Detecting Click Bot Activity in Email Reports

Automated email clicks occur when bots, not human users, open emails and click on links. These bots, designed to ensure email security and spam detection, scan links for potential threats like malware or phishing attempts. Click bots are becoming more and more prevalent.  

Automated clicks inflate click-through rates, making them unreliable for evaluating campaign success or triggering automated marketing workflows. This can lead to overestimating campaign effectiveness and misguided strategic decisions. To reduce or eliminate the effect of click bots on reporting, here are two proven detection strategies:

1. Behavior Analysis: Time Interval Analysis: Monitoring the time between clicks can reveal bot activity, as bots click links much faster than humans. Click Pattern Analysis: Bots often follow predictable patterns, such as clicking all links in an email or clicking links sequentially. Analyzing these patterns can help identify bot activity.
   

2. Invisible Links: Embedding an invisible link (that is the same color as the background) in the email can help identify bots, since these links would not be visible to human users. Interactions with these links will indicate bot activity.

Obviously, behavior analysis can be performed only after the email has been sent; embedding an invisible link must be done before the email has been sent. Note that behavior analysis will take much more time than embedding an invisible link—so for most marketers, that will be the preferred method. Once email results come back, just sort the spreadsheet by “Clicked Link Address." Then remove all contacts from the spreadsheet that clicked on the invisible link.

A caveat here: all email platforms are different, but with Constant Contact, if an email is opened by the same contact more than once, the open report will show the day and time of the most recent open. So, for example, if the email goes out to Person A at 1:00 p.m., and a bot opens and clicks on the email at 1:02, then Person A opens it at 2:34, the report will only show that it was opened at 2:34. That means discounting bot activity is simple--wait 2-3 days to give all humans a chance to open it and then delete any opens and click thrus that happen in the first 5-10 minutes of the send.

For a no cost discussion of your situation and how we can leverage metrics-based marketing to grow your business call 630-363-8081 or email jeanna@smartprcommunications.com.

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