What could cause unusual clicks and unsubscribes in SendGrid, and how can I troubleshoot it?

Key findings

• Bot activity: A primary cause of unusual click and unsubscribe activity is often attributed to bot activity from security vendors, like Barracuda, or other automated systems that scan emails and follow all embedded links, including the unsubscribe option.
• False unsubscribes: These automated systems can trigger thousands of unsubscribes from legitimate recipients without their intent, leading to significant list churn and skewed metrics.
• Inflated clicks: Similarly, bot clicks can artificially inflate your click rates, making it difficult to assess actual user engagement and campaign performance.
• ESP limitations: Some ESPs, including SendGrid, may not have automated processes to detect and filter out such bot activity, leaving the sender to manually manage these anomalous events. SendGrid notes that aggressive spam filters can open messages and click links to expose malicious content.

Key considerations

• Data analysis: Conduct in-depth analysis of unsubscribe events to identify patterns, such as common email providers or specific List-Unsubscribe headers triggering the actions.
• Account changes: Review any recent changes to your corporate mailbox provider, spam filters, or email infrastructure that might coincide with the onset of the unusual activity.
• Support engagement: If your ESP support is not providing direct answers, persist in seeking detailed explanations or logs that can help you identify the source of the anomaly.
• Unsubscribe management: Consider temporary measures, like setting up a manual unsubscribe group if available, to monitor suspected bot unsubscribes without immediately removing legitimate subscribers.

Key opinions

• External origin: Marketers frequently suspect that unusual click and unsubscribe behavior originates from external sources, such as overly aggressive spam filters or corporate security vendors like Barracuda.
• SendGrid's role: Many marketers do not believe SendGrid is directly responsible for these issues, stating that the platform's internal mechanics typically do not break in this specific manner.
• Limited visibility: A common frustration is the lack of granular data or click overlay reporting from SendGrid, which makes it challenging to identify the specific sources of these anomalous clicks or unsubscribes.
• Bot handling: Some users have observed that SendGrid does not automatically suppress obvious bot activity, recommending manual suppression of affected addresses, which is often impractical for high-volume senders. This can skew open rates.

Key considerations

• Manual testing: When facing issues like team members being unsubscribed, manually re-adding them and monitoring subsequent campaigns might offer immediate insight, though it's not a scalable solution.
• Provider changes: Investigate if any recent changes were made to the corporate mailbox provider or the addition of any new spam filters, as these can trigger such anomalies. A blocked SendGrid IP can also result in users not receiving emails.
• Feature requests: If an ESP lacks features to suppress bot activity, submitting detailed feature requests through their support channels can encourage prioritization of such developments.
• ESP switching: Persistent unresolved issues, especially with unhelpful support, may lead marketers to consider switching ESPs to one that offers better transparency and tools for identifying or ignoring bot-driven interactions.

Key opinions

• System stability: Experts with deep knowledge of ESP systems, including former SendGrid employees, express doubt that such widespread and peculiar behavior is typically caused by internal bugs within the platform itself. They suggest the system is robust against these kinds of failures.
• Data importance: The critical consensus is that access to message-level and event-level data, particularly user agents and remote IP addresses, is essential for truly diagnosing the source of automated interactions. This can help to combat spam filter and bot clicks.
• User demand: Progress on new features or improvements within ESPs often hinges on strong user demand, implying that if automated bot suppression is not a priority, it is due to insufficient collective requests from customers.
• Complex solutions: Implementing features that intelligently identify and ignore bot activity is complex, requiring careful consideration to avoid suppressing legitimate user actions, such as genuine unsubscribes.

Key considerations

• Event webhooks: Establish and store all event data via your ESP’s event webhook. This comprehensive data collection is crucial for understanding the specifics of clicks, opens, and unsubscribes, enabling you to pinpoint the exact systems causing the unusual activity.
• Source identification: By analyzing user agents and IP addresses from your event data, you can identify if the anomalous behavior is originating from a known security scanner, a particular network, or an email blocklist service.
• ESP feature matrix: Evaluate various ESPs based on their advanced features, such as event webhooks, complaint forwarding, and access to sender data, to choose a platform that better supports in-depth deliverability troubleshooting.
• Proactive monitoring: Maintain consistent, proactive monitoring of your email metrics beyond just the basic dashboard, looking for sudden shifts in engagement patterns that might signal automated activity.
• Understanding ESP limitations: Experts from Word to the Wise suggest that email deliverability is a shared responsibility, implying that senders need to understand what their ESP can and cannot do to mitigate automated behaviors and adapt their strategies accordingly.

Key findings

• Automated engagement: Documentation confirms that non-human interactions, such as corporate security scanners or automated engagement bots, are primary drivers of increased unsubscribe events.
• Link testing: Aggressive spam filters can open messages and click links (including unsubscribe links) before delivery to check for malicious content, leading to inadvertently recorded engagement. This includes email link testing by providers like Oath.
• Suppression lists: A global suppression or global unsubscribe list includes email addresses of recipients who do not wish to receive any messages from a sender, but these can be inadvertently populated by automated systems.
• Unsubscribe ease: Deliverability guides emphasize making it easy for subscribers to opt-out. If unsubscribe options are hard to find, recipients might mark emails as spam, which is worse for sender reputation. Documentation on List-Unsubscribe headers details these mechanisms.

Key considerations

• Distinguish engagement: Recognize that unique clicks and total clicks can be influenced by automated systems. Focus on other metrics or more granular data to understand true human engagement.
• Event data analysis: Leverage detailed event data provided by your ESP to analyze the source of clicks and unsubscribes, looking for patterns in IP addresses or user agents that correspond to known security scanners.
• Unsubscribe reason: Understand that unsubscribe events, whether from bots or humans, often signal a lack of interest or excessive messaging. Focus on content relevance and sending frequency to minimize legitimate unsubscribes.
• Metric definitions: Familiarize yourself with your ESP's precise definitions for metrics like unique clicks and unsubscribe drops to ensure you are interpreting reported data correctly.