How does excluding bot clicks in Klaviyo affect email click rates and segmentation?

Key findings

• Data Distortion: Excluding bot clicks provides a more accurate view of human engagement, as bot interactions often inflate metrics such as click-through rates (CTR).
• Segmentation Impact: Segmentation based on 'human-only' clicks can lead to tighter, more engaged audience segments. However, overly strict exclusions might unintentionally remove active human users, particularly in B2C contexts where initial clicks can be very rapid.
• Content Optimization: A low click rate after bot exclusion, coupled with a high open rate and low spam complaints, often indicates that the email content or calls to action need optimization for genuine human interaction.
• Deliverability: While bot clicks are not a primary deliverability signal, managing them helps prevent false positives in engagement metrics that could mislead senders about their true audience behavior.

Key considerations

• Accuracy of Bot Detection: Klaviyo's bot click detection aims to be accurate per event, meaning both bot and human clicks should register, but only confirmed human clicks are recommended for segmentation. Understand how your ESP identifies and flags bot activity. For more on this, read about how to combat spam filter and bot clicks.
• Exclusion Risks: Excluding individuals from sending based on bot click activity might mistakenly remove real, engaged subscribers. It's often better to refine reporting and segmentation to focus on confirmed human clicks rather than suppressing sends entirely. This helps avoid false email click data.
• Testing Strategy: Conduct A/B tests by sending to audiences with and without bot click exclusions to compare conversion rates and revenue, not just click rates.
• Holistic Metrics: Focus on a broader set of metrics beyond just click rates, including conversion rates, purchase behavior, and lifetime value, to truly assess campaign performance. Klaviyo provides guidance on understanding bot clicks in their help center.

Key opinions

• Content is King: Many marketers agree that if open rates are high but click rates are low after bot exclusion, the primary issue is likely the email content, its relevance, or the call-to-action effectiveness.
• B2C vs. B2B: Some marketers suggest that B2C email streams typically have fewer Non-Human Interaction (NHI) clicks compared to B2B, making overly aggressive bot exclusion heuristics potentially more detrimental for B2C brands.
• Holistic View: Focusing solely on click rate after bot exclusion can be misleading. Marketers emphasize the importance of looking at other metrics like conversions, revenue, and website activity tied to email campaigns to get a true picture of success. This helps mitigate the impact of bot clicks.
• Impact on A/B Testing: Bot click exclusion can impact A/B test results, potentially skewing the identification of winning variants if not accounted for correctly. Marketers recommend tracking conversions alongside clicks when testing.

Key considerations

• Audience Segmentation: Review whether your segmentation strategy is too aggressive if it completely excludes profiles that have any bot click activity. A more refined approach might be to filter for confirmed human clicks within segments, rather than outright exclusion.
• Frequency and Content: Assess mailing frequency and ensure content is consistently optimized with clear calls to action, especially above the fold. Sometimes, a low click rate reflects content fatigue rather than bot exclusion issues.
• Attribution: Consider how removing bot clicks impacts revenue attribution. While it can make data cleaner, ensure you are not losing sight of potential conversions that may have been influenced by emails initially flagged for bot activity. This is also covered by Hustler Marketing's take on bot clicks.
• List Health: Analyze performance by acquisition source and top email domains to identify potential issues with list quality or specific mailbox provider interactions. This can reveal hidden factors about why your deliverability rate is wrong.

Key opinions

• Suspicion of Heuristics: Experts often express suspicion about ESPs' bot detection heuristics, especially if they report high rates of Non-Human Interaction (NHI) clicks on B2C email streams. They argue that these heuristics might be overly aggressive and misclassify human engagement.
• Risk of Excluding Humans: A key concern is that some bot click exclusions might inadvertently remove legitimate human traffic, particularly those subscribers who click very quickly after an email is delivered. This could mean excluding the most engaged customers.
• NHI vs. Human Reaction: Experts emphasize that even if an email receives an NHI click, it doesn't necessarily mean a human won't also see and react to the email. Therefore, using NHI data to suppress sends requires careful consideration, as detailed in this article on deliveries, opens, and clicks.
• Data Analysis over Suppression: The consensus among experts is to focus on analyzing data to understand the true human interaction rather than suppressing sends based solely on bot activity. This approach leads to more informed segmentation and campaign decisions.

Key considerations

• Segmentation Refinement: If an ESP's bot click data informs segmentation, experts recommend reviewing those decisions, especially if the data appears to be overaggressive. This could involve segmenting by 'confirmed human' clicks rather than broad exclusions. For more on this, check out how to handle spam bot clicks.
• Website Activity Correlation: If possible, connect website activity with recipient data to provide a clearer picture of engagement, beyond just email clicks. This can help validate whether a 'bot' click led to subsequent human behavior.
• Avoiding Inflated Metrics: While bot clicks can inflate metrics, the goal should be accurate reporting to make sound marketing decisions, rather than trying to achieve a higher click rate by including false data. Understanding why your clicks are inflated is key.
• Mailbox Provider Behavior: Recognize that mailbox providers (MBPs) may conduct automated scans and clicks for security reasons, which can be misidentified as bot activity. These are often not indicative of malicious intent but rather security checks.

Key findings

• Bot Click Definition: Bot clicks are generally defined as interactions (opens or clicks) by automated scripts, often used for security checks (e.g., phishing links, viruses) by inbox security systems or mailbox providers. This is a common understanding, as detailed by EmailTooltester on bot clicks.
• Per-Event Detection: Some ESPs (e.g., Klaviyo) track NHI (Non-Human Interaction) activity per event. This means that if both a bot and a human click, the human click is typically still recorded and reflected in campaign metrics.
• Impact on A/B Tests: Excluding bot clicks can impact the outcome of A/B tests, as winning variants may be determined based on a click rate that specifically excludes bot activity.
• Conversion Attribution: If bot clicks are removed from attribution calculations, they will not contribute to conversions moving forward. Marketers need to be aware of this for accurate revenue reporting.

Key considerations

• Segmentation Best Practices: Documentation often advises against suppressing people or excluding them from sending lists solely based on NHI activity. Instead, it recommends refining segments to include only clicks confirmed as human, for instance, by applying filters like 'Bot Clicks equals false'. This helps in minimizing bot clicks in marketing.
• Avoiding Exclusion of Real Users: Excluding profiles with any bot click activity from segments can inadvertently remove genuine subscribers. This can lead to under-segmentation and missing out on potentially engaged audience members. You want to accurately identify and handle suspicious bot clicks.
• Clarity in Reporting: ESPs strive to provide clear documentation regarding their bot detection methods to prevent confusion, recognizing the negative connotations associated with the term 'bot'.
• Adjusting Expectations: Marketers should adjust their expectations for click rates when bot clicks are excluded, as the raw reported rates will naturally appear lower. The focus should shift to the quality of engagement rather than inflated numbers.