Summary
Email marketers frequently encounter false click and open data, primarily due to automated anti-spam bots and security software pre-fetching images and scanning links. This inflates engagement metrics, making it challenging to gauge true human interaction. While a complete solution remains elusive, effective strategies involve shifting focus from unreliable open rates to more meaningful engagement metrics and employing various methods to identify and filter out bot-generated activity.
Key findings
- Bot Activity Impact: Anti-spam bots, security software, and firewalls like Barracuda, Microsoft ATP, and Proofpoint routinely pre-fetch images and click links, artificially inflating email open and click rates.
- Universal Challenge: This issue is widespread, affecting not only specific firewalls but also major mailbox providers, and there is no single, universally effective solution available due to its complex and evolving nature.
- Open Rate Inaccuracy: Email open rates, especially with privacy features such as Apple Mail Privacy Protection, are increasingly unreliable indicators of human engagement due to widespread bot activity and automated pre-fetching.
- Post-Click Reliability: Metrics beyond the initial email interaction, such as website click-through rates, conversions, time spent on webpages, and overall post-click behavior, offer a more accurate and reliable measure of true subscriber engagement.
- Security vs. Tracking: Many automated clicks are a necessary function of email security solutions scanning for malicious content, meaning some artificial engagement is unavoidable and should be understood as a security measure rather than human interaction.
Key considerations
- Prioritize Meaningful Metrics: De-emphasize open rates and instead focus on more actionable metrics like unique click-through rates, conversion rates, replies, unsubscribes, and return on investment to assess campaign performance accurately.
- Implement Bot Filtering: Utilize various techniques to identify and filter out bot activity, including analyzing click and open timing, such as extremely fast clicks within seconds of sending, monitoring unusual user agents like 'headless browser' or 'security scanner', and excluding known bot IP ranges.
- Leverage ESP & Analytics Tools: Explore your Email Service Provider's (ESP) capabilities for filtering known bot activity, and use external analytics platforms like Google Analytics to track post-click website behavior for more reliable engagement insights.
- Maintain List Hygiene: Regularly clean your email lists by removing inactive or disengaged subscribers to reduce the impact of bot activity on your overall engagement metrics and ensure your efforts are directed towards truly engaged users.
- Analyze Trends & Context: Instead of focusing on isolated campaign metrics, track engagement trends over time, segment your audience, and consider the context of automated security scans to better interpret your data and distinguish human interaction from bot activity.
What email marketers say
15 marketer opinions
Building on the understanding that false email data stems from automated security measures, marketers must adopt a multi-pronged approach to accurately measure engagement. This involves not only shifting analytical focus away from easily inflated metrics like open rates, but also proactively identifying and mitigating bot activity through technical filtering and strategic data interpretation. While a complete, definitive solution remains elusive due to the evolving nature of anti-spam technologies, combining various detection methods with a deeper analysis of post-click behavior offers the most robust path to understanding true recipient interaction.
Key opinions
- Bot Identification via Speed: Bots often perform actions, like clicks, within seconds of an email being sent, making click timing a key indicator of non-human activity.
- User Agent and IP Patterns: False engagement can be linked to specific user agents, such as 'headless browser' or 'security scanner', or unusual IP addresses and patterns like multiple clicks from the same IP in rapid succession.
- ESP and User Control Limitations: The ability to filter false data often depends on the specific features offered by the Email Service Provider, or requires marketers to manually manipulate exported data.
- Security Software Influence: Major security solutions, including Microsoft ATP, Proofpoint, and those used by Google Workspace, intentionally click links and pre-fetch images for threat scanning, which directly inflates click data.
- No Single Solution: The pervasive nature of bot activity and security-driven pre-fetching means there is no universal, exploit-proof solution, prompting the industry to continuously seek improved detection methods.
Key considerations
- Analyze Click Timing: Implement filtering or program logic based on click timing, as activity occurring within seconds of sending often indicates bot interaction.
- Monitor User Agents and IP Data: Regularly analyze user agent strings for suspicious identifiers and examine IP addresses for atypical patterns, using advanced analytics tools to filter out known bot activity.
- Leverage ESP-Specific Filtering: Explore your Email Service Provider's features for excluding data from known bot IP ranges or integrating with security solutions like Barracuda.
- Prioritize Post-Click Engagement: Shift analytical focus to metrics that occur after the initial email interaction, such as time spent on webpages, conversions, and customer journey progression, which are more indicative of true human interest.
- Validate Suspicious Contacts: Perform bulk validation, including MX record checks, on domains or contacts showing bot-like activity to identify corporate firewalls or automated security systems.
- Consider Link Modification: For advanced users, adding a slight delay or a unique identifier to links might help differentiate human clicks from automated scans, although this can be complex.
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks explains that filtering by the speed of clicks, where bots click very fast, can help identify non-human activity. They also note that filtering methods depend on the ESP's capabilities or the user's comfort with manipulating exported data in other applications.
8 Nov 2024 - Email Geeks
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests identifying bots by analyzing click/open timing, noting that activity within seconds of sending indicates a bot. They propose using program logic, like delaying actions or keeping users in a flow based on click timing, as a potential workaround for ESPs with limited filtering capabilities.
