots often click immediately upon receipt.

What steps can I take to mitigate the impact of bot clicks on my reporting?

To mitigate the impact, focus on unique human clicks by filtering out known bot activity. Many ESPs now offer features to automatically exclude these. Prioritize metrics that bots can't easily fake, such as conversions, website visits, or time spent on landing pages. Regularly cleaning your email list also helps improve data accuracy.

Can I prevent bot clicks altogether?

While it's difficult to prevent all bot clicks since many are legitimate security scans, implementing strong email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) can improve your sender reputation. A robust reputation signals trustworthiness to mail servers, potentially influencing how your emails are handled by security systems. You can also strategically place honeypot links to detect and track bot activity, allowing you to segment them out of your reporting.

Do bot clicks harm my email sender reputation or deliverability?

While bot clicks don't directly harm your sender reputation in the same way spam complaints or bounces do, they can obscure real engagement signals. If your metrics are heavily inflated, it might make it harder for your ESP or mailbox providers to accurately assess genuine subscriber interest, which could indirectly affect deliverability over time. The primary concern is skewed data, not necessarily a direct negative impact on your domain's sending reputation.

How can I identify and mitigate the impact of bot clicks on email marketing metrics? - Troubleshooting - Email deliverability - Knowledge base

Dealing with bot clicks has become a significant challenge for email marketers, myself included. It's frustrating to see inflated metrics, making it difficult to understand true engagement and campaign performance. I've experienced situations where email open and click rates suddenly spike, only to realize much of that activity isn't from human interaction but from automated systems.

These automated clicks, often from security scanners, can distort your data, leading to misinformed decisions about your email strategy. Identifying and mitigating their impact is crucial for maintaining a healthy and effective email marketing program. Let's explore how we can tackle this.

What are email security bot clicks?

Email bot clicks occur when automated programs, rather than human recipients, interact with links within your emails. These bots often scan emails for malicious content, phishing attempts, or simply to pre-load content for faster user experience. While their intention is often benign, their actions can severely skew your email marketing metrics.

A common source of these clicks is email security software employed by major providers and large organizations. Companies like

Microsoft (specifically Outlook/Office 365) and security vendors like Proofpoint routinely perform link checking to protect their users. This means links are clicked even before an email lands in a user's inbox, or moments after, without any human involvement. We have written a guide about handling bot clicks from Microsoft/Outlook domains.

The primary impact of these bot clicks is a distorted view of your email campaign's performance. When reported click-through rates (CTR) or open rates are artificially inflated, it becomes challenging to accurately assess what resonates with your audience. This can lead to flawed A/B tests, incorrect audience segmentation, and ultimately, ineffective marketing strategies. I've seen how these inaccuracies can lead to a misunderstanding of campaign effectiveness, which directly impacts ROI calculations.

Identifying bot click patterns

Identifying bot clicks requires a keen eye for unusual patterns in your engagement data. One of the most common signs is a sudden, uncharacteristic spike in clicks, especially if it happens immediately after sending an email or disproportionately on certain links. This is often the telltale sign of an automated scanner at work.

I often look for rapid, sequential clicks across multiple links within the same email, sometimes within milliseconds of each other. Human behavior simply doesn't manifest this way. Another indicator is clicks originating from data centers or suspicious IP ranges that don't typically correspond to your target audience's geographic locations. You can also analyze user agent strings in your click data for signatures that indicate automated processes, which we cover in our guide on identifying bot user agents.

Some marketers try to deploy honeypot links or invisible tracking pixels within emails. These are links or pixels designed to be clicked only by bots, not by humans, providing a clear signal of automated activity. While effective for detection, it's essential to understand that hiding elements in emails can sometimes impact deliverability, so use this tactic with caution.

Timing: Automated clicks often happen within seconds or minutes of an email being sent, sometimes even before a human could realistically open and read the email. Look for clicks occurring outside typical engagement hours.
Volume: Bots frequently click on every link in an email, including images, footers, and unsubscribe links, regardless of their relevance to a human reader. A high click-through rate across all links could indicate bot activity.
Source IP: Analyze the IP addresses associated with clicks. Clicks from data centers, cloud providers, or known security vendors are strong indicators of bot activity. Your email service provider (ESP) might offer tools to help identify these.
User agent: Examine user agent strings, which provide information about the client (browser, email client, etc.) used to click the link. Bot clicks often have generic or unusual user agent strings that differ from typical human browsing patterns.

