Today I’m lucky to be able to share a guest post from email deliverability and technical expert Frank Rix (CEO of email service provider dialogue1 and Technical CRM Consultant for VERTUS), who has put together a good and easy-to-understand overview of what bot clicks are, why they happen, and what to do about them. This originally appeared (in German) on Frank’s website, Moin Inbox!
Clicks are the most important currency in email marketing. Ultimately, all important KPIs are based on them. In recent years, however, B2B senders in particular have increasingly complained about "fake" clicks. These are so-called bot clicks, which dilute the analytics. What happened?
There is a particularly high fear of phishing emails that employees accidentally click on, opening the door to data thieves. Once installed, malware can cause untold financial losses.
In order to identify phishing attacks, incoming emails are automatically checked before they arrive in the recipient's mailbox. Third-party spam filters and security solutions such as Barracuda or Mimecast do this automatically. So-called bots are used to examine the URLs they contain in a secure environment.
What is a Bot Click?
A bot click is a click that is not performed by a human, but by software. The bot executes a simple HTTP request (GET) to then check the returned content. The noble goal: Identifying malware to prevent users from being exposed to it.
What does this mean for senders?
As understandable as the use of bots is, they lead to various problems in email marketing:
“Bot clicks” result in a distorted measurement of success because the click rate no longer reflects reality. After all, as a marketer you are only interested in the “real” clicks.
Segmentation and behavior-based rules are increasingly based on false information and therefore fail.
Identifying inactive contacts becomes more difficult.
In addition, bot clicks can lead to unwanted newsletter unsubscribes. The resulting loss of valuable contacts is quite annoying.
Identifying Bots
Have you ever noticed strange click behavior? A good indicator of click bots is an even number of visits to pages such as the imprint or privacy policy. In fact, the bot often (but not always) visits all linked URLs - immediately after receiving the email.
Measures
Are you heavily affected by click bots? Then it's time to take some measures to protect yourself from further damage.
For unsubscribing, replace your 1-click procedure with an unsubscribing process where the user has to confirm the unsubscription again on a landing page (via POST request). Captchas or similar are not necessary here.
Keeping the click statistics clean is a challenge. Clicks that are tracked within the first two seconds after sending are conspicuous. These can be easily filtered out.
Bots are usually used across certain organizations. Emails to recipients with the same (root) domain are therefore equally affected. This can be helpful in filtering out bot activity.
For greater precision, a link that is invisible to the user can be integrated into emails. Naturally, this will only be clicked by bots.
Requests with a missing value for the user agent are noticeable. However, modern bots can no longer be distinguished from “real” users – they often have user agent settings that appear legitimate, and can sometimes come from the same IP addresses as legitimate traffic.
Blocking bots at server level is not sensible, as we are not dealing with “bad bots” here. Blocking them could result in the entire email being blocked.
In general, it is recommended to track click streams using web analytics. Tools like Google Analytics are quite good at identifying bots. So compare the numbers from the email service provider with those from your web analytics.
Keeping bot clicks away from email automation (“flows”) and segmentation is more difficult. In this case, it is advisable to supplement the rules with exclusion criteria: for example, for calling up the imprint (clicking on service links like “Privacy Policy” or “Terms of Use”) or (even better) a link hidden in the email.
If you have a lot of business contacts in your lists, it's worth taking a critical look at the click statistics. Unusual click numbers can indicate click bots. But even if the numbers look correct, a two-stage unsubscribe process is recommended, especially in the B2B environment. This ensures that subscribers are not involuntarily “unsubscribed.”
About the Author
Frank Rix is CEO of email service provider dialogue1 and Technical CRM Consultant for VERTUS, helping clients develop and implement ESP and CRM strategies and troubleshoot technical issues. Follow him on Linkedin or on his website Moin Inbox!
Today I’m lucky to be able to share a guest post from email deliverability and technical expert Frank Rix (CEO of email service provider dialogue1 and Technical CRM Consultant for VERTUS), who has put together a good and easy-to-understand overview of what bot clicks are, why they happen, and what to do about them. This originally appeared (in German) on Frank’s website, Moin Inbox!
Clicks are the most important currency in email marketing. Ultimately, all important KPIs are based on them. In recent years, however, B2B senders in particular have increasingly complained about "fake" clicks. These are so-called bot clicks, which dilute the analytics. What happened?
According to Bitkom, 9 out of 10 companies have already fallen victim to data theft, espionage or sabotage. This is why companies in the IT, finance and pharmaceutical sectors, in particular, are investing a lot of money in data protection and security.
There is a particularly high fear of phishing emails that employees accidentally click on, opening the door to data thieves. Once installed, malware can cause untold financial losses.
In order to identify phishing attacks, incoming emails are automatically checked before they arrive in the recipient's mailbox. Third-party spam filters and security solutions such as Barracuda or Mimecast do this automatically. So-called bots are used to examine the URLs they contain in a secure environment.
What is a Bot Click?
A bot click is a click that is not performed by a human, but by software. The bot executes a simple HTTP request (GET) to then check the returned content. The noble goal: Identifying malware to prevent users from being exposed to it.What does this mean for senders?
As understandable as the use of bots is, they lead to various problems in email marketing:Identifying Bots
Have you ever noticed strange click behavior? A good indicator of click bots is an even number of visits to pages such as the imprint or privacy policy. In fact, the bot often (but not always) visits all linked URLs - immediately after receiving the email.Measures
Are you heavily affected by click bots? Then it's time to take some measures to protect yourself from further damage.- For unsubscribing, replace your 1-click procedure with an unsubscribing process where the user has to confirm the unsubscription again on a landing page (via POST request). Captchas or similar are not necessary here.
- Keeping the click statistics clean is a challenge. Clicks that are tracked within the first two seconds after sending are conspicuous. These can be easily filtered out.
- Bots are usually used across certain organizations. Emails to recipients with the same (root) domain are therefore equally affected. This can be helpful in filtering out bot activity.
- For greater precision, a link that is invisible to the user can be integrated into emails. Naturally, this will only be clicked by bots.
- Requests with a missing value for the user agent are noticeable. However, modern bots can no longer be distinguished from “real” users – they often have user agent settings that appear legitimate, and can sometimes come from the same IP addresses as legitimate traffic.
- Blocking bots at server level is not sensible, as we are not dealing with “bad bots” here. Blocking them could result in the entire email being blocked.
- In general, it is recommended to track click streams using web analytics. Tools like Google Analytics are quite good at identifying bots. So compare the numbers from the email service provider with those from your web analytics.
- Keeping bot clicks away from email automation (“flows”) and segmentation is more difficult. In this case, it is advisable to supplement the rules with exclusion criteria: for example, for calling up the imprint (clicking on service links like “Privacy Policy” or “Terms of Use”) or (even better) a link hidden in the email.
If you have a lot of business contacts in your lists, it's worth taking a critical look at the click statistics. Unusual click numbers can indicate click bots. But even if the numbers look correct, a two-stage unsubscribe process is recommended, especially in the B2B environment. This ensures that subscribers are not involuntarily “unsubscribed.”About the Author
Frank Rix is CEO of email service provider dialogue1 and Technical CRM Consultant for VERTUS, helping clients develop and implement ESP and CRM strategies and troubleshoot technical issues. Follow him on Linkedin or on his website Moin Inbox!Comments
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