14 Jan 2023 - Email Geeks
What the experts say
2 expert opinions
To effectively mitigate false email engagement data caused by anti-spam bots, email marketers should prioritize the identification and exclusion of traffic originating from security scanners. This involves leveraging built-in features within Email Service Providers or analytics platforms designed to filter known bot activity, and, if such tools are not available, meticulously analyzing and filtering traffic based on indicators like IP addresses and User-Agent strings. Such proactive data cleansing is crucial for deriving accurate insights into genuine subscriber behavior, particularly for senders with smaller volumes where bot interference can disproportionately skew results.
Key opinions
- Bot Traffic Identification: Expert advice points to identifying security scanner traffic through IP addresses and User-Agent strings.
- Platform-Based Filtering: Email Service Providers (ESPs) and analytics platforms often provide features specifically for filtering out known security bot activity.
- Manual Filtering Challenges: While possible, manually identifying and filtering bot traffic by user agent or IP address can be challenging without dedicated platform features.
- Disproportionate Impact: False data from security scanners can significantly skew results for low-volume email senders.
Key considerations
- Utilize ESP Bot Filtering: Actively use features within your Email Service Provider or analytics platform that are designed to filter known security bot activity from your reports.
- Manual IP/User-Agent Filtering: If automated filtering features are not available, manually identify and exclude bot-generated activity by analyzing IP addresses and User-Agent strings, especially for suspicious patterns.
- Monitor Data Trends: Regularly monitor your email engagement trends over time to identify anomalies that might indicate significant bot activity, which can then inform your filtering strategies.
- Assess Impact on Low Volume: For senders with smaller email volumes, pay close attention to how security scanner traffic might be disproportionately affecting your engagement metrics and prioritize filtering accordingly.
Expert view
Expert from Spam Resource explains that to avoid false email click and open data from anti-spam bots, email senders might need to identify and filter out traffic from security scanners. This can involve identifying their IP addresses or User-Agent strings and excluding them from reporting, especially when their activity significantly skews results for low-volume senders.
23 Mar 2024 - Spam Resource
Expert view
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that to avoid false email click and open data, marketers should utilize features in their Email Service Providers (ESPs) or analytics platforms that are designed to filter out known security bot activity. If such features are unavailable, monitoring trends over time and potentially identifying and filtering traffic by user agent string or IP address can help, though manual filtering can be challenging.
29 Sep 2023 - Word to the Wise
What the documentation says
5 technical articles
Many leading email platforms and security providers, including Mailchimp, Proofpoint, SendGrid, Mimecast, and Google Workspace, acknowledge that their anti-spam and security features, such as image pre-fetching and URL scanning, inherently generate artificial opens and clicks. Marketers are advised to understand that this activity is a necessary security measure rather than genuine human interaction, and to pivot their analytical focus towards more reliable metrics like conversions and post-click website behavior, and to maintain strategic segmentation.
Key findings
- Security Feature Impact: Leading ESPs and security solutions, including Mailchimp, Proofpoint, SendGrid, Mimecast, and Google, confirm that their inherent security features, such as image pre-fetching and URL scanning, directly generate artificial email opens and clicks.
- Open Rate Inaccuracy: Major providers, including Mailchimp, highlight that email open rates are increasingly unreliable due to automated pre-fetching by security systems and privacy features like Apple Mail Privacy Protection.
- Focus on Deeper Metrics: Across the board, the consensus is to shift away from solely tracking opens and clicks, instead focusing on more meaningful human engagement metrics such as unique click-through rates, conversions, replies, and website activity.
- Security vs. Engagement Data: Artificial engagement from pre-scanning and pre-clicking is a necessary function of robust email security solutions, intended to protect recipients from malicious content, and should be understood as such rather than genuine interest.
Key considerations
- Re-evaluate Metrics: Strategically de-emphasize inflated open rates and first-click data, focusing instead on deeper engagement indicators like conversion rates, replies, and time spent on landing pages to accurately assess campaign effectiveness.
- Leverage Web Analytics: Utilize comprehensive web analytics platforms to track user behavior post-click on your landing pages, providing clearer, more reliable insights into true human engagement and intent.
- Acknowledge Security Scans: Accept that a certain degree of automated clicks and opens is an unavoidable byproduct of modern email security, and integrate this understanding into data analysis rather than solely seeking to eliminate it.
- Enhance Segmentation: Refine subscriber segmentation to ensure email campaigns are targeted at truly active and interested users, thereby making engagement data more relevant and less susceptible to distortion by passive or bot-like activity.
Technical article
Documentation from Mailchimp explains that automated security programs often pre-fetch images in emails, which can lead to inflated open rates that don't reflect actual human engagement. They advise marketers to understand that open rates are not 100% accurate, especially with privacy features like Apple Mail Privacy Protection, and to instead prioritize other metrics such as click-through rates, conversions, and overall subscriber engagement for a more reliable view of campaign performance.
31 Aug 2021 - Mailchimp
Technical article
Documentation from Proofpoint explains that their Targeted Attack Protection (TAP) feature rewrites URLs and may pre-scan them, which can result in artificial clicks being registered. To avoid misinterpreting this data, marketers should acknowledge that this activity is a necessary security measure rather than human engagement. The documentation implies that marketers should focus on actual human recipient engagement metrics that occur beyond the initial security scan, as some ESPs may offer filtering or classification for these types of clicks.
7 Sep 2023 - Proofpoint
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