Mitigating the impact on your metrics

Once you've identified potential bot activity, the next step is to mitigate its impact on your email marketing metrics. The goal isn't necessarily to stop the bots entirely, as many are legitimate security scanners, but rather to ensure your reporting accurately reflects human engagement. Some email service providers (ESPs) are beginning to filter out bot clicks automatically, providing cleaner data.

Best practices for accurate reporting

To gain more accurate insights, I recommend focusing on unique human clicks and open rates. You can often filter out suspicious activity by segmenting your data based on the patterns we discussed. For instance, clicks occurring within the first few seconds of delivery, or from known bot IP ranges, can be excluded from your primary engagement metrics. This allows you to differentiate between legitimate engagement and automated activity.

Focus on conversions: Ultimately, sales and conversions are what matter most. Bot clicks don't convert, so prioritize metrics that reflect actual business outcomes.
Monitor secondary engagement: Look at metrics like time spent on landing pages, form submissions, or subsequent website activity. These are harder for bots to fake.
Segment your audience: If you can identify and tag bot-prone segments (e.g., specific domains or IP ranges), you can exclude them from your primary reporting for a clearer view of human engagement.

Additionally, regularly cleaning your email list is a fundamental practice that can indirectly help. Removing inactive or invalid email addresses reduces the surface area for bot interactions and improves the overall health of your list. This helps ensure that your emails are reaching real, engaged recipients, which is a core part of accurately measuring email engagement.

Long-term strategies for accurate data

For a long-term strategy, understanding and continuously monitoring your email deliverability is key. Implementing strong email authentication protocols like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM can bolster your sender reputation, making your emails more trustworthy to receiving servers and potentially reducing the likelihood of aggressive scanning. These standards signal to email providers that your emails are legitimate, which can influence how they are processed, including by security bots.

Staying informed about updates from major mailbox providers, such as

Gmail and Yahoo, regarding their bot detection and filtering methods is also critical. These providers are constantly evolving their defenses against malicious activity, and often this includes how they handle automated interactions. Adapting your strategies based on their changes helps maintain data accuracy.

Views from the trenches

Best practices

Actively analyze click timestamps and IP data to distinguish between human and bot interactions.

Segment your audience based on engagement patterns to isolate bot activity from real user behavior.

Regularly clean your email list to remove inactive subscribers, improving overall data quality.

Focus on downstream metrics like conversions and website engagement for true campaign performance.

Common pitfalls

Over-relying on raw click rates without considering the impact of security scanners and automated systems.

Failing to investigate sudden, uncharacteristic spikes in email engagement metrics.

Ignoring the user agent strings or IP origins of clicks, which can reveal bot activity.

Not communicating the presence and impact of bot clicks to stakeholders, leading to misaligned expectations.

Expert tips

Many ESPs now offer features to automatically detect and filter bot clicks from your reports, providing cleaner data.

Consider A/B testing different email designs to see if certain layouts or link placements provoke more bot activity.

Leverage advanced analytics to track unique human interactions beyond initial clicks, such as time spent on landing pages.

Implement a consistent methodology for adjusting your metrics for bot activity to ensure historical comparison remains valid.

Marketer view

Marketer from Email Geeks says they noticed an unusual spike in open and click rates, with the first two images getting significantly more clicks than subsequent ones. They suspected bot or automated activity due to the highly unusual pattern.

2023-06-19 - Email Geeks

Expert view

Expert from Email Geeks says that many organizations use Proofpoint behind Microsoft Outlook's protection, indicating that the observed link checking is likely bot clicks. They confirm that this type of automated link checking is very common.

2023-06-20 - Email Geeks

Regaining clarity in your email data

Bot clicks are an unavoidable reality in modern email marketing. While they can distort your metrics and make it harder to gauge true audience engagement, they don't have to derail your strategy. By understanding what causes them, identifying their patterns, and implementing mitigation techniques, you can regain clarity in your email data.

The key is to move beyond raw click and open rates and instead focus on deeper engagement indicators and conversion metrics that truly reflect human intent. With a proactive approach, you can ensure your email marketing efforts are based on accurate insights, leading to better campaign performance and stronger relationships with your audience.